The Best Cheat Sheet for Increasing Blog Readership

Creating excellent content for your interior design blog is only half the battle. You must also boost the number of page views your blog gets and increase your readership. 

Without this shift, you may become frustrated at spending so much time creating content with no tangible benefits. Blogging is an important marketing tool, and it can drive website traffic through search engine optimization (SEO). 

Are you ready to learn how to increase the number of eyes that land on your blog each week? Here are a few proven methods to improve your overall readership. 

Researching and Using Keywords

One of the most important things you can do to increase traffic to your blog is research what potential clients are looking for on search engines. This tells you what topics you might want to touch on in your upcoming blog posts to make them more applicable to your audience and what they are interested in reading.  

Not only is it important to research what your audience is interested in, but you should also use those keywords throughout the article. 

Try to integrate them into the text as naturally as possible because search engines and readers can tell when you force certain words. This can damage your reputation on the search engines and make your readers less likely to return for additional content. 

Where can you go to perform this critical keyword research? There are many tools on the internet that can help, including:  

• SEMRush
• KW Finder
• Answer the Public
• Google Search Console

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool you may want to utilize, particularly if you are also running Google Ads campaigns to boost your business. It will give you suggestions based on your services, provide insight into which keywords are searched for the most each month, and help you organize keywords or create new campaigns.  

Write More

It might seem counterintuitive, but interior designers who want to increase their blog readership will want to consider writing more. The ideal length for an SEO-optimized blog post is between 2,100 and 2,400 words. This means that your blog posts should be longer than a short 300 to 500 words.  

If that feels intimidating to you, try expanding your shorter blog posts to 1,500 words to start. You will eventually get the hang of answering related questions and lengthening your content to give the most value to your readers. Avoid adding filler content that does not add value to the overall piece. 

In addition to writing longer articles, you might also consider writing more often. Posting once a month isn’t likely to attract many new visitors. However, posting two to three times each week builds up the number of blog posts you have. In turn, this gives your potential readership even more opportunities to stumble upon your work.  

If you are writing longer articles that are keyword optimized, you have the best chance of being seen when you post regularly.   

Add More Images

Readers on your blog want to connect with you, your brand, and your business. One of the best ways to make your writing come alive for them is to incorporate pictures throughout your blogs.  

They may be pictures of items you used for inspiration in designing a room or before and after shots of your latest project (with the homeowner’s permission, of course).  

Adding images is a great way to get people to view your portfolio subtly, even those who may not have been inclined to look at your portfolio otherwise. When someone can see that you are the professional you claim to be, you give them a tangible reason to hire you for their next home improvement project. 

Use Research to Support Claims

Are you afraid to link out from your blog to other sites? It’s time to tackle that fear and start using links to strengthen your blogs. If there is an interesting statistic related to interior design or the topic at hand, make sure to link to the original research. 

Outbound links (to websites other than your own) can help you to build trust with your audience. They also prove that the information you are sharing is legitimate and can be trusted. It also gives readers a way to further explore and engage with the content. 

As a bonus, you might also form new relationships with other businesses when you refer people to their content. 

Encourage Social Sharing

One of the best ways to make the most of your blogs is to reuse them for increased visibility. It is no longer enough to simply place your blogs on your website and hope they perform well. You need to send them out on the internet so that your friends, family members, and clients can see what you are up to. In other words, you need to get more active on your social media platforms to amplify your voice. 

When you post an article, make sure to request that anyone who likes the article give it a share. This can expand the number of eyes that land on your blog post because it will show up in the feeds of people who may not yet follow you on social media.  

If you want lots of social shares on your new blog, you need to follow all of the other steps above. People are only likely to share relevant and helpful content, so be mindful of the type of content you are creating. Follow all of the best practices for blog creation before you start posting them on social media. 

Backlinks

Another way to get more attention for your blog is through backlinks. A backlink is a link from another website back to your blog, and they are crucial for your ranking in Google’s search engine algorithm. What is a backlink, and why does it matter?  

There are many different ways you might go about building a healthy list of backlinks, but SEO experts agree that this is one fundamental way to boost your audience. 

How can you get more backlinks without paying for them or sponsoring them? One way would be to form a partnership with other local businesses. You might ask for a link on their site in exchange for linking to their services in one of your blog posts. It can be a mutually beneficial relationship if you have a few things in common with other related service providers. 

Another tactic to increase the number of backlinks for your blog is to create resource pages. Make sure that your blog is the ultimate authority on certain topics that matter most to your business. 

This means writing lots of content and providing real value to your readers. When you have some great resource pages written, you can solicit other websites to link to these pages because you will demonstrate some authority in the interior design industry. 

Guest blogging is another way to earn more links back to your page. If you can find other sites that accept guest blogs, you can expand your readership quickly.   

You can also utilize other strategies, such as broken link building, business association links, listicle link building, and more. It’s an important part of your SEO strategy to get other sites to link back to your blog, ultimately boosting your readership. 

Add a Call to Action

You don’t want to get to the end of your blog only to summarize what you wrote about for 2,000 words. Instead, you want to give your readers something actionable they can do. This is where your call to action (CTA) comes into play. 

Be clear about how readers can find you, show them exactly how they can connect with you, and give them something tangible to do to enlist your services. 

You never know how many people might be on the fence about your services and will be propelled to action by your CTA.  

The call to action is also an excellent opportunity to capture reader emails as a step in the right direction. You can offer to send them a lead magnet, a newsletter, or an intake form to help funnel them toward a sale. 

Find Your Voice

Use storytelling in your blog to set your voice apart. You don’t want your interior design blog to sound identical to other blogs or competitors. You want a unique voice that belongs to you and you alone.  

Just as your interior design business reflects who you are, your blog should demonstrate those same traits. 

Increasing Your Audience

Content marketing and increasing the readership for your blog don’t have to be as complicated as they sound. A few minor tweaks to the way you run your interior design blog could be enough to see an improvement in your website statistics and drive more business through your website.  

Of course, this isn’t the only way you can increase your website traffic. Make sure to check out our article "25 Ways to Drive More Website Traffic".