16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

The reading level for this article is Novice

You’ve got your blog set up and you’ve started post ing p ithy, useful informat ion that your n iche market would benef it from and enjoy.  Days go by, you keep publ ish ing, but no one comments and your traff ic stats are barely reg ister ing.  What do you do?

L ike any webs ite you own, you must do some blog promot ion to start dr iv ing traff ic to your s ite.  Here are 16 steps, in no part icular order of importance, that you can start do ing now to get traff ic mov ing to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscr ipt ion form on your blog and inv ite everyone in your network to subscr ibe:  fam ily, fr iends, colleagues, cl ients, assoc iates.
   http://www.bloglet.com

    

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your s ite gets regularly sp idered by the Yahoo search eng ine (see tutor ial on http://www.b izt ipsblog.com)http://www.my.yahoo.com
   

    

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target n iche.  Don’t wr ite th ings l ike “n ice blog” or “great post.”  Wr ite intell igent, useful comments w ith a l ink to your blog.
   

    

4. Use P ing-0-mat ic to p ing blog d irector ies. Do th is every t ime you publ ish.  http://www.pingomatic.com 
   

    

5. Subm it your blog to trad it ional search eng ines: http://www.submitfire.com
   

    

6. Subm it your blog to blog d irector ies. The most comprehens ive l ist of d irector ies is on th is s ite:  http://www.masternewmed ia.org/rss/top55/

    

T ip:  Create a form to track your subm iss ions; th is can take several hours when you f irst start so schedule an hour a day for subm itt ing or h ire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a l ink to your blog in your ema il s ignature f ile.
   

    

8. Put a l ink to your blog on every page of your webs ite.
   

    

9. If you publ ish a newsletter, make sure you have a l ink to your blog in every issue.
   

    

10. Include a l ink to your blog as a standard part of all outgo ing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, wh ite papers, etc.
    

     

11. Pr int your blog URL on your bus iness cards, brochures and flyers.
    

     

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscr ibe to.

13. Post often to keep attract ing your subscr ibers to come back and refer you to others in the ir networks; include l inks to other blogs, art icles and webs ites in your posts
    

     

14. Use Trackback l inks when you quote or refer to other blog posts.  What is TrackBack? Essent ially what th is does is send a message from one server to another server lett ing it know you have posted a reference to the ir post.  The beauty is that a l ink to your blog is now included on the ir s ite.
    

     

15. Wr ite art icles to post around the web in art icle d irector ies.  Include a l ink to your blog in the author info box (See example in our s ignature below).
    

     

16. Make a comm itment to blog everyday.  10 m inutes a day can help increase your traff ic as new content attracts search eng ine sp iders.  Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same t ime.

T ip:  Use a h it counter to track your v is itor stats: how many un ique v is itors, how many page v iews, average length of v is it.  You can get a free h it counter at http://www.sitemeter.com