Have you ever thought about how someone experiences your blog on his or her very first visit to it? What is their first impression of your blog? Do you make them want to stay longer or even come back regularly?
For most blogs, first time visitors make the biggest part of the traffic. According to Google Analytics more than 85% of my visitors have been first time visitors.
Therefore it´s really worth it thinking about how they feel.
Make Your Visitors Feel at Home
Many blogs tend to tell their stories from a first-person perspective, using I, me, myself over and over again (I pledge guilty too). Wouldn´t you think, writing from a second-person perspective would make your readers feel much more at home. You might have noticed, that I am trying to do this in this post a lot. 
First Impression
How do you greet your new visitors? Is there something special on your blog, only visible to new visitors? Here on my blog, I am using a very nice plugin from Richard K. Miller which adds a small welcome message to an article for the first times a visitor come to this blog. I am saying thank you for the visit and advice new readers, that there is an RSS-Feed they can subscribe too, if they like or have my posts being delivered via E-Mail.
The plugin does all the work for me, I don´t have to do anything after its installation. If you don´t use it yet, go grab it now.
What about you?
If you have one, go to your own blog and try to see it, as if it was your very first visit on it. What do you think? Do you warmly feel a home? Think a second about the design of your blog. (btw: How do you like my design? Let me know.)
Does it attract you to read more, and go deeper into the blog´s archives maybe? There is one question, your blog has to answer to a new visitor: What can you give me?. Does your blog answer this?
This article is part of my series:
The 25 best ways to increase traffic to your blog. Please read the other 24 articles and you will definitely increase your blog traffic.
Don´t want to miss a part of this series: Subscribe to my RSS-Feed
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November 3rd, 2007 at 3:14 am
Great post, I will check out that What Would Seth Godin Do? Plug-In. From what you say about it, and from what others have said, it sounds like a great feature to add to my blog, for which I am setting up a new theme.