Driving traffic to a blog actually not as hard as you think. All you need to understand is:
- To find out where people are looking for blog posts or articles to read
- To know what type of headline and content teaser can attract people to visit your blog.
Of course, content is important. But you must understand that in order to let people know that your content is important, you need to take care the two things above, that evolve around one single focus:
Get your content to as many eyeballs as possible.
That being said, I found out from my experience that good blog traffic is mainly coming from blog posts, not from the homepage. “Good” means targeted and unique visitors (visitors retention is another issue…) Therefore, search engine result pages placement is very, very important, as having your blog posts in Google or Yahoo! first page is a massive organic traffic generator.
Here are some simple, logical and practical tips on how to drive traffic to your blog – Please note, I have tested these tips and succeed in increasing my blogs’ traffic:
- Whenever possible, create a list or how-to blog post. “List” blog post type, such as “10 Steps to increase your blog traffic” or “Top 5 blog traffic ideas” and “How-to” blog post type, such as “How to drive traffic to your blog” or “How to do SEO” are two of the most successful content type in driving traffic. Use them sparingly in between regular, newsy or opinionated, blog post to give more flavour for your blog.
- Social bookmarking is a must. This is what people are still overlook today – You have to bookmark your own content (You’ve got to like your blog post – If you didn’t, then how can you expect others to?) My strategy is to bookmark to about 5 social bookmarking sites, 4 to high-traffic sites, such as Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Delicious, and 1 to dofollow bookmarking site, such as Blinklist. Mix the use of those social bookmarking sites with hundreds of others to get your content to as many communities as possible.
- Blog commenting, forum posting, Yahoo answers.
- Create content in high traffic content directory. Wikipedia, Squidoo, Hubpages and Google Knols works well, and having your links in them will benefit your search engine rank greatly. Writing useful content in them, of course, is a requirement – Great content will drive thousands of page views that will lead to visitors clicking on your links.
- Get others to review or mention your blog or blog post. People use this mainly for link building purpose, but I see reviews as double-benefit. First, getting your blog or blog post reviewed by related, quality sites will jump your rank in search engine result pages. Second, well-written review will entice visitors of the blogs or sites reviewing you to visit your blog.
- Support your blog with useful, traffic-generating services. Having a web directory attached to your blog works wonder for me. If your blog is about pet, having a pet doctor directory will drive massive traffic to your blog. This is also true for other traffic-generating services, such as press release services, classified ads, forums, and other similar type of services.
- Last but not least, never forget your own on-site SEO. Implement best SEO practices on your blog, such as using keywords in blog post title, signing your blog post with keywords, tagging each blog post properly, etc. Those will definitely work well, but not on their own – You need to do the above tactics to mix and match.
Use these wisely, as no comment and posting are created equal – You shan’t spam with “check this out!” or “good blog post. Thanks!”-type of content. They are simply useless (maybe for backlinking purpose, they still hold value.) Provide valuable and smart opinion, and others will soon see that your comments or threads are useful and will try to find out who you are. This leads to another tip: Always leave some form of contact info, generally your website address.
I GUARANTEE the results of the above tips, if done correctly and regularly.
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12 comment(s)
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You’re right about the need for targetted traffic – there’s no substitute for search engine traffic. Social traffic on the other hand does not tend to convert well into sales or ad clicks.
I am all about how to lists! I actually ghost wrote for a very popular makeup blog and made a series of 101 lists, which inspired me to do the same for my site to attract traffic.
I’m currently working on adding traffic to my site. This is really useful and I’ll take all your tips to heart. However, I’ve heard some wishy-washy things about meta keywords. Mostly, I hear that they are a waste of time, that they offer little in building traffic to your site.
I can’t really say whether this is true or not, but I’ll keep using the keywords and see if they work for me. My biggest help has been blog commenting, twitter and bookmarking sites. I’m crossing my fingers for the future!
Erika, Yes - some do think that meta keywords are useless, and putting to much keywords in it will actually hurt your SEO, and eventually your traffic building campaign. I, too, decided to keep using meta keywords - Although only a handful of search engines are still valuing meta keywords to a certain extent... My reasoning is that if it is not harmful, even a keyword in your page can make a big difference in SEO/link building.
Absolutely excellent advice and a perfect example of quality content in itself – great post. I have to give your SEO advice here about how to drive traffic to a blog two thumbs up and it’s nice to see someone who knows what they are talking about. The advice about having a directory that you moderate is shockingly good. Thanks.
This is fabulous stuff, I’m just about to start a blog from scratch so I will save this in my favourites and refer to it along the way. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for the good words :)
Thanks for sharing, Erika! In a sense, meta keywords are still important. My view is this: it's better to stick to what you are doing, rather than not. Even if you were proved wrong, meta keywords still hold some value, nevertheless.
Who says running your own blog is easy? I’ve got my blog up and I am planning to add up great content but other than that to bring traffic as you said, I will have to make sure that I’ve enough time to do it. Social Bookmarking definitely wasn’t in my mind but now I will take these bookmarking sites more seriously.
Thanks for the tips,
Bye
Debbie, Social bookmarking is fast if what you want is to bookmark your articles. Building connections is indeed time consuming :)
Honestly, this is one of the best articles I have read on building traffic to a blog. I think you cover most every point. Of course, most people prefer organic traffic from search engines. It can be hit and miss. Lists seem to do well as far as traffic, but bounce rate is high on lists and I would say that conversion is low. Mix up your content with lists and articles to get the best of both worlds.
Wow great advice, drive massive traffic is not difficult but of course it needs hard work, time, and patience. I have tried some of your advices, and now I’m doing link building for my site. Social bookmark also quite useful for me, I will continue to use it to promote my article. Thanks for this useful advice
Any feedback from you?