How To Keep Your Blog Visitors Engaged and Coming Back For More?

Making your blog look good and easy for user interaction is all good but it's not the only aspect of creating a successful blog. Only a blogger who knows how his visitors think, and by visitors I mean readers, and gives them what they came to see on the blog is going to be successful in the long run. What is happening in reality though? Most people that start blogging don't manage to fulfill the goals they've set for their blog and that makes them give up blogging altogether. Why do you thing is that? Let's find out.

Don't look for visitors, look for readers

There's a common misconception among bloggers that the more traffic they get the higher rank they'll have in Google search results and the higher profits they'll achieve. However, when your blog depends on first time visitors every day it's only a matter of time before a day comes where all of your traffic disappears. I'm not making this up, even famous bloggers like Darren Rowse have discovered this unpleasant truth for themselves. To stop this from happening you have to diversify your traffic sources and most importantly to not depend only on Google for your traffic and profit because it can go away in a flash.

First things first. The best strategy here is to achieve long-term relationships with your blog visitors. You'll find that's easier to to if your treat them like customers - with respect and loyalty.

Step Up Your Writing Game In Order To Stand Out

We're aiming for trust here. Remember, your blog is a blog for you, but for the reader it's a brand name which they associate with certain things. Of course you want them to think of your brand as something that constantly delivers high quality. These are the readers your want to attract  - they'll even help you get the ball rolling by sharing your stuff with their friends on social media sites.

The problem is that no matter the type of traffic we're talking about if your posts give a solution to a problem the visitor was looking for, you might not see them ever again. The question is how to make them stay and come back for more?

Related content is the key here. Specifically, related content that adds more value to the content the reader has just consumed. That's some simple on-page SEO but it does make a difference and you shouldn't ignore it.

Conclusion

However hard it may seem in the beginning, once you accumulate the critical amount of loyal readers, don't let them down. Give them something back - giveaways are excellent way to do that. What's nice about them is that you get some social exposure for free because people tend to share giveaways a lot more.

Don't fall into the black hat trap. A recent example is Rap Genius - they used spam to promote and get higher rankings and Google was very quick to penalize them. You don't want to deal with stuff like that - it's just not worth it.