One of the most common things I see across the Internet is a business that has started a blog and after about a month the frequency of the posts begins to taper. Not necessarily all at once, but at a good pace and later there are basically no new posts and it’s basically a dead blog.
Now, businesses can become very business. Blogging is that old in terms of all the other things a business has going on. So often in these early days a marketer or someone else in the business will be given an hour or so to think about the blog each week. And then after a month some other things come up and the blog takes a back seat.
But then there is usually a point into the future where they start wondering what happened…and where all the traffic is.
This might not be your exact story, but if you have the question about traffic and why your blog isn’t getting it, here are a few thoughts.
1. How long has it been?
How long ago did you start your blog? You may be blogging once or twice a week. After 3-4 months you’re looking at about 15 posts. That’s a great amount! But really with blogging you’re looking at a 50-100 post count to start seeing some changes in traffic. And that is especially true if you are a newer business without much brand recognition.
So it really could just be a patience things. You might be writing wonderful posts. It takes time for new blogs and new businesses to earn the trust of search engines. And if you don’t have a large email list or social media presence then those will take time as well.
2. How many total posts do you have?
We just looked at this, but the total number of posts really matters and is worth mentioning on its own. The stats and sources have changed on it over the years. But the total number of blog posts is important. Here is one that still exists showing that 200+ is a good post number to aim for. That’s for traffic and leads.
We see it with our business. You start seeing inclinations well before 100 posts or even 50 posts. And again, it depends on how old and big your business is and related things. It depends on if you’re doing any paid promotion.
But you might just not have enough total posts.
3. What word count are you writing?
More words is not necessarily better. But if you’re writing 100-200 word blog posts it may take longer to reach a total post number that starts bringing in traffic. A 100-word post could make sense. Much of blogging is about identifying a question your target audience is asking and providing the answer. That could certainly be possible with 100 words.
But if the traffic isn’t there it might be worth looking at the types of questions you’re identifying. You may want to look for questions where a long answer is better. Something at 500 words or perhaps 1,000+ words.
4. How are your formatting and linking?
There could be some technical things and design things going on with your blogs. Search engines are really good at deciphering text on the Internet. But they also look at usability and what their users are going to see if a search engine sends them to a page.
So make sure you have a nice design for your blog theme or template. Make sure the title is large and easy to see. Readers that click to your post from somewhere want to know that they are in the right spot right away. Break up the text into paragraphs and sections. Separate the sections with headings.
Also consider how you’re looking. Both to external sites and to your own site and to other posts. Internal linking, say 1-2 times per post, can help slowly lead to more traffic as readers discover more posts.
5. Quick check for crawling issues.
There might be a search engine crawling issue on your blog. There have been a few times when someone has asked and I had them check their Google Search Console or their WordPress install for this and it has been the culprit. There are a couple places like this where you basically tell Google not to crawl your site or certain sections.
You’ll probably know this is the issue if you have zero traffic after a few months.
6. Possible promotion strategy.
There are a number of promotion strategies you can try to boost blog traffic. Google, Facebook, etc. all have advertising programs that are doing very well. You can look to really focus on building an email newsletter where you include mentions of your posts and links to posts.
Social media has changed a bit. It really doesn’t work to share the title of a post with the link. Social sites want users to stay on the platform. But you can use snippets from posts on social media. You can re-publish entire posts on sites like LinkedIn. This can be a way to get visibility to the content even if it’s not on your site. And it can lead to indirect traffic to your site if someone reads your posts on LinkedIn, but then googles your brand name on Google to find your home page.
Conclusion
Low blog traffic is not fun. It’s easy to get excited about blogging when you’re first getting into it. But it’s a long process. It’s almost better to focus on the production process for a year before you start looking into traffic and how you can improve on it. This way you build a routine and once you start getting into analytics you can continue the routine with some tweaks in strategy such as what you’re writing about.
I hope these insights help and I hope you stick with blogging. It’s something that is worthwhile in many situations.