Monday, May 17, 2010

6 Tips on How to Increase Your Blog Traffic

I know that I have been away for a while and haven't been posting that much this month and I truly apologize for not providing you with your weekly SEO fix, but rest assure that there will definitely be some great tips, and resources to come.

To start off the tips, I have decided to do a blog tip about getting traffic to your blog.

I got a question from one of our members at the Network Circle about driving traffic to a blog and I thought that this would be a great topic to blog about.

The great thing about blogs is that when you are a frequent poster, the search engines fall in love with you and will reward you by listing your blog post in their top search engine result pages.

Search engines love fresh content and blog posting is a great way to give them what they want.

Here are a few quick tips that I have used for my blog and other's to get some traffic to your blog:


1. Post, Post, Blog Away: The key to your blog success is to post and post frequently. When you are posting on your blog each week. Visitors will see that you are dedicated to providing your readers with up to date content as well as the search engines and you will find that your blog post are being pinged or indexed right away. I would recommend posting at least 1 to 2 a week.

2. Be informative: Make sure you are providing your readers with market related information. This can be how to's , or how not too's, tips, specials, reviews etc.. If your readers see that your blog is a benefit to their daily lives, they will come back to your blog and even follow it!

3.  Post contest or Giveaways: A great way to generate traffic to your blog is sponsoring a contest or hosting a contest directly on your blog. The best contest are those that give away a bunch of items from numerous companies. The growing trend is to post your contest on Facebook, which has a promotions app now available I think there are some rules that you have to follow in order to post contest there, but you can always team up with other blog owners to help you promote the contest and contact store owners or niche specific sites or stores to see if they would like to donate a prize in exchange for some free publicity. Who can turn down that! We have some amazing blog owners her that can help you out. Just visit our blog section.

4. Have a newsletter sign up box on your blog. There's nothing better than being able to keep in touch with your fans! So why not take advantage of those that love you and have them sign up for newsletters so you can keep them informed of any events, important information in your industry etc.

If you dont have an email campaign company yet, you can check out a list of them here:

http://myseogal.com/weblinks.htm?page=1&linkCat=4


5. Submit your blog to blog directories: Another great way to get traffic to your site if I haven't mentioned it yet, is to submit your site to blog directories.

Submit your blog to these sites below then after that you can ping your blog by using http://www.pingomatic.com. It's very easy, you just enter in your blog url, name of your blog and RSS feed url if you have one and click submit and your blog post will be updated in some popular blog directories.

Blog Daisy


WAHM Blog

Blog Wise

Blog Catalog

Bloggernity

Bloglines

Daypop

Feedster

Syndic8

Technorati

Blogdex

Blog Street

Boingboing

We Blog Alot

Globe of Blogs

Blogarama

Feedburner

Blogrolling

Ice Rocket

6. Last Tip but definitely not least: Market, Link Build, Market.
Make sure you are getting your blog the exposure it needs. Add your site to as many niche related directories. Top 100 sites have become a great traffic generator, so I would suggest adding your site to as many of them as possible. Team up with other blog owners and see if you can get listed on their blog rolls. If you do, then your latest blog post will show up on their blog for their readers to see. Take some of your blog post and revise them a bit and create a Squidoo lens, once you create your lens, share it with your facebook fans, twitter followers etc. Include a link to your blog in your lens.

Make your blog post into articles and submit them to popular article directory sites like ezine.com or goarticles.com. This is a great way to generate traffic and backlinks to your blog.

Submit your blog to blog directories and Digg and Stumble upon. These social bookmarking sites can generate a lot of traffic for you.

The more you get your name out there the more you will start to see an increase in traffic and readers for your blog.

Just remember to always be consistent. Keep your logos the same, so you can start creating brand recognition and stay in the spotlight without being annoying. Meaning, keep your blog name out there by constantly posting on your Twitter account, Facebook account, blog etc. Remember that humans are forgetful unless you keep your name out in the open. If someone is constantly seeing your blog name, they will start to look for your post and want to know what the fuss is all about.

If you own a blog and have been successful , make sure to chime in below about what has worked for you as well.

Carla Phillips