Attracting first time Visitors into Your Blog

No matter their background or their subject matter, most bloggers share one key goal: they all want to maximize the vibrancy of their blogs by increasing visitor traffic. Some of us do it for the SEO, the digital marketing capabilities, or the advertising money. Others among us simply want to know that our content is being read and that our blog is successful. Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt that driving traffic should be an important goal for any blogger out there.

Most of this traffic, of course, comes from repeat and loyal visitors, people who are compelled to come back to our blog because they enjoy the content, benefit from its advice, or simply want to take advantage of these promotions. By return to the blog just once, these repeat visitors make it clear that they’re satisfied with the service provided and that they will likely return in the future.
But what about the first-time visitor? What about the person who has visited once and may not come back? Certainly, you can’t appeal to each and every one of them by tailoring your content to the perceived tastes of this group. But you can take concerted steps to insure, as best as possible, that a first-time visitor turns into a loyal follower of your blog. This can have an exponential benefit on your traffic and SEO.

Here are a few tips:

Use Crisp and Clear Images
Yes, this sounds like advice that you may give to a preschool teacher, but making a site that uses bold, crisp, and vivid imagery with leave a strong first impression on a visitor. While your content ultimately matters more, nothing makes a bigger impact in that first millisecond of exposure than an image does. On that note, ensure that every post has a high-quality image at the top. If that is too onerous of a task, simply choose an appealing banner imagery and make sure that your site has a strong professional look.

Make Content Skim-able
While you may be proud of every little detail of your content, a blog post ultimately needs to have one central argument or idea – and this idea should be prominently displayed for those who merely skim the post. After all, we can expect that a majority of readers won’t read a full post in its entirety, and the first-time visitor is even less likely to get beyond the opening paragraph and any bolded points. For this reason, it is helpful to take an AP style or press release approach and put your main points at the top of every piece.