In his article How to promote a blog - a list of my actions I have listed all the methods that I have tried on our blog. Surely, you have noticed that most of them will not bring you any tangible result. That is why I decided to write a separate article about content. I personally think that writing articles is the most effective way to promote your blog..
The content of the article
- one All parts of my little blogger FAQ:
- 2 Reader or search traffic?
- 3 How to write articles
- 4 Why readers don't come back
- five What am I counting on
All parts of my little blogger FAQ:
I have written a number of blogging related articles. They do not pretend to be a complete manual, but beginners may find it useful. You can read it if you are interested.
0. I recommend the course «How to become a thousand-year blogger and earn»
one. How to start blogging
2. How to promote a blog - a list of my actions
3. How to make money blogging and traveling
5. Reader and Search Traffic, and Why Readers Don't Return
4. An example of making money on our blog - Finstrip 2013, finstrip 2012, Finstrip 2011
6. Some truth about travel blogging
7. Tips for securing your WordPress blog
Why readers don't come back
Reader or search traffic?
Let's talk about traffic first.
All bloggers who write their articles and put meaning in them, of course, want to be read, commented on, etc. But when it comes to making money, then search traffic will actually be out of competition. Regular readers get used to your contextual advertising and do not notice it, they know your flight search form and have already remembered the site where it leads (and cookies are stored for only 30 days). Regular readers are good for selling services and products, but not for this type of advertising. Search engine traffic is new people who are your potential ticket buyers and ad clickers. Therefore, I personally don't see anything wrong with search traffic, we have a large part of it..
Eventually:
- We increase reader traffic if we create our own brand to sell something.
- We increase search traffic to make money on contextual advertising (Yandex.Direct and Google Adsense) and affiliate programs (Aviasales.ru, Beget.ru, etc.).
- Combined option, we kill two birds with one stone, but the efficiency decreases.
If you make money selling links (Sape.ru, Trustlink.ru), as well as posts and articles (Gogetlinks.net, Blogun.ru, Rotapost.ru, Miralinks.ru), then traffic does not matter at all, your TIC and PR.
How to write articles
In fact, the majority, including us, use this very combined option, since blogs made purely for earnings are done in a completely different way, and these methods are difficult to apply to a blog where there is also a reader audience. Now I will not talk about how to search for keywords, about long-tail queries, etc., we discussed this in the comments to the last article, and there has been a lot written about this in the open spaces. I want to say a little about how we write articles.
Usually, the article is written first, and then the keywords are selected. Less often, we write articles specifically for the keyword. In this case, if the article does not contain good photos or useful information, we will not let it in RSS and social networks. Thus, it will collect search traffic, but regular readers will not see it..
Not for everyone, but for most of the articles, we select keywords, 1-2, no more. And then the most difficult part begins - the Title. After all, it is in it that the keyword should be. How to make the title reflect the essence of the article, contain a key, and even be interesting for people to want to read? I have no answer. Sometimes you have to give up a key phrase, sometimes an attractive title, it is not always possible to combine it. So you yourself have to decide, the main thing is not to go to extremes, otherwise it's easier to make a separate blog for earnings.
Although it can take 1 to 3 days to write informative articles, there are benefits to people. That is why we write them. However, we do not expect that crowds of people will immediately come to us through a search engine, such articles are written purely for the reader's audience. Yes, it contains keywords, but as a rule, they are too competitive.
There is also a category of articles that I call «reading». This is just the main content of the blog, our philosophical reflections, reports on visiting a city or a museum. As a rule, they contain a minimum of information, a lot of photographs and it is them that are mainly read by our readers (after all, not everyone needs informational articles). I think the situation is the same on your blogs. So, in addition to introducing keys, you need to understand how to make this content as interesting and original as possible, then new subscribers will easily appear. We are still in the process of answering this question..
And a little about promotion. In the case of the combined traffic option, it seems to me that there is practically no point in promoting your articles (buying posts, links) if the project was not initially sharpened for search traffic. The money spent will not bring much exhaust. Well, you will somehow advance a couple of dozen articles to the top, well, traffic will go to them and what next? These people are unlikely to turn into readers, and the articles may well fly out of the top after a while..
Why readers don't come back
We receive a lot of emails from «thanks» for the information we have posted on Thailand and for inspiring articles on how you can make your dreams come true. And it seems that there are more and more readers. However, reader traffic is growing very slowly. Why?
It's simple. The person received information, went to Tai, he does not need to read about how we are traveling somewhere now. Or a person read our motivating posts and broke off and left somewhere, again, he doesn't have to subscribe to us, God forbid he will come in once every six months and read how we are doing. This situation is normal. Nowadays there are a lot of blogs about travel, and indeed blogs in general. I periodically get on brand new blogs, good blogs, no worse than ours. And in this abundance of information, people choose those sites that are the most original. And for this, simply describing your travels is not enough. You need to invent something like that, but not everyone can, for example, be today in the jungles of Africa, and tomorrow in the ice of Antarctica, in order to delight the reader with new colorful landscapes every day. Or write articles in some special style and with such charisma that it will be read, just because YOU are writing it.
It seems that everything described here does not sound very attractive for beginners, right? However, I just wanted to try to remove the rose-colored glasses from those who have them..
What am I counting on
Personally, I hope that someday I will be able to finally understand where to send my blog so that it brings more benefits and material returns at the same time. And I also want to try to offer my services (very soon). And also, I hope that a brilliant idea for a project will come to my mind, how can I go without it. It seems to me that it is quite logical that when a person has been doing something for a very long time, he eventually finds the very niche that suits him best in all respects..
P.S. That's all. I told you all my thoughts and considerations, as well as actions. If you write interesting and informative articles, use a little SEO (not fanatical), then it is quite possible to get a visited blog with subscribers and search traffic, as well as make money on it. It may well be that other bloggers will have completely different conclusions on this topic. But in any case, you have to try, and sooner or later we will succeed! As, I recently read somewhere, it is not talented people who win, but stubborn ones 🙂
