Whether it's your own personal site or for your business, you’ve decided to start a blog. Congrats! A blog is a great platform to spread a personal message, get some affiliate income, or even make money from advertisers. Regardless of your reason, blogging can be fun and rewarding!
But if you’re like many bloggers, you’ve come to the frustrating realization that no one is reading your posts. Here's some reasons why:
1. You’re not writing about something people find helpful
A niche topic is no longer niche if everyone is talking about it! There are already a million blog posts out there on “different things to do in xyx place.” So—for example—if you’re writing a travel blog, you have to get more “niche” with it and find something no one else is talking about. For example, “best places to find impossibly spicy food in Denver” is a way more specific and interesting post than something more general, like "10 places to eat in Denver".
2. You’re not opening doors
A big part of funneling readers to your blog is about building a network of backlinks, which are essentially hyperlinks to your site on other people’s blogs or websites. A good way to do this is just to network and do guest posts for people on their blogs, with the stipulation that you can put some links to your site on there.
3. You’re not building relationships
You need to have a contact button or form on your website, and harvest some emails. Something else you can do is blog frequently, and alert social media connections of each new posts, you can draw some steady streams of traffic to your site. The main goal is to get recurring readers. Not only will they increase your readership with their own eyes, but over time, if they like your content, they’ll share it with others.
4. Your site doesn’t look good
If people hop on to your blog and find that it looks like the screen from Pac-Man, they probably will bounce off the page in less than a minute (unless of course, your blog post is dedicated to Pac-Man aficionados… then that would be cool). Your website needs to look professional, and the architecture needs to be clean and well designed. Remember this for your mobile users as well!
5. You're writing like Shakespeare
Don’t try to get to literary with your posting, unless you’re catering to a very high-brow audience. Use short sentences, small paragraphs, and lots of pictures to emphasize your point. Otherwise, people will find your blog too exhausting to read. While SEO experts tout the benefits of long-form posts (over 2,000 words), you still have to balance that out with reader experience — and most readers can’t tolerate more than half that word count.
If you have a blog that you just don't have the time to post frequently on, you can also outsource some posts! Having a professional write a few posts for you can breathe new life into your blog, and ensure that you don't fall too far behind during periods when you can't write. Best of luck!
