Why No One Is Reading Your Blog And How to Make them Read?

We are in 2015 and no matter how good or bad 2014 was for you, it’s time to recollect yourself and work on your blog with a complete new strategy. If you still don’t have a blogging business plan, get one now. One of the major problem most of bloggers face is: No traffic and no income. This is one big factor which demotivates them. I have got this covered earlier : How to motivate yourself when you are demotivated.
Now, that article was mostly focus on motivating your inner-self blogger, but a real action is scene when you are brining visible changes on your Blog. This is not only related to your blog design but many other factors like : Content, update frequency, promotion and many other factors. In this article, I will focus the most common problem of: What to do when no one is reading your Blog.
No one reading Blog
One of the most common reason people quit blogging career even before they start noticing some results. The few first reasons they quit blogging is this, no one is paying attention to read their blogs. If you are one among them, this article is for you!

What to do when no one is reading your blogs?

You are writing for bots
The number 1 reason no one will be interested in reading your blog is, you are writing for the search engines. I REALLY don’t mean that you should not at all focus on search engines optimization. I’m indeed a great fan of SEO, but when you’re new to blogging and want to grab other people’s attention to read and share your stuff, you must be focusing on writing for the readers – not for the bots.
Because, when you’re new, you’ll have least idea about SEO stuff, right? So, you’ll probably end up writing keyword stuffed blog posts, which can kill your rankings in this panda and penguin world. If you want to get more search traffic, then try getting quality back links and use long tail keywords on your blog posts. Keyword stuffing is the thing of past, so work on improving the LSI keyword, readability score and other quality factors.
So, try to write for the readers first, you can worry about search traffic later. Because when you’re building a blog, you’re actually building a business that needs quality connections and user engagement. This is the only way to make decent money from your blogs. There are ways, by which you can make an article optimize for both: reades and search engines. Here are few links from SML archive, which will help you to reach that goal:
  • How to write post title for Readers and Search Engine
  • How to write Perfectly SEO optimized Article in WordPress
  • How to write article for your readers
I highly recommend you to read this article (How to Rank#1 in Google), as it will give you a great insight on almost all working ways to rank higher in Google search. Needless to say, before you hit publish button always check against these 11 questions to evaluate your article for high-quality or low-quality.
Your design is crazy
Selecting a blog design is one of the toughest task for any blogger. Specially, when there are thousands of options and we keep getting confused by seeing some of the amazing blog designs. If you ever ask me one tip for your Blog design, I will suggest Keep it simple. Focus more on readability, navigation and make it clean. Yes, magazine style looks cool but at the same time, make sure it achieves your purpose.
  • Simple ways to make your blog atractive
When your blog content is more tempting than anything else, go for a minimalist design. I have shared a big list of Premium WordPress themes, and you can pick anyone which suits your taste.  When someone lands on your blog for the first time, they’ll look at your designing elements. If they’re looking professional, you’re half done to convert them from first time visitors into regular visitors.
You need to invest some money on buying a premium theme, and designing a great logo for your blog to attract the first time visitors attention. Don’t make your blog design cluttered by using every widget under the sun. Keep your blog design neat and clean, it’ll add professional look itself then!
And also try to make your blog loading time faster by using limited number of WordPress plugins on your blog, don’t use all the plugins which are not at all use. Plugins create a great impact on your loading time. So, make sure your blog loading faster, if possible try to move your blog to a better hosting service. If budget for a premium theme is an issue, go ahead and grab a subscription from Elegant theme and you will not be disappointed.
Nothing new in your blog posts
If you’re just rehashing what’s others are saying, then how can you bring other people’s attention to read your blog? Try to spend quality time on creating unique content.
Here unique content means, a blog post that is;
  • Engaging
  • Educating and
  • Bursting a myth
The more unique contents you’ve on your blog, the more space you’ve to bring loyal readers to read your blog content. Always spend time to create and craft a blog post that will be helpful for both you and you readers. This way you can build a thriving audience around your network in no time.
Here at ShoutMeLoud I keep getting many new guest blog post submissions, but hardly 8% of them manage to make it live here. The only reason is: Those 8% have something new to say or have covered a topic in depth. If I look at ShoutMeLoud archive , some of the most popular articles are:
  • Case studies (Ex 1)
  • Personal Experiences ( Ex1)
  • DIY guides (Ex1, Ex2)
The whole point is, along with covering industry news, tips, software, tools in your niche also focus on adding personal comments, experiences and articles which readers can connect to. Another approach is to create a demand. When anything happens in your niche, try to be the first one to cover it in details.
Long paragraphs just don’t work every time
We are habituated to write long paragraphs, because we were used to read long paragraphs in our schools, colleges or universities. Hence, we’re repeating the same on blogs by writing long paragraphs. Let me tell you the secret to grab online readers attention with your writing.
Break your long paragraphs into short.
Because, short paragraphs are easy to skim, easy to read and easy to digest what you’re conveying on your blog posts. Remember that, most online readers just don’t read the content, they actually SKIM. So write for the skimmers by using short paragraphs like this post, and use images to make your blog posts appealing. Use bullets, strong letters and italic words to grab their eyeballs. This way you can attract their attention to read your articles.
You have generic headlines
Generic headlines don’t attract online readers to read your blog. You must spending enough time to craft attention grabbing headlines.
3 tips to create great headlines.
  1. Write How to posts
  2. Use numbers in your headlines
  3. Tweak the popular posts on your blog to have a great idea of what kind of headlines are going viral on your blog.
Your blog is full of Ads and Popups
Who will like to read a blog which is plastered with excessive ads? First off, decide your online business model to earn decent income online. You simply can’t make more money by pasting more ads on your blog.
Use only those ads which are;
  • Relevant to your blog topic
  • Give potential income per each sale
  • Laser focused on your readers needs
If you are using AdSense, you don’t need to worry much as you will be showing targeted contextual ads. Though, if you are like me and who like to earn from Affiliate marketing,  Here’s my top secret to make money from affiliate products. Write an honest review on a product that you personally use and embed it with the affiliate links at proper places – use a compelling image for that ad and place it on most visible place on your blog.
You won’t see hundreds of sales in the first month itself, but you’ll surely notice a great growth on your affiliate income after several weeks. Though, with a review post about a product in your niche, you are making a sales funnel. Educating users about a product and then sending them to review post. Another strategy which works for me is, directly liking to sales page of product I’m promoting, that works as a better landing page for buyers. The key point is, you need to test. Test the best locations with potential ads which work on your blog. This way you can be able to generate good affiliate income.
Related read:
  • Page layout algo – Too many ads above fold is bad for SEO
  • When to add advertising to a Blog

Still no one reading your Blog?

All the above points will be useful to improve your blog internally, but at the same time you need to work on your Blog promotion. One thing, which I highly recommend you to focus more on is: Building your Email list and offer all important blog subscription options. The point is to, convert those one time visits into regular readers. Here are few more pointers which will help you to make your blog better and make it readable:
  • Stick to a Niche
  • Offer compelling content.
  • Focus more on related content. You can use tools like Hittails to get keyword suggestions.
  • Maintain your Blog credibility by giving useful and cross-checked information.
  • Establish your Blog as a brand. Because by the end, it’s brand that people remember.
These are just few of the tips that I can think of now to make your blog read by many, when no one is reading it. Do, let me know what all things you do to make your content read by targeted visitors.

Comments