If you build it, will they come?

While it’s true that blogs can be an affordable way for companies to turn their website into a content and traffic generating machine, simply having a blog isn’t a guaranteed traffic booster. 

At DMA Solutions, we’ve been publishing content on this blog for over 10 years. It’s taken consistent content generation, targeted advertising/promotion, and a few strategic pivots to turn our blog into an effective traffic and lead generator for our company.

If you have a blog that’s under performing, or if you are working on launching a new blog that you are eager to see perform, consider implementing these strategies to boost blog traffic.

6 Effective Strategies to Boost Blog Traffic & Performance

1. Choose the right keywords

Blogs are capable of being SEO machines – if you are writing about topics and using keywords that people are already searching for. Google has several free tools that can help you with keywords – including the handy keyword planner. This tool will help you discover keywords that people are searching for that you can capitalize on to form your content. This is especially useful when you are in a content “slump” and you aren’t sure what to write about! 

Want to know if you’re on trend or just need outside-of-the-box ideas? Look to Google Trends! Through Google Trends, you can see where, when, and what people are searching for on Google. Use this as a guide while planning your content so that you can capitalize on what people are already searching for.

When in doubt, another effortless hack is to use Google’s predictive search results as an indicator of what people are searching for relative to your products or services. 

Note: Just including the keywords in your blog’s title and body content is one thing. You have to take it a step further and make sure you are setting your blog posts up through proper search engine optimization. Platforms like Hubspot and WordPress have built in ways to populate content like the meta description that can help with this. Not sure how to approach this? We can help!

2. Use social media and Google ads to get the word out

Organic search is powerful, but don’t rely on this alone to drive traffic to your blog. It’s important to strategically get the word out using social media, social media advertising and even Google advertising to drive people to your posts. 

Here’s the good news for produce marketers: due to the pandemic, more consumers are shopping online – which means people are searching online! If you aren’t advertising already, now is the time to get in the game!

3. Analyze regularly to capitalize on what’s working

How often do you check your blog analytics?

In September 2019, a survey found that 32% of bloggers “always” check their blog analytics and we anticipate this number has likely grown since then. 

We do a deep dive report of our blog analytics for ourselves and our clients once a month, along with weekly quick check-ins to see how things are performing. Performance analysis allows us to determine what’s working and what’s clearly NOT working and falling on deaf ears! 

Don’t just look at your analytics in a vacuum, either. It’s helpful to track your post views, clicks and traffic source over time so that you can perform a trend analysis to help you identify anomalies in the data worth further exploration. 

We recommend Google Analytics as a free resource that you should install on every website, no matter what! Here is a great guide to specific reports in Google Analytics that can help you analyze your blog performance. 

If you don’t have the time to do a deep dive into the data, our website audit is the quick fix for you. In our assessment, we dig through the data to show to you what you need to be paying attention to and how to optimize your site to get the results you want.

4. Create skimmable content

How often do you open articles and “skim” them quickly? Are you skimming this article RIGHT NOW? It’s okay because 73% of people admit to skimming blog posts! There’s even a whole app/website dedicated to those of us who are “skimmers” called “The Skimm.” The reality is, we’re busy people. Making your blog posts skimmable is a great way to get readers coming back for more if they know they can digest your content quickly.

So how do you do it? Headings to break up your post, like what we’ve used here, is a great place to start. Bullet points are always helpful to include, and lists almost always win! Take a cue from popular sites like Buzzfeed to see how it’s done!

5. Make subscribing easy and attractive

One of the ultimate goals of having a blog is to attract blog subscribers. Having blog subscribers allows you to nurture people with more of your content regularly, turning them into an avid fan of your brand/products.

If having blog subscribers is the goal, you need to make subscribing easy and attractive. Take a look at Natural Delight’s subscriber page as a great example. Their subscribe section tells you all about how you’ll get wholesome + delicious recipes, gives you the latest post to check out, and has a clear Call-to-Action to get the target audience to follow through with the action.

6. Be consistent

From the cadence at which you publish content to the number or times you email your subscribers, your blog’s success is dependent on consistency. Why? Because without consistent content, there’s no reason to regularly come back to your blog and you will fail to solidify your authority.

We’ve been blogging here at The Core for 10+ years now. One of the major reasons we’ve been able to establish the following we have is because we’ve stayed consistent. There have been times when maintaining that consistency has been easier than others, but we know from years of experience, subscriptions and our traffic volume that it’s worth it.

Consistency does take work, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right strategy, organizational tools (like an editorial calendar) and the ability to write content in advance, consistency can become realistic and achievable. But if you’re one of the many fresh produce marketers that needs to focus their time on other areas of the business, we can help! 

Blogging is a long term relationship: it requires serious dedication and can reap wonderful outcomes for your brand or business. Whether you are blogging to attract consumers, blogging to generate for retail or foodservice leads for your business, or both, our team of content generation experts can help you implement the strategies above and more. Get in touch with us and let us help you make your website and your blog work for you and not the other way around!