The more I surf, the more I find to share with you. I've answered a lot of questions for people today on getting traffic to their blog. It seems to be a big question with a big answer, the reason being because there isn't just one solution to the problem of getting readers to your blog.
What I have for you today is a link roundup (or a resource dump as I like to call it) of important articles, tools, and resources regarding the issue of driving traffic to your site. Some of these are articles from Hot Shot Blogger because I've already taken the time to write about them for you, and others are fresh off the web.
3) Google Analytics - Without a doubt, one of the most important free resources a blogger can have... a service that tells you how much traffic you're getting, where it's coming from, how long visitors stay, and more!
4) Google Keyword Tool - Another important and free resource. Use this to research hot keywords with low competition so you can SEO your posts, headlines, and tags.
5) Stumble Upon - This site will bring some traffic your way. To learn how to add your site to their listings, look at our how-to guide
HERE.
6) Yahoo Answers - Whatever your niche is, you can use Yahoo Answers to your advantage to bring traffic in to your blog and build your reputation as an expert in your niche. Sign up for an account, search the open questions pertaining to your niche, and answer away! Your goal here is to have your answers chosen as the best one, so you'll want to be as in depth (and polite) as possible. Also don't forget to add links to your own helpful blog posts that pertain to the question, as well as put your link in the "What's Your Source" field. Whatever you do, try not to appear 'spammy' about sharing your link.
7) Getting Traffic 107 - The Mega SEO Resource Guide - You really want to take a look at this one. If you have any hope at all of people finding your blog from search engines, you want to take care of some basic SEO stuff on your blog and within your posts. The Mega SEO Resource Guide has a great info-graphic to help you out, as well as links to several helpful articles that are crucial to your SEO success.
9) Run a giveaway with Rafflecopter - Granted, you'll need to have a following already for this to bring you more traffic (you know, you're going to need some blog subscribers and twitter followers) but running a giveaway is a great way to attract attention to your blog. People love free stuff, and Rafflecopter is a great free resource for you to give your free stuff away to the masses. Using Rafflecopter is two-fold in bringing you traffic: 1) People like free stuff, so your readers are bound to want to come back and see what you're offering, and 2) The way Rafflecopter works is by getting people to tweet your post, add you on Facebook, follow your RSS and more in order to gain entries into your 'raffle' for the free stuff, so they're spreading your website around to others, who will then in turn do the same because they want their entries as well. Rafflecopter = Awesome traffic possibilities for your blog.
11) Free-Press-Release - You'll need an account, but this site will let you send out those press releases you'll be doing after checking out #10. And if this site doesn't float your boat quite the way you'd like, then you can check out Mashable's list of
20 Free Press Release Sites.
12) Write great content! - This should really go without saying, but without great content, you're not going to get any traffic. Check out our post
HERE about how to write great content.
13) Get custom gear on Zazzle.com - What? What the heck is Zazzle? Zazzle is a print on demand company where you can create a free account and then put your logo, slogan, website (or anything else) on shirts, hats, bumper stickers, posters, coffee cups etc. While this is cool in itself, you can generate some traffic to your blog this way. Consider buying a bunch of bumper stickers (about 3 bucks) with your website url and putting them on your vehicles as well as making your family and friends take one. Now you've got mobile advertising. The same goes for shirts and hats that you and your friends can wear. On top of this, you can get custom gear like coffee cups, shirts, etc, and then raffle them away to followers with Rafflecopter (see #9) and then your followers are walking around in your gear too. If your blog is big enough, consider hiring an graphic designer to make some gear on Zazzle for you, and then you can sell your branded clothing etc on your blog... and this is where it's sneaky, because you're making money and your followers are advertising for you.
15) Make video Tutorials and post them on YouTube - You might not see how this can help drive traffic to your blog, but it really can. I run another blog dedicated to Photoshop Tutorials, and a lot of my traffic comes from tutorials I'd posted on YouTube years ago that are still going strong today. The key is to have a professional looking video intro (get one on
Fiverr.com for $5), make sure you announce what your blog is at the start of the video, and show your url at the end of the video as well with an invite for people to visit. Also don't forget to appropriately tag your video with Keywords found with the Google Keyword tool (#4) and the
YouTube Keyword Tool, and put a link directly to your website in the description. Be sure to have a Google Keyword rich title, and you might just find your video ranking high in the Google search engine results. The more videos you post that are valuable to viewers, the more traffic you will get.
16) Use Twitter to your advantage. If you're not already on Twitter, go create a free account now. Search out other Twitter users in your niche and start adding them. If I were you I would add around 200 per day. A lot of them will follow you back as a courtesy. After about a week, go back and stop following those who have not followed you in return. Before you know it you'll have a fairly large twitter following that will start growing on it's own. From day one you need to be tweeting about the updates on your blog with links to your posts. Don't just tweet once or twice a day, try to tweet 10 - 15 times a day and do it at different times. Some users only get on in the morning, others late at night. If you don't want to sit around at the computer all day, then use an automated twitter messaging service like
Social Oomph (find out
HERE at Makeusof's article). Don't forget to have a button on your blog in an visible place that will allow readers to follow you on Twitter.
17) Use some of your best advertising space for your own purposes. Don't be afraid to advertise yourself on your own blog. Use that prime real-estate to invite people to follow you by e-mail, RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other social network you're on.
18) Be active on Forums in your niche. Search out and join forums that are related to your niche, and put your blog link (if allowed) in your forum signature. Be polite and participate daily on the forums, and try to establish yourself as an expert in the field. This will help increase your online reputation as you offer advice and help to others, and will get your link out there to people who will find it useful. Targeted traffic is important, and a great way to get it is by letting people on Forums that respect you see it every time you post. Be careful not to spam the forums with your link. Having it in the signature is more than enough.
19) Write articles for other websites online. Writing quality content for sites like
Associated Content (Now Yahoo Voices), and
Squidoo will get your name out there and help establish you as an expert in your niche, but it will also allow you to link the article back to relevant posts on your own blog, thus getting your link out there to the masses. People who read what you wrote on those other sites will be inclined to click on the links to see what interesting content you've suggested for them to look at. The same principle applies to guest blogging, although as a new and unknown blogger it will be hard to get guest blogging gigs, and as a guest blogger you don't get the links by linking to yourself, but rather in your author bio.
20) Learn what not to do in your blog so you don't scare away the visitors you do get. We have a post
HERE about scaring away your visitors, and I think you'll want to give it a read. It doesn't matter how many techniques you use to drive traffic to your blog if visitors come in just to have you chase them back out the door again.
Well, that's it for this link roundup. I've given you 20 essential ways to increase traffic to your blog, and I hope you found them useful. If you liked this post, don't forget to share it with your friends.
Are there techniques we've missed for increasing traffic to your blog? Let us know in a comment below. As always, we love to hear what you have to say!
