Keeping your visitors to stay longer and increase time on your blog is an Art. It is one of the toughest part of blogging too. Your blog may get huge number of visitors but its the time to ask a question, How long the visitors are staying in your blog? Visitors are like flash light and they jump from page to page in few seconds looking for information. So we have only “few seconds” to attract the visitors and that’s gonna be the magical task.
It’s quite interesting, when you work towards improving your blog. I would personally recommend integrating Google Analytics on your blog which gives a clear picture on the average time a visitor stays in your blog apart from the traffic/page view statistics. You could even measure like, which source of visitors are staying for longer time in your blog ? Integrate Analytics, if you don’t have already. Let’s see those very simple yet powerful techniques which help to keep the visitor’s long time in your blog.
1. The First Impression
The first impression should always be the best impression. A unique blog design stands out and gains the visitor’s attraction quicker. Have a simple and easy to navigate blog design which helps the visitors to scan through the blog on the first sight. Also, you should brand your blog in a unique way. A logo, a slogan and the right color combinations from top to bottom shows that your blog looks professional and this builds visitor trust.
Once your blog attracts the visitor, for sure he expects more information in your blog. In short, pay attention to a unique blog design and branding. Learn the 3 steps to brand your blog.
2. Share Related Posts
Adding a list of related articles at the end of every blog post helps the visitor to read more pages. This is the most common method to keep the visitors for longer time in your blog. For wordpress users there are plenty of plugins available to show related posts. Yet another related post is one of the best plugin that I am using in my blog, it shows more relevant and fresh articles.
You could move one more level by showing the latest articles from a specific category on your sidebar. The following PHP code snippet helps to show this kind of list.
<ul>
<?php query_posts(‘category_name=<categoryName>&showposts=15′); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” title=”<?php the_title(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile;?>
</ul>Just replace the <categoryName> with your category name and you could change the number of posts to display instead of ’15’.
3. Encourage Blog Comments
Having a comment system in your blog is more important to increase conversation. Blogging requires conversation and your blog looks stagnant, if it has no comments. To make your blog alive, you should encourage the visitors to write comments. It actually brings more insights on the topic and adds value to the content.
Most of the blogs have comment system but if you use a better comment system like Intensedebate or Disqus, it sparks more interactions with the visitors. It triggers the visitors to write their comments on your blog posts. Also, changing commentators URL to “dofollow” may bring in more comments on your blog. Encourage comments and hold the visitors in your blog. Check out these wordpress plugins to increase blog comments.
4. Link Relevant, Link More
Blogging is sharing and when you share your own articles, it helps the visitors to read more. Before linking a blog post, always ask this question, does this link adds value to the reader ?
Linking to your own relevant blog posts serves the reader with more information which they need from your blog. Not only for the new posts, you could edit an older post (for example, an article written on 2006) in your blog to link to the recent article which definitely helps the reader to find fresh information. It benefits in terms of SEO too.
5. Publish Useful Blog Content
Always publish useful content in your blog. Useful content should address a problem and it should give solutions to the reader. If you started solving the reader’s problem then your blog will become their “one spot solver”. You should have a unique style in your writing. Be interactive, write great blog posts in which ask questions and answer them yourself. This way, people will love your articles and they will stay long expecting more such information from your blog.
6. Serve Your Visitors
Finally, if you are not willing to take any of these suggestions then simply do one thing, “Serve Your Visitors”. Whatever you do in your blog, keep the visitor in mind and serve them. Starting from top to bottom, add information and links which helps the reader.
In actual, serving the visitor is an art which helps to keep the visitors closer your blog and around your business ! I am trying to follow all these tips in my blog which has an average visiting time of 2:00+ minutes per month, see the below statistics captured from Analytics.
Guest author Mr. Ven is the founder of eMoneyMakingOnline.com (a “dofollow” blog) who started with nothing and became a successful part-time entrepreneur today. Image credits to Flickry. You can also guestblog here and share your blogging tips.