Content is No Longer Enough

written by BlogEx on June 6, 2008 in Blogging with 11 comments

The saying that “Content is King” has been passed around online for as long as I can remember. But the simple truth of the matter is that in this day and age, good blog content just isn’t enough. You need to use effective optimization and promotion techniques in order to attract a large number of readers. To that end, here are 4 practical tips that tell you how to drive traffic to your site and how you can retain reader loyalty once they visited your blog:

Create Title Tags for Two Audiences –

You need to write title tags for people who visit your page or those who have subscription to your feed. Title tags should be short, on-topic, and catch the reader’s attention. But you should also consider writing title tags for search engines because this can help direct traffic to your blog. You can use WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, or Overture to identify certain phrasings that are popular among searchers.

Participate in Blogs and Forums –

This may seem like an obvious thing to do but a lot of bloggers fail to continually implement this strategy usually because they are too busy with other things. It is important for you to realize that online communities can be a great help in online promotion.

Launch your Site with Disabled Comments –

When you first introduce your blog, you should expect that most of your posts will have 0 comments. That is not a problem in itself but the issue is that readers will think that your blog is unpopular and empty when no one’s commenting on it. So if you don’t have enough RSS feed subscribers or if you don’t have large enough number of visitors per day, consider disabling comments until later. Obviously there’s a bit of a trade off in the lost comments, but it will also look like you don’t have comments not because your blog is a ghost town (see rule #6 from the 10 Mistakes that Will Kill Your Blog) but because you simply don’t allow them. I wouldn’t suggest using this tactic for too long, you risk killing off any sense of community, but it can be quite effective in the early going.

Don’t Immediately Join the Bandwagon –

Or, as Max says, Stop Playing Follow the Leader. Sometimes, there are certain industry news that almost every blogger seem to talk about. But don’t immediately jump into the bandwagon especially if your blog is not established in its niche yet. A good alternative would be providing blog readers with content that is unique, informative, and unavailable elsewhere. I know I’ve beaten this point into the ground here, but I really can not emphasize this enough. BE UNIQUE!

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