Perhaps you have a great idea for a personal WordPress blog, or maybe you’ve been assigned to create a blog for your organization. Whatever your motive, you’re going to want to bring as much traffic to your blog as possible.
Here are 5 ways to easily grow your WordPress blog following:
Use the Publicize Tool to Share Content on Social Media
Once you’ve logged into your WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings, and then Sharing. You should see the heading Publicize, which lists Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, Path, and LinkedIn. If you already have an account with any of these social media platforms, click Connect so that you can publish new blog posts to these social networks with just one click. (See the image below for a preview of what this will look like).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is necessary for making your content optimal for visibility on search engines like Google or Bing. To start improving your SEO, make sure you have the basics down—like setting up your blog privacy settings. In your WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings, and then Reading. Under Site Visibility, select Allow search engines to index this site. With this setting on, everyone will have access to your blog, and it will show up in search engine results.
Pay for Traffic
If you’re willing to invest money to promote your blog, check out web applications like StumbleUpon, or journalist resources like PR Newswire. With StumbleUpon you can target your web audience by age, gender, location, and more—without making readers click through disruptive, pop-up-like ads. Through these applications, your blog is seamlessly integrated with whatever medium your reader is already visiting. This is known as native advertising. The more targeted you make your advertising, the more it will cost you. PR Newswire will also allow you to publish blog content to reach a huge web audience. These are the different methods they offer.
Tagging and Scheduling Your Posts
As with most things in life, it pays to be organized with your blog. Keep your blog posts frequent and on a regular schedule. You’ll achieve an increase in credibility with your readers and build an audience more quickly.
Aim to become a featured blog on WordPress. Don’t forget to tag or categorize each of your posts so that readers can easily gravitate toward the topics the enjoy. However, don’t overdo it; over 15 tags or categories is too much and will prevent your blog from being found.
Interact with Other Blogs
Are there other blogs in your industry that you enjoy? Leave a comment or two on their posts and generate a friendly relationship with them. Link to their content and you’ll be more likely to get links back. If you feature someone in one of your posts, let them know by dropping them an email with the post’s URL link (but don’t annoy them by doing this more than once a month per blogger).
These 5 important steps are just the groundwork for getting more visitors to your blog. Stay tuned for more WordPress blogging advice!
Which of these tips do you find most useful?
Denise is a San Francisco native who loves technology, fashion, and dining out around the city. Her favorite tech inventions include the Samsung Galaxy mobile phone and of course, the WordPress blogging platform.
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