| It doesn't really matter if your blog is a personal blog that you do just for fun, or if you're a serious online marketer who uses their blog to make money, everyone wants to know how to increase blog traffic. That seems to be the universal question.
The good news is that just by using a blog format for your website you've already done a lot to get more targeted traffic to your blog. The search engines love fresh content and since blogs are updated far more frequently than a static site would be, the search engines view that as a content driven site and will rank it higher.
There are many other things you can do, for free, to increase the amount of traffic you get to your blog. And remember, it's not just about any traffic, it's about getting quality traffic, traffic that consists of people who are actually interested in the topic of your blog.
Here are a few of the simplest and most effective free things you can do to keep the flow of quality traffic to your blog going strong:
1. Post often. The more often you post, the more often your blog will get crawled by the search engines and you will be rewarded with a higher page rank and more free traffic. One word of warning though, as with vitamins, don't fall into thinking that if one is good 15 must be better. If you post too many times in a day, the search engines will think that your not building your site in a 'natural' way and they will penalize you for it.
A very effective rule of thumb is to post one post every single day for 21 days, I don't know why, but that 21 seems to be the magic number. After the first 21 days you can slow down to several posts a week if you want, or you can continue with one a day, it's up to you.
2. Write articles that will direct people to visit your blog. You can use the free Google keyword tool to target the types of keyword phrases people are using to find your blog, than write quality articles around that keyword, then you can submit your article for free to article directories such as EzineArticles.com.
3. Learn a little about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and start using those techniques on your blog. This will make your site stand out to the search engines. Don't worry about knowing everything there is to know about SEO, just a few basic concepts can make a huge difference.
4. Visit other blogs and leave a comment with a link back to your blog. This will not only show people that you are an expert in your field, but they will also be interested in checking out your blog and more about what you have to say, assuming of course that you leave insightful, interesting comments.
These methods are the easiest methods that will help you increase blog traffic, that you will find. Don't waste a ton of money on expensive pay per click campaigns when you can have even better results just by investing a little time. |