How To Make Your Blog More Visible
As of 2019, more than 500 million websites are considered blogs. Along with that, approximately 2 million blogs are posted daily. Knowing those statistics can be discouraging. How could you ever make your blog more visible when so many bloggers exist?
By following these foolproof tips, we can answer your question on how to make your blog more visible. Your content is worth reading so take the steps for creating a larger audience.
Write For Your Readers
Back when the term “SEO” began fluttering around online, professionals were beginning to decipher the algorithms search engines used in determining page rank. What was found, and is still true to this day, is the use of keywords.
However, what began happening once writers realized this was that content quality dropped drastically. Bloggers began focusing less on authenticity and originality and more on keyword stuffing their content, in hopes that search engines would index and rank their blog post.
Although, optimizing your content still plays a crucial role in increasing your blog’s visibility, writing content that is actually tailored to physical readers has been proven to rank higher in the SERP.
That is because search engines have become so advanced that they can better understand the intent of user searches and are more likely to display a page that fulfills their intent.
So, the first tip for increasing your blog’s visibility is to write content that will fulfill the searcher’s intent and less on stuffing keywords throughout the content.
Include Visuals
Visuals add life to your blog postings. They break up your writing by disrupting an all-text format which has been proven to have a higher abandonment rate.
Not to mention reader’s like to have visuals that relate to the content they a reading. Images typically help with understanding and remembering the topic.
Along with that, images go a step further by giving you the opportunity to increase your website’s SEO. Images increase SEO by giving you the ability to add titles and alt attributes. Both of which are known to play a role in search engine rankings.
Optimize Your Content for Search Engines
So, after reading the first two tips you may be confused about the importance of optimizing content. For starts, there is a science behind implementing SEO. Executing it correctly is difficult and relies heavily on research, trial and error.
There are aspects of SEO that are crucial to implement when writing content for improving your blog’s visibility:
- Write content centered around a keyword or a keyword phrase (see next tip)
- Include H1’s and H2’s
- Write descriptive titles and meta descriptions
- Add titles and alt attributes to your images
- Craft SEO friendly URL’s
- Focus on usability
- Include internal and external links
Take the time to study up on how to improve your blog’s SEO. Implementing these seven aspects into your blog posts will give you a better chance of being indexed by search engines which will, in turn, increase your blog’s visibility.
Conduct Keyword Research
Tying into optimizing blog posts, thorough keyword research will be the main contributor to whether or not people find your blog in the first place.
Keywords are the words or phrases people use to search on the internet. When a user types a keyword or keyword phrase into their search bar search engines refer to their index of web pages that relate to that phrase. Search engines will then display the pages that are most significant to what the user had searched.
That right there is the main reason you need to conduct keyword research if you want to increase blog visibility. Your blog needs to align with what people are searching and the intent centered around their search.
Choose a keyword that relates to the topic you are writing about. The best keywords are the ones with a high monthly search volume and low competition.
There are plenty of free available tools at your disposal that you can use for finding a focused keyword for your blog posts. A personal favorite of mine is the Google Chrome extension Keywords Everywhere, which displays the search volume, related keywords, LSI keywords, cost and competition.
Promote With Social Media
Social media platforms are a powerful tool that will help promote your blog. Social media presents you with the opportunity to connect with others, engage with your audience, advertise and reach larger audiences.
If you haven’t already, you should create social media accounts specifically for your blog. Take the time to get to know the difference between social media platforms and which ones are best for focusing your efforts on.
With each post, tweet or pin you upload to social media, be sure to include a link that directs back to your blog post.
Along with staying consistent with your blog-specific accounts, promoting your blog on your personal social media accounts will also increase your blog’s visibility.
Chances are you have acquired plenty of friends and followers through your personal accounts, so what better way to promote your blog postings than by putting it out in front of your own friends, family and followers? Your personal audiences are the ones who are more likely to engage and share your blog content.
Encourage Reader Engagement
Add some thrill to your content by encouraging readers to engage with your blog posts. Something as simple as asking a question relating to the topic you write about can do a whole lot for increasing visibility.
You see this often with vloggers. Almost every YouTube influencer has some kind of call to action somewhere in their videos, whether it’s them asking to subscribe, comment, etc.
This same idea can be applied to your writing. Ask your readers to share your article, comment on their opinions or subscribe to your mailing list.
Engagement can build your audience which will increase your visibility. Every share counts.
Blog Consistently
If you’re looking to grow your audience one of the best practices you can implement is setting a schedule for blog postings. Blogs that are posted frequently and on the same days of the week develop an audience at a quicker rate.
Doing this also hooks your audience in. It gives your readers a set time for when they can expect new content from you. Don’t leave their expectations out to dry.
A tip here would be to take the time a couple of days before the start of a new month and brainstorm topics you want to write about. You can even take it a step further by conducting your keyword research well before you begin writing.
By doing this you will have a set schedule for what you need to write and when you plan on posting. It will keep you on track each month.
Spice Up Your Content
To grow your audience spice up your content once in a while. Blog about topics that you normally wouldn’t blog about. Even switching up how you write by changing your tone or language could increase reader interest.
Go a step further by breaking away from the typical text-only format. Try out posting illustrations, graphics, video or any other form of content. Doing this adds life and authenticity to your blog and will generate interest.
Plus, content that is more visually oriented typically has a greater chance of being shared more on social media. Spicing up your content is an effective way to reach people beyond your current audience.
Obtain Backlinks
Backlinking is one of the hardest tactics to implement for bloggers, but your hard work will pay off with an increase in visibility. Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Essentially, whenever someone else links to your website search engines see this as a vouch for your website’s credibility, thus rewarding you with higher search rankings.
The reason it is hard to implement is the extra work you need to put. How do you get Backlinks? You can obtain them through the following methods:
- Outreach (mostly through email)
- Large social reach
- Guest posting
- Keyword-rich writing that is extremely relevant to your audience
- Podcast features
- User comments
Creating a backlinking strategy is very tedious. Your results will depend on how much work you put in. However, once you have a fair share of quality backlinks you will begin noticing search engines rewarding your blog posts by increasing their page rank, which in turn will increase your visibility.
My word of advice is if someone ever asks to use your content that you require them to link back to your own website.
Build For Mobile
It should be no surprise that most blogs are read on mobile devices. Nearly 60% of all searches are on mobile now and that is likely to continue to increase.
If your blog is not built mobile friendly you are isolating yourself from 60% of a potential audience. This tip really focuses more on how you should build out your blog posts but still goes hand and hand with increasing your visibility.
Your blog is more likely to be read on a mobile device than on a desktop. Plus, search engines, especially Google, have stated they are beginning to implement mobile-first indexing. That means when they crawl the internet they are rewarding websites that have a mobile-friendly design,
Keep that in mind when you build out your blog posts. You want to make sure that your pages load fast and can be read the same way as on desktop.