How to Increase your Blog Traffic by 353%.

We recently redesigned our web site and blog for PaperStreet. So far its been a success and we wanted to share with our audience our success tips.

So far, our numbers have been pretty impressive. The following is a one week comparison from earlier this month, to later this month for the blog only (not the entire web site). Thanks Google for the cool filter tool that allows us to separate out the traffic.

Blog – PageViews – 2,088 currently vs. 460 previously (353.91% – almost 354%).
Blog – Avg Time on Page – 2:04 minutes vs. 1:00 minute flat (105.48%)

So how did we quadruple our page views and double the time on the page . . . with two big ideas:

1. Write Something Interesting
For the last five years of our blog, we didn’t. We own up to the fact that we used our blog more as a news / press release archive. It worked great for that purpose and got our clients ranked high, very high instantly. Basically, it was awesome for SEO purposes. It also helped improve our business and PR; so it was a success in that manner.

However, we wanted to go away from that premise and begin telling the world about our ideas. We have launched 400+ custom web projects (sites, applications, blogs), so we have a few bits of knowledge to impart.

Now with new actual interesting articles, the blog is bringing in more traffic. Simple concept, but many people miss the fact that with a blog you MUST be interesting.

2. New Design
There is no better way to attract attention to your web site or blog, then create a new design. Moreover, with a new design comes usability testing and an improved user experience. People are spending more time on our site, a lot more time, so we must have done something right.

Now for the nitty gritty, what did we specifically do in writing and designing?

Writing

1. Have a Voice – Write something pithy, funny, or just plain interesting. Have a good tone of voice.
2. Write Good – Err…well. Sorry, but if you can’t write, practice or take a course.
3. Cover Hot Topics – Anything that is new is hot, talk about it.
4. Fix Things – We fixed a ask.com search install feature, blogged about it, and it brought in links and traffic (although a bit off-topic, it still helps).
5. Review Something – Pretty simple idea, but reviews are always searched for.
6. Make a List – ‘Nuff Said.
7. Flame – Yes, you can start a flame war, but that is not professional. However, you can spar and trade ideas with others on their blogs.
8. Comment – On others blogs and get traffic back.
9. Team Commitment – We have everyone at PaperStreet writing articles. Get your team involved and excited about the project. You will find those who can write and help your blog.

Designing

1. Create a Professional Theme – Yes it can be the same as your web site with a few caveats.
2. Install Standard Features – RSS, Categories, Subscription, Search, Links, Comments, Tags,etc.
3. Install Twitter – Tweet about your Posts to a larger audience (7,000,000+ users and growing).
4. Unique Menu – Make your menu the blog menu, not just your web site menu.
5. Show More Posts – Show more posts on the home page. Allow the user to choose what they want to view. Your most recent post may stink, but you have one from six months ago that rocks. Make sure your old posts, that are good, are seen.
6. Highlight Categories – Categorizing your posts are absolutely crucial to long term success and getting users to read more posts.
7. Add Color – By color we mean something interesting, not just text. It could be the design, photos, use of good fonts.But something interesting and eye-catching.
8. Add in Photos – We added in photos of all our authors, just a nice touch.
9. Make a Wide Area for Content – Too often, the posts pages are crammed. Make it wider for graphics, photos and other content.

So there you have it, a nice succint article on how you can increase your traffic by a whopping 353%.