With so much content out there, content marketing is becoming more and more competitive. Even the most experienced bloggers are facing added challenges, with over 77% struggling to get their content to rank and over 70% finding it difficult to meet user intent.
There’s no denying that it is becoming trickier than ever to maintain a blog that drives relevant traffic, but often the solution is easier than meets the eye.
While producing unique and engaging content remains essential, without good quality blog templates, key design features tend to get overlooked – meaning efforts are wasted.
This article will discuss seven of the most underutilized blog template features that can help a business elevate its blogging efforts to increase traffic and maximize engagement.
For businesses looking to elevate the user experience and give their articles a more competitive edge, here are seven features that they should consider integrating into their blog:
A blog taxonomy is a group of articles that sit in the same category. Taxonomies take blog categories a step further by allowing users to create custom tags that allow them to find any articles related to a certain topic.
For example, on a travel blog, basic categories would consist of things like ‘Food’, ‘Music’, and ‘Events’. Although this is a great way to help people narrow down posts, it can still create frustration among users if they are not able to find exactly what they have been looking for.
When publishing a blog, the creator can also add a range of tags. These words and phrases relate to the blog post and can help users navigate the site much more easily to find posts that align with their areas of interest.
As seen in the example below, adding tags such as ‘New York’, ‘Coffee’, and ‘Beverages’ to an article about the best coffee shops in New York gives context to what the article is about. This way, people that are looking for these specific things can click through different tags to see related articles and find more relevant information.
As well as helping improve the user experience, blog taxonomies are great from an SEO perspective. By grouping related content, search engines will be able to index with much more accuracy and make content more visible to a highly relevant audience.
With over 64% of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices, businesses should be utilizing mobile features.
Push notifications can be enabled to send subscribers a notification every time a new blog that they are likely to be interested in is uploaded. This is a great way to boost traffic and keep customers engaged by encouraging them to return to the site.
These are typically very easy to set up, either requiring a snippet of code in the website’s HTML or the download of a plugin. For Wordpress websites, the Gravitec plugin is a popular one which uses AI to optimize notification headlines and text.
This approach is often underutilized by businesses – offering an even better opportunity to stand out among competitors. By notifying subscribers of any new news stories, promotions, or relevant articles that can draw them back to the website, the likelihood of conversion goes up as visibility increases.
Although push notifications are a powerful opportunity to keep customers engaged, it’s important to find the right balance between informative and irritating. If people are seeing too many notifications, many of which are not relevant to them, they are likely to feel annoyed and unsubscribe from the content completely.
Being able to instantly see how well content is performing allows a business to optimize its content strategy to make the most out of its blogging efforts.
Most website CMSs come with built-in analytics tools to give an overview of how many people are visiting the blogs and where they came from, but this isn’t always enough. If a business is promoting a new product launch, jumping on a viral trend, or running a competition, having access to real-time statistics is essential to see exactly what is happening in the moment. Detailed stats are available for every blog and any affiliate links or sales data can be accurately tracked.
Plugins such as MonsterInsights are popular among businesses with WordPress sites as they give real-time insights into the users who are currently on the site and what they are doing.
Utilizing real-time data allows a business to see what content is working and what isn’t – helping them fine-tune their content strategy to provide more of what their readers want. This strategy also allows them to revisit any blogs which did not perform well so they can be reworked, preventing efforts from being wasted.
Many bloggers are finding it harder than ever to keep readers engaged with written content. Since people have access to so much more content and are often browsing while on the move, audio is becoming more popular, whether that be podcasts or audiobooks.
Audio versions of blog posts are not known to many, but are expected to become a staple in the future of blogging. In fact, it is said that audio blog listeners are 32% more likely to engage in multiple sessions in comparison to standard readers.
By offering audio versions of written blog posts, people can listen to the content while they’re on their morning commute or making their coffee – opening up new opportunities to get content seen.
As well as creating added convenience for blog visitors, audio versions are also a big step forward for web accessibility. People with visual impairments or motor issues will be able to access content much more easily if they are able to listen to an audio version.
Video is a well-known way to boost engagement and create more visual content, but it is still incredibly underutilized when it comes to blogs.
Videos from popular platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo can be easily integrated into blog posts so users can watch relevant content without having to leave the web page. By breaking up written content with engaging video, visual learners are much more likely to stick around and enjoy the visual element.
There are various features which can be utilized to either automatically start playing a video when a user gets to a certain part of the page or a pop-up video that can be displayed to support a certain part of the blog.
Blogging and email marketing are two of the most powerful marketing tools out there, so why not combine them? Blogs offer the ideal opportunity to encourage newsletter signups as readers can clearly see that the business provides valuable content insights.
Integrating a newsletter signup form onto a blog is a feature that more businesses should be utilizing to build up their email marketing list and encourage repeat website visitors.
The classic approach would be to include a short signup form on the sidebar of the blog or as a pop-up. This is an effective way to subtly encourage signups without using a pushy approach that will distract users from the blog post they are reading.
Some businesses opt for a more forward approach by incentivizing the signup. Whether a freebie is offered or the user is not able to access more than the introduction to the blog without providing their email address, these strategies can also prove effective for quickly growing a mailing list, but risk increasing bounce rates since users may not wish to proceed.
Once a business has put the time and effort into crafting unique and informative blog posts, they should be shown off to increase visibility and draw in more traffic.
Using featured posts across a website is a great way to promote relevant articles and guide users to content that may be helpful to them.
Many businesses choose to include featured posts on their website home page, linking to their most recent blogs alongside eye-catching feature images and headlines. This not only entices people to read the blogs, but also shows potential customers that the business is an expert in its field.
Another option is to include featured posts at the bottom of each blog. By linking to other articles that are relevant to the article a user just read, it encourages them to click through to other content and stay on the site.
The concept of a blog is simple, but creating a blog that stands out from the crowd requires extra touches that make a difference.
By utilizing blog template features that are designed to increase engagement and turn users into repeat visitors, a business is able to elevate its marketing efforts and increase the likelihood of conversions.