Blog reader traffic?

I have never claimed to want or need traffic to my blogs. In fact I often keep my entries so "under the radar" that many never ever get seen, let alone read. While this doesn't overly concern me, sometimes I do like to see that what I write at least gets scanned by some. I've just never needed the ego rubbing of having a popular and often read blog.

Here are a few easy things that I could do to change that.

I could write catchier headlines.

According to many, the number one reason why anyone would even check out a blog post is due to a great headline. Perhaps it is as much an SEO factor as anything else though. I have many posts that are #1 on search engines and find that those are read often while similar headlines that may be from #2 to #5 are read proportionately less often. Many other posts that have vague headlines get far fewer views let alone reads... based on screen time. 5 second views are obviously not read.

Follow up content needs to live up to the headline.

Of course the headline may be great but the follow up content needs to live up to the nicely managed expectation, and quickly, or readers will just pass and look for the next catchy headline on someone else's blog.

Stick to the topic and hit points quickly and succinctly .


I've been known to wander, not so much aimlessly, but there comes a point where the topic and the content are not really in sync and that point needs to be recognized and severe editing applied in order to remain readable. I read many blogs that do this very well and those are the ones that I frequent.

Punctuation, spelling and grammar.

This isn't something that I consider I need much improvement on but I thought it worth mentioning as this point should be assumed, but it certainly is not. With spell checking there should be next to no reason for spelling errors. Homonyms or similar correctly spelled words are still easy to miss so proof reading is necessary to catch these simple, yet annoying errors. Using some bastardized form of english that gets used in tweets and text messages just doesn't cut it... and I won't go on about that. Grammar and punctuation, well, there are some decent books or sites that cover the basics better than what we had to go through in school, if they even teach them in school any more.

Books and paper are not necessarily the choice of the majority of readers now as so much information is available online, from news and opinions to fiction and pointless drivel, that printing can be outdated before the paper is delivered to the reader and most of the online content is free... for now. Readers can afford to be finicky. As a result it is tough to get any portion of their screen time easily.

Blogging for traffic is more an art than a science as the idea that content is king leads to decent writing skills being necessary to be successful if you count success as a regular readership.

Jeff.