5 Blog Post Tips to Increase Web Traffic

Your company may have incorporated a blog on its website or have a blog linked to your company’s website. Your company probably uses social media, hoping it will increase your web traffic, sales, and revenues. Unfortunately, if a blog post (or other web content) isn’t compelling or you don’t have enough posts, your blog will remain stagnant.

Follow the five blog post tips below to increase web traffic.

5 Blog Post Tips to Increase Web Traffic 

 

Select the right primary and secondary keywords/phrases.

You’ve probably heard this a million times already, but it begs repeating. Selecting and optimizing the ‘right’ primary and secondary keywords/phrases for your blog posts can increase web traffic.

To find out which keywords/phrases work for your company, test them by using the “A/B Testing” method.

Select a couple of keywords/phrases and use them within pages and Google AdWords (if you advertise on the web) in addition to blog posts.

Look at the number of clicks and impressions for the keywords/phrases. Which keywords/phrases receive the most clicks and impressions? What are the conversion rates? Knowing this information is useful when your choose keywords/phrases.

Once you have your primary and secondary keywords/phrases, hire a freelance writer, content manager, or social media manager to write your company’s web content, ‘tweets’ and Facebook status updates.

Optimizing ‘tweets’ and Facebook status updates with your keywords/phrases can increase web traffic. Try it today!

Write a blog post in a conversational tone.

Writing for the web is different than writing for print. A blog post should be written using simple and short sentences. If you don’t already use the Flesch-Kincaid method to analyze your blog posts, you may want to consider it.

Flesch-Kincaid Score 

90-100 : Very Easy

80-89 : Easy

70-79 : Fairly Easy

60-69 : Standard

50-59 : Fairly Difficult

30-49 : Difficult

0-29 : Very Confusing

It’s important to write web content that has a score of at least 60 or higher. The higher the number means the web content is easy to read.

Most journalists write newspaper and magazine articles that score a 70 and above. They use simple language to get their point across.

Pay attention to the word count of a blog post.

Most freelance bloggers and freelance writers will tell you a blog post should be 300 words to 700 words. However, I’ve read many blog posts that are over 700 words. Heck! I write blog posts that exceed 700 words.

Tip: About Pages, Bios, and other pages are usually 500 words.

Base the word count on your audience.

Ask a question at the end of a blog post.

If you want to start a conversation, ask a question at the end of a blog post. This is a good way to entice visitors to post comments which begins a dialogue between you and your target market.

You could automate an email response such as, “Thank you for reading our blog. We appreciate it!” However, you may want to answer a few emails personally or have your social media or content manager respond.

Tip: Ask a question or take a poll on your social media networks.

Speaking of responding … Make sure your content manger or social media manager responds to comments. Readers who make thoughtful comments want to know if someone from the company is paying attention to them.

If you receive too many comments (100 or more) you could always close comments.

Bold headlines get attention.

Writing headlines takes patience and practice.  A bold headline will stop readers’ in their tracks — they’ll have to read your web content.

Most copywriters will spend at least 30 minutes or one hour writing the perfect headline. This may seem outrageous, but it really isn’t.

Think about it. How much do you think the writers at top selling magazines earn for writing headlines? I won’t keep you in suspense — they earn a boatload of money! It is worth it to pay writers a high salary if a magazine receives a high ROI.

It’s all about ROI (return on investment). If your company wants to increase their ROI, it’s worth it to pay a copywriter top dollar for writing headlines.

These are some blog post tips that can increase your company’s blog web traffic.

Make sure your freelance writer or staff writer keeps the company’s target audience in mind when writing a blog post.

Writing a blog post is different from writing an editorial article. Most of the time a blog post will be shorter than a 1,000 word print article. However, there are exceptions to the rule. This is why it’s important to know your target audience. Write for them!

What is your biggest challenge with blog posts? Share.

 Related articles

• A Freelance Writer Gets Results, Increases Profitability (savvy-writer.com)
• Marketing 101 for Freelance Writers #13: How Social Media Really Works (makealivingwriting.com)