This article will cover some handy tips to help increase the performance of your Blog. They’re definitely not intended to be replacements for what we hope is already a steady volume of top-quality blog content. These are intended as tips to increase your blog’s performance, as an add-on to the work already being done to create and publish great content.
1. Invite High Profile Bloggers to Submit a Guest Article
If you don’t want to write the content yourself, or have your writer create it for you, why not check out the high profile and big-name sites. Requesting great content from bloggers from other sites will feed your blog with amazing content, and it will translate some of your guest blogger’s authority to your own site. If you can pull it off, it would be a great coup for your site. You’ll be that business that got ‘so-and-so’ to write for your blog!
Imagine what that would do to your blog! It would go crazy; and because your guest blogger would probably promote the post to their own network, your blog will now open up to a whole new audience. Your blog’s reach will skyrocket.
2. Increase your Subscriber Base
If you’re looking to increase the subscriber base for your blog, check your analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. You’ll probably find that some of it comes from social media, some will be direct traffic, and some would be organic search – but the majority of it is more than likely from email. This is because whenever you publish a post on your blog, your subscribers receive an email announcement. This is worth its weight in gold, because it serves as a reminder to your readers to check out your blog on a regular basis.
So let’s have a look at different ways you can increase the number of subscribers to your blog.
You could add some secondary Calls-to-Action both within the post (such as, ‘scroll down’) and along the side or top of the blog (such as, ‘look to the left’).
Also, where appropriate, you could also add blog subscription Calls-to-Action to other pages of your website.
Create a dedicated blog subscription landing page which would be periodically shared with your social media networks. This would also act as your landing page for the blog subscription Calls-to-Action.
In some of your emails, include the blog subscription as a Call-to-Action. This could be the inclusion of a P.S. at the end of an email: it doesn’t specifically have to be the primary Call-to-Action.
3. SEO Previous Post Titles
Your blog posts will (hopefully) have great catchy titles, however your posts can very quickly get lost as you continuously create new content. These ‘lost’ or buried posts can still drive heaps of organic value to your site: it should be remembered that each post is its own indexed page in the SERPS, and they’re capable of driving a lot more organic value if you SEO the post titles. This means that you change the title of the blog post to another catchy title, depending on what you’re trying to rank for.
4. Your Calls-to-Action Can Be Optimized
Blogging is a means to getting traffic to your site, and this traffic can convert to leads, which leads to customers. That’s what it’s all about! That’s why in every blog post you add the Calls-to-Action, because they direct your visitors to landing pages which contain offers for them to convert on. So it’s always going to be a worthwhile investment to optimize those Calls-to-Action because they’ll convert a lot more visitors to leads.
If you haven’t already, set up A/B Testing for the calls-to-action on your blog to learn which color, layout variations, and copy , affect conversion rates. This should be done for any Calls-to-Action you’ve placed on the side or top of your blog, as well as the in-post Calls-to-Action.
5. Refresh the Calls-to-Action on Old Blog Posts
This combines the ideas from two previous tips. We know that old blog posts will attract traffic in the SERPS, and we’ve done A/B Testing on the Calls-to-Action to determine which design produces the most leads. Now replace the old blog posts’ Calls-to-Action with your new powerful Calls-to-Action. As time is always of the essence, it’s probably best to start with blog posts generating the most traffic, and then continue working your way through the list.
6. Update Favourite Old Posts
Go back to your old posts that did really well. Do this by checking into the analytics of your blog to look at inbound links per post, and the number of views. You’ll find that there will be those ones that performed really well and could probably go again with a fresh coat of paint. Update them: give them a makeover, and re-use them. You know that topic already worked well in the past, and this is quick effective work that produces results.
How to do this? Well, one way would be to publish a brand new post, and redirect the older link to your new blog post: this way you don’t lose any SEO value. Alternatively, just update the existing post with great new content. Depending on your email system and the Calls-to-Action, there are reasons for and against both these options. With the first idea, you must ensure that the redirects are working. With the second option you’re free of the SEO work but you do have to ensure that your subscribers receive an email regarding the new post. So, just choose which method works best for you.
The advantages of this system are –
You get to update what is now outdated information;
Remember that there are many, many readers who haven’t even seen that post because they subscribed after it was first posted;
It was a great post the first time round, so your readers either don’t recall it, or they do remember it and would love to see it again. Sometimes the oldies are the goodies!
7. Optimize Your Blog For Social Media
Ensure that you blog is optimized for social media, because your blog’s success depends on it. There should be social ‘sharing’ buttons on your blog in addition to social ‘follow’ buttons: this enables you to really expand the reach of your blog’s content in addition to expanding your social reach. Try using social recommendation widgets, which inform your readers which blog content is popular with their social media connections.
8. Optimize Most-Clicked Blog Pages
As your blog continues to grow, you’ll probably expand your wings and develop your page by adding things like a sidebar, navigation, footer, and/or a banner – in addition to all your great quality content. Think about where those ‘other’ places are on your blog and determine where your visitors are going so those locations can be optimized once they leave your blog.
For example, if people continuously click on the links in your top navigation, do the work and optimize the pages your visitors landed on once they click. It’s also an option to make some of those links landing pages. It’s important to know where people are going once they’ve left your blog because it can be a huge conversion source for you; one that a lot of marketers don’t make good use of.
This guest post was written by Vincent Cassar.
He is the founder of Keeping™. Keeping™ is the world’s first helpdesk that works inside Gmail. No external helpdesk required Keeping™ is a Gmail extension that adds helpdesk functionalities to any Gmail or Google App email accounts.
He is also involved with the creation of a growth hacking experiment where the exact growth hacking techniques used to grow Keeping are shared.