How To Optimize Blog Post For Traffic

After spending several hours trying to construct sequence of sentences that is logical and proofreading, it’s perhaps the right time to hit the publish button. But at the end of the day your stat shows only a few number of people who read your post. You know the feeling if you’ve being there before. It can be discouraging to spend time and energy trying to construct a good article that is explanatory and grammatically okay and get little or no view. What are you not doing right? To attract people to read your blog post, you need to see your post as a meal. When you prepare a meal and no one eat from your meal, you’ll definitely feel bad. To attract people to eat your meal, you need to prepare your meal to look attractive with a good aroma. People are always attracted to a meal that and looks attractive to the eyes with a good smell.  Now the question is how to optimize your post to attract people. This post will explain some important tips to get this done.

Optimize Your Blog Post For A Particular Keyword

Before you write a blog post, you need to carry out keyword research. The importance of keyword research cannot be over emphasize; a lot of users are searching for information using search engines, so you need to write each post with a keyword in mind. When a post is properly optimized for a particular keyword, it increases the visibility of that post. I have written two posts about keyword research, you can read them.

How To Carry Out Effective Keyword Research Part-1

How To Carry Out Effective Keyword Research Part-2

Use Eye-Catching Titles

After optimizing your post for a particular keyword, the next thing to do is to optimize your post titles to grab people’s attention. This is a very important optimization that will attract people to read your post. To understand the importance of a good post title, just try to remember what you always check first on the newspaper or when trying to select a novel to read. No doubt you always check out the titles first. That is why most people are interested about making the news headline because they know it is the first thing people want to see. So, when crafting a post title take your time to analyze your title if it looks like that appetizing meal everyone would love to have a bite.

Good post titles also have a role to play in search engines and social media. For search engines, post titles and description are displayed, and like newspapers, people will take a look at the post title first before deciding to skim through the description. If both post title and description are properly optimized, the chance that a user will click on your link to read your post will increase. For some social bookmaking site, only a post title is displayed. Some gives you an option to add description to your post, but in both cases, you need to properly optimize your post title to attract readers especially for social bookmarking sites that allows only titles to be displayed since your post title is the only thing you have to explain what your post is about.

Tips To Optimize Eye Catching Titles

Below are some tips to help you get started with optimizing a good post title to attract people’s attention. You can also experiment on your own to learn how to craft good post titles.

Use How Tos

This is one of the most effective methods to create a good post title. The phrase “How to” tells the reader that he or she is going to learn how to do something or solve a problem. This sounds so cool, isn’t it? Most users online are looking for information to solve their problems, so you have to give them what they want, the solution to their problem. But believe me, without the phrase “ how to” only a few would understand your blog post is saying something about solving a problem.

Use Keywords In Post Titles

Keyword research has being mentioned earlier. A good SEO practice is to have the keyword you are targeting your post for in your post title. For the sake of those using search engines to locate your content, you need to place your keyword in your post title. Whatever their problem is, there is always a keyword for it. So target the solution of your post to a keyword. It will tell both search engines and readers what your post is about.

Use Numbers

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The titles above are examples of numbers on post titles. The number in the post title tells the reader what to expect from the post. If you see 2 blog posts with the following title:

“Ways To Create A Good Post Title” and “10 Ways To Create A Good Post Title”, which of them will you click? No doubt you’ll likely click the title “10 Ways To Create A Good Post Title” because the title is communicating with you. It’s telling you that you will learn ten different ways to craft a good post title if you read that post, but the other post title is not clear enough to tell you what to expect. You might click on it and find out there are only just two points in the post which might not be sufficient to solve your problem.

Use News Worthy Titles

If your post title is breaking news, then your post will spread within a short time like a virus. That is the reason why need to subscribe to services being used by the mass to be the first to post about any new changes.

Keep It Simple

A simple title that is short, clear and concise is better than a long ambiguous title. If your post title is not clear enough, chances are your post will not be read because the reader will feel he can’t comprehend your content since he can’t understand the title. Always make sure your post titles are simple, clear and concise.

These are just the few tips to craft a good post title. Although it is not possible to apply all the point above in one post, you can apply some in the post you are writing. It all depends on the type of post.

Note: The aim of crafting a good post title is to let your title speak for the entire post. A good post title gives insight to readers what your post is about. So before you hit the publish button, ask yourself: Does my title gives information about my post? It is clear, concise and simple? And will it attract attention?

These questions must be satisfied before you hit the publish button.

Read more on how to write catchy titles

How To Write Catchy Headlines That Works

Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media

Formatting

The next tip is to format your post to help readers and search engines.  It is good to break your points into parts to help readers easily comprehend and remember what they have read. To do this, you need to keep a point in a paragraph and break them only when necessary. Formatting headings is also a good way to format a post. Use different types of headings like H1, H2, H3 and sub headings to format your post. Heading formatting are very important because it help readers to find detailed information quickly. They also give the reader an idea of how deeply a topic is covered. It also provides more detail about a post title.

Another way to format a blog post is to use a listing. This is very important if your post list 101 ways to do something. Using number listing for this purpose is very important to let readers know that the information offered in your post title is correct. Bulleted listing is also useful if you have a list of items to display on your post.

Use Compelling Images With Alt Tags And Description

Image is an important aspect of blogging and it plays an important role in blogging. It enhance a post by illustrating the point in the post; some images also include a breakdown of procedures. Lately, the use of info graph has become very popular. Images add live to your blog post that is the reason why you need to add images to your post. Although it might not be applicable to add images to every post you make, but don’t fail to add images to post that images are applicable. When adding images to a post, make sure to fully optimize the image, this includes naming the image with a keyword from your local drive (that is the file name for your image should target a keyword), using image title, alt tag and image description. If you use a WordPress blog, all you need to do is fill in the fields and your image is fully optimized.

Optimize Social Media Sharing Buttons

Although this might be optimized when your blog is being created, but you still need to make sure every post you make has social media buttons to allow your readers to share your content through their social network. Using social share services like justretweet.com is also a way to boost your social media share.

Link To Older Post

When making a post, link to old posts within your blog. This will help to reduce the bounce rate of your site which has a role to play in search engines. Do you know what bounce rate is? If your blog’s bounce rate is 100% you are in trouble. Let’s get the idea behind the term bounce rate before we go further. When people visit your blog, search engines track the number of page views per visit. If each and every visitor views more than one page per visit, your bounce rate will be 0.00%. But if each visitor views one page per visit then your bounce rate is 100.00%. From the above example, we can define bounce rate as the percentage of visitors who enter the site and “bounce” (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site. A bounce occurs when a website visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytic tracking software

Where

Rb = Bounce rate

Tv = Total number of visitors viewing one page only

Te = Total entries to a page.

The question now is how does bounce rate affects your blog. Let me translate how search engines view bounce rate. When a visitor comes to your blog and views only one page, search engine views your content as not relevant enough to keep that visitor on your blog to view more pages. This can affect your blogs ranking in terms of growth. This is the reason why you need to link to older posts that are relevant and related to the post you are writing. This will not only reduce your bounce, but will attract traffic to old posts and make them relevant.

Using The Right Category

Placing your post in the right category will help readers to easily navigate your blog and locate posts. A blog can be compared to a giant file cabinet, the categories are like drawers. To make it easy for users to locate information, you need to organize your post into categories.

These are just the few ways to optimize your blog post to gain maximum exposure. What do you know about blog post optimization? Tell us, we would love to hear from you.

About The Author Apollos Iteire: I am a passionate blogger who loves to share tips and experiences. I love to connect with bloggers and you can connect with me on facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and google plus one. Website: http://www.uniqueblogging.com