Blog Traffic Tips

We all know the best blogs are the best because of good content. Whenever you ask an expert for their one major tip on how to get more blog traffic they will tell you to write good content. Okay, so we know this, but let’s look a little deeper.

What Is A Pillar?

A pillar is the foundation for a structure that carries weight and provides the main support. Without pillars the foundation collapses. The same holds true for blog traffic if you are aiming for long term stability and growth. You need pillars, but in this case you need “content pillars” since blogging is all about content.

There is a style of blogging that is very much based on news. Whatever is happening in the moment is written about by the blogger. Sometimes a blogger can bring together views and news from many sources, often gleamed from tracking RSS feeds from various news sources online, adding a touch of personal opinion and presented in easy to digest summary posts.

This is a fine strategy if you don’t care too much about long term growth. If you can commit yourself to maintaining news posts and keep your knowledge and your blog up to date you can build quite a good following of readers. The problem is that when you stop posting often or your motivation moves elsewhere you largely have a blog full of old news and your traffic will start to dwindle as a result.

Content Pillars

This is where content pillars come in. A content pillar is a major article or feature that has long term value, which is not time or event dependent. The most common form of content pillar on a blog is a how-to article written in a tutorial style. Often the more practical the better.

Good examples include “how to choose the best domain name” or “how to repair a leaky tap”. These topics are going to remain interesting and valuable to people long after they are posted. Even if you stop blogging altogether chances are your traffic to these posts will remain relatively stable. In this sense your blog becomes a resource, not just a news distribution point.

To apply this principle to your blog all you need to do is sit down and churn out some quality articles specifically teaching your audience something relevant to the topic you blog about. Don’t just rehash what other bloggers are doing or give your opinion of current events, create something of “pillar” quality and your traffic will increase as will the long term value of your blog.

Of course that’s not to say you can’t write a blog purely for news, just be clear on your purpose for blogging and be especially careful if your goals are long term and your motivation is short term.

The best blogs usually offer a mix of the two types of content - “ageless” instructional pillar articles mixed with a good helping of current events. As I mentioned in the The Evolution Of Blog Traffic, pillar articles are often the linchpins for your explosive growth periods and it’s very hard to grow big without them.

Jealousy is a nasty emotion. Impatience is a frustrating state. Chances are if you just started blogging you may have experienced either of these feelings especially when you gaze at other bloggers and their massive hit counts. But not to worry, we’ve all been there, every blogger started at zero, just keep reminding yourself that the only way is up!

I have a blog traffic methodology that I teach in my Blog Traffic School course (soon to be launched) that is focused on The Evolution Of Blog Traffic. This is a concept that describes how blogs move through different growth stages, which unless you are famous or lucky, all bloggers have to go through. It goes like this.

The Evolution Of Blog Traffic
1. Start your brand new blog - no content
2. Produce content including key “pillars” articles
3. Network with other blogs using comments, trackbacks and email
4. Other bloggers you trackbacked/commented start to monitor your blog, usually through RSS
5. Start to accumulate links from other blogs, particularly when you publish a pillar article
6. “A” list (popular) blogger finds your site and links to one of your pillar articles, flooding you with traffic
7. More “A” listers are made aware of your site and each pillar article you publish has a compounding traffic effect
8. Rinse and repeat, growing off the back of network effects and quality content

In a nutshell this is a typical blog traffic growth pattern. Your blog is likely somewhere within the cycle depending on how much effort you put into producing good content and making sure other people know about it.

If you have only just started your blog then your first job is to produce great content working particularly on some pillar content. If you already have a substantial collection of good original content but not the traffic you would expect from it, work your network by contributing comments and trackbacking other bloggers. Bloggers love to see other bloggers mention their site and the trackback ensures they know about it increasing your exposure and the likelihood that they will do a post about your blog exposing you to their audience.

I have had a conversation since I posted my original article titled - Use Full Text RSS - which has changed my recommendation slightly regarding how you should implement RSS on your blog (whether to use full or summary text). I still believe in everything I wrote regarding using full text RSS but I have since modified my opinion on how best to implement an RSS strategy.

RSS Scanning

Just as some people prefer to scan headings in articles to determine what they want to read the same goes for RSS. While personally I dislike seeing summaries in RSS feeds forcing me to click through to the web page version of the blog article I realize some people prefer summaries so they can scan quickly.

My opinion is that both full text and summaries should be available and the options should be the responsibility of the RSS reader software to provide, not the blogger, giving the power to the user to choose which format of RSS they want to read. For the moment though many RSS readers don’t allow the option and of course as long as bloggers only activate the summary version within their blog software feed readers will only be able to offer summaries.

Offer Both Options

The best solution is to offer both a full text and summary RSS feed from your blog so your readers can choose which to subscribe to. This isn’t necessarily an easy thing to implement depending on which blogging platform you use. If you don’t have the ability to control and switch between full and summary text for your blog feed than using a service like FeedBurner can help you to do it.

Using FeedBurner To Create Multiple Feeds

Using FeedBurner you can create two feeds that both draw from the same root feed from your blog. Within FeedBurner you can change the option and choose how much text to show (truncate) your RSS feed. Simple create two feeds, call one ‘full’ and the other ’summary’, use the truncate function within FeedBurner to limit the feed for the summary version and then link to them both on your blog.

It’s definitely not the best solution but given the variables involved with all the different blogging platforms it’s the most widely applicable method. I suspect as blogging software evolves more and more options will become available to control your feed. If you presently use WordPress, which I use, you get reasonably good control over your feeds. Services like Blogger unfortunately don’t provide much control over your RSS feed so the sooner you upgrade to a professional solution the better.

I hear many business blog teachers tout the importance of staying on topic with blog content if you want to establish the right type of audience. I agree, this is a smart thing to do, however some bloggers worry when it comes to talking about their personal or business lives, whether they risk becoming too off-topic, too wishy-washy and unprofessional, especially if they are blogging for business purposes.

Defining Your Niche

The most important thing is to pick a niche that is 100% in-line with your blogging goals. If your blog is designed to generate new leads for your small business you better produce content that is relevant to your target audience - your prospective customers.

If you aren’t exactly sure what your target niche is yet, don’t worry, start writing about what interests you and your audience will define itself. If it’s not the audience you want slowly take your blog in new directions and see where you end up. You are the captain of your ship and it’s never too late to change course. You may lose some readers along the way if you keep changing focus, but eventually you will settle on a mix that brings in the right type of people to meet your traffic goals. It can be quite surprising to learn what people find interesting.

If you already know the audience you want ensure your content is interesting and relevant to them and keep testing. See which articles get a better response and follow the methods that work best. Always remember to ask yourself “how does this benefit my audience?” and work towards helping others. If you aren’t blogging purely for pleasure than you have to consider what others want first, beware of getting stuck too much in your own ego.

Keep Things Personal

One of the true strengths of blogging is the power of personality. Many bloggers blog in a traditional sense, diarising their lives each week with personal anecdotes, stories and opinion. This is fine for hobby and personal blogs but if we are talking business blogging you don’t want to turn people away by complaining about how big your ass is after all the food you ate at Christmas, posting a bunch of pictures to prove it!

To get the right kind of traffic to a business blog you want to project your humanity but also stay tightly on-topic. One of the best ways to do this is to blog about your business mistakes. By explaining how you went wrong, what you learnt as a result and how you dealt with the situation you provide fantastic content. Your readers connect with you (rapport building) because they make mistakes too, all humans do and you provide a practical lesson that your readers will learn so as not to make the same mistake you made. You also demonstrate your professionalism by explaining how maturely you dealt with the situation. Of course this assumes everything did work out reasonably well, but I’m sure you get my point.

The key to good business blog traffic is personality and focus without too much of either ingredient. You don’t want to express your deepest darkest fears, fantasies and passions (unless that is the purpose of your blog - voyeur blogging perhaps), but you do want to inject your emotions, personality and unbiased opinion into your articles. Emotive and personal opinions should be used to enhance your content, not dilute it with rambling off-topic diatribe.

Not everyone will agree with this tip, especially those people that use advertising programs like AdSense to make money from their blog, but in my opinion it’s better to leave full text on for your RSS readers.

In case you are confused when I say to leave full text on for RSS readers I mean that for any user that subscribes to your blog through an RSS reader such as Bloglines, or Google Reader, or NewsGator or RSSOwl they can read the full text of your articles (read this article - What is RSS and How Do I Use It? - if you have no idea what RSS is).

The other option is to only provide a summary or concatenated sample of each article. Subscribers have to click through to read your blog if they want the full text and consequently be exposed to your advertisements and other money making initiatives that may not display within a feedreader.

Arguments Against Full Text RSS

The obvious issue is of course loss of revenue if your readers never visit your site and only read your RSS feed. Depending on why you are blogging this can be a good enough reason not to switch RSS to full text.

Another issue is that your content may not format correctly in an RSS reader. Often images won’t align neatly within text and dynamic content such as forms and tables may not display correctly. Given the variety of feedreaders out there it’s next to impossible to account for all possibilities and if you use full text RSS you just have to live with the fact that your articles may not appear exactly how you want them to.

What’s Really Important To A Blogger?

My argument for always switching RSS to full text is a simple one - you want to build an audience. In my opinion building and retaining an audience is more important for a blogger than making sure your ads are exposed. By limiting what you give to your RSS readers you stifle your communication and risk loosing readers that are frustrated by seeing only samples of your writing.

Blogging is about establishing a dialogue and relationship with your readers. The larger your readership the greater your potential for benefit. Even if in the short term your advertising income suffers as a result of less page impressions, your contacts network, your reach and your potential for future income will far outweigh the short term “losses”.

Even Probloggers Should Use Full Text RSS

I argue that even those bloggers focused on AdSense (etc) should also leave full text on. By providing full articles in your RSS feed you ensure that your audience reads your content and is not turned off. As a result they will be more inclined to help spread the word about your blog, possibly by linking to your article in their blog (bringing web based referrals by the way - more page impressions), sending email to friends or adding your content to a social bookmarker such as del.icio.us. The result is more readers, some of which will no doubt visit your blog outside of a feedreader.

Your focus should be on increasing readers, not increasing advertising dollars. Income opportunities abound when you have a critical mass of readers. Don’t stifle your blog’s growth by focusing on short term monetary gain.

This is a tip that is not easy to execute well because it can be unpredictable and you need to be quick. When you get it right though the traffic numbers can be significant, if not always very targeted.

Tracking trends for traffic is all about staying with current events and then making blog entries based on what is really popular. Here are a few ways you can determine what is really popular, both in the blogosphere and in general news.

1. Go to Technorati and watch the list of top terms people are searching for. The good thing about this list is it is very current, up to the minute data from all the blogs Technorati monitors. Often the top search terms mirror the top news stories of the day but it’s a good place to keep watching.The problem of course with this technique is that you may be too late. Once it reaches the top of the Technorati list it can already be old news and you may have missed the traffic rush.
2. Follow news sites like Google News to find top stories in your field to blog about. Again though this can results in you missing the boat because interest in the story has already died down.
3. Watch mainstream media like television and radio and blog about news as soon as you watch/hear it. This is a speculative technique that can work really well for mainstream topics (think disasters, sports events, politics).
4. Follow niche sites focused in areas you blog about. Most markets have a major news source (think slashdot for geeks, ESPN for sports, or Political News Daily for politics) and if you carefully watch these sites you should be able to pick the hot topics in your area and contribute to the conversation bringing you relevant traffic.
5. Monitor social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, especially the popular list and cover topics that are getting bookmarked often.

The trick here is to be a trend picker rather than a trend follower. If you can blog about a trend before it hits it’s popularity spike then you can enjoy traffic from people searching blogs and websites for news on the topic of the minute. Of course often the traffic is short lived and can bring you people that don’t really care for the rest of your blog but hopefully you end up with a few new subscribers and repeat visitors.