The visitor or the repeat visitor?
While it's easy to say the visitor came to your blog first, things are a bit more complicated than that.
What brought the visitor to your site in the first place?
If you have been listing your site in various internet directories, the traffic may be arriving from there. Readers of your posts on several internet forums, may have clicked on your signature line, that linked back to your blog. You may have placed a comment on someone's blog, and people found your blog that way. You may have had people arrive from search engines like Google and Yahoo.
The problem becomes one of having them return for another visit.
The way to attract and keep your visitors, and turn them into regular readers, is by providing good high quality content.
There is really no other way.
Content can be broken into three categories.
The first category is your own personal thoughts, opinions, and information. In category two, is linking to other quality blogs and web sites, and what they have to offer your readers. The third category is the frequency of your posting updates.
Let's examine each one in turn.
Your personal thoughts and opinions are important to your readers. You have to be at least somewhat interesting, if not passionate, about your chosen topic. While a business blog may not seem like the most thrilling place to be, it can provide some some of the excitemement you feel, for your job and your company.
If you choose to provide information to people (as I do on this marketing, public relations and search engine optimization blog and on my roller derby blog), you must know a little bit about your subject. You need to show you care about your visitors, and that you are assisting them in their goals. Be free with your knowledge and information. Your generous help will be repaid many times over.
The second category is linking to other blogs and web sites. There are about three billion pages indexed by the search engine Google. That is only a fraction of the material located on the internet. Not all pages and sites have been included in Google. That unlisted group includes many blogs. When you link to other people's content, you are providing your readers with information and commentary they may never have found otherwise.
As you add links to well written and useful sites, your readers will begin to respect you as a source of good leads. Be sure to write a bit of information, or an excerpt, about each link you include. Don't fall into the "post a link only" trap. Without any comment by you, the link is just another URL. Nothing more.
Don't forget to develop and maintain a good resource area of permanent links. Many links will be to traditional web sites, and many will be to blogs. Your list of blogs should contain the writers you read on a regular basis. By including permanent links, your visitors will often click on them, and find even more great sites to frequent. Become a helpful blogger!
The third category, for retaining your blog traffic, is your frequency of updating. If your blog is rarely changed, and you seldom post, no one is likely to return. Why return to the same articles? If your readers recognize that you're providing fresh material, several times a week, they will often return to see what you have posted lately.
By following those simple rules, you will find the logs in your visitor counter measuring a lot of repeat visitors. Once you have developed a regular readership, your blog is well on the way to success.
So which came first?
The visitor or the repeat visitor?
If you create a quality blog, full of quality material, they are really one and the same person!
