Photo Credit: PhotoJonny
This site took a major traffic hit when I converted from 100% business to more motivation and spiritual content.
Before you get confused and think I had all kinds of traffic relax a little. I was only at about 2,000 visitors a month. When I dumped the business coaching idea, and changed to what I am now, my traffic was cut in half. Just this month I have started seeing the same numbers as before (plus a little more). It has taken me seven months to recover the traffic.
I have doubled my traffic in the last seven months and I believe reader friendly content has been key. I try to use titles that encourage readers to check out my content. I try to think of something creative that, at first glance, will give some insight into the content being shared. I use “Journal” and “Essay” in titles to let Twitter and Facebook followers know the type of content being shared. For the most part I believe my content is easy and quick to consume and I try to build everything here, at this web site, with the reader in mind.
Here are some tips for creating reader friendly content.
1. Subscribe to your own stuff
You should be subscribed to everything you have available for your readers to subscribe to. Frequently I get Feedburner emails that have strange symbols in the subject. Consider THIS article by John Saddington of Tent Blogger for some tips on article titles. I also get some Constant Contact and Aweber emails with serious formatting problems. All of this makes consuming content problematic and most readers will reach for the delete button pretty quickly.
2. Allow 100% of your blog content into your RSS feed.
If you think that treating your RSS feed like some kind of movie teaser is a good idea, you are still in the dark ages of content publication. Make it easy for people to read your content in their RSS readers. Forcing someone to visit your site to finish a story may increase your traffic but it is not likely to increase comments or shares. Great articles encourage these things, not manipulative syndication. To access this option in WordPress visit settings>reading and choose ‘full text’.
3. Make it easy to share via social media
Every blog post you write needs to have Facebook and Twitter share buttons on it. We all love comments on our blogs but getting an article shared via Facebook and Twitter are just as big of a compliment as comments. It also carries the opportunity to gain new readers. More comments help your blog look busier but getting more shares is a big key to traffic growth. Here is an article I wrote to help you get started adding share buttons to your posts.
4. Use an image with every post
I cannot stress this one enough. There is nothing more boring and uninviting than to visit a web site that looks like an open PDR. Carefully thought out images will help convey your message and warm up your web site.
For some, a 1,000 a month increase over a seven month period is not much. For me it seems like a lot considering it is all organic, and I have never been profiled on a high traffic site.
None of the above things are complicated. They just provide for a better user experience.
Good stuff. Couldn’t agree more. For me it is boring to actually *write* a post without including an image of some sort. I’ve sadly used less personal images because my camera broke several months back. I hope to remedy that later in the summer, even if it means borrowing Tori’s camera more often.
Glad to see my web guru already had “full text” in my WordPress options.
Congrats on the increase in traffic. I’ve enjoyed the more expanded subject matter on the site.