As people are realising the significance of using blogs as a platform to share information, it is becoming very competitive and difficult for blog owners to drive traffic to their individual sites. More people are creating blogs but not receiving traffic. So what are they doing wrong?

Readership is something that must be built. One cannot create a blog and expect people to immediately begin commenting and sharing. It is important that you do the right things in order to gain readers. Here are a few things that are crucial for your blog to have in order to increase readership:

Presentation

The presentation of the website is crucial, it is the first thing that people will see. This is your opportunity to make an impact and convince the readers to stay on the site. The website is a significant factor in determining the bounce rate of the website. So what should your blog look like?

Include subheadings – This helps to condense information and allows people to scroll the sections that they are interested in. You can also include things in bold or increase the font size for emphasis.

Keep paragraphs short and concise – People use blogs as resources for information. If they are reading your blog, they generally want to know something, quickly, so you must avoid writing long paragraphs with irrelevant information. Keep everything short and concise, it will guarantee that your readers return.

Add images – Sometimes chunks of text can look quite overwhelming. Including images can help to break them down and makes it easier to ascertain information. It is also crucial that you use your own or free licensed images on your blog. A majority of images that you will find online are copyrighted, so it is important to avoid using these on your blog.

Make your blog SEO friendly

The use of search engines can allow you to gain exposure for your blog, however it is vital that you optimise your blog posts.

Use keywords – You can use tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to look for phrases and keywords that people are searching for. This allows you to incorporate them into your text. Make sure that you use them correctly and not just throw them in otherwise the content will look like spam. Also avoid using too many keywords in one blog post, the best thing to do is allocate approximately 2 keywords per post and only incorporate those into the body of the text.

Make sure you have a good meta description – This is the little snippet that appears in Google beneath your link. It allows people to learn more about the site’s content before clicking on it. It’s almost like a sales pitch and can encourage people to click through to your blog. It is also good to use a keyword in the meta description to demonstrate that the content is relevant to their search.

Interesting title – Use titles that people will want to click on, and avoid making them too long. Use a keyword in the title but keep it very simple. Things such as a ‘How To’ or ‘Top 10 Tips’ are ideal as it provides users with a reason to click onto the link. Remember that your readers want to find something useful. It is all about generating interest and engaging the audience.

Set up Google Authorship – This allows your image to appear beside your article in the search results. It can be beneficial for SEO because it increases the click-through rate to your blog. An image of you gives the article more credibility and people will be more inclined to click on the link. You can read my post about setting up Google Authorship for more information about this.

Share your posts

Add an RSS feed button – This allows your readers to subscribe and to keep up to date with your blog. They will be aware when new content has been published and it will share your feed to their newsreader.

Allow people to share – If you want more people to read your blog, then you need to make it easier for them to share it with others. The best and most common way to do this is to add icons to the website which provides people with the option to share an article if they like it. This can help to increase readership and drive traffic. Facebook and Twitter icons are two of the most popular, however it is important to monitor other social media platforms to distinguish whether or not your blog content would be shareable on them. You can also share the content on your own social media accounts.

Remember that it is important to write engaging content and to give your readers a reason to share your content.