Today’s guest contribution is written by Tifany Wunschl, owner of the custom design invitation company Gourmet Invitations. With almost 15 years of experience, Tifany is a sought-after speaker, designer, side-hustler (Amuse Invitations and T&R Stock), and an insatiable foodie.

Do you remember ten years ago when you would go every morning to your daily feeds and read all of your favorite blogs? If you are over the age of 30, you probably do. But today’s internet is completely different and changes every day. By the time you read this blog post, something will likely be old news – that’s how fast it’s changing.

So in this ever-changing market where everyone lives on social media, how do you steer that audience to your blog? And how do you keep them there? I’m not going to tout the importance of a blog and why you must blog so Google loves you. You’ve probably heard it enough times already. Instead, I’ll go over some must-haves to getting those oh so important page views and time on your site.

  • Speed is everything. Everyone wants their information NOW. If your website doesn’t give the information to your potential clients in under 3 seconds, they are going to click the back button. Yes, 3 seconds! Run a simple Speed Test on your site.  Google has one (of course) Google PageSpeed Insights. Another favorite of mine is GT Metrix.  They give you an easier to understand guide and directions to fixing your speed issues.
  • Speed is everything. (it’s so important, I’m mentioning it again) One of the errors that will likely come up when you run a page speed test is “Improve Server Response Time”. This means the server who hosts your website (GoDaddy, BlueHost, DreamHost, etc) is too slow. From my research, having your website on a budget hosting is a check in the con column for Google. In their eyes, “real” companies are paying for better and faster web hosts. In my opinion, Google is God and whatever they want, I’m going to do.  I personally use WPEngine to host Gourmet Invitations. They are the leading expert in hosting WordPress sites.  There are many out there. Do your research and find the best service for your platform and website size.
  • User Experience (UX) – Once your reader does come to your site, you need to keep them there. Makesure that you have easy to load photos, gifs are an amazing way to get people to read more, write in small paragraphs, answer questions, and have clear answers that solve your readers’ problems. Use buttons – people just have to click buttons – and have a well-organized site.  Written about the topic before or have another post related to it? Be sure to lead your readers to that blog post and go to older blog posts and link to the new article!
  • Go where the readers are – To get your readers to come to your blog NOW, you need to go to where the readers are – on social media. Post to Facebook (business and personal) with a link to your blog. Use a great photo and interesting captions. And of course, you want to do the same on Instagram and Twitter. Let everyone know what great information you are offering this week.
  • Pin, Pin, PIN – My greatest sources of traffic to my website are Google and Pinterest. These two take a little longer for your readers to find but the virility of those blog posts is going to be huge. Post vertical photos that link directly back to your blog post and be sure to remind the reader on every single pin to click on the photo to read more info.

This all may seem daunting but take it one step at a time. Run a speed page test today and see what comes up. There are plenty of plug-in fixes for most of the issues! Let me know what you plan to do first and if you have any additional advice.