4 Easy Ways To Increase Readership On Your Blog

igorkheifets — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:27:14 +0000

Today we explore 4 ways to keep visitors on your blog with Igor Kheifets. If you would like to guest post on Blogussion, read here for more information.

As a blogger, one of the most frustrating things you can experience when checking on your Analytics stats is to realize that your bounce rate is sky high.

According to “Google Analytics help,” bounce rate represents the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. In other words, the more people exit your blog from the page they came in, the higher your bounce rate is.

The best way to lower the bounce rate is to increase readership. In this post I am going to show you 4 easy ways to do just that.

1. Related Posts

One of the effortless ways to increase readership is to install a Related Posts plugin which will prove a list of related posts and/or pages below every blog post. It will drastically increase your blog’s click-thru rates and navigation by providing your readers with more of what they want.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is a great way to implement this technique ASAP. Download YARPP here.

2. Popular Posts

Another great way to lower bounce rate and increase readership is to place a list of Most Popular Posts in your sidebar. This can easily be done by installing the Popularity Contest plugin which will produce a widget with a list of your most popular posts based on comments, views, links and time frame criteria.

Download Popularity Contest here.

3. Internal Linking

Internal linking is a great way to boost readership by linking to older, relevant content in your recent blog posts. However, don’t get too “linky.” Be logical about it. If you’re writing a blog about copywriting, it would be logical to link to an older blog post titled “7 Old School Headline Formulas” in a sentence about the importance of a powerful headline.

On the other hand, linking to a post titled “How To Improve Your Pagerank in 5 Easy Steps” when blogging about Social Media is a bit illogical. Logic and Rationality are your best friends when it comes to internal linking.

But as if increasing readership isn’t enough, internal linking substantially increases your chances of ranking higher in the Search Engines. I am not going to indulge into details, but trust me, it does.

4. Comment Luv

You can increase the chances of reader’s interaction by including a titled link to their last blog post or tweet at the end of their comment. Comment Luv allows you to just that.

The technical details are not important – what’s important is the fact that this plugin drastically increases user interaction on your blog. People are happy to comment if they know that they are getting extra exposure in return.

Download Comment Luv here

Conclusion

You need to remember that your goal is to not only get visitors to your blog but to keep them as well. If you have a high bounce rate percentage then people either aren’t enjoying your content or your navigation needs work. If people are leaving your blog faster than you can say “Subscribe via RSS” than something is wrong and it is up to you to fix it.