There is no question that today’s online user has a very limited
attention span. You have just a short window of time to snag their
interest and get them to take a deeper look at what you have to offer.
While sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon and Digg can get you a decent
amount of traffic, you will not see as many visitors from them as you
will other sources.
There is still a lot of ways to make improvements, however, that will
increase the number of page views you get from your social media
visitors. Any improvements that you make will lead to more page views,
more comments, more repeat traffic and more links to your site.
Here are some ways that you can get more page views from your social media visitors.
Include Internal Links in the Post
Make sure you are including relevant internal links in your blog
posts. Look at them as doors inside your house, each one leading to
another post but still keeping them inside the site itself. Readers are
more likely to click links inside the body of your blog posts than
anywhere else on your site. Look at any opportunity in your new blog
posts where you can link readers to older posts.
Add a List of Related Posts
Another way to give readers a chance to further explore your blog is
to include a list of related posts at the end of certain blog posts. If
the reader wants to find more information about the topic, offering them
an easy link to your content on the subject will likely keep them on
your site longer. There are plugins available that will do this
automatically for you, but there is a chance that the links will not be
closely related.
Make Your Site Easy to Navigate
When people want to explore your site, you need to make sure it’s as
simple as possible for them to get from one page to the next. Have a
section in the sidebar that clearly lists your most popular content.
Have clearly titled links in your header and footer. The more your site
grows, the more you need to stay on top of any changes needed to your
navigation. Do a routine check on your site to make sure your links are
all working.
Keep Your Content Consistent
You want to stick with what you know in order to build up repeat
traffic. If you lose focus and wander from one subject to the next, you
might get a few new page views each day but it will do nothing in the
way of keeping your visitors coming back because they can’t be sure what
your new content will be about. Stay on track with your content and
develop yourself as an expert in that niche and you will see more page
views and more subscribers too.
Cut Back on Outbound Links
Unless the outbound links are to one of your other websites, you
aren’t really benefiting from using a lot of external links in your blog
posts. Adding outbound links is like holding the door open and waving
goodbye to your guests. If you do decide to include some outbound links,
set them to open in a new window so that they will still have your page
open and they can go back to it anytime for more information.
Use the Right Category
On sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, users focus on content that falls
into a specific category of interest. To reach those who will be most
interested in your content, make sure you are submitting your posts to
the correct categories and using the best related tags. Finding your
target audience will increase the number of page views.
What have you done to increase the number of page views to your blog? Is it working for you? Share with us!
Dawn Pigoni