My people at rapportnaija.com.

How far na?

Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long... without too much "senrenre", let's begin.

[If you just want to read about how to get more traffic, you can skip right to the end. If you want to know my thoughts on the site, just keep reading]

As usual, we'll begin with Design and Layout.

I. Design And Layout

I gotta say this: Hats off to you for creating something this good using the Blogger platform. I personally found Blogger tedious to use and a bit limiting (I'm a Wordpress guy).

But... and a big FAT one (hehe).

I still think your design could be much much better if you switched to Wordpress. There's just so much more functionality and plugins that make Blogger look like Wordpress's dumb cousin.

No offence, Blogger lovers reading this, but yes, I don't like Blogger. I dey house, come beat me.

To switch from Blogger to Wordpress, check this link- http://www.fabulousblogging.com/2014/01/the-beginners-guide-to-moving-your-blog-from-blogger-to-wordpress/

Anyway, on to more pressing issues:

(a) Your Site ID and your URL don't match.

This confused me initially. Swear down I thought I was on the wrong site.

I had to recheck the URL a few times to make sure I was on the right site. It ticked me off a little because it's kinda obvious.

Please, and please. Your URL has to match your Site Title. This is non negotiable.

Imagine if you typed in "www.google.com" and saw at the top of the site- " Larry Page's search engine". That would be "forked" up.

Change your Site Title to "Rapport Naija" or if you must include the Ink and Pen's thing, then try it this way: " Ink and Pens Present- Rapport Naija" or something like that.

The fact is you're not doing yourself or your visitors any favours by confusing them.


(b) Yes, you have a tagline... but you're trying to do too much.

You've undoubtedly heard this before, but sometimes "more is less and less is more."

Your tagline: "We deliver Nigeria News Headlines, Poetry, Fiction, Non-fiction, Flash fiction, Short stories, Political Opinionated articles, Motivational articles, Love Relationship/Dating Tips, Health and Fitness Tips, and Music."

That's a lot. And I get it, you're trying to target young people who spend a lot of time looking for crazy, interesting news articles and the like.

But here's the thing, everybody is doing that.

Most blogs, after the rise of the Great Linda Ikeji Blog, have sought to create such greatness for their blogs and follow in her steps. They also write about News headlines, poetry, short stories, political opinionated articles, motivational articles, etcetera shmetcetera.. you get my point.

To stand out in this area, you need to come at it from an angle... hmm, before I go too deep on this, let's move on.

All you need to know for now is that the tagline is way too wordy for a tagline. Think of an angle for it.


(c)Your Header Area

There's a lot going on there. Site name and tagline, which are great for the header area but there are a few issues:

(i) Your Call to Action is not clear.

You just have a "Subscribe" button underneath the tagline (and one that shows up as you scroll down). Anybody reading that would be like "Why?". And because you haven't told them why, they won't.

You'd be better off putting your Call to Action as an Action Bar of a different colour at the top of your site- something that makes it stand out from the rest of the page and draws the visitor's attention. Then have some text there like " Don't miss out on the latest outrageous news happening in Nigeria and the world, be the first to know, Subscribe to our blog" attached to that.

Obviously, that's a bit long, but you get the idea. Attach a reason with some emotion to it and they're more likely to subscribe.

(ii) Your Ad in the header.

Putting the ad right there below everything in the header interrupts the flow of your page a bit. Would be better if the order in your header was:

- Call to Action Action Bar
- Ad
- Site Title
- Tagline
- Menus

Then content

That would definitely be better. But don't take my word for it, try it out and see if that's better.


(iii) Your Primary navigation menu

This is a key element of every website. It's where your users go when they want to find something.

I'm not psychic or anything but when you look at your tagline, when your target visitor comes to your site, the last thing he's looking to do is "Advertise with you".

First, he's looking for those news, short stories, and the rest that you promised in your tagline.

Looking at your menu, I get it, you want to make money through affiliate marketing for Jumia and co. , but if you place that above improving usability of your site for the user, you'll lose visitors fast.

You should ideally have the different categories up there, so if they want to read News, they go to that section, or if they want Short stories, they'll go there.

See where I'm going with this?

Putting the link to Jumia Market there... that's just ... I have no words

Think about your user. What brought him or her to your site. Make it easy for him to do what he wants. Let your primary menu guide the way.

(iv) Before I forget... that little thing at the top left corner of your site that looks like a drop down menu, but when you click, a left side bar opens showing a couple of ads ... Yeah, remove that thing totally.

That thing is annoying, because it makes the user think there is a menu there and when you click, there isn't one; just more advertisements.

That does one of two things- either makes the user feel stupid, or feel like he's been duped, neither of them good. To be honest, I almost left after seeing that.

It's just like you're trying to use every opportunity to get a click, and you don't care about the user at all.

And the fact is if you continue to make users feel this way, they'll go to other sites that don't make them feel duped.


(d) Your right sidebar

If you read my last review, you should know what to do here.

But in case you don't, I'll summarize:

- Like say one ad from smeMarket hub no dey enough, you gas repeat almost the same ad at the bottom.

Oga, bet why?

Instead of a Categories link, or Archives, or anything that can help us find a way around your site, it's two ads that are almost the same. It's like you want to almost guarantee that we click by force.

REMOVE one of them or remove both of them.

Move one to the left side bar (where you placed those social icons), then do like I said in my last review:

Arrange it this way:

- Search field + search button
- Recent posts (like 2 or 3)
- Categories: This can be in form of a drop down menu with each link as a Category and showing the number of posts in it.
- Blog Archive: Just the months and years (and the number of posts in each)
- Then the Social Media buttons (which we still get yarns on top)

This will help us, your visitors, to better use your site, and we will thank you for it by spending more time on your site and actually clicking your ads.


(e) Coincidentally, the only ad placement that was dope was the one immediately after the first post.

That's how you sneak an ad in there. It doesn't really stick out like a bad haircut and yet it is there, catching our eye as we move down the page.

Another way to put an ad, would be to mask it as a call to action, like have a little chat box that comes up at the lower right with text saying "Did you know you could get 10% or 20% of these deals? Don't miss out, check them now!" and have it link to items on jumia or sme market hub that have had price cuts.


(f) Your Footer- What's going on here?

This could have been a great place to put a call to action or an ad, but it's just blank, empty?

Put a call to action, asking visitors to subscribe.. Sure, some people might not scroll down to the footer, but for those who do, give them something to do.

Also a form of secondary menu would make sense here, so we have options where to go rather than having to scroll back up again.


Now. Let's talk about ...

2. Content

Like I implied earlier, the niche you have chosen is very competitive, so you have to take a unique angle.

A few examples:

- BellaNaija (www.bellanaija.com) talks about news also, but they have built a rep for covering dope weddings. Sure, they talk a lot about other forms of news, but you know if you want to see news about weddings, you gotta check bellanaija.

Also, check out how they place their ads on their homepage. They're too slick with it, I didn't even think of it when I was talking about ads.

Lesson learned: Placing an ad with equal size as the display of a post makes it stand out less as an ad.

If you look at their primary nav menu, you'll see they have their categories up there. Smart move.

- Listverse (www.listverse.com), while not actually a news site, specializes in crafting list posts, mostly about unbelievable things and facts in various fields. They could just come out and write boring articles but they spiced it up a little and created a niche of their own.


My point is: Yes, you can write about news, and everything you put in your tagline now, but you have to come up with a unique angle, a unique voice for approaching the topics that makes you stand out from the crowd of bloggers in your niche.

Then, once you have that angle, let your tagline reflect it.

And let your content follow that angle. There's a reason Perez Hilton is Perez Hilton. You might not like his style, or what he says, but he is unique and that's why he is a celebrity blogger.

Find your unique writer's voice and show us visitors that you're not just telling us plain old boring news-as-usual.


- Your Headlines

Went through some of your headlines. They're not bad, and some of them are just too good to not be clicked.

I see you're employing the "Sex Sells" strategy. Nice, but you also need to work on other angles. Generate a bit of controversy, don't be afraid to stand out, speak up and have an opinion.

I'm not a pro when it come to Entertainment News Sites, but if you follow celebrities, and find some who are making fashion faux-pas, you could use that to create a section "Celebrity Fashion Fumbles of the Week" or "OMG, What was Rita Dominic wearing?" or "Why Banky should not marry Adesua"

Headlines like that, are certain to draw attention.

Just an idea... think about it.


NOW, let's talk about what you've been waiting for- TRAFFIC!!!

[DISCLAIMER: The ideas about to be shared are the ideas of this writer which have yet to be tested for a news site. You can try them out and let me know how it goes]

Okay, obviously you know there are two ways to get traffic- Organic, and Paid.

I'm going to assume when you say traffic, you mean "organic" traffic i.e. you didn't have to pay for ads or run a PPC campaign.

For that, you'll need SEO and social media (which I'm going to assume you already know, judging by the amount of social media icons you have on your site's pages)

But before that, I need to make an important point:

"All the SEO and social media exposure in the world will not epp you if your content sucks, your site is unattractive and difficult to use."

So you should definitely fix those issues first.

Onward.


SEO: A typical SEO plan would involve:

- finding target keywords and identifying the ones with high volume + medium competition
- Using those keywords in your H1 header, and sub headings, putting it in alt text of your images and media, and sprinkling it in your text
- Getting backlinks from reputable sites, and blogs within your niche
etcetera shmetcetera

That's all well and good for any normal site, but for news sites, I personally don't think SEO is the way to go.

Sure, try and do SEO where you can, but ultimately in my opinion, you'll get more traffic optimizing for humans rather than search engines, and promoting on social media.

What the hell do I mean by optimizing for humans?

The simple way to optimize for humans:

- Find "hot" news: Basically anything people have begun to talk about and carry on their head. Keep your eyes and ears open for trending news. You might not always be the first to know, but you can always join the party and benefit from the traffic it will generate.

- Put a unique spin on it and craft an eye-catching headline.

- Craft great content: That is interesting, and basically not the boring, same old, regular news type of gist.


Then Social Media.

A lot of the time I see these people who try to promote all those "Man rapes girl in church" type of news to me on Facebook.

I end up blocking them without clicking on the news. Well, because I have no interest in that kind of news, or any kind of random news for that matter. (Yes, I know I am weird).

Now, this is where we dive into left field- the land of experimentation.

If I was running a site in your niche, and I wanted to use social media to drive traffic to my site, this is what I would do:

(i) I will look for Facebook pages of my competition, write all of them in a list.

(ii) Then I'll look through the list of people who like their page, and figure out what their average ages are, what their interests are, other pages they have liked.

(iii) Obviously I'll create a Facebook page for my site, invite people on my Friend's list to like, etc, normal tinz. And when I create one of those earlier mentioned great posts, I'll promote it using Facebook Ads, targeted to the people who like pages similar to my own.

(iv) When I post on IG, I'll use hashtags related to the subject or the celebrity that have a huge amount of posts with those hashtags. Those hashtags usually have a lot of people paying attention to that niche, which is why there are a lot of posts with those hashtags.

(v) Post content consistently and at least 5 times a day. Like I said, less is more and more is less. Being a news site, you can post a bit more than other types of sites, but I think if you're always posting something every 5 minutes, people don't get to read the last post before you post another and another and at some point, they give up. That's on Facebook and IG though.

(vi) On twitter though, the story is a bit different. Here you can post more often than on the others as each post has a 140 character limit. You can basically post up to 3 times in an hour, and still get RTs, follows, etc

(vii) I would get about 20 people I can trust, and get them to share my content twice a day. If I have money, I'll pay them to do this. If not, I'll employ the powers of persuasion.


Mehn, that would have to do... If you have any more questions or clarifications, just send me a message.

Feeling the headache of a thousand years... Wrote this at one seating, no energy to edit. I don run.

Happy Hustling!

Copycracker:
My people at rapportnaija.com.

How far na?

Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long... without too much "senrenre", let's begin.

[If you just want to read about how to get more traffic, you can skip right to the end. If you want to know my thoughts on the site, just keep reading]

As usual, we'll begin with Design and Layout.

I. Design And Layout

I gotta say this: Hats off to you for creating something this good using the Blogger platform. I personally found Blogger tedious to use and a bit limiting (I'm a Wordpress guy).

But... and a big FAT one (hehe).

I still think your design could be much much better if you switched to Wordpress. There's just so much more functionality and plugins that make Blogger look like Wordpress's dumb cousin.

No offence, Blogger lovers reading this, but yes, I don't like Blogger. I dey house, come beat me.

To switch from Blogger to Wordpress, check this link- http://www.fabulousblogging.com/2014/01/the-beginners-guide-to-moving-your-blog-from-blogger-to-wordpress/

Anyway, on to more pressing issues:

(a) Your Site ID and your URL don't match.

This confused me initially. Swear down I thought I was on the wrong site.

I had to recheck the URL a few times to make sure I was on the right site. It ticked me off a little because it's kinda obvious.

Please, and please. Your URL has to match your Site Title. This is non negotiable.

Imagine if you typed in "www.google.com" and saw at the top of the site- " Larry Page's search engine". That would be "forked" up.

Change your Site Title to "Rapport Naija" or if you must include the Ink and Pen's thing, then try it this way: " Ink and Pens Present- Rapport Naija" or something like that.

The fact is you're not doing yourself or your visitors any favours by confusing them.


(b) Yes, you have a tagline... but you're trying to do too much.

You've undoubtedly heard this before, but sometimes "more is less and less is more."

Your tagline: "We deliver Nigeria News Headlines, Poetry, Fiction, Non-fiction, Flash fiction, Short stories, Political Opinionated articles, Motivational articles, Love Relationship/Dating Tips, Health and Fitness Tips, and Music."

That's a lot. And I get it, you're trying to target young people who spend a lot of time looking for crazy, interesting news articles and the like.

But here's the thing, everybody is doing that.

Most blogs, after the rise of the Great Linda Ikeji Blog, have sought to create such greatness for their blogs and follow in her steps. They also write about News headlines, poetry, short stories, political opinionated articles, motivational articles, etcetera shmetcetera.. you get my point.

To stand out in this area, you need to come at it from an angle... hmm, before I go too deep on this, let's move on.

All you need to know for now is that the tagline is way too wordy for a tagline. Think of an angle for it.


(c)Your Header Area

There's a lot going on there. Site name and tagline, which are great for the header area but there are a few issues:

(i) Your Call to Action is not clear.

You just have a "Subscribe" button underneath the tagline (and one that shows up as you scroll down). Anybody reading that would be like "Why?". And because you haven't told them why, they won't.

You'd be better off putting your Call to Action as an Action Bar of a different colour at the top of your site- something that makes it stand out from the rest of the page and draws the visitor's attention. Then have some text there like " Don't miss out on the latest outrageous news happening in Nigeria and the world, be the first to know, Subscribe to our blog" attached to that.

Obviously, that's a bit long, but you get the idea. Attach a reason with some emotion to it and they're more likely to subscribe.

(ii) Your Ad in the header.

Putting the ad right there below everything in the header interrupts the flow of your page a bit. Would be better if the order in your header was:

- Call to Action Action Bar
- Ad
- Site Title
- Tagline
- Menus

Then content

That would definitely be better. But don't take my word for it, try it out and see if that's better.


(iii) Your Primary navigation menu

This is a key element of every website. It's where your users go when they want to find something.

I'm not psychic or anything but when you look at your tagline, when your target visitor comes to your site, the last thing he's looking to do is "Advertise with you".

First, he's looking for those news, short stories, and the rest that you promised in your tagline.

Looking at your menu, I get it, you want to make money through affiliate marketing for Jumia and co. , but if you place that above improving usability of your site for the user, you'll lose visitors fast.

You should ideally have the different categories up there, so if they want to read News, they go to that section, or if they want Short stories, they'll go there.

See where I'm going with this?

Putting the link to Jumia Market there... that's just ... I have no words

Think about your user. What brought him or her to your site. Make it easy for him to do what he wants. Let your primary menu guide the way.

(iv) Before I forget... that little thing at the top left corner of your site that looks like a drop down menu, but when you click, a left side bar opens showing a couple of ads ... Yeah, remove that thing totally.

That thing is annoying, because it makes the user think there is a menu there and when you click, there isn't one; just more advertisements.

That does one of two things- either makes the user feel stupid, or feel like he's been duped, neither of them good. To be honest, I almost left after seeing that.

It's just like you're trying to use every opportunity to get a click, and you don't care about the user at all.

And the fact is if you continue to make users feel this way, they'll go to other sites that don't make them feel duped.


(d) Your right sidebar

If you read my last review, you should know what to do here.

But in case you don't, I'll summarize:

- Like say one ad from smeMarket hub no dey enough, you gas repeat almost the same ad at the bottom.

Oga, bet why?

Instead of a Categories link, or Archives, or anything that can help us find a way around your site, it's two ads that are almost the same. It's like you want to almost guarantee that we click by force.

REMOVE one of them or remove both of them.

Move one to the left side bar (where you placed those social icons), then do like I said in my last review:

Arrange it this way:

- Search field + search button
- Recent posts (like 2 or 3)
- Categories: This can be in form of a drop down menu with each link as a Category and showing the number of posts in it.
- Blog Archive: Just the months and years (and the number of posts in each)
- Then the Social Media buttons (which we still get yarns on top)

This will help us, your visitors, to better use your site, and we will thank you for it by spending more time on your site and actually clicking your ads.


(e) Coincidentally, the only ad placement that was dope was the one immediately after the first post.

That's how you sneak an ad in there. It doesn't really stick out like a bad haircut and yet it is there, catching our eye as we move down the page.

Another way to put an ad, would be to mask it as a call to action, like have a little chat box that comes up at the lower right with text saying "Did you know you could get 10% or 20% of these deals? Don't miss out, check them now!" and have it link to items on jumia or sme market hub that have had price cuts.


(f) Your Footer- What's going on here?

This could have been a great place to put a call to action or an ad, but it's just blank, empty?

Put a call to action, asking visitors to subscribe.. Sure, some people might not scroll down to the footer, but for those who do, give them something to do.

Also a form of secondary menu would make sense here, so we have options where to go rather than having to scroll back up again.


Now. Let's talk about ...

2. Content

Like I implied earlier, the niche you have chosen is very competitive, so you have to take a unique angle.

A few examples:

- BellaNaija (www.bellanaija.com) talks about news also, but they have built a rep for covering dope weddings. Sure, they talk a lot about other forms of news, but you know if you want to see news about weddings, you gotta check bellanaija.

Also, check out how they place their ads on their homepage. They're too slick with it, I didn't even think of it when I was talking about ads.

Lesson learned: Placing an ad with equal size as the display of a post makes it stand out less as an ad.

If you look at their primary nav menu, you'll see they have their categories up there. Smart move.

- Listverse (www.listverse.com), while not actually a news site, specializes in crafting list posts, mostly about unbelievable things and facts in various fields. They could just come out and write boring articles but they spiced it up a little and created a niche of their own.


My point is: Yes, you can write about news, and everything you put in your tagline now, but you have to come up with a unique angle, a unique voice for approaching the topics that makes you stand out from the crowd of bloggers in your niche.

Then, once you have that angle, let your tagline reflect it.

And let your content follow that angle. There's a reason Perez Hilton is Perez Hilton. You might not like his style, or what he says, but he is unique and that's why he is a celebrity blogger.

Find your unique writer's voice and show us visitors that you're not just telling us plain old boring news-as-usual.


- Your Headlines

Went through some of your headlines. They're not bad, and some of them are just too good to not be clicked.

I see you're employing the "Sex Sells" strategy. Nice, but you also need to work on other angles. Generate a bit of controversy, don't be afraid to stand out, speak up and have an opinion.

I'm not a pro when it come to Entertainment News Sites, but if you follow celebrities, and find some who are making fashion faux-pas, you could use that to create a section "Celebrity Fashion Fumbles of the Week" or "OMG, What was Rita Dominic wearing?" or "Why Banky should not marry Adesua"

Headlines like that, are certain to draw attention.

Just an idea... think about it.


NOW, let's talk about what you've been waiting for- TRAFFIC!!!

[DISCLAIMER: The ideas about to be shared are the ideas of this writer which have yet to be tested for a news site. You can try them out and let me know how it goes]

Okay, obviously you know there are two ways to get traffic- Organic, and Paid.

I'm going to assume when you say traffic, you mean "organic" traffic i.e. you didn't have to pay for ads or run a PPC campaign.

For that, you'll need SEO and social media (which I'm going to assume you already know, judging by the amount of social media icons you have on your site's pages)

But before that, I need to make an important point:

"All the SEO and social media exposure in the world will not epp you if your content sucks, your site is unattractive and difficult to use."

So you should definitely fix those issues first.

Onward.


SEO: A typical SEO plan would involve:

- finding target keywords and identifying the ones with high volume + medium competition
- Using those keywords in your H1 header, and sub headings, putting it in alt text of your images and media, and sprinkling it in your text
- Getting backlinks from reputable sites, and blogs within your niche
etcetera shmetcetera

That's all well and good for any normal site, but for news sites, I personally don't think SEO is the way to go.

Sure, try and do SEO where you can, but ultimately in my opinion, you'll get more traffic optimizing for humans rather than search engines, and promoting on social media.

What the hell do I mean by optimizing for humans?

The simple way to optimize for humans:

- Find "hot" news: Basically anything people have begun to talk about and carry on their head. Keep your eyes and ears open for trending news. You might not always be the first to know, but you can always join the party and benefit from the traffic it will generate.

- Put a unique spin on it and craft an eye-catching headline.

- Craft great content: That is interesting, and basically not the boring, same old, regular news type of gist.


Then Social Media.

A lot of the time I see these people who try to promote all those "Man rapes girl in church" type of news to me on Facebook.

I end up blocking them without clicking on the news. Well, because I have no interest in that kind of news, or any kind of random news for that matter. (Yes, I know I am weird).

Now, this is where we dive into left field- the land of experimentation.

If I was running a site in your niche, and I wanted to use social media to drive traffic to my site, this is what I would do:

(i) I will look for Facebook pages of my competition, write all of them in a list.

(ii) Then I'll look through the list of people who like their page, and figure out what their average ages are, what their interests are, other pages they have liked.

(iii) Obviously I'll create a Facebook page for my site, invite people on my Friend's list to like, etc, normal tinz. And when I create one of those earlier mentioned great posts, I'll promote it using Facebook Ads, targeted to the people who like pages similar to my own.

(iv) When I post on IG, I'll use hashtags related to the subject or the celebrity that have a huge amount of posts with those hashtags. Those hashtags usually have a lot of people paying attention to that niche, which is why there are a lot of posts with those hashtags.

(v) Post content consistently and at least 5 times a day. Like I said, less is more and more is less. Being a news site, you can post a bit more than other types of sites, but I think if you're always posting something every 5 minutes, people don't get to read the last post before you post another and another and at some point, they give up. That's on Facebook and IG though.

(vi) On twitter though, the story is a bit different. Here you can post more often than on the others as each post has a 140 character limit. You can basically post up to 3 times in an hour, and still get RTs, follows, etc

(vii) I would get about 20 people I can trust, and get them to share my content twice a day. If I have money, I'll pay them to do this. If not, I'll employ the powers of persuasion.


Mehn, that would have to do... If you have any more questions or clarifications, just send me a message.

Feeling the headache of a thousand years... Wrote this at one seating, no energy to edit. I don run.

Happy Hustling!

Damn see review! God Bless you bro, as in, how do I even thank you for taking the time to analyze a blog like that? You are one of a kind. We should connect past this level I swear... I dont know you but I like you already! Wow! Thanks

RapportNaija:


Damn see review! God Bless you bro, as in, how do I even thank you for taking the time to analyze a blog like that? You are one of a kind. We should connect past this level I swear... I dont know you but I like you already! Wow! Thanks

he also did the same for me too. He's heaven sent.

How to thank me?

30 Billion for the account lol

RapportNaija:


Damn see review! God Bless you bro, as in, how do I even thank you for taking the time to analyze a blog like that? You are one of a kind. We should connect past this level I swear... I dont know you but I like you already! Wow! Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUrqpbSq4TM