Attract and keep visitors to your blog

If you want to keep the attention of your visitors, you'll need to start thinking about just how you're going to grab their attention before you even start thinking about how you're going to keep it.

Create the content the audience wants

Obviously you want to write about something that interests you, otherwise there's really no point in writing. But you also want to make sure you're writing about something that's interesting to others, or you're not even going to get yourself an audience!

There's something called the Keyword Selector Tool, which you can use to find out how people are using keywords. If you're writing about religion, for example, then you'd enter the word 'religion', and it will bring up a list of searches done during the previous month that include that word. You can do this for any keyword or series of words.

When you can see how people are using keywords in their searches, you can then start to create content that takes advantage of the search terms that people are using. For example, "religion and spirituality" is a popular search term, so if you throw in a post that includes the words that people are searching for, then people are going to find your content when they do a search for it.

Solve their problems

Most people aren't searching for information without reason. Whatever they're searching for is usually to answer a question or solve a problem they have. If they find your site, they're going to want you to give them the answers they're looking for.

If you're not providing them with those answers, then they're going to go find someone else who will.

Obviously a personal blog isn't necessarily going to do help others solve their problems, but then you're probably not looking for a large audience either. It's only if you want a much larger audience that you need to make sure you're providing information that they're looking for, that will help them with their problems.

Write for yourself

You obviously need to make sure that you're thinking of your readers when you write, but the motivation for writing has to come from yourself. Ultimately, everything you write has to be for you, no one else.

Writing takes a lot of time and effort, and if you're not putting in the time and effort, you should be finding something else to do with your time instead.

It's easy to write, but it's not easy to write well.

Combine quality with consistency.

I can't remember where I found that statement, but it's excellent advice. In order to be good at what you do, you have to do it all the time. As you write, make sure you edit it; make it better than what it is, and improve upon it all the time. Commit yourself to write quality material, and be consistent with it. But do it for yourself. Do it because you love it.

Being yourself

Following the above advice will help you become clear about who you're writing for and why you're writing. But you can't lose sight of the fact that it's you who's doing the writing.

Even though your audience is there to read the information you provide, they would also love to see your personality and your unique perceptions shining through.

It's you and the personality that you present that will keep them coming back. Even if the personality is something that's made up entirely for your writing, keep it consistent. Make it as part of the theme of your blog. Your unique style will keep them coming back.

Understanding your weaknesses

If you find that you're unable to write something down, it's often because there are gaps in your knowledge about the topic you want to write about.

Do some research to gain more knowledge, so that you can speak with sincerity and authority. Those are two very important aspects of your writing.

"We teach mostly what we need to learn."

As you teaching people with your writings, you're learning as well. The more you write about a particular topic, the more you have to understand it. The more you research it, the more you become an expert on it.

You can't teach someone without learning it first, so writing for your blog is helping you learn and grow as well.

You get something from it, and so do the readers. Everyone wins.

Get people to comment

You're going to get a lot of visitors to your site. Most of them are looking for what you are providing, but some of them are going to know more about what you're writing than you do. There's nothing wrong with that, and the more you can get them to share their own knowledge, the better it is for you and for your website.

If you end your posts with requests for feedback, or if you ask questions to inspire debate or to provide you with more information, you're going to get visitors responding. A responsive bunch of visitors is going to make your site look more active and inspire even more people to involve themselves in conversations.

Make sure you reply to everyone's comments and feedback, even if it's to thank them for taking the time to say hello. Your own response to their comment helps them feel that you care about what they say. Make sure you do care! It also gives you the opportunity to answer any questions they might have, or ask your own questions of them.

Check your stats

No matter which service you use to provide statistics about your site, they're all going to show you where your visitors come from, what your most popular pages are, what people are using in their search terms that bring them to your blog, and how many are returning visitors.

All of it is important. Knowing where your visitors came from helps you to see who might be linking to you, and you can check the referrer out as well. You might even link back to them and start networking. Knowing what people are searching for that brought them to you helps you create more content based on popular searches. And, of course, knowing what your popular pages are helps you to create even more such popular pages.

Your stats have a wealth of information for you. Make sure you understand how to take advantage of it.

Be flexible in your approach

As you understand more about what your audience wants and how you can deliver it to them, the tone of your site is going to slowly change. You might have started your blog with the theme of digital cameras, and you write about anything and everything to do with digital cameras. However, over time, you learn that your audience is more interested in how to take photos for various events or conditions, and so you decide to start doing more 'how to' posts.

Being flexible allows you to adjust the content of your blog so you can take advantage of what your audience is looking for. If you have no flexibility in your writing and in your approach to blogging, then you're not going to reach your potential, and you're going to feel like you're wasting your time.

If you aren't flexible and don't learn to adjust, then you are wasting your time!

Listen to the feedback of your visitors so that you can understand what they're looking for. As long as it doesn't take you away from your own passions, give it to them!

Without listening, learning and changing, you're not going to reach your goals of attracting and keeping more and more visitors.


If you have any of your own suggestions to attract and keep visitors, please feel free to share them with us.