9 vital Sign for Web Traffic

Most Popular posts from other blogs...

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the content dated?
2. Are you encouraging your visitors to join a list?
3. Are you driving discussion in your comments section?
4. Are you using a “Subscribe to Comments” plugin to bring commenters back to your site?
5. Are you using social bookmarking plugins?
6. Are you asking people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn?
7. Does your site have a clear focus?
8. Do your posts and articles generate controversy?
9. Does your site have personality, and/or is your persona in the visitor’s face?

The answers to these questions can make a world of difference in your repeat traffic, sales, clicks, and conversion rates.
You can take quick action to clean up a tired, boring site by simply changing the timestamps on your posts or updating your template or theme. Changing timestamps on an old site or removing them entirely from your theme can make your theme look less dated.
If you’ve got a good ethical bribe (free PDF or video), you can get your visitors to join a mailing list and email them on occasion with good reasons to return to your site. You can also use plugins to automatically email them every time you make a new post.
If you’re using WordPress, you can add some plugins for commenting and social bookmarking which will help your visitors find your site again.
Here’s a tip that will help you understand why people bookmark sites and how you can quickly make your site more bookmark-able. Look through your own bookmarks for clues as to why you bookmarked the sites you did. There might be content, tools, or gimmicks you can add to your own site to make it more sticky (i.e., more attractive to return visitors).
Another mistake site owners make is in not adding their own personal branding to the site. The more someone can identify with you, the more likely they are to bookmark your site, follow you on Twitter, and get engaged in your content. This can be as simple as adding your picture and bio in your sidebar, or creating a custom header graphic or background image to really promote yourself.
Finally, the absolute best thing you can do to get people to visit your site is to write compelling copy that encourages discussion. This method is as simple as finding a controversial news story, giving your honest opinion of it, and encouraging discussion. It not only makes your site current, but it gets people engaged and keeps them coming back for more. For example, earlier this year I posted a controversial email I received. I didn’t think much of it, just found it amusing. However, it generated over 140,000 visitors and over 200 comments to my site. I had no clue that would happen, but the reason was simple: people love controversy and they love to give their opinions. You just have to give them the platform to voice them. To this day that controversial email still generates over 1,000 visitors a day to my site.
If you take a little time to think about and answer these nine questions and implement some improvements to your site based on what you discover, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more relevant your site can become virtually overnight. Think about the reasons you return to the sites that you frequent, and do your best to emulate their role in people’s lives.
Action Steps
- Try to look at your website through the eyes of an outsider to gauge its real value.
- Change or remove old timestamps to instantly freshen up your site.
- Encourage visitors to join your mailing list and then email them with reasons to return.
- Add personal touches that will engage your readers.
- Make sure that your copy is compelling and that it encourages discussion.