ProBlogger: How I Expanded the Demographic of My Niche Blog to Include Every Person Online

How I Expanded the Demographic of My Niche Blog to Include Every Person Online

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST

This guest post is by Sonal Pandey of Tap Easy.

Some things don’t get better with time. This was going to be one such case. Here I was, sharing an awesome technique capable of changing lives, but not many were paying attention.

My niche had the perfect demographic—open-minded, receptive, and suitably educated, with interests ranging from psychology to health and fitness. And yet…

I had over 35 solid posts on the blog. I had a video up on the sidebar demonstrating exactly how to use the revolutionary technique. I also had a newsletter opt-in with a desirable giveaway.

Three months had gone by since I had started my niche blog catering to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) enthusiasts. And yet, nothing much was happening. The email opt-in rate was miserably low, even for a new blog. Sometimes there were no sign-ups for days together.

Well-meaning people told me to just hang on and things would improve with time. Somewhere inside, I knew they wouldn’t. Where was I going wrong?

I was doing everything that successful bloggers were suggesting. But all that was falling on deaf ears. The bounce rate was a staggering 83%. I knew I needed to take stats data with a pinch of salt, but there must have been some truth to them after all.

It got worse

Also around that time, my Google search impressions dropped drastically. Within a span of three days, the search impressions came down by 92%. Such drastic reduction in search impressions also meant a drastic decrease in the clicks to my blog through search results.

I submitted a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster. But they came back reporting no evidence of manual actions by their webspam team. As far as Google was concerned, I was in the clear. So the problem was inside the blog.

From a good enough daily traffic figure (even if with a high bounce rate), it came to days when traffic to the blog was zero. It was scary, and depressing.

My impulsive reaction was to think of myself as a reject. No one wanted what I was offering. But my research had shown considerable demand for such material. People are quite exploratory when it comes to self-help and healing modalities. So why weren't there more takers?

Stats sleuthing

On a close analysis of the blog stats, it turned out that a good number of people were coming through search engines. But they were not arriving here because of EFT related keywords.

For the longest time, the #1 most popular keyword sending people to my blog was “disappointed.” The Universe was trying to rub it in! For whatever reasons I wanted my blog to shine, “disappointed” was not one of them. Yet the material on the blog frequently referenced similar words since they were an integral part of the self-help process.

These visitors were people who had no clue what EFT meant or what they were doing on my blog. So they would come and quickly bounce back.

EFT is a powerful tool to help people recover from all kinds of negative emotions, including disappointment. So Google was probably sending them to the right place. But the visitors didn’t know why they were there. That lead to a very high bounce rate.

I wondered if this very high bounce rate had brought about the downfall in my search results placement.

That was when I had an epiphany.

Aha!

I created a minute-long video trailer especially for those completely oblivious to EFT. And placed this video on the sidebar with an opt-in form below it. The video didn’t get into any EFT mumbo jumbo. It didn't even talk about how to use EFT. It talked about why.

It simply informed the visitors that they could get relief from a host of emotional and physical problems if they used EFT. And that they could bring positive changes in their lives through this technique.

I started offering my earlier video about EFT process demonstration as a giveaway to those signing up. To encourage visitors already familiar with EFT to sign up, I added an e-book that listed my best tips on using the technique. So that giveaway package became attractive to both people new and not new to EFT.

Why it worked

Earlier the blog only catered to the initiated, people who were already using EFT. They could find their way around the blog easily. Even before things improved, such visitors would stick around for ten, 20, or 30 minutes.

The video trailer made sure that even if somebody landed on my blog by mistake, they would at least come to know how they could use it to their advantage. Now anyone who had stress or problems (that includes everyone, right?) was a prospective visitor and subscriber.

Sell them what they want, so you can give them what they need.

Apart from laying down the real-life benefits of EFT in plain English, the video was reminding people to sign up. That in turn gave them the exact tools needed to get started with EFT, and use it in the best way possible.

From using these tools, all the material on my blog became comprehensible to them. So they stayed around.

Just rewards came

Suddenly everything improved: time on site, page views, bounce rate, search impressions. Email subscriptions shot through the roof. When I say “through the roof” I mean it in the frame of my new blog and relatively small traffic. But I’m a firm believer in the theory that a good conversion rate can beat high traffic stats any day.

These results were achieved without writing a single new post during that interval. So what was needed was certainly not more content.

The moral of the story

The takeaway from this experience is to keep in mind the visitors who may be unaware of your area of expertise. It is not so much about showing a video. It is about helping a first time visitor feel at home.

I used to think of my blog as a niche blog, but now it is open to anyone who has an Internet connection and a set of problems.

And to a great extent this learning will influence what content I write next. Because it will be based on a policy of inclusion, not exclusion.

Sonal Pandey is a software engineer turned self-help blogger. Her philosophy on self-help advice is that it should be targeted, effective, and easy to incorporate quickly. Through her blog, Tap Easy, she offers Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping scripts to help people overcome stress, fear, and other negativity and bring positive changes naturally.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger