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For many businesses and individuals, a blog can be a great way to share a personal hobby, a professional interest, and advertise a new product or service. There are millions of unique blogs on the internet, with the majority of them receiving no traffic. Many blogs have less than 10 unique visitors a month, with the majority of the visitors being friends or family.
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There are 18 essential tips that every writer should follow to increase traffic to his or her blog. Many of these tips are simple, while a few may require changes in web design.
1. Host your blog on your own domain. Many commercial services offer blog hosting, but this can reduce potential blog traffic. There are many software solutions, both free and commercial, for hosting a blog on a personal domain. One of the most popular free packages for blog posting is WordPress, found at WordPress.org
2. Make sure to write to an audience that exists. Many blog owners write content that only they are interested in, and isn’t of interest to anyone else. To drive traffic to a blog, it’s important to write to a wide audience.
3. Use SEO techniques to drive traffic to a blog. SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization, a way of writing content that attracts visitors. There are online tools available that show the most popular keywords people are searching for. If writing a blog about mobile technology, the keywords ‘Broadband deals’ can be an effective way to drive traffic to a website.
4. Write blog article titles with a large audience in mind. If article titles on your blog sound boring to visitors, they will be less likely to read content from your website.
5. Offer a valuable product or service on your blog. If you’re creating a blog about Internet services, helping your visitors find broadband deals can be a great way to drive traffic to a website.
6. Disable comments until your blog has a high number of readers. Seeing 0 comments on all your blog articles can be depressing, and can reveal to readers that your blog isn’t very popular. Until your blog has a high number of unique visitors, leave comments disabled.
7. Form healthy relationships with other bloggers and companies. Build a relationship with other people in the industry, and offer to link to their blogs. They may reciprocate, driving traffic to your blog in the future.
8. Submit your best articles to link aggregation websites. Websites like Reddit and Digg allow users to vote for submissions, bringing the highest quality content to the front pages of these sites. This can be a very effective way to drive content to your best work.
9. Use increased traffic wisely. When experiencing an influx of new visitors, make sure to put your best foot forward when writing.
10. Don’t use advertisements until you have a large user base. If your blog is only receiving a handful of unique visitors a month, placing advertisements won’t generate very much revenue, and may drive some traffic away.
11. Higher traffic allows for higher quality advertisers. When first starting out, you won’t have much of a choice on the type of content advertisers want to put on your website. You may find your cooking website is filled with advertisements for broadband deals. As you build a reputation, you’ll find higher quality advertisers.
12. Promote your blog on Twitter.
13. Get friends, family, and acquaintances to like your blog on Facebook. Word of mouth advertising can be effective at driving traffic.
14. Use CRM software to determine which of your articles are the most popular. Software such as Feedburner can help a blogger discover what content on their blog is most popular.
15. Use graphics, and avoid large blocks of text.
16. Include a user feedback button, to help users provide you with information on how to improve your blog.
17. Use a solid and likable ‘voice’ when speaking to your internet audience.
18. Most important of all, have fun!
Author Bio
A guest post by Spencer Hogg from the Broadband Expert website where great broadband deals can be found.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Nice tips..