Hello everyone!I have a blog attached to my marketing business. (Ironic, I know, that I’m seeking advice on how to market my blog when I’m attempting to do this for others, but here goes…) I’m mostly writing how-to guides and tutorials geared towards the solopreneur and their business. I’m thinking I might be hitting topics that are two broad, but I’m not getting seen therefore no engagement. It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re spending so much time researching and writing, but it seems no one is listening. Maybe it’s subpar, maybe it’s not specific enough, maybe I’m not effectively broadcasting the posts, maybe it’s all of the above. I’m open to any possibilities and would greatly appreciate some constructive criticism so i can improve. My blog url is http://www.ashevillevas.com/soloprenews

Hi @albertmora I like your blog a lot. Right to the point with images.  Everyone loves images. The problem I find, which has nothing to do with you, is that there are so many tutorials on similar subjects.  See where you find yourself when you do a google search from another computer using certain key words.  Find a way to get your self at the top of the search engine list.  That is my only thought.  I’m sure there are many individuals here can help with the search engine bit.  

I would suggest expanding your reach by teasing the articles on relevant LinkedIn groups so that you can reach an audience specifically interested in your topics. There are more than 1.4 million LinkedIn groups so you are sure to find several groups that are interested in just what you are talking about. For example, you can join groups interested in marketing, Wordpress, project management, social media/SEO, Facebook, Gmail, etc.

@dawnchitwoodrivers

Look at the average time users stay on your site, and the page views per visit. That’s another way of looking at the bounce rate.

The SEO niche is really hard to rank in. There are always going to be huge firms competing with huge pocketbooks to play with in getting them ranked on page 1. If you don’t go for longer tailed keywords (key phrases), you will find it all just a frustrating exercise in futility that may never realistically get you the results you want.

So go for something a little more specialized. A sub-niche, if you will. Find out which part of SEO or helping people new to blogging (for example) appeals to you most. Whatever you are personally passionate about is going to translate in the best possible way in the articles you write.

I would suggest working on your social media network. Network with other people in the industry. Frequent other blogs with similar content and comment on their articles, often! Get going with guest posting, link back to your site in the author by-line.

More traffic will follow. Then you’ll really be able to see which type of articles are most appealing to your audience. The more numbers of ppl that come, the more data and stats you can collect.

Try the StatCounter.com wordpress plugin to track numbers of people that visit. Also try the Social Metrics plugin – which tracks how many people shared your articles with their social media networks. All great resources to help you focus what you write about.

Just put riyaz.net/social-metrics into your browser address bar. For some reason, Social Media Examiner puts their site URL in front of all URLs we type in content here in the forum. Which of course screws up outbound links.

Thank you for all of the great advice. I am using Google analytics. Do you think it is beneficial to have both Google analytics and Statcounter on your site..I’ve used Statcounter before and I do like the way they present the info. I also noticed when using both that they show different statistics for the same site. For example, I was analyzing a site that showed quite a bit of traffic referred by Twitter in Statcounter, but in Google analytics it showed hardly any coming from Twitter. I found that interesting and couldn’t find any similar claims by others elsewhere on the net. Curious…I will definitely check out the JetPack plugin.
@ldylarke

@dawnchitwoodrivers So, you’re in Asheville,NC – I’m in Wilmington, NC.  Go North Carolina!  : )

I took a look at your site — love the design with all its white space, etc.

Just a couple of minor things I see —

#1: Some of your blog posts have rather long blocks of text, which can be off-putting to readers.  Website visitors are usually in a hurry, looking for a specific solution to a specific problem or an answer to a question, so when they land on a site and see long blocks of uninterrupted text, they’ll click away pretty quickly if they see they have to wade through long paragraphs of info, etc. 

I try to use what I think of as the “bread crumb” approach when I write web content for my small biz clients – use a good headline, then headings, subheadings, bolded text and contextual hyperlinks to lead readers through the content.  And keep paragraphs to 2-3 sentences as much as you can. (Which I know isn’t always easy.)

#2:  Maybe you could edit your headlines a bit to make them more specific.  For example, “Improve Your Search Engine Ranking with These SEO Tips” could be changed to “How to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings Today with These 6 SEO Tips” and “Design a Kick Ass Twitter Header” might be changed to “How to Design a Kick Ass Twitter Header in Two Simple Steps.”  Small tweaks, yes, but I find sometimes those kind of minor headline edits make the difference between a blog post getting clicked on and read or not. 

I usually create 6-8 headlines for each of my blog posts, then put them aside for a day or so, then when I come back to do the final edits on that blog post, the headline that sounds and feels the best always kind of raises its hand and says, “pick me, pick me!”  : )

Don’t know if these tips are the kind of advice you’re looking for, but I hope they help.

Good luck!

@dawnchitwoodrivers Wow, I have the same issue — I too have the tendency to overexplain things, both in writing and in conversation.  Glad to know I’m not alone.  : )  I’m fine when I’m writing content for clients and have no problem with brevity there, but when it comes to writing for my own website, I’ve been known to overexplain.  Although, the longer I give myself to write something before publishing it, the more ruthless I am about whittling it down to its shortest possible form!

@stonepeople  I hear ya. I always try to write with with one reader in mind, and talk to that one person. My overexplaining tendencies kick in when I realize that some people who come to my blog have never even attempted to do the thing I’m explaining, so I sometimes go into great detail explaining it.  ; )

You have a great blog! Attention getting methods keep your readers coming back for more because you make them interested in what you write.se a little shock therapy! They will love it.

@kim-steadman Thank you! I would definitely agree that I need fine tuning. A major source of my frustration is not knowing myself my uniquity. I am not-so-patiently awaiting to discover my niche. I do believe that I will find it through continually learning and working with clients, but it’s a lot of feeling around in the dark in the process. I will certainly check out the link…thank you for that!

Perhaps try to run some Google Ads targeted at the “right” customer and see if you are able to fine tune your message according to what you see in Google Analytics.

The downside to this strategy is it is not free… but the upside is you are likely going to encounter a ton of really good readers that you are less likely to see if you were relying on organic results alone – as others have pointed out the space is very competitive.  

If you are going to spend I’d also consider testing out if a popup works better for subscribes – I know people don’t like them but they do tend to have much higher opt in rates.  

Lastly, just an observation but you seem to be writing blog posts for people that solve a DIY need but you are a service provider – the result is the people coming to your site are trying to solve a problem that they are interesting in fixing themselves while your service is focused on people that need/want to outsource the answers to these issues. 

Good luck with it all – I know I struggle with this same issue as well.