10 Ways to Optimize a Popular Post on Your Blog(1)

1. Analyze the Source of Traffic

The first thing that I’d highly recommend you do when you realize that one post on your blog is attracting more traffic than others is to spend some time analyzing the source of the traffic. Where it’s coming from will determine what actions you need to take next.

* Is the traffic coming from search engines? If so, you’ll want to do some SEO on the post. You should also do some analysis of what keywords people are searching for that drives them to the post.
* Is the traffic coming from social media? If so, it’ll be more temporary so you’ll want to act fast and concentrate on converting visitors to subscribers.
* Is the traffic coming from another blog or site? If so you’ll need to act quickly, concentrate on getting subscribers but also build a relationship with the other site.
* Why does the post work? - this is an important question to ask yourself, particularly if you’re looking to write more posts like it. Is it the title of the post, is it the topic, is it the voice you wrote it in?


The more information you have on where the traffic is from and why it’s landing on your post the better equipped you’ll be to decide which of the following strategies you should take next.

2. On Page SEO

If point #1 shows you that traffic is coming to the post from search engines you are in luck. Search engine traffic is wonderful because it has the potential to send your post traffic every day for years to come. However don’t just sit back and feel good about yourself - ask yourself how you can take the traffic to the next level and drive even more search engine traffic to it!

One of the things you will want to do is optimize the post for search engines even more than it already is. Obviously you’ve done something right in terms of SEO - but how can you improve it even more?

Knowing the keywords that the post is doing well for in SE’s is important here. Once you know this you can highlight them to the search engine bots by bolding them, adding them to your post to increase keyword density, adding images that have those words as their name and in alt tags, adding them in headings etc. Don’t ’stuff’ your post with the words - but finding ways to naturally build them into your post can help it rank even higher for those words.

Again - don’t over do this. You’re already ranking well so just tweak the post a little.

Read more about on page SEO at Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers.