Wednesday, May 7, 2008

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

If you're a blogger, and want more traffic to come to your site, you're going to have to take action. There are simply too many blogs online vying for readers' attention for them to find you.

Here are a few ways you can increase your traffic.

Become more social. Think of the blogosphere as a dance club. You want people to dance with you, but it ain't gonna happen unless you get out on the dance floor. In order to get readers to your site, you have to let them know you're there. Try taking advantage of the many social media sites available like Facebook and MySpace. Create a profile that's relevant to what you're blogging about and start making friends.

Submit to blog directories. There are plenty of blog directories online, and many of them break down their listings according to topics. Get your blog listed there because many people look to those first before doing a general Google search. There are also blog directories geared toward specific topics. Do a search on the topic of your blog and see what comes up.

Latch onto popular blogs. Everybody likes to be with the In Crowd, so look for where the action is and join in. Find blogs that are similar in scope to what you're offering, then join the community. Become a frequent commenter on the site, just make sure you're bringing something to the table, and not doing it only for the traffic. Also, go beyond just being a commenter and make friends with the site's author. Getting a mention in a post from a widely read blogger is like being handed a pot of gold.

Blogs, and their visitors, feed off one another. One blog latches onto another blog and then a third blog comes in -- the next thing you know, you've got a little community of blogs, which will attract even more traffic as time goes by.

Make good use of SEO. SEO won't drive traffic to your site as quickly as the first two options, but you should make use of it nonetheless. Having a good SEO strategy is a good plan for the long haul, because while you'll get short bursts of traffic from the other ways I've mentioned, SEO will keep traffic coming in from outside sources for a long time.

The bottom line is that you've really got to work at getting traffic these days. With millions of blogs online, and millions more coming every year, there's just no way to get noticed without being proactive in your marketing.

Mike Sieber - The Word Wrangler - is a professional web copywriter with over 5 years experience. You can hire him by visiting his site: http://www.thewordwrangler.com

No comments: