From the category archives:

blogging basics

Mommy Blog Traffic: How To Increase Yours

by anna on July 11, 2011


A while back, you guys came up with a bunch of ideas for posts you’d like to see here here on ABDPBT View definition in a new window Personal Finance. The most common question, by far, that I get from readers new and old is “How do I get more people to read my site?” Building blog traffic is a tricky and kind of zeitgeisty thing, but there are some things you can do to maximize the views you get from the people who are already on your site — making them into more loyal readers who come back again and again. Below are some tips on how to keep the readers you already have, and hopefully turn them into people who will go out and evangelize for your site.

1. Be consistent over a long period of time.

This is the tip that nobody wants to hear, but it’s the truth: web traffic grows slowly, over time, for people who consistently provide useful information or very entertaining content on a predictable schedule. Your first goal should always be to be one of those people, because that is how you win the loyalty of your readers.

2. Respond to comments on your blog and leave thoughtful comments on readers’ blogs when you can.

This is another boring, but essential tip: showing your readers that you value them makes them more loyal to you, and strengthens the community you are trying to build around your blog. Show your readers you appreciate them by responding to comments and emails, and try to comment on their blogs when you have time.

3. Link to other relevant posts within the text of new posts.

It always pays to go back through your old posts and link up to past entries that touch on similar topics. Some of your readers will have seen the posts before, but many readers will be newcomers and therefore will appreciate the links. For example, I’ve written about the EVENTs that seem to have resulted in big traffic for mommybloggers in the past, and I also followed up with a post on things that newer bloggers can do to increase their traffic without having to undergo major life trauma. Both of these posts are relevant to this post, even if they take slightly different angles.

4. Make sure new visitors have a clear place to go to see your best work.

Blogs are tricky because they usually require a few weeks of consistent reading to really win people over. When somebody comes to your blog for a popular post, make sure they have an easy way of finding your best work. To do this, you can create sneeze pages that organize your best posts by category. Once you’ve done this, then make sure to create a highly visible link somewhere so new visitors won’t miss it (like, say, the right-hand sidebar, as I have.).

5. Create a blog support group to help promote your blog.

Online communities like the SITS Girls work because they encourage everyone to help people grow their blogs. Joining up and really getting involved in one of these communities can boost the readership of your blog. If you do join a community, remember that you get out what you put in — people who are just there to get traffic for their blogs will be seen through pretty quickly, so make sure your intentions are transparent.

6. Create useful content that people will want to share.

Even within the mommyblog community, the vast majority of readers are looking for and more willing to share posts that provide useful information. Personal posts do get shared on occasion, but posts that contain tips for, say, better parenting (i.e. Parent Hacks), or organizing your home (i.e. Simple Mom), cooking (i.e. The Pioneer Woman), or making your home more beautiful on a budget (i.e. Centsational Girl) are far more likely to be shared.

7. Use this simple technique to search optimize your useful content.

I’m not very knowledgeable about SEO, personally, and I find most of it to be far too much work to bother. But, if you can learn easy techniques to help with the search engine optimization of your posts that deal with useful information, there’s no reason not to do so. I read this post on Skelliwag last week that outlines a really simple way of optimizing search hits through screening Google suggestions when you’re writing posts. It’s worth checking out, particularly if you are just getting started with a niche blog.

OK, what have I left out? What are your traffic-building secrets?

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6 Observations On Online Controversies

by anna on July 4, 2011

I think some of you might be waiting for me to comment on the rather large controversy that happened last week between me and Heather Armstrong View definition in a new window. I certainly understand this curiosity; however, except in a general way, I don’t plan to do this. In this section of my blog, I am always trying to remain as objective as possible to the issues I discuss. Although I may not always succeed in this, I do always try. On this particular topic, I have no objective feelings: therefore, it would be impossible to even attempt an objective analysis of the facts. What I decided to do, therefore, is make some general observations about online controversies that might serve as a usable takeaway for the people who come here to read about the business of blogging. See below.

1. There is a fraction of the audience who loves a fight.

Controversy for controversy’s sake is something that is greatly appealing to a portion of people. Temporary attention and traffic comes along with this.

2. There is a fraction of the audience who hates a fight.

Controversy of any kind is something that is repugnant to a portion of people. Temporary attention and traffic loss comes along with this.

3. It is more common to feel before thinking.

Most people to react to a controversy based on their feelings about the issues discussed and/or participants in the controversy before they weigh any kind of argument. It is unusual for a first reaction to a controversy to be based on logic over feelings. Though opinions might change over time, it is futile to attempt to inject a logical argument (for either side) into the overall reaction to controversy, because it mostly operates outside of logic. The process of uncovering all of the nuances of a disagreement takes far too long to uncover for most observers to bother.

4. Controversy is, generally speaking, not an effective online traffic-building tool.

Traffic spikes that result from controversy tend to be temporary (with a very few exceptions). This is true whether you are at the heart of the controversy, or if you are merely weighing in on the controversy from the sidelines. People come to figure out what happened. Then they leave. Most of them will not return unless their controversy-driven visit to your site happens to result in them finding something they had not found before. Therefore, if you are hoping to cash in by being part of a controversy, or weighing in on a controversy, this is probably not going to happen.

5. The only way to avoid controversy is not to blog.

While it is true that some bloggers attract controversy more than others, there is no way of putting your life and your opinions on the internet (or any other portion of the public sphere) without putting yourself at risk for controversy. People will develop good and bad opinions of you and your thoughts regardless. Some of these might be articulated in a blog post someday, and still others may not ever see the light of day. Even the most universally beloved bloggers have found themselves the targets of criticism on occasion — that is part of the business.

6. You cannot control criticism, but you can control how you react to it.

Given that criticism and controversy is a part of blogging, if you find yourself at the heart of a controversy, there is no point in attempting to shut it down or control it in any way. The only thing that you can do is accept it, and base all further actions on those things that you can control. Despite how it may feel, you can control what you do in the face of criticism, and you can control what you do when you’re in a storm of controversy. Decide what your best-case scenario is — given the current circumstances — and act accordingly. If you’re too close to it to decide, ask a trusted friend or, better, an uninvolved observer, for their take on your best course of action.

Finally, to all of you who have sent your support, and to those of you who continue to read here, please know that I am so grateful to have a community of readers who are interested in discussing these topics with me. The number one most common comment I receive from readers contains the words, “I don’t always agree with you, but . . .”, and I cannot imagine having it any other way. So thank you.

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Why You Should Always Remember That Most People Have No Taste

by anna on February 21, 2011

Everybody wonders why some popular blogs are popular, when there are smaller blogs that are more interesting that stay unsuccessful. Though this is not always the case, it’s often very difficult to discern why one blog makes it and another blog doesn’t, particularly if you are prone to forgetting the reality that most people have no ability to sort quality from crap on their own. Most people do not have a highly developed sense of taste, and they rely on other people to tell them what is good and what isn’t.

There are a bunch of factors that lead to a blog being successful. Only one of these things is quality and talent — there is also longevity, the connections of the blogger to other popular bloggers, the phenomenon of the EVENT View definition in a new window, the ability of the blogger to market themselves, and the blog’s story all feed into how popular a blog is. It might seem intuitive that the best blogs seem like the best when you visit them — and sometimes this is absolutely the case — but often this is not true. Something is considered good, much of the time, because somebody influential said that it was good — people who visit the blog are operating on a recommendation from somebody else.

Here’s the thing: back in the day when there weren’t that many blogs to choose from, maybe you checked out each one carefully and decided whether you liked the blog before moving on. There were like ten blogs back then so, you know, why not?

But today, I’m not in the market for any more blogs. I already have too many to read. So when I see your blog, you need to grab me right away and tell me why I need to read you. You simply cannot rely on me to go through and figure out what makes you interesting, because I’m probably not going to do it. And if I’m not going to do it, then you can bet even fewer of the Justin Bieber adoring public is going to bother with it.

If you want to be successful as a blogger, give me a story that I cannot get anywhere else, and make it really easy to find. You have to tell me what it is, don’t count on me figuring it out. There are tons of LOLCats I could be spending my time chuckling over, after all.

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