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50 Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

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50 Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Blog
It's time to throw more traffic at your blog than it knows what to do with.

Witnessing an ocean of traffic flood through the metaphorical gates of your beloved blog is a dream to most.

But building a good level of traffic doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. With a lot of hard work, quality content, and marketing nous, you can produce a well-trafficked blog. Here are 50 tips to get you on the right track.

  1. Write great posts.
  2. Write more posts (do you post 3x per week? Try 5x per week).
  3. Be among the first to break a hot story.
  4. Write something controversial.
  5. Write list posts.
  6. Create irresistible headlines.
  7. Use Feedburner.
  8. Submit key articles to ezinearticles.com for syndication.
  9. Write guest posts.
  10. Invite guest posters.
  11. Host webinars with other bloggers – tap into their audience.
  12. Start producing videos and tap into the huge YouTube market.
  13. Start producing a podcast and tap into the huge iTunes market.
  14. Start a periodical newsletter to bring visitors back to your blog on a regular basis.
  15. Create “link love” posts and let each blogger know that you are linking to them.
  16. Make your blog beautiful.
  17. Make your blog easy to navigate.
  18. Use breadcrumbs.
  19. Optimize your posts for SEO (permalink, title, description, headers, content, etc).
  20. Create loads of relevant tags and link them to your posts.
  21. Interlink your pages.
  22. Submit your site to major directories.
  23. Always use relevant alt tags and titles for your images.
  24. Include a link to your blog in any and all online profiles you complete.
  25. Search out and follow likeminded people on Twitter (search by keyword, or by hashtags, etc).
  26. Always follow those who re-tweet your content.
  27. Comment on other people’s Facebook pages to drive traffic back to your own.
  28. Mention other Facebook pages on your wall and you will show up in their feeds.
  29. Jump on the Google+ bandwagon and create your own page.
  30. Make sharing simple – include highly visible social media buttons on your posts.
  31. Submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.
  32. Interact with peers on forums.
  33. Reach out to bloggers you like – build relationships.
  34. Keep in touch with bloggers you know – nurture relationships.
  35. Provide insightful comments on other blogs and get to know other bloggers and commenters.
  36. Offer yourself up for interview on other bloggers’ podcasts.
  37. Interview other bloggers and tap into their audience.
  38. Talk to everyone about your blog. Don’t be shy.
  39. Print some business cards. Hand them to everyone and anyone.
  40. Attend blogging conferences and any “gatherings” related to your niche. Throw business cards around with wild abandon. Network like crazy.
  41. Create your own local periodical meet up for bloggers or for your blog’s niche.
  42. Release a free product and ask your readers to “pay with a tweet”.
  43. Write an eBook and market it voraciously.
  44. Produce a video course.
  45. Leave trackbacks on other blogs.
  46. Add your blog’s URL to your email signature.
  47. If writing for others, link back to your own blog (with permission only of course).
  48. Write a press release for your blog and publish it to the world.
  49. Hold a competition. The prize doesn’t have to be huge!
  50. Never stop trying new things.

That’s it! I could go on, but I think you have plenty to get started on, and I wanted to leave you with room for improvement.

What other tips can you think of for boosting your blog’s traffic?

Creative commons image courtesy of Mark Woodbury

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Comments (48)

  2. Hi Tom,

    Some great tips you’ve shared here, thanks a bunch! But .. regarding your no.8 (Submit key articles to ezinearticles), I thought Ezinearticles was hit hard by Google’s algorithm update (Panda), so now this strategy is obsolete?

    A lot of their links are made ‘nofollow’, so the profit for your SEO is gone too? But hey, enough great tips left on your list ;-P

    Cheers & Ciao ..

      • Hi Tom,

        thanks for your reply! Okay, by making your articles (or other web material) available to multiple other sites, you can get more exposure, .. very true!

        I do that too with articles from the gonzoblog.nl, but I also want to benefit SEO-wise when submitting my article.

        Ezinearticles was hit hard by Panda because of it’s duplicate content, so that’s why I’m doubting if submitting my article to them still is safe, .. SEO-wise?

        But maybe you can clear that out for me, what do you think, is it still safe to do? Cheers & Ciao ..

        • Gonzo,

          In my opinion, in terms of risking Google’s wrath, submitting articles to Ezinearticles is safe. Syndicating content has gone about since the dawn of media, and it is not something that Google would look to penalize deliberately.

          Google may have chosen to devalue the worth of Ezinearticles as a site, but that should not mean your site indirectly gets devalued too.

          If you are submitting quality articles to Ezinearticles with the honest intention of getting the content syndicated, you should have nothing to worry about.

          Cheers!

          Tom

    • Thanks James! Appreciate your comments, and couldn’t agree more. In this day and age, marketing is incredibly important – there is no doubt about that. However, without something to actually market, it is pointless. Content always comes first.

    • So you think writing good contents/posts can bring people to the site?
      I just a very little advice. What is the best way to bring traffic to my site?
      You can mention four beginning with the best

      • More Tips to increase visits

        This time the advice is more geared to SEO, not at all difficult to learn but will be very useful if used, remember that most visits (60 to 70%) come from search engines, especially Google, so by implementing these techniques along with small tips to increase visits before I gave them rest assured that their visits will be increased considerably.

        Befriend google and do nothing against him, do not break any of its guidelines. Keep them in mind when trying to implement something new in your blog.
        Was ordered to write. It is always best to use short sentences ending paragraphs. If you are Spanish speaking avoids abusing ‘,’ and the ‘y’, do not thrust too prayers. It is always best to use the period followed.
        Separate ideas with points and keep aside an order of hierarchy in the titles when using the H2 tags, H3, H4, H2 obviously has more hierarchy than the H3 and H4. If your blog already are using the H2 for titles then post the contents thereof must not use this but start with the H3.
        When you upload an image using the tag ‘alt’ to something descriptive, 3 or 4 words, do not put things like ‘image1′. Put descriptive things. If 70% of visits come from Google, 30% of these visits do through a picture so this tip is really useful.
        Add your blog to as many blog networks you can, here are some networks . Also inscribelo in as many directories as you can but try not to request these reciprocal directories, here’s a list for that.

        Never pay for links. We all know that we need people to link to that Google gives higher priority. But something banned by Google are paid links, do not accept or ask for any.
        Try to see that your posts go into a news site by a vote of users like Digg, Reddit or Slashdot . This better if someone does it for you because they tend to prohibit self-hype, I mean you get to put their links on your own page. A site that you accept this is Fresqui .
        Use a template design or light, do not upload thousands of images or become slow to load, and believe it or not Google penalizes that too. Do not put in the design static video, use the videos only in posts.
        Be organized, do not forget to use tags properly and do not choose more than 2 categories to your posts.
        Use either the bold. When you want to highlight something uses bold, use them in the words prefentemente more descriptive and if the words match the target or description of your blog much better.
        They are very useful tips that I hope that everyone served. Greetings.

        visit more information http://www.rkinfo.in/blog.html

  6. I have been looking and trying to figure out how to make a really good blog. i want to base it on humanity. i want to start networking with people and trying to build a network that advertises an effort to fight poverty and the unfortunate. i might not change the world but i figured i would try. you can email me if you would like. i would love to get some more tips. austindake18@gmail.com

    • Austin,

      It sounds like a very noble idea. There is absolutely no need to feel overwhelmed. If it ever seems like blogging is too complicated or too tough to get started with, just remember this – all great things are achieved one step at a time.

      Just make a start and see where it takes you! And you know where we are if you need more advice :-)

      Cheers,

      Tom

  8. But building a good level of traffic doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. With a lot of hard work, quality content, and marketing nous, you can produce a well-trafficked blog. Here are 50 tips to get you on the right track.

    • Hello Ayush,

      You can get decent SEO results with hosted sites, but if you are serious about your website, you should be self-hosted. As it is, you have no real control over your site – Blogspot could choose to take you down tomorrow. Sign up with a cheap provider like Bluehost, grab yourself a copy of WordPress, and migrate that site!

      Your blog’s design is okay. I have a few suggestions:

      - Publish an About Me/Start Here page and link to it in your nav bar. Make it easy for new visitors to know what your site is about.
      - Dump the blog archive sidebar widget. Link to your archive in your nav bar if you want to it.
      - Get rid of that live traffic feed thing. It doesn’t benefit your readers.

      Keep up the good work!

      Cheers,

      Tom

  17. Thanks for the great info; never saw it this short, simple and straight foward. Barely 7months I started my website, http://www.toplifehill.com, with it’s blog being my main focus. Please can you take a look and tell me how am doing, good or bad, and maybe tips on getting better (please).

    Also I have a very new blog, http://healthstethoscope.blogspot.com. Please what do you advice as regards hosting it with googles paid services? That is, is it better to use another paid host and migrate.

    Plenty questions, I know, but please reply. Thanks a lot.

    • Hello,

      The first site has a clean design (which is good) but is way too wordy and has nothing to break up all those huge blocks of text. Throw in some titles, bold and italicize some text, and get some images in there!

      As for the second site – never build your sites on a 3rd party platform! Grab yourself a domain and get self-hosted with WordPress (of course!).

      Cheers,

      Tom

  18. Thanks a lot for your advice, I’ll put them into practise immediately. But please, did you mean that my articles are too long, and what are your suggestions for pictures considering what I write about? Also, I didnt quite understand the “title” thing you talked about, because all my articles have titles.

    As for the second site I won’t wait longer to do what you advised. Thanks a lot.

    • Hello,

      The article is a little overwhelming as the very first thing a visitor sees when they hit your site. People immediately want to see what your site is all about and the different things it has to offer – they don’t want to wade through paragraphs of text to figure it out.

      By titles I meant subtitles. It looks like a you cover a few different topics (based upon the categories you have listed), so you might choose to use them as subtitles in your main article. This serves to break the text up (and therefore make it more readable) and will also give new visitors an overview of the content of your site.

      Cheers,

      Tom

  20. Very nice tips. I actually run a blog site that allows all bloggers to throw up there posts and backlink back to their websites. Its been helping us out because we get extra content on our site, and for other bloggers they add their web address on the bottom of their post and get a lot of click through. My website is http://www.checkzaza.com so any other bloggers feel free to contact me to help increase traffic to both of our sites.

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