Here we are on day 21 of 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt and I thought it might be a good time to cover an area I get questions on almost daily. Either via email, phone and even twitter. These questions are sometimes out of frustration, I know. And even due to a lot of new bloggers paying way to much attention to the numbers. However, I will admit, they are important and there are ways to take care of the issues too.
Please keep in mind, I warned you I almost named this series “kick the blogger in the butt” and not “kick your blog in the butt.” This is going to be one of those post in the series that just might be one of the kick your butt post. I am telling you what I am about to tell you because I want you and your blog to be successful. I don’t want the process of blogging to be a waste of time.
The questions I get a lot are as follows:
- Why am I not getting a good Pagerank
- Why am I not getting traffic
- Why am I not getting incoming links
- Why am I not showing up high in search results
- Why am I not getting comments
- Why am I not getting noticed
Today’s teaching moment
I think what a lot of us are looking for when we ask these questions is really just a thumbs up to all of our hard work. A lot of the reasons these questions are asked has to do with the blogger not posting the right stuff. Not giving their prospective readers what they are looking for.
Some of the reason you are not getting those things may have to do with your SEO. However, what we are going to discuss here is not going to be the under the hood type of SEO steps you should be taking. What we are going to discuss is some of those things you can do by just posting correctly which will help. The under the hood SEO help is going to be coming soon however. But keep this in mind. You can do all the great SEO and get the traffic. And if you content stinks, no one is going to stay around and read what you have to say. And they aren’t going to take it that one step further as we discuss here.
Why aren’t you getting noticed as much as you think you should?
One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers and even some not so new bloggers make is they are not posting the right stuff. Lets face it, you are doing things you should not be doing. Do I dare say it? You are doing it wrong! Granted, you are well ahead of most of your competitors in the fact you are at least blogging. You have a web presence. But you are not taking full advantage of it. You are not writing the right kind of post and you are not using the right kind of titles either.
The biggest mistake I see many do is simply regurgitating news items on their blogs. While I would be the first to admit, it is okay to do a few post from time to time about hot news topics in your niche. It is not okay to only post hot news topics in your niche. Quite frankly, I can go to the news sites and get that.
For example, if you are a business owner and your blog is about a product that protects your car, don’t tell me about an accident or some other useless news item in every one of the post. Give me something of substance.
- Tell me about some of the new developments in the products to protect my car.
- Tell me about how I can use your product to better protect my car.
- Tell me what the steps are in using your product from start to finish.
These are the type of questions people are searching for answers to. And if you are giving them those answers, you are going to get those “why am I not” taken care of. If you will take this example and apply it to you own niche, market and/or industry, you will see what I am talking about.
Give them what they want.
People are starving for information and that is why so many of them are using the Internet to find it. Don’t just be another “news” source and regurgitate the news like the media. Give your visitors something more. Whether you own a business that sells broom sticks or you own a professional service firm, your potential customers or clients are looking for answers to questions and problems. And the best way to get noticed and to get all those “numbers” you think you should be getting is to answer them. You know what questions they are because you hear them every single day. Take those questions and write your blog post. I would almost bet you that you have enough of these basic questions in your own mind you would have blog post ideas from here to the middle of next year. Start keeping a list and start writing the answers.
These type of “give me the answer” blog post don’t have to be long. And they darn sure don’t have to be complicated. Write to your audience. Don’t write over them and don’t you dare write down to them. Write to them.
Give them answers not the news and you will see good things happen to your blog and to your return on your investment in your blog.
