Website Tune-Up: Finding Ways to Increase Traffic
Is anyone out there? Writing a blog (or a static site) can be lonely at times, particularly if you feel that you are not driving traffic to your site. You check your analytics to see that certain posts are pulling in readers, so you may want to use them to help drive up the visitors to other posts. Here is one simple method to help your visitors find what others are reading on your site, and it could help increase traffic.
I cannot take credit for this idea, but I read the original post from an SEO a month ago, and I forgot to save the link. I developed a method which does not go into such detail as the original, but it works for me. Because of my business background, I have a love of going through reports, drilling down to the data that I need, but you do not need to be so detailed. I just installed Google Analytics, which does present the most read posts easily. I prefer my Awstats for a good quick overview. Even the statistics from a platform like WordPress will provide you with what you need.
Step 1: Find the ten most popular posts or sections from your site.
Step 2: Find the ten most popular keywords or keyphrases being used to bring visitors to your site. These are the terms people used to probably find the post/sections mentioned above.
Step 3: Check those keywords/phrases in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Live. See where your post positions. Check out other results for that term to find out what they did for that phrase. When you click on your site in the search results, where did you land? Did you go to the area where the result is?
Step 4: Go over your post or section to see how you can incorporate the keyword/phrase into your post title, the first paragraph, or other means to optimize for it. Make sure that the post has a clear call to action for what you would like the visitor to do. Do you want them to comment? Or would you like them to use your service? Make it easy for them to take the action that you want.
Step 5: Set up a landing page or post for your blog or site which contains a list with links of your most popular posts or sections. Use the keywords/phrases which brought visitors to your site to describe the posts. If someone liked one post, they may want to read more items.
Step 6: Have a friend check out your site navigation. You need
an impartial observer to tell you how easy it is to move about the site and find what they are looking for. Ask different people to do this every so often, so you can understand how your visitors interact with the site.
About the keywords/phrases: I find that searchers use slightly different terms when trying to find the same bit of information. For example, a popular post on this site deals with obscuring an exterior air conditioning unit from view. Some people find the post with a phrase like “landscaping around the air conditioning unit”, while others use “hiding the outside air conditioning unit”. A few people use the term compressor or condenser when referring to this unit. I combined the phrases to make “using landscaping to hide an exterior air conditioning unit”, then I incorporated the terms condenser and compressor into the post.
To do this thoroughly will take about three hours each month, which is not bad. This method has increased the average time spent on my blog by visitors, which is three times more than my static site’s number. Sometimes, I just do a little bit of this each week when I have time. The main effort is rewriting the posts. Having a background of English lit, I try to avoid using the same terms again and again, but for optimization reasons, you should use your keyword or keyphrase again or again (about 15% of the post is the maximum). I still find that idea makes for odd reading, but I am getting a little better at it.
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