Top ideas to increase blog traffic
Today I thought I would put together a nice list regarding the best ways to increase your blog traffic. To survive in the blogosphere I would suggest practicing some of these techniques or suggestions. I’m not perfect and FYI no one is so do your best and things will work out.
Write Well and Write Often – Try to remain active with your writing and at the same time maintain the quality of your work. Don’t ever sacrifice your content for quantity of writing. You could write 3 or 4 times a day and it the quality is poor your readers will never return.
Take Advantage of Your Comments – When your readers leave comments do your best to engage their question or statement. Make sure you leave open ended questions and try to encourage interaction between you and the readers.
Do Your Research – Try to make some effort to understanding the topic you’re writing about! Don’t be writing about topics or subjects you know little or nothing about! Don’t assume anything when writing your articles! This could make you a big failure and this isn’t what we want to see. So take some time to Google and research your article topics and subjects.
Understand Your Target Market – Make sure your target market is interested in what you’re writing. Don’t be posting about unrelated content make sure you stay on topic and focus on satisfying the needs of your readers.
Consider Guest Blogging – Have you considered guest blogging on another blog? This could be a great way to gather new readers! Well all know this is hard to do but guest blogging can help you build brand awareness and gain new readers. Be careful when you guest blog and make sure your content is of amazing quality, well researched and full new and informative information.
Join Social Networks – Get noticed and start joining social networking websites that can benefit your blog. Places like digg.com, blogengage.com, Stumbleupon.com, and more can increase your blog traffic and overall comments.
Become Active in Webmaster Forums – Don’t be shy! Start signing up in the large Webmaster Forums. Use this method to market your blog to gain more readers! People that hang in forums enjoy reading and blogs are on the top of the list! Request Blog reviews and become an active member. I know this is time consuming but FYI I get the majority of my traffic currently from Webmaster Forums. Here’s a list that can help you get started. Top Webmaster Forums Article.
Add Traffic Increasing WordPress Plug-ins – Add plug-ins to your blog that will encourage comments. Add the Top commenter’s plug-in, commentluv and similar plug-ins that encourage active readers and commenter’s to place comments on your blog. Comments can bring in a lot of traffic so try your best to encourage the readers to comment.
Template Design – Ensure your template is easy to use and navigate. Readers and other visitors don’t like messy blogs. Keep things tidy, neat and make sure the visit is pleasurable! Don’t have annoying pop ups or anything like that. If you must, place a nice add in the said bar like I do and leave it at that!
Take Advantage of your Blog Roll – Start trading links with bloggers that have traffic related to your target market. This could potentially be a major form of targeted traffic to your blog! Link to other blogs your readers might find interesting as well. Don’t worry they will visit you again you’re not going to lose readers.
Tag your Articles – Start using targeted tags for your articles! This comes in handy if using website search engines such as Technorati. This also helps readers find similar topic they might be interested! Browsing your blog counts as traffic to be specific and very targeted when using these tags!
Search Engine Optimization – Don’t forget to SEO your blog titles and Meta Tags, SEO is a great form of traffic and if done correctly can generate you a massive amount of visitors. Try to be very specific with your topic title and Meta tags so your traffic is in fact looking for articles that relate to their search! Targeted keywords will help you keep the bounce rate down and allow for better indexing with Google!
Use cool images- try and find unique and cool images that apply to your articles. Don’t go overboard with image but if you have something to show the reader make sure it’s a good image and not some random Google image search image. Don’t add images to fill a lack of information… ensure it’s relative to the article at hand.
Tag your Images – Ensure you tag your images! Many bloggers are getting an extreme amount of traffic to their blog from Google Image Search. When you upload your images to the article tag it and apply a description.
Become Timeless – Write posts that can be read in a year or right now and have the same meaning! I know at times this concept can’t be followed but if and when you can ensure your blog article have the timeless affect!
Link Back – when you get ideas from other blogs make sure to link back! This build traffic from that blogger in specific and you normally get a nice trackback for doing so. Some bloggers don’t allow trackbacks but the majority of us do so link to the people that influence your article ideas.
RSS Feeds – Encourage your readers to subscribe to the RSS feeds. Allowing your members to keep updated on all your new posts will help increase your blog traffic! Don’t under estimate the power of RSS feeds and from what I read over at Yan’s blog is RSS feeds are literally one of the most important resources for your blog. I haven’t had the opportunity to develop many RSS subscribers but I’m still early in my blog career so well see what the future brings!
Contests – Start unique and affordable contest. Don’t go bankrupt in order to wow people with your contest. Look for other bloggers that are willing to provide prizes for advertisements! I know some bloggers that have extremely high traffic blogs and all they ever do is contests! People like to win free stuff it’s a no brainer!
Do you have any others ideas on how we can generate more traffic to our blogs? Don’t be shy post your ideas here in the comments! Who knows if I get enough I could post your idea in a similar future topic linking toy our blog! Take care and thanks for reading my ideas!
Your list is very informative. I will try to practice all of those you suggested. Although it will be time consuming, I expect, but I believe the rewards will be worth it. Thanks for writing this tips!
Yes, since I’ve started blogging, the above mentioned list are those that I am practicing… thus I can see some traffics gained monthly
Lisas last blog post..LINK LOVE
I’ve found commenting on other sites to do a great job in increasing traffic!
Susans last blog post..The Short Sale Purchase Agreement
Great article. It gives me some solid ideas. BTW… I altered the button for my site, and welcome any other suggestions. Thanks.
All the best…
Lee for http://www.cheaplee.com
Cheaplees last blog post..The Bailout: the Winners and the Losers
@ Malditang Pinay This practice isn’t that time consuming once you make it a way of blogging! Practice these techniques and soon it will become natural.
@ Lisa – Keep at it and soon enough it will pay off! I haven’t seen the results I was wishing for but I’m already getting a lot of organic traffic so it is worth it!
@ Susan – ahh it’s refreshing to know someones human around here! Yes commenting on other sites does help build traffic but ti’s nothing like organic traffic! This is where the money is at!
@ Cheaplee – Thanks for adding the image Cheaplee and I’m glad you sorted it out!
bbrian017s last blog post..7 Effective Ways To Increase Your Technorati Authority
Great post.
I’m going to tag my images from now on.
I agree, I thinking tagging is particularly important. Also, I think people love the art in my films – so they come!
elyssa whites last blog post..Graffiti Portrait, Madrid
Wow! Good list of traffic generation methods. Thanks!