Ten Ways To Bring Traffic To Your Blog

There are many people out there who have already set up there own blog or are thinking of doing so soon.  Many have chosen their domain names, lined up their web hosting provider, installed a blogging platform like Wordpress, designed the look of their blog, and started writing blog posts.  This initial start up phase of a blog is exciting, all the possibilities of what they’ll do with their own little piece of internet real estate tumble through the minds of these blog owners, many of these dreams will never be fulfilled.  The main thing that causes a blog to fail is the lack of traffic.  Without traffic there can be no money made with a blog, when a blog makes no money the owner usually gives up and does something else.  In an attempt to keep those dreams alive, here are ten ways to bring traffic to your blog.

1.  Don’t forget to advertise your blog in the real world.  Printing the URL of your blog on any flyers, business cards, brochures, calendars, or other type products can increase your web traffic.  You never know when someone will use that URL either for themselves or reference it in a newspaper article or recommend it to a friend.

2.  Don’t forget to not only enable an RSS feed of your blog, but to display a link to it or an icon for it prominently on your blog.  This enables people to subscribe to your blog feed and be alerted when you’ve updated your content.

3.  Continually and frequently update your blog’s content.  The more blog posts you do and the more chance one of your posts will end up in a search engine result for a term that someone has searched for.

4.  Enable or use a ping feature like Ping-o-matic on your blog.  This feature will ping, or notify, blog directories each time you publish a new blog post.

5.  Write and submit articles about topics related to the niche of your blog to article directories that allow you to include a link to your blog in the article footer.  By doing so, every time someone reprints your article they will also be publishing a link back to your blog.

6.  Frequently comment on posts in other blogs that are related to your niche.  If your comment is informative and well written, people may follow your link back to your blog and become traffic for you as well.

7.  If your blog is one part of a bigger website that you run, make sure each page of your website includes a link to your blog.  This will maximize the traffic you already have coming to your site that may not be coming to your blog as well.

8.  Participate in social networking services like Digg, StumbleUpon, and others.  This can increase your traffic from people that search related subjects from these services.

9.  Submit your blog to both search engines and blog directories.  Submitting to search engines is fairly easy, and depending on how long you’ve been blogging may no longer be necessary as most well programmed search engines will find you on their own after awhile.  Submitting to blog directories can be very time consuming and can either be done a little at a time or can also be outsourced to someone else to do for you.

10.  Add a link to your blog in the signature of both your email and of any forum you’re using.  People that communicate with you via email or on an online forum can then follow these links back to your blog, increasing your traffic.

Utilizing tips like these make it so a blog has a bigger chance of succeeding.  Becoming a successful blog owner is not guaranteed no matter what strategy is used.  But without internet traffic, becoming a failed blog owner is almost a sure thing.



March 28, 2009 | 4 Comments 

Five Mistakes You Make When Writing For Your Blog

Okay, you have a blog started and the layout looks just the way you want it to.  All the features you wanted to be functioning on it are there.  All the top of the line and most popular plug-ins are activated and in use.  You’re even marketing your blog for both search engine success and also using great link building techniques.  What else is there, right?  Let talk a little bit about your writing and the five mistakes you’re making.

The first and most glaring mistake that you may be making when writing for your blog is not proofreading.  This is easy to do because many times blog posts are written in a largely quick and casual manner.  While this makes for an embracing type of interaction with the readership and is a very valid form of writing, when writing in a casual tone make sure there are no misspellings and grammatical errors.  Everyone makes mistakes, but proofreading is not that hard and most of the writing software on the market comes with spell checking capability.  When any writing, whether it is used online or off, is filled with spelling and grammar errors the effect it has on the reader is to lose confidence in the intelligence of the writer.  This is not the effect that your writing should project to your readers.

The second mistake you might be making with your blog writing is going too in depth about a broad subject.  Instead of writing one 3000 word post about a broad subject, consider writing three to six posts in the 300-600 word range that explore different aspects of that broad subject.  This serves two purposes, it makes it so your readers don’t risk getting bored by committing to a large article, and it also means that instead of one post you’ve written yourself a week or more worth of material.

The third blog writing mistake that may be affecting your writing output is burnout.  It isn’t uncommon that after planning out your blog, designing and redesigning its layout, tweaking its features, and finally writing the content that at some point you could become burnt out on the topic of it.  Regardless of how much you love the subject you blog about, burnout is a possibility.  Your readers can tell when they read what you write if you are just going through the motions and not as passionate about your blog or topic as you once were.  To solve this problem, take some time away from your blog periodically.  It might take writing an extra blog post now and then and not posting it.  Let these accumulate so that you can take a week away from your blog but still have fresh content to post.

The fourth problem your blog writing may be experiencing is that of being too informal or casual.  While a certain amount of casualness can be a great match for some blog topics, if you are covering more serious issues or are looking to gain a certain amount of respect in a given marketplace, writing that is too informal may actually turn people away.  People want to at least think that the authors they are reading are educated and informed about their subject matter.  They may take the subject very seriously, and if you aren’t writing for these readers then you may be losing them.

The fifth problem you may be having with your blog writing is the topic you’re writing about.  The sad fact about many struggling blogs on the internet is that there is truly either very little or no market at all for the subject they are talking about.  In a perfect world, your subject matter hits a viable niche market that you can capitalize on and market to.  What you need to try and stay clear of is either a subject matter that is too broad and is already overcrowded with other blogs and websites covering it or a subject that has such a limited niche that the possibility of mining it for any traffic or profit benefit is non-existent.

Many people think that tackling the task of running a blog or even blogging full time is easy.  Not only is this not true, not only is running a blog difficult, it can be difficult each and every day.  One of the best ways to get the most out of your blog is to have high quality content and the best way to do this is to constantly work at both improving your writing skills and proofreading what you have written.  Having a well written blog with frequently updated and quality content is the one and only way to make sure that it is successful.

 

March 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment