Learning Hub | Content Marketing

Attract Blog Traffic for Your Business

Want to attract blog traffic when you write for your business? Google’s parameters for ranking search results – particularly its indexing “spiders” – don’t care at all about how well a business blogger writes; they care whether the blog itself is formatted to attract traffic. Considering that they are anchored to computerized algorithms rather than actual people, don’t take it personally.

Respected industry bloggers once thrived off of organic qualities like their professional reputation, multimedia savvy, and writing quality. These merits continue to stand as the central pillars to outstanding blogs, but this is an era that now suffers from information oversaturation as a side effect of its digital empowerment.

To the effect of a referee making sure that a soccer player has legal cleats, tied laces, and a pair of shinpads before a game, Google is ratcheting up its screening criteria on blogs, evaluating their search optimization practices before the blogs are sent into the search ranking fray.

So is your blog up to snuff? Is it ready to attract traffic? Is it tailored to your target audience? Let’s just say that if you keep the following things in mind, you can even get away with bad writing. But you’re better than that. Here are some pointers that will – in no uncertain terms – drive up your analytics.

KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE/BUYER PERSONAS

  • Imagine this: A tech-savvy entrepreneur in Silicon Valley may appreciate a blog about the economics behind premium streaming music services, but it may mean nothing to the Wall Street executive who’s chiefin’ on a cigar with a Frank Sinatra vinyl playing in the background
  • While both men are involved in business, the writer will have to be cognizant of how seriously either businessperson will take the blog
  • Think about these questions: Who would read your blog? What are their professional ambitions? What is their occupation, position, and work ethic style? Do they get their information off of newspapers or mobile apps? Are they about to retire or do they have a young family that just moved into a new house? And for purposes of the previous example, how do they listen to their music?

LOAD UP ON BULLET POINTS

  • Keep it simple. If you want to promote an idea or product, people want to be able to skim for major points (bullets) before they decide to dig into the bulk of your writing
  • Not all blogs are destined to have bullets, but the human attention span does not like enormous blocks of uniform text
  • To that end, Google’s spiders don’t either. Or, well, they are programmed to recognize when pages lack diversity in terms of how a blog is structured and organized

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SOLID CONTENT (DUH)

  • As a refresher, content includes videos, writing, hyperlinks, infographics, and other informative elements to supplement your blog
  • Be adventurous; transcend a text-only blog – for example, linking to other blogs can bring their traffic your way and give them credit (make sure you demonstrate your reason for including the link rather than just placing it there) as well
  • Make sure your content is relevant – if it is incorrectly titled in its original format, you can fiddle with things like metatags and keywords to integrate it seamlessly anyway for search engine optimization

INCLUDE SOCIAL SHARING BUTTONS AND “CALLS TO ACTION”

  • Kim Kardashian may have ruined social media for many people, but without putting share buttons for the social media hubs on your blog, it will be living out a fate akin to a person in a life raft that’s drifting in the ocean without any means of communication
  • Social sharing buttons prompt a dialog box containing your blog which can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and any other network you desire. It’s that easy
  • Calls to action, especially for businesses, are the anchors that, if the blog is compelling enough, keep possible customers connected, prompting them to provide contact information
  • A successful call to action doesn’t get in a customer’s face, telling them “BUY ME NOW!” Instead, it offers something in return, like a free consultation or a free eBook…trading them for contact information

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE WITH MEANING

  • Search engine optimization is not an easy endeavor. However, if you have the tools to monitor what people are entering into Google’s search box, you can also answer the other who, where, how, and why; these are answers that can help you strategically place things like long-tail keywords and metatags into your posts
  • If that doesn’t make sense to you, just bear in mind that every single empty box on your content managing system’s blogging interface is probably another missed opportunity to boost your SEO value. Seize them
  • If you still need some help, check out our blog on the basics of search engine optimization