What a shame of your blog state
Because you are reading this text I think I can safely assume you are familiar with basic blogging terminology. In case you need a reminder, you can read this post.
However, in order to start driving traffic to your blog, you need to have some basic blog traffic-building elements in place.
I like to look at my blog stats from time to time. In addition to satisfying a basic curiosity, I look at my blog stats so I can better determine the type of traffic my blog receives and the parts of my blog I need to improve in order to get more traffic.
With a plugin like Google Analytics you can combine the power of WordPress with the detail the Google Analytics stats system provides.
On top of that, I also use the WordPress.com Stats plugin because the WordPress.com Stats plugin lets me view my stats in real time while updates of Google Analytics stats lag behind a bit.
But you will still asking the big question:
IS YOUR BLOG SEARCH-ENGINE FRIENDLY:
When blogging, you can go a long way towards making the search engines happy by using a WordPress SEO plugin.
The All-In-One SEO Pack is a free plugin that optimizes your blog for search engines. It makes sure the most important aspects of your blog including its Title, Description and Keywords are indicative of your posts while eliminating the danger of your blog being penalized for self inflicted duplicate content errors.
Why you must use A FAVICON:
Trivial as it may seem to some, a lot of people fail to include a favicon on their blog. A favicon (aka shortcut icon) is an icon associated with a blog or website. Browsers that support favicons display them in their URL.
A favicon (file extension .ico) appears as follows in your blog html:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/images/dnx.ico" />
People add a favicon to their blog in order to improve its overall memorability.
When I visit a new website and I like it, I add it to my bookmarks. Days later when I browse through my bookmarks it is a lot easier to find a bookmark if it was marked with a cool favicon as a favicon makes a bookmark stand out.
A favicon highlights a blog amongst the other websites a visitor may bookmark. You can create a favicon for free at http://www.favicon.cc/
But is that enough to STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD
Blog readers are a fickle crowd. By using a default WordPress theme you risk alienating a strong proportion of potential readers.
People have read so many well-designed blogs that by not bothering to make an effort to visually enhance your blog, you are implicitly telling your readers you don't care enough.
Readers' attention spans are so short that they only need one reason to forget about your blog and move on. You have a few seconds to make an impression on a new reader before they move on. By making your blog is visually appealing you are improving the odds of a visitor staying on your blog a few extra seconds.
Those few extra seconds may make the difference because during that time a topic or an interesting post might grab their attention and they may decide to subscribe to your
RSS feed or bookmark your blog.
You can find some quality premium themes to purchase over Or, if you are on a tight budget you can always Google for various free WordPress themes that will
make your blog visually appealing.
Regardless of whether you purchase a theme or download a free one, you have to add a unique touch to your blog theme. Add a cool logo and header. Use a unique favicon. Make your blog stand out from the crowd!
We will ask now: IS YOUR BLOG COMMENT-FRIENDLY?
In 2006 Jacob Nielsen claimed that in most online communities 90% of users are lurkers, 9% contribute minimally while 1% account for almost all the action.
His figures obviously refer to online communities in general but similar principles apply to the Blogosphere. Most of your blog readers are lurkers. If you wish to improve your comment rate and get more people involved in your day to day blogging there are certainly things you can do:
Install plugins that reward commenters
Ron Rothams' Recent Love plugin shows recent comments made on your blog and a link to the commenter's website (if included). Scott Reilly's Top C ommenters plugin shows commenters that posted the most comments on your blog. A lot of people comment on other blogs in order to get linkbacks or some back-traffic so why not throw them some bait?
Make it easy to comment
This is especially important if you use a Blogger or WordPress hosted blog as a lot of people there use those annoying comment forms that require you to login. If it is easy to comment on your blog, you can be sure that a lot more people will do so.
Make your blog a do-follow blog
This is a very touchy subject. Newer versions of WordPress make your blog a no-follow blog by default. You may wish to change your blog to a do-follow blog although you have to be aware that even though this may increase your comment rate it may affect your search engine rankings negatively.
What is a no-follow blog? A no-follow blog is a blog where commenters' links are created with a rel=”nofollow” attribute value.
What is a no-follow attribute? A nofollow attribute value is an HTML attribute value that indicates to search engines that a link should not influence rankings in a search engine's index.
Allow commenters to follow responses to their comments
You can make this possible by using a plugin like Subscribe To Comments that notifies all commenters of any new replies to their comments if they indicated they wished to be notified.
Respond to comments
Why would anyone comment on your blog if you never reply? Make yourself available and answer any questions asked via your blog's comments.
Moderate comments
Pay attention to new comments on your blog and exclude any spam.
Also, promote productive discussion but try to moderate any comments that are inappropriate or insulting in any way that may offend your readers.
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