August 11, 2011

Ten Easy Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Starting a blog isn’t rocket science – anyone can do it. Just head on over to WordPress or Blogspot and start writing whatever your heart desires. Starting you blog isn’t the hard part; it’s getting people to actually visit and read your blog that takes work. There isn’t anything worse than checking your Google analytics and discovering only 4 people visit your blog each day (your mom, your grandma and your baby sister – not even your significant other checks your blog out regularly). Here are ten easy ways to increase your blog traffic, because, let’s be honest, everyone needs to hear about your near-death experience while visiting the monkeys at your local zoo.




How To Easy Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic

1. Be Patient.

I should put this tip at the bottom, so that you have to read this whole article before you get this little golden nugget of goodness, but this is the best piece of advice I can give to you. Be patient. Your blog isn’t going to become an instant success. If you start your blog on Tuesday night, it’s not going to be the buzz of cyberspace Wednesday morning. Be patient and don’t give up. It takes time, but your blog can be successful if you are willing to work for it.

2. Comment on Other Blogs.

Word of mouth really is critical to driving traffic to your website. So, take time to search out other blogs that are ‘authorities’ in your area and comment on their blogs. Join the online community and let people know what you have to share, and then leave a link to your blog so people can check it out. Another good tip, try to use humor when you are leaving comments – people love humor. And, if you can find a controversial post, absolutely leave a comment (act like a grown up). Controversies are some of the best ways to become famous without much effort.

3. RSS Feeds.

You should always syndicate RSS – because they are the best. Syndicating feeds can result in an increase in traffic because the people who are subscribe to your feed will know when new content is posted and will want to come check it out.

4. WIIFM.

WIIFM is an acronym, often used in television and radio news, that stands for ‘What’s In It For Me?’ When it comes to the Internet and reading blogs, people often ask themselves questions like ‘Why should I keep coming back?’ or ‘Why am I wasting my time reading this blog?’ or ‘Why should I subscribe to it?’ If you take time to produce good content that people are really interested in reading and things that people are talking about, you will see your traffic increase. Ultimately, web traffic is directly linked with word of mouth. You know you’re doing well when people are talking about your blog and the content on it.

5. Get Social.

Take some time to submit your content to social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit. These social bookmarking sites have been very helpful in boosting blog traffic. If you write a linkbait article, make sure you put it up on these sites. And, after it hits the front page or you get a couple hundred visitors from the sites, make sure you take time to write good, high quality content for a couple days. You don’t want to kill off your buzz by not updating for three days after you’ve just got this huge rush of new visitors. If ever there is a time for excellent content, it’s now.

6. Add Comment Boards Later.

Nothing breaks my heart more than going to a blog and seeing ‘0 comments’ under every blog post. The blog feels empty, dead and very unpopular. So, while your blog is getting up and going, disable commenting and no one will know you only get 14 unique visitors each day. Once you’ve got 100 RSS subscribers or 500 uniques a day, you can open up comment boards and see what kind of activity you get. Comments are the easiest way for tech-savvy people to judge the popularity of your site.

7. Build a Brand.

Brand-building is one of the most important aspects of blogging. If you want to be great, you need to create a brand that people will want to associate with and they feel like is value from. Exclusivity and inside jokes or the occasional cat post are solid ways to keep your loyal readers feeling good about their experiences with you. Once you have a brand that people like and can relate to, be careful to stick to it. If you’re just getting started, write down the goals of your brand to help you remember while you are writing.

8. Open Up.

Humans are naturally nosey people. We like to ‘know’ things. Why else would we stalk celebrities with flashing cameras at all hours of the night? Nothing attracts people to a website more than sharing ‘secrets.’ Sharing information that would typically be considered ‘private’ (trade secrets, contract issues, harmless rumors, etc.) can really benefit your blog and boost your traffic. Decide now what’s ‘off limits’ and how far you are willing to go, then push right up to that limit to see the best effects. If you really open up your community will begin to reward you with links and with traffic.

9. Find Your Voice.

Write like a human. People like compassion, empathy, honesty and authority – keep that in mind while you are writing posts and your likeliness to succeed will increase. Stay humble, stick to your roots and don’t get too serious. When readers start to feel like you are taking yourself and your blog too seriously, they’ll start to look for new places to get their news. Be cautious and control what you say and how you say it. Remember, once you publish, there is no going back.

10. Write Well & Often.

This tip is a no brainer, but I still am going to throw it out. The first step to building an audience is updating your blog with good and useful content on a regular basis. Have something meaningful to say to your readers and then say it. This will maintain your reader’s attention and keep them loyal. Also, if you post frequently, it’s more likely for you to catch a search engine’s attention – resulting in better rankings and more traffic for you.

No comments:

Post a Comment