Increase Impressions With the Same Amount of Visitors
January 29, 2008
Do you want to increase your page views/visitors ratio? Basically what I am asking is how would you like to increase the amount of impressions based on the same amount of visitors to your blog? So let’s say you had 1,000 visitors to your blog last month and you plan to do that this month to. Without increasing your visitors there are techniques you can do to increase your impressions. All you have to do is keep your visitors at your blog longer and have them click on a few links.
One of the best ways to increase page views on your blog is to link to other articles in your archive. Not only do we want to have people come and read your current blog post but we should be redirecting them to other articles you have written in the past that pertains to the current post you have now. This takes a little more energy and effort. You should have a mental image of what posts you have done in the past. Also browse your older posts often. When I browse my older posts I usually can think of ideas to blog about but it also reminds you what you have saved away. Just because it fell off the home page and gets archived doesn’t mean it is no good. Link to it a few times.
Our goal is to get our readers to click on links that lead to internal blog posts. Make sure your internal links are not set to open in a new browser. This will make it more enjoyable for your readers to click through your site searching for articles they want to read.
How about the Read More –> feature? There are theories out there about using the <–More–> tag in your post. What this allows you to do is create an article and by placing that tag after the first few paragraphs will force the reader to have to click on a link that says “Read More” before taking them to the full article where it is archived away. The theory behind this technique is to force another click from your reader giving you another impression. If the majority of your readers actually clicked one more time to finish reading the article then ultimately it could almost double your impressions? But does it work?
I have actually experimented with this technique a bit and I have to say I did see an increase in overall impressions. It was probably a 20% increase. Am I certain it was due to using the Read More feature? No I am not certain but other areas where I was not using that feature, the page views remained constant. I do think the Read More feature is something you personally should experiment with. It will only bring you short term boosts of impressions. We also have to try and implant long term techniques and the best way is to link all the time to previous posts. Whether it is hyper-linking words from your article or leaving a list of related posts following your article, the key is to entice your readers to continue deeper into your blog.
How about placing your category list located in your sidebar higher up the page? We have learned that people browse the Internet by topic and not by date so placing your category list high up in the sidebar would be a way to help show your readers there are many topics to browse through. Not only should we be emphasizing categories by moving them higher up the page, but you should take time and be creative in creating your category names. Think about your niche and what interests your readers. Then compile a list of categories you think would entice readers to click on. When you create articles in this fashion it will also spark ideas on what kinds of topics to blog about.
What else? How about enticing readers to comment. By enticing readers to leave a comment it forces your readers to click a few more times in order to leave a comment. How can you entice readers to comment? Ask a question. Blog about topics that are interesting or controversial to your readers. Leave a half written list of good ideas but tell your readers to help you finish the list. These are just a few ideas on how to get people to comment on your blog. But if you want to increase your impressions, having readers comment often will help.
In addition to having comments, make sure you have the feature on your blog where commenters can subscribe to that post. This will give the commenter an instant email notification when someone else leaves a comment. This feature will remind people that they had left a comment and to go back to see what others have said. When they go back to read the comment and possibly post again, you will be getting even more impressions provided by the same visitors.
So let’s rehash and bullet things we can do to increase impressions with the same amount of visitors:
- Use the Read More feature
- Link to old topics often and consistently
- Create well thought out categories
- Move your category list near the top of your sidebar
- Entice readers to comment through various techniques
- Implement the “subscribe to post” feature to remind commenters when a new comment has been made
Steve Remington
[...] Skinny Moose Media wrote an interesting post today on Increase Impressions With the Same Amount of VisitorsHere’s a quick excerpt Do you want to increase your page views/visitors ratio? Basically what I am asking is how would you like to increase the amount of impressions based on the same amount of visitors to your blog? So let’s say you had 1,000 visitors to your blog last month and you plan to do that this month to. Without increasing your visitors there are techniques you can do to increase your impressions. All you have to do is keep your visitors at your blog longer and have them click on a few links. One of the be [...]
Good stuff, Steve.
With the exception of linking to old articles, I’ve tried to incorporate some of the suggestions into my blog.
One question about subscriptions. I know the spammers use these subscriptions for some reason, as I have a disproportionate number of subscribers with nonsense email handles, usually attached to a .ru or .cz domain. How are they using them, and what can be done to stop their subscriptions? Or is it even worth concern?
For us NEWBIES!!!! BRAVO!!! This is exactly what I needed to help me get going on major hits in February. Thanks for posting this!!
Always
Definitely good tips. I usually link to other posts because it serves 2 purposes: 1- increases views, and 2- helps new readers stay up to date on the current storyline.
Great tips!
Hey guys and thanks for the comments. Phillip, the spammers will register to the blog if we have it open for registration.
The subscription to blog posts will only work if they comment on a post…
Either way they are annoying!
Nice tips, Steve. I like to refer back to my old posts often too. Even after only doing this for a few months I’ve forgotten what I’ve written!
Cheers!
Great job. I’m back in the saddle and my goal is to break into the Top 5 (in the Network). Thanks!
The read more will come in handy in my future post.
Great post, Steve. I have incorporated some of these things in blog posts in the past, and plan on doing more in the future. Your blogging advice is always appreciated.
Steve - Is there any advantage gained by “categorizing” a post in multiple categories?
Steve you make some great points and I attempt to post too many of my older posts as I can. It is not unusual for someone to come in from a search engine on one of my older posts, links & pingbacks will help them find additional information and often fresher more relevant information from the blog. For the bigger topics I might recall doing an earlier post about it but often times I forget myself and the search is helpful to pull up the old posts so I can link them. As far as your question Desert Rat I think there is a great benefit to categorizing in multiple categories when it’s appropriate because folks can more readily find the information they are looking for.
-Moose-
I like the relocation idea best of all. How hard to move it to just under the banner?
Hey i love ur article but my aim is to get 1000 page imprssions a day.I tried everything to achieve that imprssion on my blog http://tipsforresume.blogspot.com but didn’t acheive that.i wanna to increase my impressions…