Keeping a blog on your website up and running can be a time consuming and arduous task. You have to think of a topic, research it, write the piece, proofread it, generate an attention grabbing headline, find an attention grabbing image, optimize the blog piece for SEO and proofread it some more. This takes time and you hope that your blog will help to bring traffic to your site and turn some of that traffic into customers. So if no one is reading your blog, why should you bother?
It is a terrible feeling if no one is reading what you are publishing. You put a lot of time and effort into creating the post and you are getting nothing out of it. You may feel that you would have been better off just kicking back and watching TV or going out to wing night somewhere. Despite that, even if no one is reading your blog, it is helping you out.
Trust me I know the feeling!
How Can An Unread Or Under-read Blog Help?
SEO. On your website every piece of content is scanned by the search engines so that they can determine how to rank websites. It is a complex and ever changing process but there are some general principles that remain the same. If your website is linked more often it will score higher, if it mentions keywords more often it will rank higher and many other ways. Even if no one visits the page.
Now you are saying that if no one visits the page no one will read the content and link to it. Yes, that may be true but you can link to other parts of your website in your content. That will build the SEO for those pages and then later you can link to this blog post. It is a small boost but it can work.
How Can I Get People To Visit My Blog?
Generating traffic to your blog can be a great way to get new customers. Of course you have to get your content in front of others. Social media is a great way to start. Do you have a social media account for your business? If so which ones? If not, what are you waiting for?
By sharing content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and many others you can get your content in front of the people who follow or like you. That at least should generate a few clicks. If your visitors find that your content is worthwhile they might even share it or you could encourage them to share it with their friends. Of course creating attention grabbing headlines can go a long way towards bringing in an audience, but don’t forget to fulfill the headlines. No clickbait!
Make People Aware Of Your Blog
By sharing posts from your blog your are making people aware that you have a blog. This can be done through other means as well, like just telling people to check it out. Mention it to customers, put a sign up or create a newsletter or other marketing plan. If people don’t know your blog exists they won’t look for it and their viewership will be wholly by chance. Don’t leave things to chance, make your customers (and acquaintances) aware of it.
Other Factors
Once people are aware of your page’s blog there are other things that can keep potential viewers away and if that is the case they will not be reading your blog. If your blog takes too long to load people will not wait for it to load. With the high speed connections of today people have grown impatient when it comes to waiting for a website to load. Most people will only give it a second or two to load before closing. If your blog takes too long you need to do something, try optimizing any media on the site for the web first. It can make a huge difference.
If your site layout or design is ugly it will turn people off. People like aesthetically pleasing places and your website is no different. If colors clash it will be harder on their eyes and they will spend more time rubbing them and less time reading what you have to say. If different elements of the site run bleed into each other viewers will give up. Instead if your site is easy on the eyes they might be encouraged to visit other parts of it.
Be Consistent
When it comes to a blog consistency can matter. Sure there will be people who will just happen to see your content shared to social media and click on it but your core viewership base will come to expect a consistent schedule. How many posts are you doing per week or month? When are you posting the content?
You might only have time for one post per month, you might have time for more (or you could have Nicely Done Sites do it for you). Try to stay on a consistent schedule. Find a good time and stick with it. There are some general guidelines about when the best time to post is but even the top experts do not agree on when that is. You will have to figure that one out for yourself, but once you have established your blog stick to the schedule.
Hopefully now people will read your blog. Hopefully some of those readers will go from viewers to customers. That is the goal after all and that will make all of that time and effort that goes into creating a blog worth it. You might not have time now to sit back and relax or go to wing night since you will be so busy with your business!