Health and Fitness blog having trouble getting traffic

[Fitness Contrarian]

Thanks Robert. Great advice about Sub-Categories. I will give it a try.

Best - Mike

[ChickenFreak]

So, I still hold to my argument that a more unique, personalized take on your material might serve you well. But on another look, I also found some other issues:

- Has the rolling "featured" thing always been there? I found it problematic. I could see someone getting to the blog, starting to read, having the article roll away, they say "What? Where'd it... oh, never mind." as they click to another blog and you've lost them.

- Something odd seems to be going on with your paging. The first page gives me several articles, the second just gives me a few, the third just gives me a few and I've already seen one of them, the fourth just gives me a few and I've already seen two of them... what's the paging intended to do? Is it possible for you to do the normal sequential "older posts" thing? That's what's normal, and this repetition of posts is very disorienting - do you have a page for each category, or something? I can't figure it out.

This paging scheme is likely to, again, lose your reader as he decides that he doesn't want to work to figure out how to operate the blog.

- Have you considered putting more of the article on the main page, and selecting a specific break point? I don't see enough text to really "hook" the reader, and breaking in the middle of a sentence, presumably just when a certain number of characters or lines have been reached, may not break at the best point to lure the reader into reading more.

There's so little text that you're sort of communicating that your text is unimportant and not very valuable. In fact...

- ...yes. The photos and layout are, I think, a big problem. The layout is signaling that the _photos_ are what matter and that the text is just the caption.

They get more space than the text, thus signaling that they're more important than the text. They're very generic, not adding information to the text, again signaling that the text doesn't matter.

The overall feel is of a catalog, where, yes, the picture _is_ what matters, because the picture is the product, and everything else is secondary.

For example, on the potassium article I almost find myself looking for where you're stating the price of the apple, and on Over Train, is he selling the racket or the ball, and does the racket come in another color?

You have a layout that looks like the text is serving the pictures, instead of the pictures serving the text. The text is being devalued in every way. Yep yep yep. I think that this is a big problem here. No matter what you do to your text, as long as your layout is signaling "pay no attention to the words behind the curtain", your efforts will be wasted.

ChickenFreak

[mitchman3]

Can I mention a couple of things?

One, I like your topics, but your paragraphs are, well, kind of long. I had to learn this one myself; when you can, try to reduce the number of sentences in your paragraphs to 5 or 6 lines at most. I looked at one of your posts, which had pretty good content, but it also had 14-line paragraphs. Most people won't read through all of that.

Second, do you go out and comment on any blogs? One of the best ways to get traffic is commenting on other blogs. Your niche is fine, but something you should consider is having a list of 10 blogs to visit somewhat consistently. Make sure at least half of them are in a niche similar to your own; by that I mean a health blog if not necessarily another workout blog.

The other blogs you write comments on can be different. The idea is to be seen by someone, and if they have CommentLuv, which means your latest post will show up on their site, people might get intrigued and follow it back to your site.

[RateMyBlog]

I just had a quick lok at your site, its got some good content and looks nice. Fitness is a very competitive subject, as others have said you could try to focus on specialised areas. How about writing some guest posts on other fitness blogs?

[Fitness Contrarian]

Thanks everyone for taking the time and giving me so much great advice.

ChickenFreak - I started working on some of your suggestions; I slowed down the rolling Featured slider to 12 seconds from 4 seconds. I think that will give readers more time to click and read the whole post. When I first started this blog a few months ago I had a simpler theme. I just changed to this new theme and have not totally figured out how to use it. It is possible for me to get rid of the rolling feature but I thought it looks cool.

I have changed the paging to normal sequential order. But I’m not sure if I should keep the video posts in normal page order or just in the video side bar.

I will start working on more text with a better break point. I can make the pictures a little smaller but I really like how they look.

Mitchman3: I will start working on shorter paragraphs. Yes, 14 is too long. I have been making comments on large newspaper blogs with some success but have not found high page rank blogs in and close to my niche to regularly comment on.

RateMyBlog: I would like to do some guest post.


Thanks again
Fitness Contrarian

[ChickenFreak]

I thought that I responded to your response, but apparently I never finished writing.

Re:
"I can make the pictures a little smaller but I really like how they look."

I understand that, and they do look like high-quality, expensive pictures. But the pictures aren't the purpose of the blog, and they're not why people come back. People will come back if they like your text, and right now your layout is telling them not to waste time with the text, that it's not really very important.

You said that you think that the rolling post thing looks cool, and that you like the way the pictures look. And if your blog is mainly for your own satisfaction - as mine is largely for my own satisfaction - that's fine. In that case, what matters is what _you_ like, and if your readers don't like it, they can just move on.

But if your blog is for your readers and you want more readers, then what you like isn't the deciding factor. Of course you don't want a blog that you hate, but I think that it's important to find the subset of things that you like _and_ your potential readers will like.

At the very least, I would suggest putting much more text on your first page - at least two or three paragraphs of every post - and adding some descriptions for your videos. And, ideally, losing the rolling post thing. People need something to draw them in the instant that they hit the page, and right now, all they're getting is an expensive-looking stock photo and a couple of lines of text that disappear as soon as they start to read them.

ChickenFreak