Increase In Search Engine Traffic And After Thoughts
Yesterday was April 1st or better known as April Fool’s day, a day where people pull pranks on others for a quick chuckle. It seems that even the larger companies are doing it for some quick PR action and in my case it was Lululemon who created an interesting full-page ad in local newspapers here in Vancouver.
As some of you had read I posted a little blurb about the Mansy that Lululemon ‘announced’ they would be offering on April 1st. The Mansy is the male version of a one piece yoga suit that some people found offending and some people found interesting. Lululemon created the ad so that they could create a bit of hype and cause a stir. They definitely did that and with my writing a quick blog post about it brought me in about 500 new page views within a 2 day period.
Now some of you might say, 500 page views over two days is nothing, but for me it’s an interesting event and I like seeing that when you Google particular phrases such as ‘lululemon mansy’ I came up on the first page (originally the second hit) and that drove an increase of traffic to my site. When I first checked my incoming views I noticed that people were coming to the permalink page but not going anywhere else. I took notice that my blog doesn’t really show you where else you can go while visiting my site and this could cause issues with keeping visitors around. So what did I do?
Adding A Recent Posts List
I added a list of the 10 most recent blog posts to the sidebar. This will hopefully help peak people’s interest to stay longer and read more on my blog especially if they don’t land on your front page. I’ll have to look at writing perhaps better titles for my posts but I will keep track to see if this helps bounce rates lower.
Show Related Blog Posts
I find sometimes when I visit a site to read a post I am curious if they have written more on the similar topic. This is where showing a list of relative topics could come in handy. Again you want to try and increase the time your visitors stay on your site. The more time they stay on it, the higher chance of them coming back or becoming a loyal visitor.
Granted having a blog based around a particular niche I am sure would increase my daily traffic. I would also have to ensure my writing is of good quality and interesting enough, but I’ve always enjoyed writing about whatever is happening in my world or the world around me. Finding a niche seems to be harder and harder these days because everyone else is doing it. I guess you just have to find a way of doing it better!
If you have any tips, comments, suggestions about increasing traffic or keeping people reading your site longer please feel free to leave your comments.