Increasing your daily page views, not your BP

Imagine you’ve just bought a pair of unique, classy, new shoes (the pair you’ve been eyeing for a couple of weeks while waiting for your paycheck at the end of the month). You step outside with them excitedly for the first time in the midst of your friends…and to your disappointment, nobody seems to notice your ‘golden feet’ let alone drop a much-awaited compliment. You feel the pinch in your gut (not just in your pocket). That’s sort of what it’s like for a blogger who puts up great content but has nobody reading it or leaving comments. Frustration is inevitable but it doesn’t have to be permanent.

In my first year of blogging I was averaging a laughable 20 daily page views. Two years later I doubled that figure after discovering how to get more traffic to my blog which included adding more ‘killer’ content and keyword tags. By March 2013 I was averaging about 50 daily page views. But after giving my blog a little makeover towards the end of March I’ve been averaging 100 daily page views without breaking a sweat. Here are some changes that made all the difference:

Using excerpts not full posts on your home page. Remember, sometimes less is more. When a reader stumbles upon your homepage and sees your most recent post dominating the screen with its hefty paragraphs then he or she may be a little intimidated. In contrast, readers may be willing to tackle three scrawny excerpts of three different posts. The idea is that if you were to visit a blog and got hit with a long post, you probably wouldn’t want to stick around to see what else was available. But if you saw a couple of excerpts of different posts, you could click to read one and go back to read that other interesting excerpt you saw earlier. That’s two views for the price of one!

Using pictures to redirect readers to pages within your blog. You may or may not know this, but readers tend to click on pictures within your posts. What tends to happen is that they just get taken to another page where the picture can be viewed in isolation – what’s the point of that? Instead, create a link within the picture so that the reader gets taken to another page within your blog, or to another article within your blog (You can click on this one to see where it takes you to). Keep that reader engaged as much as possible and maybe he or she may discover more intriguing content. It took years before I realized how much page viewing I had lost after readers clicked repeatedly on pictures (for whatever reason) when I could have used that to guide them around my blog. *sigh*

Interacting with blogs that share similar content. If you wrote about relationships, for instance, and you visited a blog focusing on the same topic then your comment could lure readers (and even the blogger) to check out your blog. The beauty of most blog platforms is that when you comment you get to leave a link to your blog. Once readers click on your name they’re miraculously teleported to your blog’s homepage…then hopefully the two points I discussed earlier would do the rest of the magic 🙂

stressed bloggerWe make mistakes learn everyday so hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes experiences and get the boost in readership that you secretly yearn for. As always, I’ll publish a follow-up article when I make some more useful discoveries that could get you the quality traffic that makes you Google’s best friend.

Note: In case you want to read other blogging tips I posted previously, you can find them all in this new page I created (and dedicated) to blogging tips, aptly titled Blogging Tips 

Image credits – understandfashion.com, techcrank.com, greenetrees.net, andertoons.com

7 thoughts on “Increasing your daily page views, not your BP

  1. Bloody awesome advice! I will give it a go when I have a few minutes spare to sit down and concentrate on it!!!! I didn’t realise that people clicked on pictures. I never do! lol. p.s. how is Candy Crush coming along?

    • Thanks Yvette! In my Dashboard I see what readers have clicked on and a good number of my media files are listed there, lol. Candy Crush is getting more challenging *sigh* – I’m at level 67. Cheers for the train ticket. A little bird told me you prefer Farmhouse Heroes 😉

      • Haha well, I’ve been stuck on level 97 for way too many days now, with no end in sight on Candy Crush so I’ve moved over to Farm Heroes but if you need another train ticket in CC just pm me on FB and let me know. Also.. why not give Farm Heroes a go! It’s cute and fun! I still have CC on my phone so play it there when I’m bored. Most of the time that is where I have managed to blitz a level that I’ve been stuck on.

        • Wow, 30 levels ahead…will I ever catch up? lol. It’s so random sometimes how I even complete the levels. It’s almost as if CC just decides you’ve been on this level too long so I better introduce some killer combos and end your losing streak! By the way, your question under FAQ has been moved to Blogileaks, just in case you thought I deleted it 🙂

  2. Great advice – how DO you make it so that excerpts are shown? I’ve been noticing this layout on other blogs and have wanted mine that way for a while (even more so now lol) is it down to the theme or can it happen on any blog? xB

    • You’re right about the theme. Some themes allow you to be able to do excerpts. What actually I in my own case is to go to the right hand side of the ‘New Post’ page and select ‘Gallery’ under Format instead of ‘Standard’ which is the default selection. Some themes do not give the ‘Gallery’ option.

  3. Using pictures to redirect readers to pages within your blog… good tip. I assumed people clicked on images to get a bigger & better view- but you’re right, why not give them something related to chew on. It will take some thought, but it’s worth pursuing. Thanks for sharing.

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