About a month ago, I was moaning and groaning about how upgrading this blog from Banana Feed to Banana Scoop reset our indexing and essentially sent us to ground zero. Well I’m more than glad to inform you that we’re back on top getting a healthy 300 – 400 hits a day and growing. In my opinion, as vain as it is, I see page hits as a measurement of success, and in my eyes, what we’re accomplishing is absolute success. I’m sure big name blogs and entertainment sites would scoff their heads, but success is in the eye of the beholder, and I’m going to share with you how I got my ‘success’.
This article will talk about how I get the most viewership out of my blog. Forget the cheesy page on WordPress that tells you how to get traffic or any of those other posts that talk about that, I’m talking the dirty, under the table stuff people tend to overlook. We do real talk here. This isn’t for bloggers who write poems, anecdotes and post quotes hoping to get noticed. Take that shit to Tumblr. If you legitimately want a successful blog in terms of viewers, take a look at these points.
Adjust Your Target Audience to Maximize Viewership, Talking About Your Feelings Isn’t Something Everyone Wants to Read
From my perspective, the successful blogs are the ones that entertain the most. And if you don’t have your target audience in mind and understand the numbers that encompass that audience, then you’re going to be very disappointed. Take the example I pointed out above regarding those who post quotes about life, write poems and colorful anecdotes about their experiences. Don’t get me wrong, there are probably some of the greatest soulful writers hidden as a gem from some of these blogs. But in a sea of absolute crap and garbage, who has the time to read every Philosophical Penny and Deep David out there? And just how many people a day did you think they’d want to read about the ups and downs of someone else’s life?
If you’re looking for views, you need to turn your direction to a more stable audience. My own audience is a television/movie loving group, so I do my damnest to provide what I think will be entertaining to them. What’s best is that something like television and movies are loved EVERYWHERE and what’s better is that it’s opinion based, meaning two people can have four different opinions on the same subject. Based on the subject I mentioned above, you’re not going to want an someone else’s opinion on how you conduct your own life, but you’ll gladly argue with someone who the best superhero is and why.
Understanding your audience, how they react, and how passionate they are to the subject you’re trying to convey is crucial. Stay out of personal situations [seriously, the interent isn’t your diary dumpster] and write and post about what your forte is. Your audience will quickly find you, and you can adjust to maximize how they react to your blog.
Pictures are Worth Their Bytes in Views
I’m not ashamed that more than half of my views on a daily basis are from picture images. Using pictures not only grabs audience attentions in main articles[which is their intended use], but they can be used as a means to get points on Google Image indexing. If you post a picture that’s properly tagged, you’d be surprised what people search for and how your picture falls into that category. Soon enough, you’ll have one image that continually gets view points and one random ass article will be your most viewed article ever, not because of your awesome writing, but because you just so happened to be one of the few sites on the world to have that image.
If you get really lucky, you can search a common phrase, ‘Avatar Aang’ for example, and see how many rows down it is on Google which justifies how much it’s seen. And the more it’s seen, the higher up it moves up. It’s a vicious cycle. I remember I got thousands of views for ‘Stark Family’, simply because my image got indexed to be the SECOND image on Google Images when you typed ‘Stark Family’. That totally skewed the article “Debating who to root for in Game of Thrones”, but I don’t care. Internet views are internet views.
The Internet is Full of Men, Capitalize Their Disgusting Instincts
Men are disgusting. It’s a simple truth on the internet. As a matter of fact, it’s a simple fact. 9/10 times if two article are put next together, one about woman’s shoes with a picture of a half naked girl as the header and the other about Sunday Night Football with a picture of a random football player on it, the man will choose the half naked girl first. It doesn’t matter if he actually reads the article, the idea is that he picks that one up first. The same principle is applied to the internet. If there is a sexy woman sitting on a chair on the cover, who cares if the article is about the history of chairs. And even if the man stares at the picture and then reads the article, who cares if he scoffs and says that was a waste of time. Because the simple truth it: he picked it up first.
So apply that to blogging. Queue the half naked Jennifer Lawrence photograph. This is very similar to my pictures explanation. When I write an article about a TV show or a Movie, do I put the main character in a badass pose as the header? No, I choose the sparsely used female supporting character in half ripped clothes posing on an exploding car. For example, my Dark Knight Rises review article is still putting up decent numbers with a common search title ‘Dark Knight Rises Catwoman’. Even though I know it’s not the best written article out there, people are not going to my article to read it but to look at Anne Hathway look cute on a sofa, and if they do read it: bonus. But regardless how they actually feel about it, I still got their IP address added to my statistic. When it comes to searching for news, the images used in the articles are far more descriptive than any creative header or killer hook an article might have.
Create Original Content
This blog heavily focuses on not just movies and trivia but the artistic ways people react to them, whether it be through videos, images, or satirical articles. We like to think we bring the best of the web to you on a daily basis, but we’d be fairly unoriginal ourselves if that’s ALL we did. Have your blog contribute something back to the internet by creating original content. I used to do webcomics and still on occasion do sketches. This is truly original content that others might find interested in sharing. And with sharing comes claimed copyright that must link your piece of art with your blog.
Do it in whatever your forte is, cooking, writing, drawing, etc. If you have a talent or passion, show the world what you can do with it and surely someone will perk up and listen. Adding your own creations and publishing them on your blog alongside the creations of others [with all copyright credits in order] will certainly make your blog an attractive place for people who share similar interests.
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its an awesome piece of advice