20 Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Written by John Cow on August 2nd, 2007

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Mr. Bloggeries asked us if he could get a link from us. Why sure, since your site is very much blog related, we’ll link you for an article! *cough*that and the paid link your giving us for free on your PR6 site*cough*. Here’s what the owner and creator of bloggeries had to say.

Have you recently created a blog, or are you perhaps considering it? The first thing that you need to realize before you begin is that you won’t be able to drive traffic to your blog overnight. Instead, the process of attracting readership is a little drawn out and involves several different factors, including how you blog and what you’re blogging about. Where your blog is hosted and how well you optimize the website for search engine results. Here’s a list of quick tips that can help you increase the traffic that your blog needs. This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are many other steps to try in addition to what you see here. Consider this a mere jumping off point.

1. When writing blog entries, use lists whenever possible. Lists are a great way to break up the content and they are much easier for readers to process.

2. When you are writing blog entries, try to stick to information that needs to be read right away and stay on topic as much as possible.

3. When writing blog entries, strive to become an expert in your pasture so that all of the information that you post is relevant, news worthy and worth reading.

4. Try to break the news whenever possible!

5. Try to be timeless. Don’t write posts that will become outdated eventually. Instead, try to write entries which will still be worth reading years from now.

6. Share your expertise with other people in the same field as you, so that readers will come to recognize you as an expert and to depend on you for the right information.

7. Write posts that are long and definitive.

8. Try to post eye candy, like polls, meters, pictures and other media which attracts views.

9. Reply to comments and e-mails so that your readers know you are listening, paying attention and that you care about their feedback.

10. Encourage all of your readers to subscribe to an RSS feed so that they may stay up to date with your blog.

11. Allow comments, because they will help your blog become a virtual water cooler that will be fed with lengthy and sometimes controversial conversations by many readers. Participate in these conversations and appreciate the increase in readership that follows.

12. Point to useful resources. The more little-known they are, the more helpful it will be to recommend them.

13. Write about the things that readers want to know about, like gadgets, Google and Web 2.0. Make your blog personal, but not too personal. Make sure that readers want to know about your bad hair day before you post about it.

14. Write about blogging, so that readers will be inspired to create their own blogs. If you inspire them, they will more than likely link back to you. Their readers will quickly become your readers. (moo-haha)

15. Post on weekdays more than weekends, because you will attract more readers this way. If you can, post every single day because the more you post, the more people you will attract to your blog.

16. Write about many different topics while still remaining at least somewhat relevant to your industry. The more you talk about, the less likely your readers are to become bored with your blog.

17. Be patient, because attracting new readership is not something which can happen in a single day. Include yourself in the network as much as you can be talking about and linking to other blogs, articles, web sites and content, then wait patiently for them to do the same for you.

18. Write in proper English. Nobody wants to read a blog with spelling or grammar errors, so edit yourself ruthlessly until the quality of your blog is up to par with the industry experts.

19. Don’t be boring. Ranting endlessly about a topic is only effective if people want to read about it. Make sure that you are blogging in an interesting way.

20. Above all else, write about topics that people actually want to read. Better yet, write about topics that people will be interested in sharing. One of the biggest features of the blog community is that a good post will be passed on, talked about and even blogged about. So blog about interesting things that are worth talking about.

To share ideas on this topic and others related to blogging as well as network with other bloggers you may want to visit Bloggeries Blog Forum.

Us cows agree with most of these. We’re not too sure about points 7, 8 and 13. What do you guys say?

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58 Comments »

Comment by Debo Hobo
2007-08-02 22:04:49

Hey now, this is a very useful list I can use. I need all the help I can get. I could also use a back link from you let me know what I need to do.

Thanks :twisted:

Comment by John Cow
2007-08-02 22:15:25

Pay us 1 million dollars?

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-02 23:27:42

A lot of those should be fairly common sense, at least I hope they are. I think number 7 is subjective. Some people believe shorter posts are better with certain exceptions.

I do agree that building traffic or getting anywhere in the blogging world can take time, lots of it at that. However Mr. Cow is doing a terrific job his first month, so I must say congrats ^_^

 
 
Comment by LuKiaNo
2007-08-02 22:17:06

1 million for a link? A little expensive don’t you think?

Comment by John Cow
2007-08-02 22:22:40

Is it? Ok, we’ll drop down to 100k

Comment by Webd360
2007-08-02 22:25:39

I’ll give it to you in monopoly money :razz:

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Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:17:36

I have only 90k monopoly money! :lol:

 
Comment by John Cow
2007-08-02 23:17:38

DEAL!

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-02 23:25:33

LOL a box of monopoly money doesn’t even come with that much money. You’d have to buy multiple boxes :smile:

 
Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:27:59

Says who? :lol: I have SPECIAL one from Bil Gate$

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-02 23:31:12

LOL. Now we talking about it, I miss playing monopoly, its been years. I actually own the online edition. Odd that Google of all things is not on the board.

 
Comment by Webd360
2007-08-02 23:39:57

Lol, yea monopoly is fun and to pay the 100k I probably would need a few boxes, or maybe monopoly deluxe has enough to cover it :lol: ?

 
Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:51:41

Now for real, in my monopoly game i have more than 1 mil.$ in fake money, but it’s europe version, maybe becouse of that!

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 00:33:03

Then we’re going to have to do a currency exchange to get the correct dollar amount in US monopoly money

 
Comment by mahdi yusuf
2007-08-03 05:24:35

SERIOUSLY! HAHA that was the funniest comment thread!

 
Comment by Navjot Singh
2007-08-03 12:04:35

And maybe the longest nested thread too. :mrgreen:

 
 
 
 
Comment by Robert Klein Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-02 22:22:27

Hi

I am new to blogging, but I seem to be conforming to your guidelines rather well.

I must say though that I took the most reassurance from your comment that the process of audience building takes a great deal of time.

My principal subject matter on Global Warming is as timely as it gets, yet it too takes time to expand.

I could write on a whole slew of other subjects, but i cringe to think how long that would take to gather an audience.

regards

bob

2007-08-03 19:35:17

That actually sounds like a niche that is good to get into, although it’s not my cup of tea. You have a lot of people out there who are really passionate, and if you can get your SEO straight, you could capitalize on all of the Google-ing people do when they see something on the news.

DevDad

 
 
Comment by Fatgadget
2007-08-02 22:26:45

Nice post, some great tips in there :mrgreen:

 
Comment by Bloggeries
2007-08-02 22:57:35

Thanks for the Post Mr. Cow. I like your writing style because the way you described it was pretty much how it went down. If you liked the article and are interested in reading the rest of our ever expanding library of blog tutorials and articles please visit our blog forum where they are listed for discussion.

Thanks for all the positive comments,
Rob

2007-08-03 19:37:23

I’m checking out your forums now. Looks like it’s doing pretty well! How long ago did it go live?

DevDad

 
 
Comment by James Wilcox
2007-08-02 22:57:42

Some good tips, but nothing that hasn’t already been said over and over again at the many blogs I read. That should also tell you something…these ideas work. Definitely not overnight, but they work eventually.

The only thing I disagree with is to write what readers want to read…that sort of goes against the whole nature of blogging. Write what you are passionate about, the audience will find you in due time.

Comment by John Cow
2007-08-02 23:02:57

Just because you’ve seen these tips before doesn’t mean the rest of the world has too. A blog can’t provide new information for everyone in each post.

And yes, we agree, you should write what you’re passionate about, not what you think your readers want to read.

Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:15:19

Nice tips, and i can’t say i saw all of them!

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Comment by Steven
2007-08-02 23:29:32

I agree with Mr. Cow. They do come up often but there are always readers who haven’t seen these tips. However I would hope that most would have some common sense to know some of the things on this list. Others are fairly helpful. None-the-less, a good post.

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Comment by Webd360
2007-08-02 23:42:47

I agree with Mr. Cow too, as long as you are writing anything non-fiction chances are that its been said before, but everyone certainly hasn’t heard it before

 
Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:47:41

I think everyone should write everything they know and there will be some people that don’t know that! :smile:

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 00:33:44

We already do that on our own respective blogs lol

 
Comment by Bloggeries
2007-08-03 06:21:06

Also never put into “your words”. :wink:

 
 
Comment by Bloggeries
2007-08-03 00:54:56

“Above all else, write about topics that people actually want to read.”

It’s meant to be make sure to include some posts about what’s popular in your niche. Remember if you have a quality resource you will have a decent stickiness as well so all relevant traffic is good traffic. If you write about what you think people want to hear you’ll try and be everything to everyone and end up nothing to no one. Thanks for bringing that up and giving me a chance to clarify.

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Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 01:15:47

Good point. I think we should focus on adding 1 reader a day at the beginning like earning 1 dollar a day when you’re ready to monetize your site. Then from there you progressively move forward and gain more readers per day and continue to increase from there. All those points are important but having a goal of increasing traffic is good as well.

 
Comment by Bloggeries
2007-08-03 05:07:49

Absolutely until hopefully one day it just begins to snowball for you. If you don’t set realistic goals your blog or any other project faces a high percentage of burning out. You have to be passionate about something to stick with it until it’s success most of the time. Sometimes you get lucky and get picked up immediately but it’s definitely not the norm :mrgreen:

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 08:27:23

Oh I totally agree. And I love blogging. I hope that people don’t just get into it because they want money out of it. I feel there is a rise of people like that. I mean they should at least love blogging, not just the topics they write.

 
 
 
 
Comment by icedragon
2007-08-02 23:43:28

how about this, our page is a PR-zero, if you don’t make a link to us, we will make three daily backlinks, reviews, even banners linking to your blog, so your pagerank will drop down slowly :twisted:

we really don’t know if this work, but, if your site gets a little link love from the great beef, the great cow, or darren rose your PR goes up, maybe in the opposite way also works . . .

Comment by Cubofild
2007-08-02 23:50:01

“or darren rose your PR goes up” , that sounds like EVIL plan to get PR7 in next update! :lol:

 
Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 00:34:45

You guys can all link to me if you like, I am still sadly at a PR0 too :cry:

Comment by Navjot Singh
2007-08-06 11:16:59

Why not try linking me? Even I am at PR 0. :lol:

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Comment by Johnny
2007-08-03 02:26:51

Great post, even though I have seen many of these before it never hurts to see them again to refresh my memory on something I may be forgetting.

 
Comment by browie
2007-08-03 05:51:06

Pretty good post. I’ll have to try some of those so I can get more readers to check me out.

 
Comment by Aquanetta Jones Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-03 07:30:13

I’m quite mooved by your post. One question, if the person suscribes to the feed, how can you get that to actually count as site traffic? I need to moove up mine.
crazydiets

Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 09:02:01

Some advertisers account for that. It doesn’t actually count towards site traffic as far as numbers go.

 
Comment by Navjot Singh
2007-08-03 12:08:25

Yeah feeds are never counted in actual site traffic, but they provide great value. If you want to get advertisers for your blog, higher number of readers will help. Also sites like Text-link-ads.com value number of feed readers as well. So one should work hard towards increasing feed traffic as well.

Comment by Steven
2007-08-03 12:26:36

I just love seeing the numbers go up knowing you have some fans out there reading your site. As long as that holds true, the traffic numbers don’t matter as much as most people hold them for. I mean they are important, but having loyal readers is too

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Comment by ForumeR
2007-08-06 09:03:56

Sorry, i can’t find your post about viral tags. There are so many i tagged you before but i still not seen your reciprocal to my blogs :(

I tagged you here

http://www.feedget.info/2007/07/boost-your-page-rank-before-google.html

Please just put to my link

http://www.feedget.info

Best regards
:)

 
Comment by alanj878
2008-01-21 02:42:42

I guessed this post was designed for blogging content

 
Comment by Increase Traffic
2008-06-19 18:27:32

Hey CowMan… Good Post as always yeah and well done with your new blog… gamerzreviewz, it looks sweet my man!!! I made a similar post over at my blog on how traffic rules the web…

Jeanmatt

Increase Traffics last blog post..Increase your Website Traffic - After all It makes the Web Go Round…

 
2008-09-11 01:19:54

Thank you very much for the big list. This will really help you to improve your Blog rankings and ratings. Even I have to implement most of it. Thanks again…

 
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