4 Simple Ways to Bring More Traffic to Your About Page

February 11, 2014 by Daniel Sharkov|

Last week’s post was focused around some of the elements that
you should consider adding to your about page and why they work.

If you paid close attention, at the end of the article I mentioned that I will be writing a follow-up piece about how to actually bring more people over to your about page.

Well here you have it!

Just to recap my previous post, here are some of
the key reasons why your about page needs more traffic:

It can serve as a social proof and thus add more credibility to what you share It can help you get more followers on the social networks It can prove an effective way to get more email subscribers

For the full details I’d recommend you to read my “ 6 Ideas for Your Blog’s About Page and Why they Work“.

Now, without further ado, here are
four rather simple yet often times untapped ways to make your about page more visible to your blog’s visitors!

1. Make Sure to Add a Simple “About” Widget

Have you recently considered tidying up the sidebar of your blog?

Now might be a good time!

I like to believe that a functional sidebar is a sidebar that only includes widgets, which either help you keep visitors browsing, grow your list, get followers and make money.

On my blog the “Search this blog” and the “Recently popular” widgets serve
the first purpose The very first widget is all about helping me tell more people about
my newsletter The “Follow me” is self-explanatory… “Product Spotlight” is my way to get the word out about products I have reviewed
i.e. monetization

The purpose of the “About Me” widget?

Pretty much all of the above combined into one.

Each click on the “Read More” link means one bounce lessand more time spent on the blog. A click on the widget also means someone learning more about me and based on that possibly considering a collaboration of some sort.

The links to my social profiles on the other hand can help me obtain a new follower, while
“the end of the funnel” allows me to recruit more people to my list.

Now that I hopefully made your mind about including that widget, let me help you create one!

Here is the HTML layout that you should paste in the widget content field:

Headshot URL ” alt=” Your Name “>

Write a few lines about yourself

About Page URL “>

Read more

And here is some CSS to make it all look nice and neat:

.about-img {float: left;margin: 8px 25px 0 -2px;border-radius:50%;-moz-border-radius:50%;-webkit-border-radius:50%}.about-p{font-size: 13px;font-style: italic;line-height: 27px}.more-about {margin:-13px -1px -10px;padding:1px 17px;width: 80px;background:#A1C264;color: #fff!important;display: block;font-weight: bold}.more-about:hover{background:#B4D577;text-decoration:none !important}

The above snippet goes into your stylesheet. The latter is located in your WordPress dashboard -> Appearance -> Editor -> Stylesheet (style.css). Once you open up the stylesheet, look for .sidebar or #sidebar and place the code after the last curly bracket (  } )
2. An Author Box Below Posts is a Must

If we compare the about widget with an author box, the latter wins.

Why is that so?

The box will gain more visibility, because people don’t have to look sideways to spot it. They simply have to scroll down and read the article. It is more “natural” so to say.

But then there is a problem…

Since the author box is way, way below the fold (whereas the about widget can go a lot higher) , in the end it will gain less “impressions” so to say i.e. less possible views.

That
doesn’t necessarily mean lower visibility however.

Think about it – people who reach the end of the post
are obviously more engaged than does who reach say one third. There’s a better chance that they actually found the post interesting. So it’s only obvious to assume that they will probably be a little more inclined to take further action (learn more about you, the author, in our case).

Okay, but
what are some of the ways to add an author box under your blog posts?

First if your blog runs on the Genesis Frameworkyou can easily add an author box (like I have done), by going to your WordPress dashboard, then clicking on Users and selecting “Your Profile”.

Under
Biographical Info you need to compose the byline which will be displayed in the author box. Once you are done simply scroll down and thick the check box “
Enable Author Box on this User’s Posts “

Also consider taking a look at this pagefor various snippets to help you modify the author box.

If you don’t have the Genesis Framework you could try Fancier Author Box. That is a really neat author box plugin which allows you to add links to your social networks, customize the appearance of the box.

There is also
the really cool option to show your latest posts in a separate tab (as much of them as you specify in the settings) .

The authors offer a premium versionof the same plugin (costs $10) . There you can also add your social profiles as tabs (their position can easily be modified) . I’ve seen a lot of blogs using that one and have to say it looks neat.

A third approach would be to either try out other author box plugins
or use the below snippets if you have a widget section under your blog posts:

Avatar URL ” alt=””> By Your Name – Your Byline About Page URL ” rel=”author”>Read More…

You will also need
some CSS styling (goes into your stylesheet, same way as described a few paragraphs above) :

.author-box{background:#F3F3F3;border: 1px solid #D3D3D3;margin:10px 0 30px;overflow:hidden;padding:15px;border-radius:4px;-moz-border-radius:4px;-webkit-border-radius:4px}.author-box p{line-height: 30px}.author-avatar{border-radius:50%;-moz-border-radius:50%;-webkit-border-radius:50%;display:inline;margin:8px 14px 10px 2px}

3. Link to Your About Page in the Comments

Replying to the comments you receive is common sense…

You are doing it, right?

I’d understand if you are an authority and you get a hundred comments on every article you publish. Then it would probably be hard to reply to each and everyone who leaves a comment.

If your comment count isn’t anywhere near the above, I’d highly suggest you start replying and at least saying thank you to people for spending their time to share their opinion.

Those are some of your most valuable visitors because they interact!

Okay, that was a bit of a rant here but I felt like it needed to be said.

Anyway…

When leaving a comment there are three fields – one about your name, one about your email and one about your website’s URL. The URL is the website that a visitor will be sent to if they click on your name.

As an author and a logged-in user you won’t have to fill those though. The fields relevant to you are found in your user profile in the WordPress dashboard.

So the thing I was doing wrong (and probably some of you as well) just until I realized a few days ago was that in the website field I had simply filled www.reviewzntips.com .

What’s the problem with that?

Well the thing is people are already on your blog.

They know your name and they know you, the author of the blog, replied to their comment. And while if it weren’t your blog it might be logical to place a link to your home page, here it really isn’t.

Why not instead point your name to your about page!

Simply go to your profile page, scroll down to contact info and in the Website field make the link to point to your about page rather than your home page.

The problem is that old links won’t automatically be changed…

What I am currently doing is I’m editing and replacing the link only on the most popular and the more recent posts on my blog.

The process isn’t all that time-consuming if you open up all comments in new tabs, copy your about page URL and start replacing it using the CTRL+TAB combination to switch through the tabs.

4. Don’t Forget About the Footer

Are you taking advantage of your blog’s footer area?

The footer and what you place in it is basically your last chance to keep visitors on your blog.

Think about it, how many times have you clicked the return to top button and kept browsing?

Probably just a handful…

So if you have a footer widget section that you are not taking advantage of, make sure to fix that mistake as soon as possible! If your theme doesn’t allow for footer widgets, the following tutorialmight help you set them up yourself.

A link to your about page is the first thing you should consider placing there.

Some bloggers like Kristi Hinesand Jay Baerfor instance, have taken this a step further and have actually placed a short bio in the footer. That one is very similar to the about widget, which was the first tip I introduced in this post.

That is also a good option as long as you have enough real estate (which for me is not the case) in your footer to house an image, a few sentences and possibly links to your social profiles.

Final Words

That’s pretty much it folks. I hope you enjoyed the post and definitely give the tips a shot if you haven’t done so already!

Now I’d like to hear your thoughts!

Do you find the about page all that important? What are your ways to bring more traffic to yours?

Definitely take a minute to share your thoughts and the post if you happened to like it!

Daniel

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