Tips for Growing Your Blog's Traffic

By The Liberal Avenger

So many people stop me on the street and say, "Mr. Liberal Avenger. How do you get so much traffic to your wonderful website?"

In the past, I would smite them down in all my Liberal Fury. Now, however, I am a "kindler and gentler" Liberal Avenger, so I wrote the following traffic building tips list and keep several copies in my cape to hand out with a smile to all who approach me on the street.

I thought I would share it with you, too.

So here are 9 tips for making your blog better and growing traffic to your blog:

Reciprocal Linking.

Since I like your blog and since you are going to do more posting, I will link to it from all of my pages in the lefthand column. If you have any other blogs that you frequent or have any friends who run blogs, you should offer a link for a link with them. This way a group of sites that share a similar viewpoint or set of experiences through friendship can cross-promote one another and everyone benefits through the increase in traffic.

Search Engine Spidering.

Make sure that your URL gets picked up by all the search engines. The easiest way to do so is to visit each search engine (google is the most important) and find where they have an option to "Add Site" (or something similar). Some of them (not google) will make it seem like you have to pay to get listed PROPERLY or else risk a no guarantee listing. Just do the free one - paying for it isn't worth it.

Here is where to do it on Google to get you started:http://www.google.com/addurl.htmlWeblogs.com.

Make sure you have your Blogger settings set to "ping" weblogs.com. It is a massive directory of all blogs. Worthless to humans, but tons of smaller search engines and blog services spider the lists electronically.

Blog Participation.

Find several blogs that you really like (or really dislike) and become an active participant in the discussions there.

People who strongly agree (or strongly disagree) with what you have to say are likely to visit your blog and participate there as well.

Keep Your Profile Updated.

Take the time to really flesh out your profile with your interests, favorite books, favorite movies, etc. Thousands of people look for common interests through blog profiles. One of my site's biggest sources of traffic is from people who have seen my profile after searching.

Add a Site Statistic Button.

Having access to your site statistics is a way for you to monitor your progress. You will see how your traffic grows over time directly driven by changes and improvements you make in your blog. You will also see which sites/pages people are clicking on from other blogs and search engines to get to your site along with which topics/postings of yours people are visiting most.

Post Frequently.

The more you post, the better your blog is. The more you post, the more hits you'll get from the search engines. The more you post, the more people will come back to read what you have to say. The more you participate in the "comments" section on your site, the more your guests will participate.

Set Goals.

Give yourself a goal that you feel comfortable about meeting - perhaps the goal can be to post at least one time every two days. Hopefully you will post more frequently, but simply meeting your goal should please you.

As time goes on, try setting tougher goals for yourself. If you're having trouble meeting a goal, paste in a quick note (with link) about an article or blog posting that you've read from elsewhere.

Post About Current Events.

Unless you want to be a "current event" site, not all of your posts should be current events, but some of them should be regardless. Current events will attract more visitors through search engine exposure and will encourage passionate debate in your comments section.

I hope these tips can help some of you, the teeming millions, enjoy some of the same overwhelming commercial success in which I bask on a daily basis.