July 11, 2008
How to Get Blog Traffic - 11 Steps to Growing Readership
Many of us work so hard on our blogs and frankly, it kind of sucks if we don’t get the traffic we want. And it’s a catch-22…you can’t get the traffic without the work, but it’s tough to justify all the work if you don’t get the traffic. Well, here are 11 suggestions to get the traffic you want to your blog.
1. Be Remarkable - This one is number one for a reason. If you do this, most of the rest of this list will come into place and will have lasting effect on the growth of your readership.
Be remarkable by:
- Being informative: Teach your readers what they want and convey the info in a way your audience appreciates.
- Entertain - Insert humor, amaze your readers…do what’s appropriate to get their attention.
- Connect with Your Audience - Understand and speak to their pain, worries and even their dreams and desires.
- Be Controversial - Share an opinion…not everyone has to agree with you to find you interesting.
I have been accused of having an “if you build it, they will come” attitude with this suggestion and I guess to some extent, it is true. That doesn’t mean you can’t be proactive in your traffic building as well, but the more remarkable your blog is…the better the long and short term effects of your efforts.
(Side Note: I personally do very little active traffic generation for this blog and I seem to be doing all right. I keep my focus on delivering what my readers want and it works! 
)
2. RSS Feed - You’d think it’d be a given, but I see plenty of blogs without an RSS feed. If you’re not familiar with the term, an RSS feed allows your readers to be notified when you make new blog posts. Unless your audience is totally tech-savvy and is all over the RSS thing, I recommend setting up a feed that allows your reader to sign up for updates into their feed reader or email if they prefer. An easy way to set up this type of feed is to use a free service like FeedBurner.
3. Ping!: Make sure your blog is set up to ping the various web blogs. Many blog platforms allow you to set this up in your settings. This helps a variety of information/search sites know that you’ve updated your blog.
4. Make Comments: Make useful comments on busy blogs related to your blog’s subject. Usually, you can link back to your site when you make a comment on another blog. BE RESPECTFUL!: Only use the space provided for your link…don’t write ads or fancy signatures AND make sure your comment is relevant and useful to other readers.
5. Do Trackbacks: Many blogs allow you to make commentary about their posts on your own blog. When you link to their particular blog post, a link to your own blog post appears in the comments area on their blog. For trackbacks between WordPress blogs, all you need to do is link to a blog post and it’s automatically set up. BE RESPECTFUL: If you’re going to trackback, have something useful to say. Just summarizing and linking to someone’s post does NOT add to the discussion.
6. Keep Your Email List Up-to-Date: You probably already know that your mailing list is a valuable asset. Use this asset to the fullest by sending them to your blog to read the posts you think they will find helpful, enjoy, etc.
7. Distribute Content: A great way to get people read more of your content is by getting content out there to more people. You can distribute articles, post videos, guest post on other blogs…just get some good stuff out there and lead people back to read your blog.
8. Affiliates Link to Your Blog: If your affiliate program allows your affiliates to link to any page on your site, encourage them to link to and write about your various blog posts. The system I use at Quicksales (a private-label 1ShoppingCart) allows my affiliates to quickly and easily link to any blog post they want.
Affiliate referrals are cookied when someone follows a link and if that referral eventually buys, they get the commission. Of course, the conversions on blog links aren’t going to be as good as linking directly to a sales page, but it gives your affiliates the opportunity to bring value to their own readers (by linking to your AWESOME content) and potential benefit financially.
9. Social Networks: You can use various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) to drive traffic to a blog. People you connect with socially are likely to be interested in what you have to say on your blog. Make sure you follow proper etiquette and use your common sense. Also, don’t overdo it and get lost in your social networks all day…you’ve got WORK and other important things to do. Plus, if you are remarkable, those who use social networks will be doing the work for you and talking about you.
10. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking includes sites like Digg, del.icio.us and Stumble Upon, where you can share links to a variety of content. Some people self-bookmark, but realize this could put your account in jeopardy, so read all the rules first. Others choose to work with others in helping each other bookmark. Being remarkable also encourages people to spread the word on your behalf.
11. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): I put this one last, where I know a lot of people tend to put it first. If your goal is repeat visitors who become faithful fans, put SEO on the backburner and SEO your other content pages where you are looking for first-time or drive-by visitors.
The problem with trying to optimize all your blog pages is that it takes away from you being remarkable. A remarkable blog is written with interesting subject lines (rather than boring keyword phrases) and isn’t always on topics that people use a search engine to find. Of course, you can combine the two (SEO and being remarkable) in some ways, but don’t let SEO take anything away from the interest and word-of-mouth your blog creates.
NOTE: If you need more help with making the most of your blog, sign up for our Internet Marketing Blogging Bootcamp. We have a few spots left and registration ends Sunday.
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Alice,
Great post. A couple of things:
So, if we download feedburner, we don’t have to worry about RSS? I hope, because I’ve never understood RSS.
I appreciate your last point, too, because just yesterday, I wrote a blog post in response to a comment I received in a recent survey I did.
I went to wordtracker and couldn’t find a good keyword phrase for the post. So, I decided to just address the comment and titled the post to relate to it.
I like the point about differentiating between posts for first time visitors and your more “regular” readers and the need for keyword selection.
Thanks!
How to Get Blog Traffic - 11 Steps to Growing Readership is a great post. Thank you for the great content, I have become a regular reader.
Hey Laurie,
Feedburner is not a download. It is a free account you create to set up user-friendly RSS feeds that can be done by email and RSS reader. It is a fairly simple set up, but just go through the instructions. A tech-dummy like me was able to figure it out. Once it’s set up, you’ll have copy and paste code that you can put onto your blog for your readers to use.
Thanks Robert…glad it’s helpful.
I have to admitt I enjoy reading your posts. They are very informative and worth the read. Thanks for being such a sweetie!!
Serena Carcasole
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Alice, this may be silly, but I’m not sure I understand the “Ping!” concept. How does that work?
I also want to commend you for encouraging us to make our blogs great. Most “make money online” tips encourage only SEO and and lots of affiliate links, but that can make for a pretty pathetic blog (or website) with no passion.
And if we don’t have passion and something worthwhile to say, why on earth are we wasting web space?
Thanks for your great tips.
Thanks for the great tips. That’s a nice feature of Quicksales that I’ll keep in mind when I build my own affiliate program.
If you need a good RSS tutorial try here-
http://www.sls.lib.il.us/infotech/presentations/2004/cil-rss.pdf
@Amanda: When you set a blog to ping update notification sites, what happens is the blog software will contact these sites and tell them “Look, here’s a new post by Amanda, this is the URL and a short description”.
The update service will say “Ok thanks” then proceed to list your post, url and possibly an excerpt to their site.
All this goes on programatically in the background. You won’t see it happening but it is
You only need to set it once and the blog will keep doing that for every post you make until you turn it off.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for the info, Alice!
Laurie, I second Alice’s comments about RSS. It was confusing for me, but I managed to find all the instructions via the web to create my own RSS.xml files, RSS feeds, and get my podcasts listed on iTunes. If you *want to know*, there are plenty of resources available for the do-it-yourselfer.
Best regards,
Nancy
Excellent post, I’ve just started a blog and see I have much to learn. Is this advice geared towards Wordpress or will it work for all blogging platforms?
Thank you so much for all this valuable information. I have also been confused about RSS feeds.
Thanks for the great tips! I was wondering what PING services you (or anyone) recommends? I know Wordpress (my blog platform) comes with just pingomatic (I think) and it covers a lot.
Anybody want to share a few that have proven helpful?
Thanks everyone. Lynette has just posted a helpful post on RSS if you want to check it out.
Lorraine, it works for all platforms. I mentioned Wordpress in the trackback part because they have a simple trackback system. Trackbacks are supported by other blog platforms as well, but I’m not as familiar with how they work. Blogger, though, doesn’t support trackbacks, but has a “Link to This Post” system which some Blogger blogs might be using.
For Ping services…honestly Jeff…I go what’s standard in WordPress (and previously Blogger). Lynette is more of the technical one and she may have done something for more extensive for me, but I’m not sure.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Great list of useful ideas. I know what you’re saying about the SEO at the bottom of your list but for me, simple SEO takes just a couple of hours and is definately helpful for organic traffic through search engines.
Hey Steve…it’s not the time involved because that’s simple. I did mean to include in the original post that I might focus on some off-page SEO (building links, etc)…but I try not to take away from my message and ability to connect with and get the attention of my readers for SEO.
I have static HTML content pages for that.
Thanks for the feedback!
Oooh…and one more thought. If you’ve set up a blog as a sort of content management system (posting articles, etc), rather than a personal connection type of blog, that’s a totally different thing. In those cases, optimization is probably a big part of your strategy.
Hi Alice,
Thanks for this information. It’s nice to see someone focussing on the content - especially the advice to ‘be remarkable’! We all have our own style and perspective on things… and it’s important to share that with others, rather than just being another cardboard cut-out blogger.
Great tips. When you start your blog it is really confusing how to get traffic. Your post helps.
Regarding the ping set up on wordpress; in your dashboard go to “settings, writing” and scroll down to “update services”. That’s where pingomatic lives. I went to several sites that will automatically ping an article for you including pingmyblog.com, autopinger.com and a few more. Then I made a list of all the feeds, copied them into wordpress in the “update services” box.
I did filter my list so that I wouldn’t double ping by taking a look at what pingomatic was pinging and deleting those entries from my master list. If you want a copy of the list visit my blog and leave me a message.