I was talking to a friend the other day about why some blogs get all the traffic, and some receive little to none, despite constant posting. She said traffic was based on writing style. The nutty, off-the-wall, laugh-out-loud, “punch you in the gut” ones get the most traffic.
Being in the search industry and blogging for years I’ve learned that although style may be a factor, I disagreed that it’s what made the sole difference in traffic attraction.
Business Verses Entertainment Blogging
Now she doesn’t work in an industry where getting leads or traffic from a blog really matter, so from her frame she was mostly looking at blogs as an entertainment vehicle. It goes back to content & keywords. We’ll speak in-depth about that later.
One thing we did agree on; bloggers who get read the most have a goal with every post, and sometimes several. After ten years of personal blogging, and half as long business blogging, I realized long ago targeted traffic and high rankings from search engines start with a plan, goal setting, and strategy.
That is unless you are just 1) extremely lucky 2) have an extremely viral topic 3) you start on an already well-established blog 4) someone is footing the bill on paid advertising.
For your industry or audience, there are only a handful of blogs that are the signal, and the rest either follow the big blogs’ lead or don’t get read (some may call “noise”). I call the former Beacon Blogs. Every industry has them. We’ll cover Beacon Blogs and how to become one in another post.
Think about it. What are the blogs that really stand out either in your industry or bring the type of audience you want? What characteristics do these blogs share? Not everyone can create an unpredictable viral sensation, which results in millions of visitors and showing up on the homepage of Digg. The truth is, you don’t have to in order to be successful.
If you work hard on a niche subject, publish consistently with high quality content, and start with the end in mind, you can get a sizable piece of the traffic pie.
What Would Robert Kiyosaki Do?
Best selling author and real estate mogul Robert Kiyosaki, wrote in Rich Dad, Poor Dad – What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not, about one huge mistake those wanting wealth make.
Instead of looking for opportunities that give you consistent cash flow and scale, often those seeking wealth will look for that big payday. It’s the same with blogging and your plight to business growth online; traffic flow is better than the hope of a one day surge that you think will change everything. How do you do that? Good ole’ fashion hard work.
If you’re persistent, consistent, targeted, strategic, and start with the end in mind you’ll start moving the needle.
When looking at your analytics or the number of your reader base, I challenge you to instead of just accepting the status quo on the traffic you are given by the search engine gods, make a goal for every post moving forward.
Five Goals to Have with Every Post
- Search Engine Ranking for a Particular Phrase
- Organic Traffic to that Particular Post
- Social Media Share (Retweets & Facebook Likes)
- Number of Comments
- Backlinks to that Specific Post
These goals could be short or long term on a post by post basis. For example, if you have a topic which gets searched 1000s of times a day (you should know this by your keyword research previously covered), but you’re not receiving 1% of that, don’t get upset. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Find a way to make it happen. Add more content, get more backlinks, keep the momentum of comments and shares going by responding to each one. Monitor your ranking for your target phrase, and keep adding to the SEO mix until you’re number one and getting traffic from that target phase.
Neil Lemons is an independent Search & Social Media Marketing Consultant at SearchAndSocialResults.com. To learn more about traffic and audience-building subscribe to his free blogging course.