Today we move on to the life blood of a blog. To keep the blog alive, and to make money, we need:
VISITORS.
Without visitors, traffic or hits a blog, in the majority of cases, is a waste of time.
Experts give us all sorts of suggestions as to what we should do to get visitors, everything from including our blog URL on our outgoing emails to submitting our blog details to the various directories.
The easy answer, as to how to get traffic, is quite simple: You have to become known.
However, before you become known, you have to measure your audience and track where your referrals are coming from. Two reasons for this:
(i) So that you can tell if your audience is actually growing. If it’s not, then something has to be done to correct this and
(ii) Once you know where your referrals are coming from you can play to your strengths.
For example, as far as referrals go, I have found that most Blog Directories are next to useless. Whereas I have several ‘friends’, I have made in the blogosphere, who send me lots of referrals. So who do I nurture? Obviously the friends who help me.
Okay, to measure and track your visitors there are several programs you can join. Two I recommend, because they are free and give quite a lot of useful info, are Sitemeter and eXTReMe Tracking. I’d suggest perhaps using them both because trackers seem to vary with their findings.
How Do You get Visitors?
Here are a few suggestions that have worked for me.
(1) Socialise.
You can do this by joining websites such as MyBlogLog, myLot and a myriad of others. Find one that suits you and use the facilities they have to get known. Contact other members, leave them worthwhile comments on their blogs, join their communities and generally be nice to people - just as you would at any social gathering in the real world. Within the Internet this can be a lot easier, especially if you are normally reserved.
There are lots of other groups such as the two I have mentioned. You’ll come across them in your Internet travels. Pick what you feel happy with, not necessarily those that others recommend.
Further reading:
Experiencing MyBlogLog
myLot, Money And Referrals
(2) Leave Comments.
Visit blogs of a similar niche to your own and leave comments relative to what has been written in their post. Don’t spam, be polite and most bloggers will do you the courtesy of a return visit.
(3) Exchange Links.
Some bloggers may be willing to exchange links with you. Don’t expect a long established, high traffic blog to necessarily exchange links. They probably won’t. It’ll most probably be like for like at first. But as I often say: If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
(4) Forums.
Get involved with a few forums. I’ve written about this previously in my post Money Making And Promoting Your Blog With Forums so I won’t repeat the same information here. I’ll just say that using a forum properly will attract visitors to your blog.
A couple of good forums, relative to blogging and also money making, are Digital Point and blogger forum. For a directory of over 1900 forums try Big Boards.
(5) Keywords.
It’s important to think about keywords when you are writing your posts. These should be included in the title and the body of the post without overdoing things. It is, in part, keywords that bring referrals to your blog from search engines - providing they are used properly. Again I have written about this previously: Keywords Bring Money Making Referrals.
In my opinion search engines bring some of the best traffic. Getting them to do this is what SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is all about. As far as I am concerned there are two main aspects to this.
(i) Keywords and
(ii) Getting good links to your blog.
Keeping it simple, I have already suggested ways to do this. There is more to it than what I have written but this is sufficient for a new blogger. You will soon come across lots of other advice.
Further reading:
Learn To Do Effective SEO (In less than 350 words)
(6) Blog Directories.
I have previously said that I don’t reckon much to Blog Directories, as far as getting referrals is concerned. However there is another side to these directories. They provide links to your blog and, as I have said in (5) above, links are important to SEO. Maybe it is, therefore, worth submitting your blog to some directories.
In my Money Making Weekly Reports I list directories that are giving me referrals. There are also numerous Blog Directories listed at the bottom of this blog’s side column. These are all ones where I have listed my blog.
(7) Technorati
I’ve given this a separate heading because it does produce visitors in various ways. I suggest that, if you haven’t already done so, you join Technorati and claim your blog(s). It is all self explanatory once you register.
Further reading:
Blog Marketing Tips - Technorati Explained
(8) Blog Carnivals
To quote: 'A Blog Carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that links to other blog articles on the particular topic.'
You can submit your posts, or articles, to Blog Carnivals (which are on other blogs). If accepted there will then be a link to your post (or article), which may then send referrals to your blog.
You can also host Blog Carnivals on your own blog. This generates interest and often an increase in traffic when they are published.
You can find more information, and an index of Blog Carnivals to which you could submit posts, at Blog Carnival.
(9) Link Baiting.
Often mentioned by long standing bloggers. It simply means writing a post, or providing some sort of information, that will make other blogs want to link to this. In other words, other bloggers will mention your post or information on their blogs and will link to it. This will (a) send you visitors and (b) give you another link to your blog. This is important, as explained in (5) above and also for PageRank which I’ll go into later.
(10) Link Love.
This may sound a strange way to attract more visitors. Link Love is about linking, within a post, to other blogs. A couple of examples here and here.
Now you might think that linking to other blogs will only be good for the blogs you are linking to. However, by giving a little Link Love occasionally, you often get traffic in return. Try it!
Much More.
There are many more ways to attract traffic but 10 seems a good number to finish on.
Do the simple things that have been covered in Parts 1 and here in Part 2.
Post content of value > Attract visitors > Keep visitors on your blog > Make them want to return.
If you can do this then you can start to make money - which I’ll cover in Part 3.
Further reading:
How To Get Traffic To Your Blog And Make Money With It
How to Get Free Traffic for Your Web Site
Blog Marketing Tips - Technorati Explained
Good luck,
Mike.
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