How to Get Blog Traffic – 11 Steps to Growing Readership

Blogging for a living can be hard work, and to be honest it gets very frustrating when we don’t obtain the traffic we need to keep the blog thriving. You see, simply working hard can’t always guarantee that you will receive the traffic you want, while on the other hand, not working at it is a sure fire way to never receive traffic at all. For us bloggers that work too hard at this game, here are 11 successful techniques to help you get all the traffic you need.

1. Be Remarkable – This one is number one for a reason. If you do this, most of the rest of this list will come into place and will have lasting effect on the growth of your readership.

Be remarkable by:

* Being informative: Teach your readers what they want and convey the info in a way your audience appreciates. * Entertain – Insert humor, amaze your readersdo what’s appropriate to get their attention. * Connect with Your Audience – Understand and speak to their pain, worries and even their dreams and desires. * Be Controversial – Share an opinionnot everyone has to agree with you to find you interesting.

This may be seen as a “build it and they will come” attitude, which is usually advised against in internet marketing, which may be true in some respects. Of course, this doesn’t mean giving up manual traffic building, but the more “out there” or a controversial your blog is, the higher the chance is that your efforts become noticed.

2. RSS: Some may say RSS old news, but there are still many blogs that haven’t thought to use a feed. If it is not something you have come across, an RSS feed is simply something that allows readers to stay updated without constantly visiting the blog. The RSS feed alerts readers to every new post via their feed reader or e-mail account. Using a service like FeedBurner.com will make this process a lot easier.

3. Ping!: Make sure your blog is set up to ping the various web blogs. Many blog platforms allow you to set this up in your settings. This helps a variety of information/search sites know that you’ve updated your blog.

4. Blog commenting: Offer to comment or publish content on other blogs or sites related to the same niche. The owner will usually allow you to link back to your own site, providing the comment you have provided is respectful and useful to the site itself. Be as courteous as possible! Make sure your comment is relevant, and don’t make it a big advertisement for your own site.

5. Do Trackbacks: Many blogs allow you to make commentary about their posts on your own blog. When you link to their particular blog post, a link to your own blog post appears in the comments area on their blog. For trackbacks between WordPress blogs, all you need to do is link to a blog post and it’s automatically set up. BE RESPECTFUL: If you’re going to trackback, have something useful to say. Just summarizing and linking to someone’s post does NOT add to the discussion.

6# Stay in contact with your list. As every marketer says, the money is in the list. This is definitely true, but the list needs nurturing and updating or you may begin to lose subscribers. Try to send relevant posts and things that you know people on your list to enjoy.

7. Distribute more content: Don’t limit all of your content just to your blog. Distribute your content in other ways, like article marketing videos, podcasting, posting content on other people’s sites and blogs etc. Keep pumping that content out to drive more visitors to your pages.

8. Affiliates Link to Your Blog: If your affiliate program allows your affiliates to link to any page on your site, encourage them to link to and write about your various blog posts. The system I use at Quicksales.com (a private-label 1ShoppingCart) allows my affiliates to quickly and easily link to any blog post they want.

If a potential client clicks through these links provided by your affiliates, they are automatically cookied, meaning that any purchase made on your site will generate an affiliate commission. This will give incentive to your affiliates to publish your content and link back to the original article. This won’t offer the same benefits of landing on the actual sales page, but will provide a good alternative and at same time provide referred visitors with excellent value.

9. Social Networks: You can use various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) to drive traffic to a blog. People you connect with socially are likely to be interested in what you have to say on your blog. Make sure you follow proper etiquette and use your common sense. Also, don’t overdo it and get lost in your social networks all dayyou’ve got WORK and other important things to do. Plus, if you are remarkable, those who use social networks will be doing the work for you and talking about you.

#10 Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is different to social networks. Social bookmarking is a little like bookmarking your favorite websites in your browser, except the list will be published for everybody else to see, including the search engines. Some people bookmark their own sites, but do understand that the networks do not like this and may ban your account for “self promotion”, so be sure to read the rules. Another technique is to pay others or work in a cooperative scheme. But again, if you are remarkable enough, your site will be book marked thoroughly by the internet public.

11. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): I put this one last, where I know a lot of people tend to put it first. If your goal is repeat visitors who become faithful fans, put SEO on the backburner and SEO your other content pages where you are looking for first-time or drive-by visitors.

The trouble with trying to optimize every single page on your blog is the time it takes to do so, and the fact that you could be using that time for being remarkable. Remember that content should be readable rather than just written for the search engine’s, and keyword rich with the same phrase repeated throughout. If you’re savvy enough however, you could combine the two by optimizing your existing pages, but don’t make this a priority over your (remarkable) content.