Get Your Blog Ready for First Time Visitors

When I first launched my blog, all the visits that I got was from the networks. If you have a social media icon somewhere on your blog, they will be the first to like or tweet about your blog. As much as we appreciate their effort, we all know that those actions and their visits come out of courtesy.

And then, reality sets in. An eerie silence after all your friends have come and gone.

Persevere as they said, and so you did.

After about six months, search engine visitors started to come in. You were excited as you watched the number of unique visitors coming in. Slowly, but they were coming in.

Your blog is now ready for the real action…or is it?

If you have not been prepared for this moment, you could be losing a bigger opportunity for your blog to achieve its maximum potential.

There are three sources of traffic from which a site is visited

1.Search engine traffic
They are called unique visitors who discovered your sites after they make their search query on Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engines

2. Referrals from other sites
When other websites published a post with links to your site, you also get traffic from them.

3. Regular readers
Regular readers are also called direct traffic who subscribed to your blog.

Regular readers and referrals are merely an aftermath of search engine traffic or first time visitors who came and took action after they first visited your blog.

If your blog is not ready for them, expect no action to happen after your blog is first visited.

So, how do you get your blog ready for first time visitors?

Depending on your ultimate goal, you will have to create a draft or an outline that will start from the first time they visited your page until you achieve your goal.

For example, you are interested about getting repeat visitors; your call to action should be to ask them to subscribe or to follow you. Or if you are interested about creating a buzz about your post, call on them to like or tweet about your page.

Now, that doesn’t apply to all sites. You may have a different conversion goal like if you are selling or promoting something-calling to subscribe is certainly not necessary. You might need to focus on getting them to click on your ads or affiliate links. But whatever your goal is; it is important that you convert your visitor right there and then because it is unlikely that they will visit your site again.

Let’s go back to creating a draft. Now, this draft applies to those who are interested for long term relationship with their visitors.

Step 1 – Call on them to subscribe where you have an email box to capture their email address. You can use tactics such as: offer freebies, get regular updates, or a promise to teach them anything. The goal is simply to get them to sign up.

Once you capture their email address, the following actions may be taken by using autoresponders.

Step 2 – Convert them to follow you on social media sites. Now that invitation should only come after you thank them for subscribing.

Step 3 – Promote interaction. After thanking them, you can send them another newsletter with a list of your best posts and call on them to drop a comment.

Step 4 – Make a sale. After successfully building a relationship with your reader, it’s easier now to convert them to buy. Offer discounts or freebies if you will, as a compliment.

Step 5 – Suggest spreading the word about your blog by utilizing social media icons to get them to click and share.

The draft I provided above is just an example; you might have a different conversion goal. The point is, you have to hook up your first time visitor and lead them to walk through the process to maximize your blog potential.