Why Few People Read Your Blog

You call yourself a blogger.

You’ve got a lot to say. About a lot of things. Having a blog is better than posting on social media you think.

No one can censor your blog. You are the captain of the ship. And now you want to make some money from your blog. Other people make money blogging. Why not you?

But if you’re like many bloggers, you’ve come to the frustrating realization that no one is reading your posts, and here’s why:

1. You’re not writing about something people find helpful.

There are already a million blog posts out there on “different things to do in dome locale or another. If you’re writing a travel blog, you have to get more “niche” with it and provide some value.

For example, “best places to find spicy food in Denver” is a much more specific post that carries some value for the readers who are putting that inquiry into Google.

Learn how successful bloggers operate. Here’s a link to an excellent blog. You may wonder why I send you to another blog. That’s part of my SEO strategy. My blog’s SEO rating improves with internal and external links.

Click on this link. It is an internal link to another post on my blog. That helps my SEO. Each image on this and other pages are linked to offers or sites. I suggest you do the same.

Always provide value. If you have a tropical fish blog tell me something helpful with each post. Be specific. Don’t waste my time. Keep me coming back.

2. You’re not opening doors.

A big part of funneling readers to your blog is about building a network of backlinks, which are essentially hyperlinked to your site on other people’s blogs or websites. A good way to do this is just to network and do guest posts for people on their blogs. The stipulation is that you can put some links to your site on there.

Few of us make money online in isolation. We network. Getting to know others in the digital business world is essential to success.

3. You’re not building relationships.

You need to have a contact button or form on your website. It’s essential to harvest reader email addresses. Blog consistently and alert social media connections of your new posts. you can draw some steady streams of traffic to your site. The overall idea is to get recurring readers.

Regular readers become supporters. They often share your ideas on social media. Or link to your posts from their sites. You want cheerleaders. I remember when something called Google came on the scene. Google was better than existing search engines. And we shared that with our friends and followers.

I cannot remember what search engine I was using before Google. These days I search with DuckDuckGo.com. DuckDuckGo protects your privacy. Give it a try.

If you like DuckDuckGo (it is free) most likely you’ll remember me for recommending it. Another freebie you may want to investigate is Lumen5. Lumen5 is a free video creation site. Sign up and Lumen5 grabs your blog post text and creates video scenes. Use this link to see a video created with Lumen5.

Notice all recommendations are free. I build relationships by giving a lot of things away. Don’t use your blog just to sell, sell, sell. Building relationships means treating your readers like friends. You may never know their names. The goal is to have them know your name.

4. Your site doesn’t look good.

If people hop on to your blog and find that it looks like the screen from Pac-Man, they probably will bounce off the page in less than a minute. Unless of course, your blog post is dedicated to Pac-Man aficionados…then that would be cool. Your website needs to look professional, and the architecture needs to be clean and well-designed (for mobile users as well).

Us a clean template. One that’s easy to navigate. And easy to maintain. Freshen posts that are out of date. Or remove them. Follow good rules for SEO optimization. Make it easy for web spiders to crawl your site. That’s how you get a good Google ranking.

WordPress offers a variety of free templates. Of course, you can purchase templates. Whether you use a free or purchased template make it look professional. If you are unsure of how to do it spend a few bucks and hire someone to set up your site. I recommend Fiverr.com.

5. Write easy-to-understand posts.

Don’t try to get too literary with your posting. Unless you’re catering to a high-brow audience. Use shorter sentences, small paragraphs, and lots of pictures to punctuate your words. Otherwise, people will find your blog too exhausting to read.

While SEO experts tout the benefits of long-form posts (over 2,000 words) you still have to balance that out with reader experience—and most readers can’t tolerate more than half that word count.

Refer to the Flesch Scale and check blog post readability. Ernest Hemmingway wrote at the 5th-grade level. Insurance policies are written at the graduate school level. I use Yoast.com on my sites. Yoast takes care of my SEO requirements. One of the indicators is the readability of each post.

You have to pay to use Yoast. I receive no commission if you signup. But I highly recommend that you visit the site. There is a lot of good free information. And when there sign up for the Yoast blog. The information expands your general knowledge of communicating online.

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