Saturday, November 12, 2011

A great trick to increase pageviews on your blog

It was a wild spike in traffic mid morning, and a frenzy of research last month, that prompted this post.
 
As bloggers, we (and I hope it isn't just me...) stalk our traffic patterns. By stalk, I mean that I check into several sources, several times throughout the day. I find that although Blogger stats (above) are usually very inflated in comparison to my other sources, it is at least proportional. A great site I use, is Histats. With this site, I can see the IP addresses of each visitor, so I trust its values.

As you can see, something crazy happened that day!!



I quickly became obsessed at finding out what the flook was, or what I did right to get this traffic spike, and I thought I would share my findings!

I first checked into Triberr. As is usual, most of my traffic is coming from there in one form or another. Because of the many URL shorteners that Triberr uses, hits from there will show as "t.co....", "twrt...." and sometimes Triberr, or "bit..."

My stream was normal, showing the usual amount of clicks on my tribes mates posts.

I checked my Twitter @mentions to see that I was being mentioned at a normal rate, usually once every 5 minutes or so.

Next I looked into which posts were being viewed. HERE is where a difference showed. Not only my newer posts, (those still making their way through the Triberr stream), but many OLD posts were being viewed as well. Hmmmm....WHY WHY WHY!! I needed a way to find how readers were getting from a new post, (their entry point) to the old posts.

The trick?  
When you insert an image into your blog post, by default, blogger links that image to ITSELF. This means that if your reader clicks on the image, they will leave your blog and view the image. Chances are, (hopefully) they will back up in their browser to get back where they were. If they don't? You have a bounce. A dreaded 1 page view and jet. BOO BOUNCES!!!

LINK your images manually to your OTHER POSTS!!! Don't be a pain in the neck, make it relevant to the image. You don't want to alienate a reader by sending them in all sorts places the didn't want to see,but link up to something that makes sense!

How about my twitter image above?

I don't think I have a relevant post to link that too. I don't have a twitter page on my blog, and I don't want to send them off site to Twitter....You will come to places like this if you decide to go through old or future posts and link up your images. You have two options- 1. I can send them to my Twitter page and by adding .....target="blank" to the end of my link, it will open in a NEW tab leaving my site open! or 2. I now have a suggestion of a post I need to write! How about some free social media icons for download? That would be a great post to have, and provide me with a relevant and USEFUL link!

 Link within your text too!

You should have at least one link within your blog post, to another blog post via text within your content! The same as you would do for a sponsored post, you should be doing for yourself! Keep your reader in a loop through your content, so when they finish an article, they already have something else they want to see! In this case, I would add a link to my article on backlinks, because it has relevant information on how to structure your LINKS for SEO purposes.

I never did find out where the rush of visitors came from that day, and it hasn't happened again since, but it did lead me to this little revelation :)

11 comments:

Things Sent My Way said...

Great ideas!

Michelle @ Things Sent My Way

everyday products and more said...

Great tips thanks for sharing

Leslie said...

Thanks for the tips!

Leslie www.itsacouponlife.com!

Dawn - Blogging Mom of 4 said...

Another great tip! Thanks, Cindy!

Dawn @Slop Swap

Heather Buen said...

This is AWESOME! Also a great way to use keywords for Google Keywords search. If you use keywords to title or describe your old images, than you move up in the search engines. As for the links, I like the idea of linking to other posts OR sometimes linking to the same post that you posted to stumble upon or some other site. That way you get traffic to your social media sites as well. Love this! I'm reposting.

Janet said...

What a revelation!! I just shared this in my Newbie Blog Hop FB group!! Thank you!!

Shawna said...

What great advice! So glad I came to your page today!! Love this post. I'll be doing these things for sure now. Thanks for all your hard work in figuring this out.

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Anonymous said...

awesome post!

Cleverly Changing said...

Thanks so much for sharing this information. Within the last two weeks I have posted more consistently than ever and surprising, there was a decline in my traffic. This tip will help.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the information! I love reading your blog from time to time :)