February 21, 2013 by Daniel Sharkov|
I’ve said it multiple times and I believe it’s clear to most of you –
successful blogging doesn’t simply come down to finding lucrative ways to get people to visit your blog.
The real valuable visitors are the ones who don’t happen to be on your blog by accident…
Or if they are, they actually end up subscribing to your list or RSS, following you on Twitter, liking your fan page or adding you to their Google Plus circles.
The idea is getting people to take action.
One of the ways to achieve this is by having the right pages in place.
There’s a good reason why WordPress and other blogging platforms allow you to create static pages – although not the most visited, those parts of your blog might turn into a good way to get the first time visitors to subscribe to your blog or try out the products you promote.
Below are four of the pages
that you absolutely must have if you’d like to create better user-experience on your blog and thus improve your conversion rates:
That is the most important page you need to add to your blog and it ain’t optional. Whenever I happen to visit a new blog, the first thing I look for is if the blog’s author has taken the time to write a little about himself.
Reading articles on a blog without an About page is like reading a book without knowing who the author is.
Successful bloggers nowadays spent lots of time and money to promote their names. Often times you happen to know the blog by its author rather by its actual name.
Readers don’t trust articles, they trust the people who wrote them .
So the first step if you want to make your blog a little more personal and if you’d like to start building your brand is to write a few hundred words about yourself. In the About page you can include pretty much whatever you want – how long are you working on the niche that you cover, your other hobbies, projects you have worked on and all those small yet important details.
Believe it or not
but new visitors check the About page and often times base their decision whether they will follow you or they will skip you on how well it’s made.
More on the topic you can read in the post:
6 Ideas for Your Blog’s About Page and Why they Work
That one isn’t a straightforward as the previous. Not all blogs have it and you could probably also go without it. However I’d strongly suggest that you create one. The whole process doesn’t take more than an hour and a “New Here” page is beneficial in lots of ways.
But first what do you include in that page?
I’d suggest you to start with a short (100-150 words) description of your blog. You can include things like how long have you been running it, what topics do you cover and what visitors can expect to see.
What I’ve done after that intro part
is to create subheadings with the different categories that my content fits into (blogging tips, traffic generation, social media, etc.). Under each subheading I have added links to 2-3 articles that I believe are the best from that specific category.
At the end I’ve placed a call to action that is basically a subscription form.
Again similarly to the About page, the “New Here” page also draws some attention. And since there are links to many articles, there’s a good chance that everyone will find something of interest to them. This results in people spending more time on your blog, a lower bounce rate and also improved SEO due to the linking you’ve done to other posts.
Additionally this page is the perfect place to direct traffic, coming from your bio in other blogs where you have contributed a guest article. That is exactly my strategy and it’s working pretty good in terms of converting first-timers into subscribers.
3. The “Resources” PageMonetization… that is without doubt one of your reasons to be blogging. And even if blogging is simply a hobby for you, you certainly wouldn’t mind making a buck out of the time you spend writing, publishing and promoting your articles.
O
ne of the best ways to make money blogging is with the help of affiliate marketing . The fact is if you are serious about blogging, then you have probably bought your own hosting, you have a premium theme and you are using some paid services or tools to help you save time and improve productivity.
Most of those service that you’ve paid to use allow for affiliates to promote them and to earn a commission for doing so.
That is basically what your “Resources” page will serve for
– there you will include a short description of the products you use along with affiliate links. If you’ve written a whole review post, you should also include a link, so that your readers can get more in-depth information about it. That way it will be easier for them to decide whether they actually need that product and if it’s worth the money.
You can simply take a look at my “ Twitter Resources” page
to see how I’ve structured it and to get the general idea.
And last but definitely not least is the “Guest Blogging” page. As you know, guest blogging is a great way for the beginning blogger to get more exposure to their blog and along with backlinks to improve search engine rankings.
But then again, how do you benefit by going the other way around – allowing guest bloggers on your blog?
I don’t think that’s hard to guess – you get additional content. You get content at absolutely no cost, which if you ask me is a great deal. The more frequently you publish quality and useful articles, the more traffic and subscribers you get and hence the more your blog and business grows.
But what should you include in your “Guest Blogging” page?
There are basically three components that you need to pay attention to:
It’d be good if youprovide a screenshot from your Google Analytics account that displays how much traffic you’ve received in the last thirty days. You have to be up and front with potential contributors so that they know what they will get in return. You need to set the rules
– make a list of the requirements that you want the blog post proposals to meet before they can be sent out to you. Include the topics you’d like to see covered, the minimum length of the posts, the way they should be structured, etc. The benefits
– don’t forget to tell potential guest bloggers, why they should they choose to write for you and not for someone else. Tell them what kind of links they should expect to get, how much readers they will get and how much social sharing their guest entry will receive. Add a contact form
so that people can directly get in touch with you via the “Guest Blogging” page. For the contact form you can use a plugin like Contact Form 7– me personal favorite when it comes to creating forms.In Conclusion
If you haven’t yet included one of the four pages I overviewed in the above paragraphs, I would highly suggest that you do so as soon as you can.
Although blogs mainly revolve around the blog posts that are being published, they aren’t always enough to convince visitors to become subscribers or to try out the products you recommend.
Now on to you folks!
Do you have all four pages on your blog? Do your visitors actually click on them? Let me know your thoughts!
About Unknown
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