I often hear the questions, how do I get traffic to my blog and why would anyone care about what I have to say in a blog? I will get to the traffic portion in a moment. I don’t care who you are or what you write about, someone WILL read your blog. Obviously the more informative and valuable information you provide, the more readers you will gain. But there are WAY too many people around the world surfing the net with infinite interests to assume that no one will read your blog. In my opinion, it’s impossible.
As far as building traffic to your blog, I don’t have super high numbers, but I get traffic. The unique visitors to my blog range from 100-300 per month. Ultimately, that is my own fault for not posting more frequently. There is always a spike in traffic when a new post is generated. The truth is I dislike content writing greatly. I’m more of a talker. 🙂 But I continue to maintain a blog because it helps my potential clients get a feel for who I am and what my skill levels are. I have had excellent feedback from leads gone clients because they were able to feel my personality bleed through my words. To me, that’s invaluable! I’m attracting like minded people and probably deterring the others, which is exactly my goal.
I’m going to share the methods I use to build my blog traffic (outside of the large amount of traffic I get from the link to my blog from my About Me page on my business website). I find building blog traffic to be very similar to building traffic to a general website.
Signature-In my e-mail signature line there is a click-able link (with the http:// included) to my blog with a compelling tag line. For example, “Find free resources and valuable marketing tips”. I also include this same signature in any forum, group or social networking site that allows it in their terms of service.
Link Exchanges- As a result of online networking, I have met many wonderful people. I have been approached a few times from people who have found my blog insightful and were interested in link exchanges (putting each others’ links on each others’ blogs). If I like their blog then I accept. I frequently see traffic coming into my blog from their blogs. Perhaps I could be more proactive and seek out link exchanges more often, but I just don’t have the ask for something mentality.
Blog Directories- Just like website directories, there are a ton of blog directories. If you google “blog directory” you will get endless results. Submitting your blog to blog directories increases your backlinks and should bring in traffic. I get quite a bit of traffic from one specific directory, Blog Surfer. Blog Catalog & Technorati are pretty good too. Here is a link to a good post on the, “20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To” written by Loren Baker. Additionally, not that it is necessary because the search engines will index your blog anyway, but you can add your blog to Google’s Blog Directory. Bing and other search engines probably have the same thing.
Feeds-Many major networking sites have applications to feed your blog to your profile. My blog feeds through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and every other social networking site I have a profile at that allows it. I find this helpful because although I don’t participate in every networking site I belong to, my profiles are still updated with fresh blog posts/news. (Note: the hyperlinks above are to instructions on how to link your blog to those social networking sites.)
Pings-For networking sites that don’t have feed applications, you can set up a ping. A ping is like a messenger that lets sites you subscribe to know new content has been added. You can set up pings at Ping-o-matic or Ping.fm.
Search Engines-I get a fair amount of search engine traffic. My posts are all related to my industry, therefore my content is relevant and keyword rich for the audience I am trying to target. (Something the search engines love!)
Comment on other Blogs-I have found that when I surf through other WordPress blogs and comment, the blog authors usually visit my blog in return.
Good Content- I am going to touch on content once more before I close. Good content is key. Yes, I believe all blogs will get traffic. But if you want reader loyalty, provide informative information with a personal touch. Give freebies…trade secrets, reference guides and give viewers a reason to bookmark your blog. Be honest, sincere and true. Let people know the “who” behind the screen. It’s not all about the product or the service. It’s the “who” behind the product and/or service that sets us apart from our competitors. I really believe all and all, this is what blogging is all about!
For ideas on what to blog about, visit 10 Simple Ideas for Writing Blog Posts
December 16, 2009
Posted by Dawn Lawson |
How To, Marketing | blog, blogging, build traffic to blog, building blog traffic, generating blog traffic |
4 Comments
I’ve spent a lifetime in the hospitality field and several years as a 911 Operator and Dispatcher. I loved the Public Safety field but unfortunately it was not the friendliest environment. If at least half of the personnel acted out of goodness perhaps I could have tolerated it, but it just did not work out that way. I took the lemons and made lemonade. My administrative experience provided me the tools to embark on a new journey. It feels fantastic to be appreciated again for my hard work and effort.
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