Why Your Blog Has Stopped Growing
It’s totally normal for your blog to occasionally see a decrease in traffic and growth. It may last a couple of days, weeks or even months. Of course, it feels horrible to experience this and you may not even know why this is happening. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most bloggers if not all have experienced these periods where their blogs growth just seems to slow down for no reason.
There could be a number of reasons why there was a sudden decrease in your traffic and overall growth. Sometimes, we change the smallest things about our blog like our theme or even our font and the algorithm/search engines start freaking out and you begin losing traffic. Often times, it may not even have anything to do with you. WordPress, search engines and social media algorithms change and get updated over time to stay on top of their game and this may cause a decrease in traffic as your blog may be more compatible with older versions of the algorithm compared to the new ones.
Anyway, this post is not about why your blog has stopped growing but rather how to fix it. Here are three methods that will help you get your blog back on track:
Research
When you notice a drop in traffic or followers the first thing you want to do is some research. See if WP or any of the search engines your primary traffic comes from has made changes to their system. If they have you can edit your posts accordingly and make sure they are compatible with the new changes.
Sometimes, WP may have also made changes to their sites too. For example, some themes may not load as quickly as before, some themes may not be mobile friendly anymore, some fonts may not work properly and so much more. What you want to do is go through your site on your computer and mobile phone to make sure this is not the issue. Check the loading times, how clear everything is, if the functions all work as they are supposed to etc.
You may also want to do some research on keywords while you’re at it. Keywords help bring in traffic and are often changing over time. Using currently popular keywords does wonders for growing your blog.
Interact With The Community
Don’t just post and ghost. If a reader takes their time to leave a like or a comment make sure to interact with them. Reply to their comment and if you have the time stop by their blog too and try to read a post or two of their and leave a genuine comment. Interacting with other bloggers will give you an instant boost in your traffic and following. Plus, it will make the algorithm like you which is always a good thing.
I just want to clarify that by interacting with other blogs I mean leave genuine comments not spam ones asking people to visit your blog. Those don’t work and honestly if anything that will probably just piss people off and you’ll end up decreasing your traffic and following.
Another tip with interacting is that the first 24-48 hours are crucial. That’s when the post is still fresh in your readers mind and the information is still interesting/valuable. As humans we don’t have the best attention spans and we tend to forget or lose interest in a little while. Therefore, respond in the first few hours if possible and respond at least within 48 hours.
Encourage New Traffic
It’s totally okay to write posts for yourself alone but if you want to actively grow your audience and following you need to have posts they can interact with. Ask them to leave comments about their thoughts on the topic etc. Ask them to like the post if they enjoyed it. Try to have a conversation with them in the comments section.
All this will encourage new readers as well as keep the old ones coming back because they enjoy interacting with you.
Spam
Don’t spam. It’s honestly that simple.
Don’t try to spam people with comments asking them to visit your blog, don’t try to spam the system by commenting and posting a million times a day and don’t try to spam everyone by buying likes and followers.
I would say these techniques don’t work long term but honestly they don’t even work short term. They just never work pretty much. They just piss people off, piss the system off and will probably get you eventually banned and/or blocked.
If you put out quality content that you are passionate about, become a part of the WP community and do your best you will grow over time. It may not be instantly but it will happen eventually. be patient. Wonderful things that a while to create. It took me years to get to where I am and my blog isn’t even that big compared to some of the ones out there.
Your Thoughts
Have you noticed an increase or decease in your traffic lately? How do you deal with that? What are some ways you increase your traffic? Let me know in the comments below because I would love to hear your answers or simply stop by and say hi- I have had to stop biting people for legal reasons so don’t be scared to leave a comment I don’t bite (anymore).
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