6 Steps To Overcoming A Blog Traffic Slump
April 14th, 2008 by Court1. Re-energize
Whether we want to accept this or not, traffic often slumps on our blogs because we lose our passion, drive, and positive energy. This of course happens for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes the pressure to post often can start weighing us down. Items of importance enter into our lives and cause us to become distracted. Our success is delayed longer than we initially hoped for. These are real issues that the best of us face, and learning to overcome them is essential for a blogger that wants to achieve maximum results.
No matter who you are, at one time or another you will face one or more of these issues that can cause a lack of positive energy. Although at times each of us loses our mental energy, we can move forward and reverse our negative emotions.
The first step in correcting the loss of positive energy is recognition of the problem. Symptoms of energy loss include lack of attention span, difficulty with creativity, writers block, and frustration with your blog’s progress.
2. Re-educate
Your traffic may slump because you’re running out of fresh ideas. Here are some methods that you can use to get fresh ideas:
- Dig into your feed reader, where you should have the feeds of prominent blogs in your industry.
- Read magazines related to your industry. If you aren’t subscribed to magazines related to your topic, your blog isn’t as good as it could be.
- Read through the comments of highly-commented posts on your site. Look for questions that people have.
3. Step up the freaking post frequency
If you guys haven’t noticed, we’ve been posting a lot more around here lately. Why? Because we wanted to see an increase in our traffic. What happened? People started using the site more and our search traffic started going up. This means our RSS started increasing - hence the nice increase this year. Our traffic is higher than ever, and this is one of the major reasons why.
Guys I want to to ask yourself an honest question - are you doing what you can to write as many top quality posts as possible?
4. Re-vamp
If you haven’t done spring cleaning for a while, it’s probably time to get that taken care of. There are a few areas I would focus on:
- Getting rid of excess weight in your sidebars and headers. Make the site as clean as possible.
- Creating link clusters that point people to additional, useful content that is relevant. This will help search traffic, and page loads.
- Improve site design. Whether we like it or not, our sites’ designs will affect returning traffic. Make it look as good as you can. If you can afford a redesign, it definitely won’t hurt you to get a better look.
5. Decide what you stand for
Figuring out who you want to help will increase traffic more than I can describe. You have to determine who you want to help, and then figure out how to help them. If you aren’t helping anyone, you probably won’t ever have a successful blog.
Many times, deciding what you’re against can help you to make that determination. I personally get tired of people following marketing sites that don’t teach anything. Being 100% against sites that preach one technique and use another helped me to figure out what I wanted to blog about - the nuts and bolts of making money with the internet.
6. Lose the fear
I would imagine that many of you don’t get the results you’re looking for because of fear. Do you let fear stop you from speaking your mind? Do you let fear stop you from selling yourself?
Overall I would say the people that are willing to do whatever it takes to build a successful blog will, and the rest won’t.
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April 14th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Great post Court! I am finding myself in a slump right now on a few of my sites.
It is amazing how life can distract from your posting, both in quality and frequency.
I have often found that a day or two away from the internet in general is a good method to help clear my mind. I don’t find myself thinking about stats, or how to word something in a post, etc. when I do that.
Thanks for the great insight!
April 14th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Yeah that can help for sure! That’s one of the reasons why it helps me a lot to have Mark - we can still post a lot but neither of us posts everyday. I have to admit that it’s really nice.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Court - you’ve been on POINT in the last weeks. tons of stuff to help me gain momentum with my new blog.
thanks so much for the awesome insight!
April 14th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Hey Alejandro - glad that I can be of service.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Super post Court. Blogging slumps are so common, I’ve got a few blogs right now that I’m experiencing this with… It’s just a matter of getting perspective and taking the very steps you listed
Maria
April 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
My traffic took about a 50% hit in a matter of a couple weeks. But I wasn’t burnt out, and I felt like I was writing at least as well as I ever had, if not better…
Confused……
April 14th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Alot of people get into slumps at this time of the year. I reccommend reading of successful Blogs and/or people like Courtney, Shoe and John Chow…trust me man, reading about others helps to motivate yourself!
April 14th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Heya, I noticed that your “boost traffic” section has a link that’s not in the blue box. This might just be a Firefox thing, but I’m just letting you know.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
My traffic has taken a bit of a hit too. On Melbel.com and on the site I’m working for.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
My traffic has started going up. But it wasn’t until I learned number 3 and number 5.
Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire
April 14th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Yes number 3 mmm very very important want to see what happens when you do not post for 2 weeks LMAO look at my Alexa but then again at the time I think bringing Blogging Zoom back up was more important I think Court would give me a pass on that one
April 14th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I am relieved to know that traffic slumps are not unusual and should not be so worrisome if one is prepared to do the things that you have suggested.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:33 am
One strategy that’s good if you want a quick boost is to look at what the hot topics are and pick one of them. You can look at google trends, memeorandum (for news and politics), techmeme. There are probably others.
Find a story. Put your spin on it, and it’s bound to get some quick google blogsearch traffic.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:58 am
[…] there are a number of things you can do to jump start your traffic. The first and foremost is to increase your post frequency and post on topics that are relevant to the theme of your blog. Based on my own experience here, I […]
April 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Great post — you’ve really outlined the important aspects about making your blog have a high readership. I think people forget that the whole reason we get into blogging is because it’s so much more accessible and fun than other types of work. Once you’ve overcome your fears of failure and start putting out there en masse, then I think you really will start to see a difference in you readership.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I’m building and haven’t reached a point or peak to even notice a slump, LOL! But I found this post helpful. For example, No. 5, Decide what you stand for. It can be easy to veer of course. I want to explore many methods of earning online, primarily ways to supplement or “boost” income. I can’t help my readers earn thousands a day, or even thousands a month and it would be foolish of me to try to do so.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Ta for the post, Court. Am currently researching the setting up of a company blog, and information like this comes in really handy in the initial planning process. Drawing on other people’s experience sure does ease one’s own journey!
April 16th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Thanky for the informative article. Its gerat. I like your blog very much. Go on that way.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Some of my best posts have come from answering peoples’ questions.
I get questions from people not only from my comments but some facebook groups and forums I participate in as well.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I agree that having an effective blog creates a solid foundation for any internet marketing. Staying on top of your postings can be a hassle at times and having good content is a given. Now there is a system that helps you do just that and it absolutely free.
Based on web 2.0 and social marketing, the Spiderweb Marketing System is a great way to get started.
It’s at least worth a look.
http://www.EffortlessATM.com
April 18th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Thanks for the post Courts.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
It seems to me there are two issues here. In the beginning people ‘blogged’ because they had something to say, or they wanted to share their news with family and friends without having to write multiple e-mails.
I don’t think anyone in that category has any difficulty in continuing to write their journal, any more than the musician who earns his living as a house-painter has any difficulty picking up a guitar.
And then there are the other bloggers. These may also be split into two groups. Those who are passionate about their work and see blogging as a savvy way to gain exposure and make contact. These people, such as Seth Godin, invariably give something away each time they hit the key-board. The may not write every day, but they write because they have something to say.
Finally there is the crowd that never really had an easy time blogging, but they read somewhere that blogging is a powerful way to market goods and services. Naturally, for this group, blogging = work, and that’s really the problem.
Some of these people are now hiring professional diarists such as David Petherick of Clarocada to write their blogs for them. Petherick has even appeared on TV and radio speaking about his career as a digital biographer. Those who can’t afford someone of Petherick’s calibre may find someone via Rent-a-Coder, or Elance to do the job.
For myself, I prefer to write all my own blogs, and retain my individuality and identity. Were I to lose interest in writing about daily matters I would drop my blog in a jiffy and move onto something more entertaining. For the moment though I plan to keep blogging four, or five times a week.
BRAY
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[…] and a deeper look at blog traffic slumps, you may want to check out a recent article called “6 Steps To Overcoming A Blog Traffic Slump” by an old friend of mine, Courtney Tuttle. He really knows his stuff, and I highly recommend […]
June 6th, 2008 at 6:07 am
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July 4th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I’m suffering a bit of a blog traffic slump with a couple of my sites. I post frequently each day so can’t see how it could be a quantity issue or not even a quality issue (basically because the visitors aren’t coming to turn them away!!)
I’m going to do a bit of a clean out / redesign and see if that makes a difference.