The Ultimate Guide to Driving More Traffic to Your Blog
With the growing interest in blogging as an online promotion and branding tool, many marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books, and services. But a blog is like a website. “Write and they will come” is certainly not a magic formula for bringing in boatloads of traffic.
If you need to promote to drive traffic to your website, you should also promote your blog.
Here are some ways you can become a well-read and effective blogger.
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1. Write posts people want to read
To write posts that people want to read, it’s important to keep the following things in mind:
- Know your audience: Consider who you are writing for and what they are interested in. This will help you choose topics that will be of interest to them.
- Choose a compelling title: The title is the first thing that people see when they come across your post. Make sure it’s catchy and engaging to encourage people to click through and read more.
- Write engaging content: Once you have a reader’s attention, it’s important to keep it by providing interesting and informative content. Use compelling headlines, bullet points, and subheadings to break up the text and make it easier to read.
- Use images and videos: Visual elements can help break up the text and make your post more engaging. They can also help to illustrate your points and make your content more visually appealing.
- Promote your post: Once you’ve written a great post, make sure to promote it on social media and other platforms to get it in front of as many people as possible.
- Update and repurpose old posts: If you have an older post that still gets a lot of traffic, consider updating it with new information and promoting it again to give it a boost. You can also repurpose old content into new formats, such as turning a blog post into a video or podcast episode.
2. Optimize your posts for search engines
To optimize your posts for search engines, there are a few key things you can do:
- Use keywords: Make sure to include relevant keywords in your post title, headings, and throughout the body of your post. This will help search engines understand what your post is about and improve its ranking for those keywords.
- Use internal and external links: Linking to other pages on your site and to external sources can help improve your search engine ranking and provide additional value to your readers.
- Use alt tags for images: Adding alt tags to your images will help search engines understand what the images are about and improve your site’s ranking for those keywords.
- Use a descriptive and concise URL: Make sure your post’s URL accurately reflects the content of the post and is easy to read.
- Use social media to promote your content: Sharing your content on social media can help increase its visibility and drive traffic to your site.
- Use header tags: Header tags (H1, H2, etc.) help to organize and structure your content, making it easier for search engines to understand and rank your pages.
- Optimize your site’s loading speed: A slow-loading site can hurt your search engine ranking, so make sure to optimize your site’s loading speed as much as possible.
3. Submit your blog and RSS feeds to directories
Submitting your blog and its RSS feed to directories can help increase its visibility and drive traffic to your site. Here are a few steps you can follow to submit your blog to directories:
- Find directories to submit to: There are many directories that allow you to submit your blog and RSS feed. Some popular ones include Technorati, Alltop, and Blogarama.
- Create an account: Many directories require you to create an account before you can submit your blog. Follow the steps to create an account and log in.
- Submit your blog: Once you are logged in, look for a link or button that allows you to submit your blog. You will typically be asked to provide your blog’s URL, a description of your blog, and your RSS feed URL.
- Verify your submission: Some directories will require you to verify your submission by adding a link to your blog or by providing a code to insert into your blog’s HTML.
- Repeat the process: Once you have submitted your blog to one directory, repeat the process for other directories. It can take some time for your blog to be listed in the directories, so be patient.
Submitting your blog to directories can help increase its visibility and drive traffic to your site. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the value of directory submissions has decreased in recent years as search engines have become more sophisticated. As such, it’s important to focus on other strategies as well, such as creating high-quality content, promoting your blog on social media, and optimizing your blog for search engines.
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4. Ping the blog services
Pinging blog services is a process that involves sending a notification to various services to inform them that you have updated your blog. Pinging helps to ensure that your blog’s content is indexed quickly by search engines and can help drive traffic to your site.
To ping your blog, you will need to use a ping service or plugin. There are many ping services available, such as Ping-O-Matic, Pingler, and PingMyBlog. To use a ping service, simply enter the URL of your blog and the service will send a notification to various blog directories and search engines.
Some blogging platforms, such as WordPress, also have plugins that allow you to automatically ping your blog whenever you publish a new post. These plugins can save you time and make the pinging process easier.
It’s important to note that pinging your blog can help improve its visibility and drive traffic to your site, but it’s just one aspect of a larger traffic-building strategy. It’s also important to focus on creating high-quality content, promoting your blog on social media, and optimizing your blog for search engines.
5. Build links to your blog
Here are the methods I recommend as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog
- Link to your blog from every page on your main website
- Track your posts to other blogs
- Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics
- Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites
6. Edit your blog posts into articles
One of the best ways to promote your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories.
The suggestion to extend this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories comes from the coach at “Explode Blog Traffic”, who also has other great suggestions on his blog.
7. Create a buzz about your blog
- Creating buzz about your blog posts and topic in local and online media gives your marketing a viral component.
- Create controversy around your blog or its topic.
- Distribute bumper stickers or other items with your blog URL and tagline.
- Write a press release about any news and link it to your blog topic.
8. Capture subscribers via email
It may sound strange for Blogger to send updates via email, but email is still the #1 choice for most people who want to receive news and information.
Using a free service like FeedBurner to manage your subscriptions is easy and it allows your subscribers to manage all their subscriptions from a single interface.
However, if you want more control over your list and don’t mind the mailing updates yourself, you can use an autoresponder system to capture and follow up with subscribers. These tips will give you a good start to building your blog traffic.
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