How to Keep Visitors Coming Back To Your Blog

There are very few people who realize that most of a popular blog’s traffic is return traffic. New traffic is something that only occurs upon occasion, whereas regular traffic will come back again every week. Plus, if you have an RSS feed, then your loyal viewers will look at your new posts and the posts that he/she missed earlier in the month. Getting people coming back is what is going to power your blog. It is the reason why you write it in the first place, since surely you are not writing each post so that only new blog attendees view it, right?

Following some ways to keep visitors coming back to your blog:

Blog frequently

There’s no point in even having a blog if you’re only going to update it once in a blue moon. Why would someone keep checking your blog if, for the past three months, every time they have checked there has been nothing new? Plus, blogs that aren’t updated frequently are simply out of date. That news story you told six months ago…. guess what? It’s not news anymore. And out of date blogs are hugely unappealing for readers.

Keep your language simple

Reading blogs is considered a light reading activity for many. I personally don’t like the idea of getting out the dictionary and spending an hour translating a 300 word post from pretentiousness into English. Keep your language straightforward and simple. You don’t need to show off your vocabulary. It’s not enjoyable reading when it’s more confusing than a lecture on rocket science in Swahili. Know what the point of your post is, get to the point and do so in a way that people understand. This has SEO benefits too, given that people generally search in simple, straightforward terms.

Ask yourself what the point is

It might seem harsh, but before you hit the ‘publish’ button, read back over your material and ask yourself what the point in it is. Has it been written to educate or inform? Has it been written to entertain? And most importantly, does the final piece do what it set out to do? What’s in it for your readers? There has to be some sort of benefit for your readers in reading the posts you publish, otherwise, why would they bother?

Let your readers get to know you

If a blogger does not apply a little of his or her personality in the posts they publish, they don’t come across entirely human. In exposing some of your personality when you write, your readers feel as though they get to know you as a person and become familiar with your style. People feel much more comfortable commenting when they at least feel as though they have an idea of who the person they’re commenting to is. Blogs that lack personality, to me, feel as though they’re auto-posted by bots! And even if this isn’t the case, I find them bland and never return to them more than once.

Invite Guest Contributions

While you may have a readership loyal to your posts, it’s always nice to inject something a little different. I think that a guest post offers a different perspective and can be refreshing for your readers. It’s also a great opportunity for you to invite members of your community to share their thoughts. This, in turn, can bring a whole host of new visitors to your site, as the poster passes the link on to their friends and contacts.
Don’t Over Police Your Comments

While spam is the bane of all our lives, closing comments altogether or getting a little too tough with the moderating is a sure fire way to put people off. By all means, delete those comments laden with links to sites offering ‘cheap Viagra’ but don’t go all power-trippy on us! Don’t completely delete someone’s comment because you don’t agree with his or her opinion, for example. Yes, any insults, expletives etc should be moderated. But if you want to build a community around your blog, you have to be prepared to let people have their say. As I see it, if you blog, you’re putting your opinions out into the public domain and then have a responsibility to hear out people who wish to respond to them.

Offer them something of use when you write

The most popular blogs are the ones that have a use. If you are looking to find the most recent movie review then you can look through the millions of movie websites, or you can log onto the blog of the person who has just been to see the movie.

Install an RSS feed on your blog

People are going to keep coming back to your blog if they have an RSS feed. It tells them when you have a new post, and reminds them of how many they have missed. It also reminds them that you exist at all.

Make sure your blog always has a happy theme

As weird as it sounds, researchers found out that lots of people do not watch the news on TV because it makes them feel sad. Avoid this pitfall with your blog and keep the tone positive so that people feel happy as they visit.

Give them funny pictures and gifs to share with friends

Give people things to share with their friends and they will keep coming back each week. When they share funny things online it makes them look good, so they keep coming back in order to look good.

Make your domain name and blog easy to remember

People will return if they easily remember your domain name and/or your blog’s name. If you make it easy to remember, people will not have to search around online as much.

Brand your blog and imprint it on your readers’ minds

Branding is there to help you keep your blog imprinted on the mind of your reader. It is there to help them remember you at certain key moments. For example, you are probably aware of car branding, to the point where you remember brand qualities when buying a car, e.g. Volvo for safety, etc.

Start a comment section and encourage a lively debate

You can get people to return by engaging them on the comment section. The best way of doing this is to kick off a lively debate. You can be the “pot stirrer” so to speak, in that you are the one that starts and restarts the comment section topics/issues.

Offer people weekly updates or results

People will visit you weekly if you give out weekly updates or results of some kind. For example, you could give updates on the latest gambling results, or the progress of your local political party.

Link your blog benefits to the user personally

This is not as difficult as it sounds, as all you need to do is find a personal issue and exploit it. It can range from the very broad such as money saving to the very specific such as new diabetic developments or party political progress.

Make it clear that your comment links are followed

Many comment sections allow you to install a link into to another website, but they install a no-follow tag. This means that the link will not be followed by search engines and so has no SEO value. Do not install a “no-follow” tag, and tell people, and they will return weekly to install links.

Give them new jokes to tell their friends or dating advice

Give them something that is both personal and that they can use. Make it a mixture of point 1 and point 4. Things such as a joke to tell at a wedding or dating advice are something that people can use personally.

Start a newsletter for your blog

This will allow you to send monthly emails to your readers to promote your blog and remind people that your blog still exists. It also allows you to remind them of all the benefits of using and attending your blog.

Turn your blog into a serial that grows every week

Serial blogs are hard to pull off because you risk scaring away new viewers. But, if you can pull it off then you will have people attending and re-attending all the time in order to see the next installments of your blog. 

We hope that this article helped you to Keep Visitors Coming Back To Your Blog. Feel free to leave a comment below!