How We Improved Our Blog In One Week

To help you in your quest for success in blogging I'll share with you how we improved our blog in one week and so can you. These simple but effective strategies will help you to look at the finer details of your articles and revamp what does not work.

• Why you are not getting traffic to your blog
• What makes a blog stand out?
• How long does it take to get traffic to your website?
• How we improved our blog in one week
• How to promote your blog
• How we improved our blog in one week - Conclusion

Why you are not getting traffic to your blog

When your journey starts as a beginner you are putting in a lot of time to create something that you think your targeted audience would appreciate.

Despite investing time and money in a great visual website, it may not be attracting much traffic. As a result, you may get little to no return on your investment, which can be disheartening.

There are a number of reasons why your blog may not be attracting many visitors, but the situation can be overcome. I realized that and with the experience gained I started making changes to several of my websites and blog articles.

The impact I saw was immediate and I started getting visitors which grew throughout the months as more and more of my articles started ranking on Google.

However, it is important to first try and figure out what you are doing wrong. There can be many reasons for this which might become very technical and can only be detected as your experience grows.

Here are the top 5 reasons why most beginners fail to attract visitors.

• Poor quality content
• Incorrect keywords
• Poor SEO optimization
• Website speed
• Marketing

Poor quality content

A very obvious reason why your website may have failed to generate traffic. No matter what you do, if your content is not really good or of notably poor quality, your website will struggle.

The primary reason that anybody visits your website or blog is mostly because of the content. It's possible that your website will attract a few visitors at first as a result of good SEO. But you'll have to put in some real-time effort to keep those visitors on your site.

Pay close attention to your brand's online persona and see if your content meets the needs of the target market. If you do, you'll get a consistent flow of organic traffic.

Incorrect keywords

Most beginners to blogging will pay no attention to keywords because of their lack of experience. At the beginner stage, we are not aware of how the keyword integrates into a bigger online presence.

Keyword research is at the foundation of any SEO strategy. Keywords enable search engines in interpreting the content of your website so that it could be indexed in search results accurately.

You won't rank well if you're targeting the wrong keywords, which means you'll be less visible to your audience. As an outcome, less organic traffic will be sent to your website.

Low-quality traffic that does not convert into sales or leads might be attracted to a website by providing content that is focused on the wrong keywords.

So, what can you do if your keywords aren't well-targeted? Use a good keyword research tool including Google Keyword Planner to do in-depth keyword research.

I am a big fan of using the free keyword planner on the H-Supertools website in conjunction with Google Keyword Planner.

Poor SEO optimization

When bloggers hear the term SEO they cringe because for content creators this can be a totally new technical aspect with too many variables to learn.

It is however important for you as a beginner content creator to know and understand some of the basics of SEO. This will at least help you to start getting ranked on Google.

Here I would also advise that you use a free SEO analyzer that can give you some ideas. Also once again I recommend the free SEO analyzer over at H-Supertools.

Maintaining a perfect SEO balance is hard work as there are consistent algorithm changes on search engines that make it hard work to keep up.

Here are a few things most beginners will overlook when starting their first blog:

• The importance of post titles
• Your site's meta description
• Header placement such as H1 to H6
• Keyword selection and frequency
• Image file sizes
• Alt tags for images
• Content flow

These are only some of the basics and without even touching some technical aspects of the SEO game such as effective HTML code, site maps, and Google search settings.

What makes a blog stand out? 

I realized only after a few years of blogging and doing research about blogging that no matter what is said or how it's said it boils down to blog structure and content flow.

Search engines have a specific requirement for measuring content quality and their algorithm is purely based on that. In other words with their algorithm, they are telling you that if you don't comply you will be ignored.

The main objective behind this is that they are setting up their search results only to benefit their advertising campaigns. It has nothing to do with user experience. User experience is your job that is why it is part of the algorithm.

As more and more bloggers become aware of this the fight for "Page 1" has become tougher. Let's face it, how often does anyone search past page one to get what they look for?

That is why if you are fortunate enough to get listed on page one or two of the search results you have to make your blog different in some ways from the others surrounding you.

This is normally done with visual presentation and ease of finding the information the visitor came for. Keep in mind that very few visitors will read the whole article and if they can't find what they are looking for they will disappear.

The three basic things that make your blog stand out are:

• Quality content that will quickly show the visitor that you are an authority on the subject
• A visually pleasant experience with no clutter
• Guidance for the visitor to find solutions to problems

How long does it take to get traffic to your website?

Of course, there isn't a correct way to respond to this question. A Blogger with a large base of followers can launch a new blog and begin receiving new hits, ranks, and even sales very immediately.

A rookie blogger, on the other hand, who does everything perfectly may have to wait months or even years before making any real money from their site. This is because of domain authority and how long it will take you to build up the trust of your audience and also that of search engines.

Google will also look at your content and if they feel it is something people are searching for but Google only has limited information on it you might get lucky and rank within 48hours.

This is not because they like you but because they can spot a new opportunity for creating another advertising stream.

Where Google finds an abundance of information on your topic they will ignore you until you have shown authority and intent to stick around.

How we improved our blog in one week

As I am not a technical wizard when it comes to SEO I have decided to focus on the few things that I do have knowledge about and that is structure, layout, and graphics.

Structure of the blog

With experience, I also learned that all the components on a blog intersect with each other and therefore must together be supportive of the main idea.

Search engines specifically look for these connections to make sure your blog structure is correct.

The first step was to make sure that the structure of the blog is SEO compliant and that was done by focusing on:

• URL Selection
• Main titles and headlines
• Keyword frequency
• Visual components

URL Selection

I have never realized the importance of the page URL when writing blogs as most blogging platforms will automatically allocate the URL based on your post title. I was under the impression it must just be easy to remember.

This was until I learned it is part of the keyword strategy and important to search engine crawlers.

Changing the titles at this stage will bring along complications such as having to redirect all current posts to the new URL and I was not up to that.

Instead, I decided that I am going to focus on my keyword strategy as well so I looked at the titles I have because they already contain the keywords I am aiming for.

So instead I made sure that these title keywords appear in my content at the desired frequency that will grab search engine bots' attention.

Main titles and headlines

The next part of my blog improvement strategy was to make sure I allocate the correct headline tags to my blog in order to improve the blog structure.

This is done by identifying what the headline represents and then allocating the H1, H2, or relevant tag to it.

Here is a good example of how headline tags should be applied to your structure.

H1 - A blog post's title. They're usually keyword-focused, centred on a page's or post's "core idea," and written to spark visitors ’ attention.

H2 - These are subheaders that separate sections and classify the key points of your paragraphs. Consider inserting semantic keywords in your H1 which relate to the "main topic" while also helping the reader in finding the portions they want to read.

H3 - These are subheadings that expand on the points stated in the H2. Alternatively, they can be used to format key points or lists.

H4 - These are subheadings that expand on the ideas stated in H3. Alternatively, they can be used to format main points or lists.

You can also add H5 and H6 tags should your sub-sections expand further and you only apply them to continue structure.

Keyword frequency

As a beginner with content creation, you will tend to spend too much time worrying about placing keywords on your blog. Instead, this time should be spent on keyword research so you have the right keyword to match your content.

If you have the right keyword then it is all up to placing it strategically in your content without falling prey to keyword stuffing. Search engines do not take to keyword stuffing too well and will write you off instantly.

The best places to make sure you place your chosen keyword or keyword phrase are:

• In the URL
• In the post main topic
• In the first paragraph of your post
• In the post description
• In image alt tags
• Include it at least in one or two headers
• Distribution frequency throughout the content will depend on the length of the article. The suggestion is between 2 and 3% of the total count but it is not a fast rule.

If you are using WordPress the Yoast plugin is helpful in getting your keyword frequency to an acceptable level. There are also many online keyword density checkers available online that you can use for free.

Visual components

It was essential to upgrade my images to be a more visual representation of the topic. Besides the main title, your focus image is the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your page. If it is not interesting enough they won't even bother reading the rest.

It is also important to size your images correctly in order for faster loading of your website. A website taking too long to load will be abandoned 9 out of 10 times before it even opens.

With mobile connectivity and data pricing, it is essential to keep image sizes manageable as search engine algorithms made this one of the top priorities.

Before re-uploading my new images I reduced the file sizes by converting them to the smaller lossless webp format. I can assist with your conversions through my Fiverr gig here. The other way is to find a free converter online which will be good for small conversions.

The last step in fixing my images was to ensure that all images had alt tags with a description of the image including my targeted keyword.

How to promote your blog

The final step in driving more visitors to my blog had to be through online marketing. One thing must be clear and that is if you stop marketing and you are not on search engines you will get no visitors.

This can be done by selecting one social media platform at a time and marketing your articles. I suggest one platform at a time as it can become time intensive if you still have to focus on other parts of your blogging business.

The most popular social media platforms to start with at no cost to you will be:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr

It will depend on your target audience so first start with the social platform where your potential visitors are more likely to hang out. Selecting Tumblr when you are running topics on business management might not be your best choice.

This type of topic will be more likely suitable for LinkedIn or Twitter but it doesn't mean you can't utilize the others for getting some traffic. I am only suggesting that you start by mastering and building an audience one at a time until you are familiar with the specific platform.

Once experienced there are other places to build authority and win some traffic.

• Quora
• Youtube
• Online forums
• Podcasting
• Telegram
• Whatsapp
• TikTok
• Email Marketing

It is very difficult to maintain posting schedules therefore I suggest getting automated software that can do the posting for you. In this case, it is obvious that paid tools will give you better and unlimited posting options but you can get away with doing it for free.

I personally use Facebook integrated post scheduler through my business page. This allows you to schedule and post to your Facebook feed and Instagram at the same time. It allows you to set up posts and I was told 6 months ahead but my experience is 75 days at least.

For Twitter, I use the integrated scheduler to post daily. I just found that they don't like the same post scheduled too many times so changing your wording on each post is essential or they will suspect you of spamming.

To overcome these obstacles and restrictions that the free options have you will have to go for one of the paid schedulers such as:

Tailwind - Instagram & Pinterest only
Buffer - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

How we improved our blog in one week - Conclusion

By using the experience gained in five years of blogging for fun we needed to step up the game towards monetization.

Just by learning new blogging skills and then implementing the basics of search engine optimization, we managed to increase our blog visitors significantly. If we only knew then what we know now we would've been much further in the game of monetization.

That's why as a beginner it is important to start off in the correct manner as it will save a lot of time and money in the years to come.

To become an authoritative figure in your niche you have to put the hard work in at the start of the process in order to reap the benefits in the long run. It does not happen overnight and without effort, it might night happen at all.