Everyday we work on strategies to increase traffic to our blogs and websites and you are reading this article because you need that traffic. That’s right!
I don’t need to mention here that without traffic, you’ll be as good as not having an online presence.
Whether you are working on paid or free traffic sources, if you fail in these two things I want to discuss here, your traffic strategies will be a complete waste.
NB: I have written this meaty post so as to help you improve on your traffic. So I recommend taking your time to read it word for word. Don’t create imaginations and skip a paragraph. If you understand these points and implement them well, you’ll certainly see a change in traffic
We generally want free traffic from social media (by posting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) and from search engines (by doing some onpage and offpage SEO). A lot of us do some search and/or social PPC. Again, if you fail to properly craft these points, you will be wasting money.
I’m sure you are not going to read these points for the very first time. You might have read them severally but their importance is such that I want to emphasize on and show you a little trick that will literally increase your traffic. Here we go …
Two things to increase traffic to your blog
1 – [ POST TITLE ]
This is undeniably the first thing (for the most part) that attracts attention when your entry is listed on the Search engine result page (SERP). If a searcher does a search on Google and your entry comes up on position #1, the first thing that the searcher reads is the title. If your title is dumb, chances are high to lose the click though you are on position 1 of page 1.
Your article title must be able to reflect what’s in the searcher’s mind. That’s what attracts the clicks. It’s not the beauty and length of the article. It’s not how in-depth your article is.
Google may judge your article highly relevant for some keywords but there is no way it can force clicks. Placing your article on SERP does not guarantee traffic. If you miss the title, you close the door.
Pat Flynn in this article shows us a strategy that has proven to increase traffic. Have you heard of headline hacks by Jon Morrow? This is one highly recommended free resource on writing attractive post headlines.
2 – [ POST DESCRIPTION ]
Some people think the description of your post plays a part in your search engine ranking. That’s not true. Your description is where you expand on your title and give a clearer image of the content. To encourage a high CTR (Click Through Rate), you must link your title and description up. While the searcher finds a reason to click the title, your description should not drive him off. We are going to look at some examples in a moment.
According to David McSweeney, “Your meta description tag is your advert; your chance to sell your product or service and entice people to click your link. Once you get your web page onto the first page of the search results for a keyphrase, a well crafted meta descriptions can dramatically increase your actual click through rate. No point being number one if no one is clicking through to your site!” Read more
Comparative case study
Now, let’s see exactly how post title and description can combine to increase traffic – clicks. I’m going to use a practical example – I just ran a keyword on Google and here is what I found;
ABCDBlogging is a blog owned by a good friend. I’m excited to see him grab the first position for this keyword on Google.com. But I particularly think there is a problem with his description that can bring down the number of clicks he can get from this entry.
First, I think the title is attractive. I personally will like to know about these 5 blogging communities so I can join them.
I’m not looking for the definition of blogging communities in the keyword I used but as you can see, the description above is rather giving me a definition. So you see here that the title and description don’t match. Let’s see another example;
This example by Mashable is quite straight to the point. This tells me exactly what to find on the page and can drastically positively affect my decision to click the link. The title and description are in perfect match. Let’s look at my own example;
Now look at the description. This gives more weight to the title and creates a perfect marriage between both.
NB: You don’t have to repeat title in the description box though. Just be creative and make a stronger point that will keep the searchers hooked
Poor titles and descriptions is one of the top reasons we have high impressions but low clicks. If you think your CTR is poor for a certain listing on SERP, you can improve clicks by bringing some changes to your titles and description.
Post Meta Description and post Introduction
The error some of us make is to just copy our introduction into the description box or allow search engines to generate the description for us. The introduction of an article generally cannot make a good description. If your theme does not allow you to describe your article by providing meta boxes, I can advise you switch to Genesis or grab the free SEO by Yoast WordPress plugin.
Recommended: How Meta Description affects your SEO ( Whip your CTR up )
Post Titles and Description for SEO or Human readers?
In the early days of SEO, keyword reach Titles and Descriptions used to be as important as being on SERP page 1 and position 1. Google’s Hummingbird update for their search engine algorithms has made keywords much less important than conversational searches. This reflects changes in the way that people search for things. For example, instead of looking for the keyword “mobile phones”, Google will look for pages that answer questions such as “Which is the best mobile phone for me?
That means your title and description should be as close as possible to human understanding.
Titles and description on Social Media and ppc
On Facebook for instance, your post title, description and to a very large extent, images play an important role in how many clicks you get. Sometimes you wonder why you belong to tens of Facebook groups and Google communities yet you don’t get clicks. I propose you work on the titles and description of your entries. Use more attractive and professional images to attract more attention from members
On PPC (Search or Social), the title and description of your ads are very crucial. That’s why most PPC platforms provide split testing facilities. This helps you tweak your entries (titles and description) and settle on the best option with the highest CTR.
Facebook social PPC makes it a bit different by adding the image so if your title and description don’t catch attraction, your image should. If you fail in the 3 components, you are better not doing any Facebook PPC
Try to link your post titles and descriptions up. Make the descriptions more catchy and as close to your content as possible. The results will certainly be positive.
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