If you are in a niche blog, increase in returning visitors is important. Increase in retaining visitors means that your blog has more loyal readers and commenters.
It’s a good sign. The increase in the number of returning visitors has many benefits for your blog.
Why returning visitors are important?
- Returning visitors have great trust in you.
- They trust the products that you advise to them.
- They tend to leave comments on every blog post to publish.
- They tend to share the blog posts you publish.
If there is a decrease in returning visitors to your blog, then it means that you should work hard on the quality of your content.
In spite of high-quality content if you’re not receiving returning visitors to your blog, then it means that there’s something wrong with the design or performance of your blog.
Here are some of the simple, actionable tweaks that you can implement right away to increase the number of returning visitors for your blog.
Here are the tricks
Deliver unique content
With the huge amount of generic content spread across the web, there’s no value for mediocre writings.
As a blogger, you have to deliver some unique content that your readers can’t find anywhere else on the web. When they deliver value to them, they likely remember you and your blog and return to it more often.
I have to stress the word, UNIQUE. High-quality content, that is not unique, does not work.
If a visitor visits your blog and noticed that the content you have written is generic, he leaves your blog without waiting a second.
Blog as a human being, use your face
Be what you are. Blog in your own authentic style. Always highlight your personality in your blog. Make your readers feel that a human being writes your blog.
Include great about page and author bio on every page of your blog.
Use words like YOU and I, in your blog posts. It will create an emotional bond between you and your readers.
Create an effective about page to create a bond between you and your readers. An effective about page reflects your personality for your loyal readers.
Your blog posts should reflect your personality as a blogger. Ditch robotic approach. Remember that you are a human being and you are writing for other human beings.
Spacing matters
Blog posts should not be like a story or novel. It should not be continuously written.
It should be scannable. It should consist of plenty of white space, numbered lists, bullets, bold and italic phrases.
Ever come across a blog post, which have no paragraphs at all? If I come across such a blog post. I will close the page without thinking twice.
Because my concentration is too poor. I would not bother it to split it up in my mind and read.
I think, the below earlier blog posts by me are extremely helpful for you.
Post consistently
Always maintain a schedule to publish blog posts. I publish a blog post every two days. That’s my posting frequency.
What’s yours?
I do not mean that you should post every two days. If your blogging schedule commands you to blog once a week, then that’s okay.
Nevertheless, always maintain a posting frequency and consistency. It will help your loyal readers to expect new blog posts on your blog.
Otherwise, they will be disappointed when your blog consistently is not delivering them fresh content.
If you blog consistently then it will help you to establish yourself as an authority for your readers. That’s especially needed when you’re blogging for a long term with future in mind.
Social media promotion
You need to promote your blog posts properly on social media sites. Promoting your blog posts on sites, where your readers hang out, helps them in pinging them about updated content.
It makes them return to a blog to check out the new content.
Social media promotion also helps in gaining initial traffic to your newly published blog posts. Initial traffic to a newly published blog post helps greatly in increasing the rankings of the new blog posts in SERPs.
Reach out your readers
If you’re not building an email list on your blog, then you must do it instantly. It helps you to quantify the actual number of loyal readers.
The readers, who wish to be updated with the latest blog posts published on your blog, sign up for your e-mail list.
After having your readers signed up for your newsletter, don’t forget to feed them with the latest stuff and informative ideas so that they won’t get bored.
By this, you can make those readers return to your blog when a blog post is published. In turn, it also increases the number of returning visitors to your blog.
Reach out commenters
You can make use of plug-ins such as thank me later to reach out to the blog commenters and thank them for leaving the comments.
You can also make use of the plug-in called the Comment Email Reply to e-mail commenters of your blog whenever their comment has a new reply. In the urge of knowing the reply they have got, they return to your blog.
The moment they realize that you value and reply to all the comments on your blog, they will continue to leave insightful comments.
Later you can publish a post named “Top commenters of this month”. And thank all the commenters on your blog. They, in turn, can be the regular commenters and loyal readers of your blog.
Ask for content ideas
Ask your regular readers to submit their content ideas for your next blog post using plug-ins such as Usernoise modal feedback.
People feel good when their ideas and views are taken into account.
Especially if you’re suffering from writer’s block, you will also get great content ideas.
Once the suggestions given by them are valued by you, then they keep on giving valuable suggestions.
If possible, include a line like, “This blog post topic is given by Mr.X”. Your readers will be extremely thankful for this.
Have a great page load speed
The patience of the online readers has been declining rapidly. They need access to content as quickly as possible.
Once your blog is marked as slow in their mind, then whenever they come across your blog in the SERPs or social media, they will ignore it to some extent.
Having a great page load speed, encourage your readers to click on your blog posts whenever they come across them on the web.
As a bonus, high page load speed also acts as a ranking factor in Google. Blogs that are of high-speed ranks higher up.
Wrapping up
As a conclusion, I would like to say that being as natural as possible and creating an emotional bond between you and your readers is important. It encourages your readers to return to your blog expecting new content.
Return massive value to your readers via your blog posts. If your content is unique enough, then readers will not bother to visit your blog again later.
Hope this blog post has helped you. Do share and comment.
