How To Get Traffic To Your Blog
How to get traffic to a blog is one of the biggest questions facing the new blogger. You have written your wonderful articles, filled your site with great links, ads, and content, and you find that you are the proud owner of a "cobweb blog" - nobody visits you except the spiders. Just about every blogger has gone through that despairing time when the mystery of how to get traffic to your blog just seems to be impenetrable.
Fortunately, many bloggers have walked this road before you, and the science of how to get traffic to your blog has been somewhat refined by their pioneering efforts.
1. Be Patient
You can always find gurus claiming they can teach you how to get traffic to your blog in five and a hlaf minutes, or products and services which claim that you don't need to know how to get traffic to your blog, because they will send you thousands of visitors for just a small monthly fee, starting immediately - just enter your credit card details ...
Don't do it!
Any advice about how to get traffic to your blog which promises instant results is a scam. The best way to get traffic to your blog is to regularly provide good quality content, do some simple promotional work, and then just be patient.
2. How To Get Traffic To Your Blog Using Your RSS Feed
Every blog will produce an RSS feed, which is essentially a summary of the headlines and content of your blog posts.
This will help you to get traffic to your blog, because wherever you put it, it will display a constantly-updated advertisement for the great content on your blog.
Put your RSS feed everywhere you possibly can - on your Facebook profile page, and any other profile pages which allow it on any other social networking sites, on your iGoogle and myYahoo pages, any other websites you own, and any pages you create in public content-sharing spaces like Squidoo and HubPages.
Just be aware of any Terms of Service when adding RSS feeds - for example, at HubPages it would be classified as "overly promontional" to have other links to your blog on the same page as the RSS feed. Read the TOS and plan your pages to stay within the rules.
There is no point learning how to get traffic to your blog if your best strategies are removed for being in violation of someone's TOS.
3. How To Get Traffic To Your Blog By Pinging
Once you have established your RSS feed, you can "ping" certain sites. These sites will notify the search engines that there is a new post, so they can send spiders to index it.
The serious bloggers know how to get traffic to a blog by pinging each and every post immediately.
Wordpress blogs can be set up to ping automatically, so you don't have to remember to do it each time you make a new post.
4. How To Get Traffic To Your Blog Using Your Signature
It is simple, when you know how, to get traffic to your blog by making every communication you send out a mini-advertisement for your blog.
Email programs and most forums can be set up to automatically put certain words at the end of your emails and posts. Make sure your signature contains a link to your blog, and then go and post widely in a range of forums on topics relating to your blog.
Don't be stupid, of course. Don't run in to a new forum and post something like "I have a great blog on this subject, come and read me!!" You won't get traffic that way, and you might even get banned.
Make sensible contributions to the conversation, which show off your intelligence, personality, and knowledge on the topic. People will come of their own accord to check out your blog once you have impressed them.
5. How To Get Traffic To Your Blog Through Article Marketing
Professionals know how to get traffic to a blog by NOT posting their best content on the blog itself.
While you can get traffic to your blog by taking your posts and re-publishing them in article directories, the best results come from using completely original material to get traffic to your blog.
Write some great articles, and post them at places like Squidoo, HubPages, Gather, and Multiply. Include a link back to your blog, and you will eventually get traffic to your blog from the articles. These sites will send you direct traffic, but they can also provide the valuable back-links that you need to have your blog posts rank well with the search engines. If you can get traffic from organic search results, you are well on your way to blogging success.
There is no mystery in how to get traffic to your blog, but it does take time and energy. Practice, practice, and practice some more. You must learn how to get traffic to your blog, otherwise all your good work in producing compelling content will be in vain! |