11 Steps to Explode Your Blog Traffic
Professional blogging is not as easy as it sounds. It can be a bit of a vicious circle as a blog cannot thrive without traffic, so we have to put forth a lot of effort in an attempt to obtain it – however simply working hard is no guarantee that you will receive traffic in the first place. To help with this matter, below are eleven tried and tested techniques that will ensure you get as much traffic that you need to your blog.
1. Be Remarkable – This one is number one for a reason. If you do this, most of the rest of this list will come into place and will have lasting effect on the growth of your readership.
How to be outstanding:
- Content is king. Inform your readers of every detail, give your viewers exactly what they want and speak to them in a way they almost understand. – The entertaining. Do whatever is needed to keep your readers glued to the page. Make them laugh and cry with you. – Connect with your readers. Speak to them as if you know them personally. Address their worries, concerns and well-being. – Controversy. Being infamous can also have its benefits, even ending in good publicity. Not everyone has to agree with your opinions for you to become well-known.
I have been accused of having an “if you build it, they will come” attitude with this suggestion and I guess to some extent, it is true. That doesn’t mean you can’t be proactive in your traffic building as well, but the more remarkable your blog isthe better the long and short term effects of your efforts.
2. RSS: Some may say RSS old news, but there are still many blogs that haven’t thought to use a feed. If it is not something you have come across, an RSS feed is simply something that allows readers to stay updated without constantly visiting the blog. The RSS feed alerts readers to every new post via their feed reader or e-mail account. Using a service like FeedBurner.com will make this process a lot easier.
#3 Ping Your Blog. Be sure to choose the option to ping relevant services. Most blogging platforms or scripts will allow this easily via your control panel. Using a ping service will notify various search engines and other sites that you have updated your blog.
4. Blog commenting: Offer to comment or publish content on other blogs or sites related to the same niche. The owner will usually allow you to link back to your own site, providing the comment you have provided is respectful and useful to the site itself. Be as courteous as possible! Make sure your comment is relevant, and don’t make it a big advertisement for your own site.
#5 TrackBacks: Most other blogs will allow you to post comments about their site on your blog. When you link to their site, a link to your own post actually appears in the comments on their blog. Setting up trackbacks between two WordPress blogs is easy, you simply need to put a link to the relevant post and the rest is done for you. Again, be respectful. If you’re going to TrackBack to someone else’s comment, be sure that you have written something useful. Simple copy and pasting of their own post really does not count as adding to the conversation.
6. Keep Your Email List Up-to-Date: You probably already know that your mailing list is a valuable asset. Use this asset to the fullest by sending them to your blog to read the posts you think they will find helpful, enjoy, etc.
7. Distribute more content: Don’t limit all of your content just to your blog. Distribute your content in other ways, like article marketing videos, podcasting, posting content on other people’s sites and blogs etc. Keep pumping that content out to drive more visitors to your pages.
8. Affiliates Link to Your Blog: If your affiliate program allows your affiliates to link to any page on your site, encourage them to link to and write about your various blog posts. The system I use at Quicksales.com (a private-label 1ShoppingCart) allows my affiliates to quickly and easily link to any blog post they want.
If a potential client clicks through these links provided by your affiliates, they are automatically cookied, meaning that any purchase made on your site will generate an affiliate commission. This will give incentive to your affiliates to publish your content and link back to the original article. This won’t offer the same benefits of landing on the actual sales page, but will provide a good alternative and at same time provide referred visitors with excellent value.
#9 Social Networks: All of the popular social networks around can provide traffic like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Internet users admire the transparency that these type of networks offer, and like the idea of being able to communicate with the blogger. Follow the right mannerisms when using these networks, and try not to fall into the trap of messing around on social networking sites for hours ( remember there’s more important work to be getting on with). And, if you are remarkable as mentioned above, everybody else will be talking about you on the networks without you having to intervene.
10. Online Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking includes well-known sites like del.icio.us, Stumble Upon and Digg. The site enables you to bookmark your favorite webpages and other content on the Internet. A lot of marketers choose to mark their own sites, but this could be against terms and conditions, so read the rules first. Another idea is to bookmark each other sites, but at the end of the day if you’re site’s good enough, people will bookmark it on their own accord.
#11 Search Engine Optimization: Perhaps I’m going against the crowd, but I’ve chosen to put SEO last. I understand most marketers would have this at the top of their list, but if your goal is to make an amazing website that will retain visitors, SEO should take a back seat.
The problem with trying to optimize all your blog pages is that it takes away from you being remarkable. A remarkable blog is written with interesting subject lines (rather than boring keyword phrases) and isn’t always on topics that people use a search engine to find. Of course, you can combine the two (SEO and being remarkable) in some ways, but don’t let SEO take anything away from the interest and word-of-mouth your blog creates.