If you’ve been following Vancouverscape since the beginning, you’ll know it all started with a tweet. Over the years, I’ve been able to turn my passion for travel and writing into a full-time blogging career with a steady online readership.
From time to time, I’ve been asked how I built my audience. Building website traffic takes time and patience – but the results are well worth the effort!
High Quality, Frequent Posts
First things first: Post often and post quality content. Readers will learn to count on you to provide new and interesting articles, which is the key to building your audience. I post a brand new article almost every day.
As an added benefit, search engines, such as Google Search, use a variety of factors to decide which order to list websites when someone enters a search term. Google favours websites with unique and up-to-date content. This can boost your ranking position in search engine results, leading to site visibility and shiny new visitors.
Reliable Web Host
Using a reliable web host is critical for the success of your blog. I’ve been hosting my website with local host Doteasy for over six years. I trust that their uptime and speed can provide the best experience for my visitors — and support my growing traffic.
Website speed is a top priority for building your traffic. Imagine clicking on a link, only to wait for what seems like an eternity for the page to load. Most users would lose interest and leave the site. The right hosting plan from a trustworthy web host provides the ideal performance for building and maintaining your site traffic.
Professional Domain Name
If you’re hoping to build your blog, it’s important to use a professional domain name (e.g. www.vancouverscape.com) right from the get-go. It can be tempting to start with a free subdomain (e.g. freewebsite1234.vancouverscape.com), but the cons outweigh the pros.
If you start with a free subdomain, you’ll need to rebuild your image if and when you switch to a custom domain name. Getting your audience familiar with your new name can also be a pain. A professional domain name also gives your website more credibility over a free subdomain, helping you build an audience faster.
As domain names are relatively inexpensive (between $15-25 a year), the investment is well worth it. Even better, Doteasy includes my domain name with my hosting plan for free.
SEO Tactics
Improve your rankings in search engine (e.g. Google) results by employing SEO (Search Engine Optimization). While it sounds like a technical term, there are simple techniques to improve your rankings in search engine results.
Be sure to provide meta descriptions for your pages. If your web page appears in a list of search engine results, meta descriptions will appear with your website. A description can encourage someone searching through Google to click onto your site.
Input alt text for images. They tell search engines what your image is about, and appears if your image fails to load on your page. I simply add alt text to my images within WordPress.
Mobile Site
Having a mobile version of your site is crucial. Not only does a mobile-friendly site keep you from losing smartphone viewers, but it’s also a Google Search ranking factor, which can affect your website’s search engine ranking.
Luckily, Doteasy provides many ways to build both desktop and mobile sites. If you choose to build your site with WordPress, most WP-optimized themes include a mobile version. I personally use the WP Touch plugin for added functionality and layout options.
Social Media Engagement
Last but not least – get social. I’m lucky to have an amazing community of Instagram followers, and continue to promote my content through Facebook and Twitter as well. Sharing my blog content is just the first step. Audience engagement through comments and posts helps to create a sense of community and a supportive reader base.
Visit Doteasy online to find a web hosting plan to get you started on your blogging career.
This post produced in partnership with Doteasy.
