When people are getting value from reading your blog posts, they will stick around longer to read more. The longer someone spends reading your blog, the more likely they will:
- Associate your company with that topic (your area of expertise)
- Remember the value you provided
- Visit other pages on your website to learn more about your business and its products and services
That's why I encourage people to make a blog part of your business website - so that prospective customers are always only one click away from taking the next step to doing business with you.
Here are five blogging practices that will encourage longer website visits:
- Post consistently – How you do anything is how you do everything, and keeping up with your blogging shows people they can count on you.
- Invite readers to explore – There are tools such as YARPP and LinkWithin that will automatically display links to your related articles at the bottom of each post.
- Craft compelling titles – When readers see those links, you need to quickly capture their attention by summing up what they will find if they click.
- Embed links within your posts – If you mention an idea that you've covered in a previous blog post, provide permalinks that lead back to your goldmine of archived content.
- Provide clear and relevant topics - Display your blog post categories in the sidebar and use these to tell your readers exactly what topics you're knowledgeable about.
People will also stay on your blog longer if your posts are relevant, readable, relatable and varied, and if there are interesting visuals to go along with your text.
Ultimately, when you provide valuable content and make it easy to find more of the same, you're creating goodwill with your blog. People will remember that when they need help later.