5 Tips to Get More Out of Blogging

Blogging can provide increased traffic to your website and even improve sales. Yet competition is fierce. There are millions of bloggers active in the U.S. alone. Many bloggers post at least once a month, which means it’s challenging to compete with others targeting the same industry and market as you are without a strong blogging strategy.

One way you can beat your competition is to blog in a way that engages readers and gets them to keep coming back to your website. Knowing blogging trends that increase readership and ranking ability will help you do this. Here are five tips to improve your traffic and conversion rates with blogging.

Use Visually Engaging Content

There’s no doubt that people go out to blogs to read up on a topic. But if they get out there and that content is large blocks of text that look overwhelming, they’ll likely back away and go somewhere else for answers.

Consider how to make your content come to life with visuals and sprinkle them in throughout your information. You’ll avoid overwhelming your audience and you’ll keep them engaged and enjoying your content.

Visuals can be images that highlight or illustrate your story, infographics, charts, etc. Just make sure they fit your brand colors and the overall aesthetic of your website to really make them work for you. And, consider reusing these graphics in your social media content.

Outside Citations and Proof

Sadly, we’re living in the fake news era. To combat people questioning whether your content is reliable, you need citations and proof for your articles. Invite critical readers to join the discussion to further validate your claims and show your website visitors that you are an expert in your field.

Use backlinks and cite only reputable sources in your content. Avoid claims that you cannot prove in any way. Never overpromise on what your company can deliver. If you do, your followers will call you out on it.

Blog for Mobile Devices

In elementary school, your teachers probably instructed you that a paragraph included five or more sentences. But when you go online, you’ll see that could not be farther from the truth.

That’s because large paragraphs become even larger on mobile screens. That makes it challenging or overwhelming for mobile viewers to read.

Today’s content includes paragraphs of just a few sentences. Or even one sentence.

Consider the formatting on your blog as well. Make sure that it’s mobile-first. Navigation should be clear and easy to access on these smaller devices. Load speeds should be very quick on mobile. And never wrap text around images because this looks pretty clunky on a mobile device.

The simpler and more concise your writing is, the more mobile-friendly it will be.

Show an Estimated Reading Time

People want to know what they’re getting into. You’ll notice some of the largest blogging websites include a note at the beginning that tells you the estimated reading time. This paints a rather clear picture of what users can expect when they land on your blog page.

If it’s a five-minute read, your readers might stick around for the whole thing. For a 10-minute read, they’ll be looking for a clear index at the top of the page that allows them to skip to the sections that really matter to them.

Keep in mind that you’re catering to the information generation. We can go anywhere now to find the information we want. Make it as simple as possible for your readers if you hope to keep them.

Index of Content at the Top of Long Content

In-depth content is fantastic for SEO. But you can’t forget the readability of such content. Make your content easy to skim and scroll by adding an index at the top.

The index is nothing fancy. It just shows the major headings in your blog and uses anchor links to jump down to this content. Now from the very top of your articles, readers can get to the information that’s relevant to them or know at a glance what they’ll get out of reading your article.

Blogging Tips and Expertise

If your company has been blogging but seeing little to no results from the activity, it’s probably time to bring in an expert. New Light Digital has helped countless organizations create a sound blogging strategy that delivers results.

We integrate the blogging strategy with an overall website SEO strategy to make the two work in tandem. Get a quote or schedule a consultation with us to learn more.