After yesterday’s post discussing why freelance writers need blogs, I decided to dust off this piece about increasing blog traffic, and give it a bit of an update. The original version appeared about a year and a half ago at About Weblogs.
Tips for Building Blog Traffic
Unless you prefer to keep your blog private, you’re probably blogging in hopes of reaching people. Bloggers who are just starting out may find it takes time to get the word out. Promoting a blog isn’t for the shy. If you want to bring in the masses, you’re going to have perform a little shameless self promotion. What follows are some tips for bringing ‘em in.
Content is King but Good Content Rules
First and foremost, you can encourage millions of people to visit your blog, but the numbers won’t mean squat if you don’t keep them coming back for more. You’ll need to provide content. It’s not enough to provide the same news as every other blogger in your niche topic. You’ll have to come up with something new and unique and provide thought provoking analysis. Your blog has to say something and say it well. If you have good, solid content, people will come - and return.
Participate in Like-Minded Forums
Even if you’re not a joiner, it pays to visit forums so others in your niche know about your blog. If your blog is about knitting, visit some knitting and craft forums. If your blog is about earthworms, visit earthworm, soil and gardening forums. You don’t have to post a lot of "hey come visit my blog" type comments, but if you add a link to your blog in your signature, it will appear in every post. This is sure to bring in traffic.
Visit Other Blogs
Search for other blogs falling within your niche and pay them a visit. Be sure comment so they’ll visit your blog too. If you have something interesting to say about your topic, others may link to and even discuss your blog.
Add Links
Not only is it important to add relevant blog links to your blogroll, but you’ll also want to link to other blogs in your post. The blogger on the other end of the link might just reciprocate, leading more traffic to your blog.
Install an RSS Button
Make it easy for others to subscribe to your blog by installing an button.
Submit Your Blog Posts to Social Media and Bookmarking Sites
Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon are just a few of the social media and bookmarking sites available online. At these sites, members submit articles and blog posts they find interesting and members vote. If your piece gets lots of Diggs and Stumbles, you can receive tens of thousands of visitors in a single day. Mind you, not all of that traffic will stay, but some will. Others will link to your blog and building backlinks is important for search engine placement.
Read Up on the Latest Traffic Building Techniques
If you’re really serious about blogging, visit blogs about blogs. The top blog bloggers offer great traffic building tips in addition to other helpful information.
Analyze Your Stats
In addition to the above steps, you’ll want to implement a stat tracking service such as Site Meter or Performancing Metrics keep track of hits and traffic. Your stat tracker will not only let you know how many people are stopping by each day, but they’ll also let you know where everyone is coming from. This will enable you to determine which traffic boosting methods work best for you. Your stat trackers will tell you what keywords your readers use to visit your site and what the other bloggers are saying.
Patience
When it comes to blogging, patience is indeed a virtue. Traffic doesn’t happen over night. But if you keep at it, continue to provide quality content and promote the heck out of it on a regular basis, you’re sure to slowly but surely build up traffic.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:39 am
Good post. Perhaps one covering social networking sites? (Slap me if it’s a re-post
)
February 21st, 2008 at 4:52 am
I am new to blogging and found your information quick helpful………..thx!
February 21st, 2008 at 6:40 am
Now this is what I’ve been wanting to read! Yay! Thanks so much!
February 21st, 2008 at 6:48 am
I have a couple of other suggestions to add:
Submit your blog to search engines. You can do this yourself or use a free site submission service.
When you post an article on your blog, submit it to a few free article sites like ezinearticles.com with a link back to your site.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:03 am
This is great information - thanks, Deb for all you do!
February 21st, 2008 at 7:35 am
@Jodee - I didn’t know one could do that! Thanks for the information
February 21st, 2008 at 10:55 am
And apparently you have added your own little tip jar as well…how come you didn’t put that into your list of tips
February 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
@Jodee,
Is submitting to a search engine really important? I haven’t, and I am already listed in Google. In fact, I am noticing an increase in the number of daily SE visitors to my blog. I think Google begins to index you when another blog links to your blog. I am far from an SEO expert, so I was wondering…
I would vouch for Stumbleupon. I’ve had great results with it, and it does seem to be popular with women.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:41 pm
@ PreSchool Mama: Even the “Big Three” search engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) can’t possibly index all the web pages online. Your goal here is to get a high ranking on SEs. I would suggest that you search for your blog on MSN and Yahoo to see if you have been indexed yet. If not, take a few minutes to submit your blog rather than waiting for them to find you.
No one outside of Google knows exactly how Google decides to rank web pages, and to me it’s worth it to take a few minutes to register with a free SE submission service (even if you are going to get e-mail offers) to get your site/blog listed on multiple search engines. A high ranking on one of the smaller SEs might help your ranking with one of the Big Guys, and you may get traffic from SEs other than Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:38 am
Thanks to Deb and to Jodee for this very helpful info. I see I have some work ahead of me, but at least now I won’t be headed in the wrong direction.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 am
Suggestion: In Deb’s article, it suggests we visit other people’s blogs. Heck, a great place to begin to do that is right here; click on each message writer’s name…go visit. I’ve read some pretty neat blogs this way, and I am helping a fellow blogger out as well.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:05 am
Thanks, Jodee! I am off to see how “well” I am doing on Yahoo now!
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 am
Great post and a very cool site. Some really sound advice here.