Make your visitors feel welcome

Introduction

True Confession: the reason I’m writing this post is that I am realising that I have got it totally wrong on this blog. I had some good ideas for developing navigation on this blog, but I allowed myself to be diverted on another project. These problems will be sorted out over the next week or so. Please forgive me.

One of the problems of new bloggers, and in fact many experienced bloggers, is that they write their blog posts but do not think how to keep the visitor on their site. Their blogs are like visiting and IKEA store. You know there are lots of goodies there, but you’re not clear where they are, and I am sure I am not the only person who tries to retreat within five minutes of entering this large warehouse masquerading as a shop.

Your visitor

It is likely that your first-time visitor will have landed on your site from a search engine or a link from another website. They will probably check out and read the post they have arrived on. They will then look around and see is there anything else worth clicking on — and if there isn’t something obvious then it it is click ‘back button’ and goodbye — sadly another bounce statistic on your visitor log.

Give them a reason to click and most will. Encouraging your visitors to stay on your site is a very important technique. It means dramatically more of your site’s pages will be seen, (good for page views, good the authority of the blog and also good for search engine ratings), makes it more likely that your visitor will subscribe to your feed or your newsletter and if they are in the habit of clicking, well they just might click on an advertisement or affiliate link.

1) Make sure your navigation is great

I’ve seen it — quite a few blogs do not even do the basics. I’ve seen blogs without a search box or using the basic widget, ‘Recent Posts’ — shame on you if your blog doesn’t have these features.  You do not deserve to build up your traffic.

Do your categories help with navigation, (Confession two: my categories on this site need completely revising).  If not then change them.

2) Tag everything that moves

Tags are really useful they help the serious visitor drill down to what they are looking for on your site. Usually tags are found underneath a post with a clickable link. Your visitor can then click on that link and see a list of posts with the same tag.

One of the people and helping at the moment, Philip, has a motoring site.  He does not use tags. This winter in the UK has been remarkably cold and we have had much more snow and ice than normal.

He has written about five articles on winter tyres, which are unusual to use in this country as in most areas we only get one or two days of snow. However, these articles are mixed up among a great many other articles on this site. So visitors were landing on one of his winter tyre posts, but had no obvious link to his other articles. Therefore they read and left.

Had he had the tags then they would have happily read his other articles, which would have enhanced Philip’s authority on the subject and the links would have meant that search engines would have rated the articles much higher.

Philip is beginning to address this problem and also planning for next year to include advertisements for the suppliers of winter tyres.  He will also write in the late autumn series of articles, ‘Preparing for winter’, which will be a lead in to his articles on winter tyres. Hopefully next year this linking will build his site’s authority and bring in some income.

You should use tags in all of your posts. Try and remember to use the same tag to describe a particular activity. If I was tagging a post about writing I would always include the tag, ‘content writing’.

If I use a variety of different tags, say ‘writing’, ‘writing a post’, ‘web journalism’ or ‘new posts’ this is not going to be helpful to your visitor. So try and be consistent with your tagging.

For most blogs a tag cloud, a box in your sidebar displaying the tags used in your blog. The more popular a tag is the larger it will appear in the box. This is another useful way a visitor can explore your site.

3) — Tell your visitor where to go

There is an amazing reluctance of quite a few bloggers to point to their visitors to specific parts of their site or to ask the visitor to do something, like make any comment, sign up to a newsletter. Don’t be shy become the tourist guide to your blog.

In your sidebar use a text widget to highlight your most important posts. Explore the WordPress plug-ins and find one that will display the most popular post on your site.

As important you need to put links at the bottom of each post telling your visitor exactly where to go. On many of my posts I have a section titled, ‘My Links’, where I display links to useful programs on my blog. I also have a section called ‘Other Links’ for external  links.

Originally when I started writing this blog I combined internal and external links, but I plan now to separate them on this site.

Another thing you should do at the bottom of your posts is to direct your visitor to do something — in the blogging trade this is known as ‘Call to Action’. In most cases I use this to encourage my visitor to make a comment, however, I will be hinting that my visitor may want to sign up to the newsletter or ‘what does the visitor think about such and such a link post’.

Conclusion

Give your visitors as many opportunities as possible to stay on your site. Good navigation is essential making use of categories, links in the sidebar, tags, a tag cloud, a ‘My Links’ section at the bottom of every post and now again encourage your visitor to any specific post by a ‘Call to Action’.

My links

Blog Basics: How to install a WordPress widget

Beginning to Blog:  Three reasons to use widgets in your blog

Beginning to Blog: 12 ideas to promote your blog for free

Over to you

What do you think?  Are there any others ways of keeping visitors on your site? Which sites do you think have good navigation.