How to Keep First Time Readers to your Blog – Part I

Wayne has a good post titled Previous posts still bring visitors which picks up on the importance of your old posts in blogging. He writes:

‘Blog posting on a regular and long term basis pays off in visitor traffic.

Older posts are like a good gift that keeps on giving.

Like a beautiful flowering apple tree, a blog continues to grow and bear fruit. It also provides sustenance from the past, like apples frozen for pies at a later date….’

How true Wayne’s words are. The way I like to think of it is that my blog’s archives are perhaps my blogs greatest asset. Each post I write has the potential not only to reach current readers – but readers for many years that surf in after finding it on search engines.

Of course writing witty, up to date, regular content each day is something that you’ll want to work on if you want to build a loyal readership – but in the case of most blogs the real activity in terms of traffic levels happens in the back end on your previously written posts.

Take for example my Digital Photography Blog – A quick look at it’s statistics reveal that at the time of writing this post – only 4 of the last 100 hits to that blog have come through the front page (click adjoining screen cap to see the breakdown of where people enter). Of course this doesn’t take into count 13% of entry pages which were unable to be tracked. But even at its highest – only 17% of visitors to my blog came through the front page – the rest hit either individual pages (single old posts) or category pages. This is the story on almost all of my blogs – individual, old pages are incredibly valuable entry points to your blog.

Ok – interesting information to know you might say – but so what? Well in my opinion this is not just an interesting fact to know – but rather something you should consider capitalizing upon. As Wayne writes:

‘Each new reader is a potential regular visitor, and perhaps someone who will link to your blog.’

How do you tap into this wonderful source of traffic and encourage these one off readers to your old posts to become regular, loyal visitors to your site? Of course the first step is to be writing useful, insightful, well written and engaging posts – if your reader likes what they read the first time they find your site they are more likely to come back. But how else can you hook them in?

Over the next few posts I’m going to give you 10 tips to help you keep first time readers to your blog. Stay tuned.

This series of posts continues at part II, part III and part IV – enjoy.