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Building blog traffic for newbies

Building blog traffic for newbies

Duncan Riley> was checking out a Bloggers forum which someone is currently bank rolling through Google Adsense at the moment and got sucked into joining and posting the odd thought. One thing that struck me was the lack of knowledge about promoting blogs, so this is what I posted (with a few edits). Let me know what you think.

Blog Promotion for Newbies
1: Don’t use blogrolling: it may be easier to use but the javascript stuffs up search engines when they are looking for links and makes the links useless, use WordPress’s managed links feature or similar product, or even hard code it, I did for the 18 months I used MT before changing to WordPress

2. Pinging to weblogs et al is good but trackbacking to sites is better, when of course your post is in relation to that sites topic. Also legitimate commenting directly on other sites helps expose your site to others. But remember, it must be legitimate comment and not spam! You can even send people to your blog from your email signature by adding a CTA button with a link to your latest post. WiseStamp’s email signature editor offers this option for free, so give it a try.

3. Offer to exchange links on your site under your links section, it lets people know that your interested in linking and will build up your site quickly in Technorati and Google.

4. Link to other small sites without exchange, either through side bar or post: linking to big sites is great in showing what your reading but does nothing to build up your readership because they nearly always never return the favour, indeed a number of them will steal your stories or ideas without any attribution at all. Smaller sites on the other hand are often stoked that you’ve linked to them and will return the favour without asking, even if they don’t, you’ve still done a good deed.

See Also
aged domain blogging

5 submit your blog to ALL the search engines, it might take some time but the spiders will start coming if….

6. The most important feature of all: post regularly and post often. It not only brings readers back regularly but it means the spiders from the search engines will return more frequently indexing your entire site, and you’ll start getting hits from the search engines. Some may argue that these aren’t that valuable but I would argue that’s rubbish. It exposes your site to a new audience for free, and even if only a few return you’ve still built up your readership for free. Take the Blog Herald for example, we get 5,000 views per month just from clickthrus in from Google and another 2,500 from other search engines (Google is the only real game in town though). Even if only 1% return to the site later, that’s 75 new regular readers per month or nearly 1000 per year, and what I also find is that this traffic also responds well to advertising on the site if they’ve stumbled in for the wrong reason.

View Comments (84)
  • I would have to agree with each of these points! In my 6 months at blogging I would say that these points have held to be true. I am finally getting hits from Google and other search engines!

  • Not too long ago I received criticism for my belief that regardless of how long it might take for a search engine such as Google to list you..it is better to submit your site and therein do something, rather than doing nothing and wondering why your site is always empty. So it is nice to see that I am not alone in this belief (ref: point #5). However, one of the problems I find is that because my site is subject specific it is harder for me to draw in the audiance needed. As there is far more popularity for general politic and espeically political bashing than there is for a governmental watchdog site such as mine….any suggestions here?

    Christopher
    Lost In America, Org.
    http://www.lostinamerica.blogs.com
    [email protected]

  • Your #6 was not the most important. I think the most important is #7 – Write original and high-quality stuff! Visitors will return only if your blog is interesting enough.

  • Cloudless
    your right to some extent, original and high quality stuff is important in developing repeat visitors and I should have included it, but its not as relevant as quantity for search engines (well atleast Google). Personally I pursue a mixture of both, but I also know some bloggers who blog infrequently (say every couple of days) with great posts who just don’t get the traffic due to the lack of frequency.

  • I am fairly new to blogging myself, but things are building nicely. I was picked up on day one by a popular local blog and that gave me a big boost right from the get go, other links soon followed and they go both ways. So I agree that exchanging links is a big part of promotion.

    Thanks for your other tips, I will be implementing them ASAP!

  • These are a great set of ideas for gaining more visitor traffic to your blog. I have to say one thing, however. It’s no longer necessary to submit your blog to the various search engines. In fact, as long as you have an incoming link from any blog already indexed in Google, Yahoo, or MSN Search, their spiders will crawl and index your site by following that incoming link. The need to submit to search engines is eliminated.

    On the other hand, it’s a very good policy to submit your blog to the various blog directories. They are free and easy to get your blog included. Most of the mainstream website directories, like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory (not the same as their search engine) accept blogs submissions as well. Directories send a steady stream of targeted traffic to your blog.

  • Entirely agree with your comments. In real estate there’s a saying that a good house sale is a matter of location, location and location. In blogging I would think it’s a case of content, content, content and/i> frequent posting.

  • Thanks for the tip on Blogrolling. I’ve noticed that shows my blog when I load it andhad the same problem while checking out other rolled sites. I also have to start pinging.

  • This is an interesting discussion. Thank you. My feeling about getting high page placement in Google is that it’s a double-edged sword.

    Over the course of the several months that I’ve been writing a blog, I’ve percolated up to page one or two in Google for just about any term you would use to search for Italian food. The result has been (according to my Web logs) that nine of ten visitors to my site find me through Google searches.

    The downside to this is that they’re searching for some kind of free information, and they find me selling my cookbooks and continue their search almost immediately.

    Of course, I’d love for every one of my visitors to buy one of my cookbooks, but I’ll continue to share recipes and thoughts about Italian food whether they do or not. As long as I can continue to pay my ISP and my broadband connection charges, I’ll share what I know for free.

    Again, though, in my case, nine in ten visitors don’t stay long enough to explore my content because they’ve been searching for something more specific.

    The outcome for me has been that I get a ton of traffic, but they don’t stay for more than a couple of seconds.

    Best regards,
    Skip Lombardi

  • Great article! I definitely agree that posting often and getting indexed by search engines makes a big difference in building traffic – for example, I found this post by searching on Google.

  • Sites like blog explosion and blog clicker can really explode your traffic. Also, by surfing in those sites you will also find other blogs that you are interested in and possibly some link exchanges or what not. Not all of your visitors will stick around or ever come back. But some of them will.

  • I think, especially if you’re using your blog to promote your website, that the same rules apply to blogging that apply to submitting articles to ezines: keep the original spirit of the internet intact. Quality content means that you give information freely and that you don’t pitch your product too hard.

  • Exactly what I think.
    Many new bloggers are just fucked up too fast.
    If you start a blog you can’t expect, that people will say: “Oh, a new blog – i must be there” and give up after a few posts.

    I always say: It does not matter – write 100 articles and get them listed, make them interesting and the people will come themselves

  • I am in the midst of getting traffic for my blog. These tips will really help me out. It is also quite reassuring to see that some of the things that I am doing appears here as well!

    Thank you!

  • These tips are generally good. But what is not mentioned is the amount of time it takes to build “Quality” traffic.

    Some blogs/sites get plent of 1-15 second traffic due to friendly links, comments, forum posts, or other drivers. But How does one build returning traffic that will buy your products, affilate products, click on ads, or contribute to the comments and forums of a site?

    Other than the obvious answer of “Lots of content, frequently”, I notice it helps to be part of a large network, or to be mentioned on your peers blogs. Viral marketing can be hit or miss. And some topics are just overdone, so finding a new angle is critical.
    Just my $0.00000002.

  • Simple, interesting, sound advice! Good take on the numbers as well, if you’re able to convert 1% of your traffic into 75 new readers, maybe they’ll tell a friend… who’ll tell a friend… etc.

  • One thing I was thinking about is:
    Surf for clicks and similar websites brings you traffic, but not many readers. Knowing that, I was wondering if they could instead be used to get higher ranking in blog directories. Any thoughts on that?

  • Excellent recommendations…I’m so stumped these days! So it was nice to see a fresh perspective.

    [http://holdthepaprika.blogsome.com]

  • Trackbacks allow people who read other blogs to randomly click on you, but not help your search engine ranking. Nearly all the major blog software and the search engines themselves have teamed up to provide a rel=”nofollow” attribute when linking via trackback. The purpose of it is to deter trackback spam and hence you shouldn’t rely on it for page rank.

  • Hi. We started a new blog that I think will be of use to people looking for content on their blog as well as people willing to contribute in other peoples projects in order to get linked.
    The idea is quite simple but I think the method is a good way to increase traffic.
    Check it out at collectivized.blogsome.com
    Any feedback is welcome.

  • Good tips. One thing that I wondered tho is how long it actually takes to build up a sizeable amount of traffic. Obviously it’s going to be different depending if your niche or not, but it would nice to know peoples experiences.

  • thanks for the informative tips, I’m a new blogger and your advice may help generate some traffic – although it is still too soon to tell. I’ll post up another comment later to report on the results.

  • Great advice, especially about search engines. I would also recommend customizing the meta tags in every post as well, that certainly doesnt hurt!

  • Building blog traffic for newbies article search brought mere, and the 6 points raised is certainly very useful advice for (not only) newbies. I’ll experiment with these points for further increased traffic.

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