Most websites use the WordPress CMS these days. Indeed, tons of new WordPress blogs are published every day. In order to make sure that yours doesn’t get lost in the digital sea of clutter, you need to make sure it attracts traffic like a streamlined, top-of-the-charts website that’s already been in business for years.
But how exactly do you design a WordPress blog that’s set to attract traffic? This guide will answer that question in detail.
What Drives Traffic in the First Place
To bolster your WordPress blog’s traffic, you have to understand what drives traffic in the first place. In general, visitors are more likely to visit and click through a site if it has the following characteristics:
- It answers the question of their original query via search engine, or it offers valuable content related to the subject matter of their keywords
- The site is easy to navigate
- The site is clean and doesn’t bombard them with advertisements
- The content is valuable and helpful
Therefore, every action you take to boost website traffic should improve at least one of those four pillars to some degree. Any improvement will make your site a more attractive place to visit and encourage people to spend more time viewing your content or investigating your services or products.
Now let’s break down some specific strategies you can use when designing a WordPress blog.
Optimize Your Blog’s Domain Name
Whether you already have your blog up and running or you haven’t yet launched the site, be sure to optimize the domain name. Your site’s domain name is the first piece of identifying information that visitors will see when they access your site. A good domain name should be:
- Memorable
- Related to the content or subject matter
- Easy to spell or type
Naturally, this means you should avoid domain names that are comprised of random letters and numbers or that are difficult to remember. Furthermore, be sure that your domain name is either related to your content or focus, or it’s witty (humorous domain names are memorable and can fit in most niches, save for more technical blogs).
Many of the best or most memorable domain names are indeed already taken. Fortunately, you can find plenty of cheap domain names that relate to your niche using domain name checkers – these are sites that scan the web to see if a name is free or not. All it takes is a little creativity.
Don’t forget to modify domain names that appear to be taken with different extensions. For instance, thisisablog.com might be taken, but thisisablog.net might not be.
Boost the User Experience – Faster Speeds, Smoother Interface
You should improve your site’s user experience as much as possible. This may mean upgrading to a different type of web hosting. Certain web hosting plans don’t offer fast loading times, especially for mobile users. Considering that a majority of website traffic now happens with mobile devices, your web hosting service must offer a seamless mobile user experience with very short loading times.
Try to keep your loading times beneath 3 ms if possible. Most visitors these days have short attention spans and there’s no shortage of content related to your niche that they can browse instead. A fast, smooth, lag-free website is the best way to get people sticking to your site instead of clicking away before they even finish loading the landing page.
Furthermore, make sure that your interface is relatively seamless to navigate and that buttons and pages are in logical locations. For instance, a clear, identifiable header should be at the top of your blog so that visitors can easily access all your content by category and within one or two clicks at most.
Combine Regular Blog Posting with Social Media Advertising
Most successful blogs obtain and keep traffic by posting regularly. In fact, having a regular posting schedule is one of the best ways to boost your rankings according to Google’s SEO algorithms. Make a schedule in your calendar and stick to it, even if traffic seems slow at first. Google does not reward sporadic posting.
But you’ll also need to make sure that people know you’re posting regularly. To this end, be sure to integrate your posts with scheduled social media marketing efforts. These days, there are plenty of plugins and third-party tools you can use to synchronize blog posts with social media announcements to draw attention and traffic to your WordPress site.
Both efforts combined will, with some time, get more people viewing your posts on the first day that they’re live. Repeated visitors are more likely to stick with your site over the long-term.
Streamline and Optimize Your Blog’s Existing Content and Search Functionality
Lastly, you should design your blog to be as streamlined and optimized as possible in terms of content. For instance, be sure to carefully and strategically interlink different posts with one another to drive inter-site traffic. Use smart keywords and anchor text to encourage visitors to take a tour of your available content.
You should also make sure that your blog’s search functionality is as airtight and comprehensive as possible. You may need to modify your search bar to include custom post types (since custom WordPress posts are not included in search results by default).
Bottom line: make sure your visitors can find the content they want and that all of your content is available to them through an easy search function.
Summary
All in all, setting up your WordPress blog to attract more traffic will take some time and lots of effort. But it’s always possible if you use the right strategies and fully optimize your blog as best as you can. Good luck!