Many first time bloggers automatically assume that once their blog is setup and they put a few posts on it, they will get some hits and regular readers. This is quite untrue. You won’t get any traffic if no one knows about your website. In this article I hope to tackle these problems and discuss some of the common ways bloggers and webmasters drive more traffic to their site by understanding the user. I have received many emails from aspiring bloggers asking me what they can do to get more traffic, so hopefully this will help out at least those people. Don’t forget to checkout the prequel, How To: Start Blogging, that covers the technical side of setting up a blog.
Blog Usability
Before I get into getting your name out there, your blog has to have some style. Most web users are instantly turned off by tacky site designs or extreme neon colors. I know I won’t stay at a website too long if the layout or navigation annoys me. The goal is to have a unique blog, different than all the other weblogs on the net. The one thing I really stress to others is making it easy for your readers to contact you. It shouldn’t take a reader more than a click, if any, to find your email address or a contact form. This makes the reader feel like someone actually runs and cares about the website. An about page is also a great asset to have on a personal site or blog. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content. I highly recommend reading this weblog usability article by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.
Content
Your blog’s usability goes hand in hand with its content. You can specialize in a niche subject as long as you have an idea of how many people might be interested in that subject. If you do well with your niche subject matter, you could get some crazy traffic for being the only decent blog online with that type of content. On the other hand you could have widely used content, such as some aspect of technology, but add your own twist with your opinion or comparing/contrasting from other tech analysts. People won’t go to your site to read something they could have read on CNet or Tom’s Hardware, they want a unique take on it. If you learn anything from this article, I hope its that reblogging is a very bad thing. The one thing to kill your traffic is having identical content to another several hundred blogs. I suggest taking a glance at Mr. Veloso’s Evils of Constant Reblogging to get a better idea. Finding out what your content should be is a key element of your blog’s identity and the type of image your blog will ultimately emit.
Technorati is Your Best Friend
Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. It makes your blog much easier to find when people search by technorati tags. Technorati is also a large blog ranking engine. Based on the number of links to your blog from various websites, your blog is given a rank. The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things. A higher rank gives your blog greater credibility in technorati. If you don’t already have a technorati account, get one. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog. Go to Account and then down the page to Your Blogs. Enter the URL of your blog in the URL field and then hit “Claim this weblog.” Once you’ve done that go to “Configure this Blog” and fill in what you can. Click the checkbox to select “Include this blog in Technorati’s Blog Finder” and fill out as many tags or keywords that accurately represent the content in your blog. When you’ve done that, click “Save Changes” and then grab your claim code. There are two types of codes that you may put somewhere in your blog for technorati to verify that your blog exists and keep track of it. If you have a blog that is Blogger powered or some other blog host that does not give you direct control of your blog files you will want to use the “Link Code” and post it somewhere on your blog. If you are using a more versatile blog publishing system, such as a custom WordPress or Movable Type installation you should copy the “Embed Code.” You can edit your sidebar, header, or footer file and put it wherever you like. You also have the option of posting a Technorati search box or various links on your blog without altering the code you just pasted. Select the options you like and click “Save Changes.” Everything is done by automatically by Technorati. One last thing you might consider is adding the Technorati ping link to your weblog. Doing this will let Technorati know when you have updated your blog. Find out how to do that on Technorati’s Ping Configuration page.
You will also want to search for a plugin for your publishing platform that supports Technorati tags. For WordPress users, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior. Installation can get a bit complex, so moving to a WordPress theme that has support for UTW, such as K2, is a good idea. Basically, when you post an entry you can supply it with Technorati tags. Update: WordPress 2.3 has built-in support for tags.
Blog Rings/Networks
Submitting your website to a blog network or blog ring is another excellent way to get more readers. There are many of these networks but the one that I use is BlogTopSites.com. BlogTopSites is a blog ranking website that makes your blog easier to find and search for as well. After you sign up for an account on their website, you just need to copy a bit of code and paste it somewhere on your site just like we did with Technorati. Make sure you select an appropriate category to post your blog in. If you are not careful, you’ll find yourself in the same pool with some heavy hitting blogs and your ranking will be fairly puny. For WordPress users, you can join Blogs Of The Day by simply installing their plugin, which uploads your blog stats directly to them.
Burn that Feed!
By now you may have a few extra readers, but how can you help them come back? Many blog users will immediately scan the page for an RSS feed if they like your content. Most blogs, such as WordPress, already have RSS feeds integrated for entries and comments. Using the default feeds may suffice, but you won’t have any idea about how many people you will be catering to. The FeedBurner service will take your feed and reproduce it on their fast servers while tracking reader statistics. I highly recommend signing up for the service and letting them burn your feed. I won’t through the steps of signing up for FeedBurner, but once you’re done with that find the “Publicize” tab. Click on “FeedCount” and activate the service. FeedCount lets you post a little icon on your blog that displays the current circulation of your feed as well as make it easier for people to subscribe to your feed. Select the colors you wish to use for the icon and post the code somewhere on your blog. Come back a few days later and you should see some detailed reader statistics under the “Analyze” tab on the FeedBurner website.
As long as you are going the FeedBurner route, replace the current RSS links on your blog with the FeedBurner link. This usually means digging through some code to find that link and replace it. I really can’t go into details as it varies greatly by publishing platform and theme.
So Now You’re a Serious Blogger
You have found your unique blog style, mastered the type of content you want to deliver, and gained some regular readers but you want even more. If you are still on a free blog, get rid of it! Even if it is a paid TypePad account, you still have a shared domain name (e.g., yourname.typepad.com). It is time for you to become independent and get your own domain and hosting.
Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naïve beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Jakob Nielsen
If you are open to hosting recommendations, a (gs) Grid Server plan from Media Temple is the perfect solution for the dedicated blogger. It is when you start receiving over 150k hits a month that you might consider upgrading your plan.
Getting To Know Your Readers
The next step is tracking your visitors, seeing where they came from, what they saw, and how they left. You will be able to easily assess what content your readers appreciate the most and concentrate on that aspect of your blog. Most webhosts include some type of stats monitoring applications such as the Urchin suite. However, I use Mr. Inman’s Mint religiously. The best part of Mint is an open API that lets developers create plugins called Peppers that dramatically extend functionality. I had previously posted an article about the top Peppers I use. It is definitely worth a look if you want to get a better idea of how great Mint can make your life. There is also a Mint Pepper for tracking your FeedBurner stats.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully my suggestions have helped out at least a few people. If you post guides or reviews on your blog that you think many people can benefit or learn from, I suggest posting a link on del.icio.us or Digg. If your page gets on the frontpage of Digg or on del.icio.us popular, you’re set. Many tech websites have an email address for tips. If you think your content is worthy, I would try sending them an email with your article. You never know, they might post it. Even if they do not have a tips line, a polite email to the editor-in-chief or webmaster could do the trick. As a blogger, you really should not have any trouble talking to strangers… you practically preach to them everyday. While looking for companies to send me review products for my other website, I must have sent out over 150 emails. It is amazing what a nice email can get you. I gained a contact with at Akasa, who was kind enough to trust me and send some computer products for review after a few emails. Even at the lowest level you will establish some rapport between that company or person, which may help you out in the future.
Also, holding a contest can greatly boost traffic. Even if it is for a small thing such as a WordPress golden ticket, you will be amazed at how many people find out about it. You can establish a relationship with some of your readers, and they might link to your blog on theirs. Commenting on other blogs can also earn you a few hits if you put down your URL. Oh and how could I forget a de-lurking post to talk to those hidden readers of yours.
PaulStamatiou.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like PaulStamatiou.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
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great read!!
you forgot about commenting on these sorts of blogs and leaving your URL…and when you have the cance to includie it so they only have to click on your name(like the one you see of me) it’s even better!hehe if you post a good, rational idea people usually will check out what you have to say on your site and it drives people even more to your site(I know this out of personal experience)^_^
Yeah ipsofacto, I do that a bunch myself!
interesting, you mentioned digg as a good way to drive traffic to your blog. well i found your blog on digg ;D
Great write-up. I get traffic due to some of the articles I have written with technical solutions people sometimes look for, but not a lot. I followed your advice as much as possible. We’ll see how it helps. Thanks for the great info. Keep it up!
**shameless plug**
Also, anyone who likes some of the features of Shaun Inman’s Mint (mentioned in the article above) but who don’t have the $30 for every domain, you can always Inman’s free stats tool, ShortStat, and while you at it, go check out my add-on for ShortStat called ReferrerRSS. It generates an RSS feed of referrers to your site (one of the coolest features of Mint, IMO).
Cool stuff. And again, thanks for the useful article!
Nice article Paul (I’m “Eschatonik” from DIGG, btw). Very sound advice you’ve complied here!
The only thing I would add is:
Webloggers who are using CMS software that does not auto-ping can do mass pings manually via http://pingomatic.com/ or http://pingoat.com/. Both of these services do a great job of driving traffic to your site that really wants to be there. You can even set up your own bookmarklet for ping-o-matic that fills in your info, allowing for quick, 1-button ping action.
Woah! Thanks for another excellent article! Now, if I only had something useful to write about I could be teh uber blogger dude!
Another useful tool I’ve found is trackbacking.. If you do read other blogs, and feel compelled to comment on it (assuming they provide trackback urls) — your post will be often be referenced as a comment which other people can then go and read.
I, by no means, have a lot of readers to my site.. but I find that on days when I post comments or trackbacks, I end up with more traffic.
The WashingtonPost actually has a reverse technorati lookup now, where if you link to a story on the post, it’ll include your blog in the “Who’s blogging about this” box linked within the story.
Paul – Thanks for the great post. I think it’s hard for blog newbies to know what to do after they get their blog up and start posting. Many of the people I talk to don’t even know about Technorati. The kind of info you’re offering here is invaluable to that group.
I’m compiling a list of resources as part of a series I’m doing more geared towards my niche audience (ironically on a brand new blog). This one’s defiantly going on the must read list!
Great article. Funny, I did a lot of this stuff when I started blogging but got lazy and stopped linking and leaving comments. Thanks for the reminder…
Paul,
As always, spot-on! As the new kid on the block, it’s nice to see that guys with experience are always willing to share. My site is only about a month old, and driving traffic is a daily challenge. By reading articles like this and honing my writing, I hope to make a positive impact.
It’s interesting that you mention Technorati. Am I nuts, or do Technorati and WordPress not always play nice together? Numerous times, I’ve posted an article, only to find that Technorati has not acknowleged my ping. I have to go to the Technorati site and manually ping them. After two or three times, it seem to “take”. Funny…
You’ve been a daily read for me for the last month or so, and I’ve placed a permanent link to your site on mine to encourage my readers to do the same.
Best of luck to you, Paul.
GG
Thanks for a great list of suggestions. I’d like to add another; namely “leeching” :-) By this I mean keeping a track of blogs similar to yours in taste and higher up on hitcounts and commenting on them to make your name (hence your blog) more visible…kinda like what I’m doing right now :-)
A greenhorn blogger like myself gets easily tempted to set up as many free chatboards, trackers, aggregators etc. as he possibly can soon as he starts. Its absolutely vital to evaluate the horde of resources out there before letting your name depend on them. To that end comprehensive lists and advice postings like these are indispensable.
I think content should be the main method to make your blog popular
the second tip should be patience: blogs don’t become popular in a month.. it takes a year (or so) of hard work to make a site popular these days since there are so many of them out there
I also agree with the poster above… keep a list of all the sites/blogs that are in your category and post comments on a regular basis… not splog but acutal quality comments
Great stuff and very up to date… been trying to compile a cheatsheet to boosting blog traffic but you did a nice job already! :)
Great article gained quite a lot from this
thanks :)
Very nice read … One thing I would also like to point out .. Most of my readers come from search engines .. So Search Engines are also big source for getting traffic .. And if your content is attractive, the user will notice it and will come back .. Its these returning visitors who make your blog popular .. So submit your blog to major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN … For Google, you should submit your
Sheesh .. I pressed enter it submitted {Please add this content to the above post .. Thank you }
For Google you should submit Google Sitemap to have your site indexed by Google ..
nice read, learned some new things & got some interesting links.
keep up the good work
cheers
Nick
Some great tips. Thanks!
My experience has been that content is king. I used to update my blog AT LEAST once per day, and had the traffic to show for my hard work. After a period of extreme business (new baby, moving across the country, new job, house, etc.) I stopped publishing regularly and people stopped reading.
Now that my life is getting back to normal, I am making a conscious effort to get back to regular posts.
Happy blogging!
thanks a lot! i love it.
many greetings from Germany!
domi – freieszeichen.de
Thanks for the great tips! I’ve recently just started blogging and found lots of great ideas.
Good article in boosting traffic however from past experiences, the majority of visitors I receive leave without bothering to read the content. They simply throw a quick glance in your direction and depart. Granted your site must be out of the ordinary to elongate a visit however I find the design does not amount to a significant figure. As long as your content is legible but interesting, your viewer numbers will be high. And you must either be very convincing in the practice of concocting fictional tales or retell your day in a “She/he did what?!� sort of fashion.
I would also add, comment compulsively, especially on blogs with high traffic. The more times your link appears, the better for your site. Your comment however should be worthy material. Nobody is going to visit a spammer. But your main focus should be the content. Frequent updates are advised but you need to have a focal point in your entries. Select a mood may it be serious, witty, comical or the like and adhere to it. Don’t be bouncing off the walls unless you are chasing after the wonky title.
Thanks for the great artcile! Cleared up some things I never understood before! Thanks! :P
Extremely useful information. After reading this and another article on Adsense, I feel much more in control of my Blog and have noticed an increase in visitors and “clicks”. If you are new pay attention. Thanks!
You read CNET and Tom’s Hardware Ads?
I’ve been in Press Rooms with the CNET writers, when they have trouble with their PC or the Network they shout for a Tech-guy!
Lol .. See its already working for you .. :) .. Just post good content and there you are .. :)
Great article. You’re a legend.
Wonderful article! Two related things that should be paid attention two, though, are themes and compatibility. It seems like everyone is moving to Wordpress nowadays, and more and more are using the same old themes. When average Joe goes to a web site that looks like like all the others, the thinking is that the content won’t be much different either. So taking the time to design your own theme is beneficial. And point #2, this theme must work in *all browsers*! Too many people test with just IE or just Firefox and IE — and Opera, Safari, Konqueror, etc users see a trash site. The internet’s too big and time’s too little for people to decipher dirty content. But if trashy IE doesn’t have all the desired effects with your CSS code (and as shameless promotion) you can always do something like this [blog.magicbytom.com] ;-). (Go with Internet Explorer, and you get a nice.. “suggestion”.)
Paul,
Thankyou very much for your article. Also, apart from gathering heaps of info from the article itself, I caught some nice tips from the comments.
Comment Away! Heh heh.
Also, noticing the little Ajax functionality when typing comments. Awesome. That is cool.
Again, thanks.
I don’t get nearly any traffic from the sources you mentioned. I tried some of them but not deep enough. i’m working on to build the site and content and this helps traffic too much. Lastly you can find some similar info here:
http://www.problogger.net/
i hope it helps.
Best way to generate links and traffic on your blog? Write a really excellent post on generating links and traffic on your blog. It’s infinitely regressive.
Thanks for the beneficial tips. I will try to follow your suggestions ~
Thanks for this, nice layout too.
Wow, what a great article! thanks for all these information.
Wow, great article! I am definitely going to put these ideas to use! Thanks!
You can also install the Google Sitemaps plugin and keep google up to date with your latest posts instead of waiting for your site to be crawled. You can get the plugin at http://www.arnebrachhold.de/
great read, definatly a good guide to users that are new to blogging and want to go “bigtime”.
Hi everybody.
Having some experience in SEO and being aware of how current the blogging is for this market, I’ve got an idea to launch a service that would provide bloggers with custom written topic-specific articles. These articles would be composed according to the requirements – keywords, their density, relativity etc, and I can even organize a feed that would allow to subscribe and integrate the posting directly into the sites that need to be updated.
What do you think, is there any demand for a service like that?
if you are in need of such service, or have some ideas, just write me muraha@gmail.com
thanks
One sure way to boost traffic is to submit your posts to various carnivals and if you have the time and energy, to even host them on your blog. See here for more details.
I have to second the notion that the site needs to be clean and usable. Besides having your site hosted on your own space with your own domain name, I highly recommend that you seek professional design help to create the “theme” or look-and-feel of your site.
Thank you so much for this article. It shed some light on a few questions I have had. I have been doing a few of the things that you mentioned, but not to their fullest. I do have a quick question, however. If you publish multiple blogs, does claiming all of them on Technorati hurt your authority or rank? What I mean by that is if I claim two blogs that link to each other will Technorati not count that link because I own both blogs?
Thanks.
I imagine a lot depends on what your purpose is, but visibility certainly wont hurt in most cases, thanx for the tips – and hope it generates the kind of traffic your after :- )
Excellent tips! I’ll be implementing as many as possible. But I’m just getting the hang of this thing, so my @aol.com presentation may be around for a while.
wordpress is constanly changing and i cant configure it through technorati…prob. they do it implicitly.
n get ur blog and rss submitted to as many engines as possible.
rss engines like technorati, rss locator, rss network, feedster, daypop, pingomatic, easyrss, pubsub and blog engines like blogarama, blogwise, blo.gs, blog search engine, blog street, blog universe, blogtastic, or boingboing if u have really cool site….
and leave good comments to articles you read. it doesnt take much time to get a few visitors now and then.
or find similar blogs like yours and exchange links which works most of the time.
Paul-
Thanks for this article. I’ve been spending more time in the recent past learning the Wordpress publishing platform and less time on content. I’ll be done soon releasing a new design template, and only after that will I resume really adding links. Thanks for the great advice, helps out a lot!
I am wondering how big a factor it is to have a free blog site? Is it more for the people who visit your site and your credibility or is it more for the search engines?
All the best
Jason
Having a non-free website is more about credibility and lets your users know you care about your website.
Thanks for the information. Looking forward to the traffic now!
Great advice.
About 6 people post on my blog/site and I’m not entirely sure If I’m running it correctly. You certainly gave me some Ideas for running it.
Good work. I like your site.
This article was very informative and helped me out quite a bit. Thank you so much!
For generating a RSS feed from virtually any web page, try FeedTier ( http://feedtier.somee.com )
Interesting that you cite Nielsen with approval. Put his article’s URL in Technorati to see the overwhelmingly negative responses from the blogosphere.
Having own domain is something I see old-time techno-snobs keep insisting on. It used to be true. It is not any more. As blogosphere democratizes and is not the province of techno-geeks who know code any more, having a Blogspot blog, or even a LJ is not a point of derision any more. After all, MOST blogs are hosted on these services, including some of the most popular blogs out there (Atrios anyone?).
Related to that, having a simple, generic Blogspot template/skin is just fine if you provide quality content for your readers instead of cheap gizz-wizz bells and whistles.
Writing quality content is rule #1. I agree with you on the perils of re-blogging and neccessity of developing your own voice. A narrow focus is not neccessary, though. An ecclectic blog can do just fine if the content is of high quality.
Commenting on other blogs is #2 strategy. Make your comments unique, provide novel insight, write it in literate Standard English, and be polite. Do not be afraid to blatantly blogwhore (you may test the mood of the owner once before making it a habit on any one blog). Trackbacks are going the way of the dinosaur – old technogeeks like them, but new bloggers (which is 99% of bloggers) cant’ care less about them. With Sitemeter and Technorati in place, trackbacks are unneccessary for engendering two-way communication.
Sending entries to (and ultimately hosting) blog carnivals is #3 strategy. Most of the blogs on my blogroll I discovered via carnivals. Those are the people who have the same interests as I do, after all. This is most important when thinking long term as the archives of carnivals will be the GoTo place for the archivists, historians, students and journalists of the future as they do research on the blogosphere of today – a one-stop shoppiing of the BEST blog writing on any given topic at any given time, all well organized and packaged.
Everything else are technical gizmos that will help only if you follow the above rules #1, 2 and 3. Without quality writing, quality comments on other blogs, and joining blogging communitites via carnivals, no technology can help you.
thanx for the info, I’m a newbie in blogosphere..it helps!!
Great post. Very useful since I’m starting a new blog.
yeah,,blog is rocks!!
Thanks for the tips. They were very useful.
I have a question and a comment.
1. Does inclusion in someone’s bloglines feed have an impact on how easily your blog is discovered?
2. I found this resource very interesting how pervasive blogs are what that means for marketing:
http://www.comscore.com/blogreport/comScoreBlogReport.pdf
Best Regards,
Zachary
http://www.quiverandquill.com
Great tips that are really useful. I was already doing most of what you mentioned, but there are some tips there that I hadn’t thought of. Thanks for the info.
Great article. Heck I didn’t even know about the multi-ping sites!! (yea, I’m an out of touch blogger). Boy do I have a whole new list of favorite haunts :) And, as a thanks for all your info, I’d like to also contribute too. I added a plug board to one of my domains. I’ve got a nifty way to bring traffic to blogs – found it on some teen sites originally when my own daughter was reading blogs. All you do is add your own button and it immediately shows up. Everyone is welcome to plug their blog – it’s absolutely free and takes like 2 seconds. plug your blog here all you need is an 88×31 button.
Great article!
Have to figure out how to get those technorati tags in b2evolution next…
One resource which I don’t see mentioned which I found excellent was Robin Good’s list of 155 blog and feed directories. It took me about a day and a half to submit to all of them but people are starting to find the site and it is possible to get listed on quite a few high page ranked pages on the list.
Thanks!
Another great resource I have come across since my last post is this extension for firefox:
Firefox – Webcomments Extension
When you have this extension installed, it displays a little popup window at the bottom right of the screen which shows you which blogs have commented upon or linked to the page you are currently looking at. This means that if you just go about your normal day looking at the sites you are interested in, webcomments will show you which blogs are talking about those sites you are interested in.
Its great for connecting you with blogs that are relevant to your interests. I highly Recommend it. If you’re a firefox user I also recommend the extensions for tabbed browsing – they make a big difference…
Thomas
Thanks Paul,
Great information.
Dee
I found that on my personal blog where I blog about lots of things , I had the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album on my page for a while and the number of people gonig to my site went through the roof… things like that really help boost traffic.
Maybe Paul, you could give us some tips on links?
I thought that if you put links on your blog,
that those links count, but I went to tech, and pinged
and no links. Do you need to change code in your blog?
Dee
Dee, by default, WordPress adds no follow to links so they won’t be followed by Google or other engines. As for technorati, it takes quite a while for them to check links again.. pinging them only checks your feed for new posts, nothing else. It might take a week to a month.
I think it was said earlier but putting some of your more interesting posts on Digg/Reddit.Oks/leve1/shoutwire and even fark can get you some needed traffic. This is especially important when first promoting a brand new site.
Thanks again Paul,
I have another question? If you have good content,
and rank high on Google, MSN, Yahoo, but have few
links, having good content will it be enough?
Dee
You need to have a good balance of links as well as great content. Ranking high in search engines means Google will flood you with people searching for stuff (that’s where your good content comes in). But a lack of links means that you will rely on people coming in from search engines and you will have a relatively low ranking on Technorati and miss out on their great traffic. I get a good chunk of my hits from Google… maybe 500 a day just from Google. But the way you rank high in Google is through links. Tons of people have linked to my Azureus article and thus it is why it’s on the first page when you search for azureus. Great content gets you links from other bloggers which gets you a good rank on Technorati and Google. Start with your content and then start thinking about getting your stuff seen.
great read – lotsa info!
Terrific article, there is an interesting article on the Google algorithm at
http://www.akamarketing.com/google-ranking-tips.html
Wow! What a wealth of helpful information! I’m just getting started with my own blog and am looking for any help I can get with increasing traffic. Just set up my feed with Feedburner, which I never would have known about had it not been for this great article. Hopefully, with some good ol’ fashioned hard work and patience, my little tech help site will be running with the best of ‘em in short order. Thanks for taking the time to help out us new folks!
Very useful article, especially for those new to blogging like myself.
I’ve just dumped my old site (was getting stale) and started again using Wordpress. I’m trying to spend as much time as I can trying to familiarise myself with it and blogs in general, so stuff like this is great for me.
One point in the article maybe needs re-wording. You say: ‘If you are still on a free blog, get rid of it!’ I assume you mean the free blogs that host it for you as oppose to free blogs like Wordpress which you can host yourself. Not everyone will get that point and free doesn’t have to mean less in quality.
Great article, its like an add on on article i wrote, i coverd other interesting ways of building succesfull blog-webpage please review it thin yull like it!! feel free to check it and use the material in your own articles if you want to update them….
Paul,
If someone links to your site and they go to
ping-o-matic and ping their blog, will it
automatically ping your blog? The reason I am
asking is because I went to ping my blog and it
said to slow down, that I or someone had justed
pinged, So what’s up with that? I had only pinged
once.
Dee
It depends on their blog software. I believe that in WordPress, by default, it notifies all links in the current post.
I’m just a return visiter to your blog This is a great article and very useful to first time bloggers like me.
Excellent article :)
I exactly follow this instructions
Can I try to translate this post in French and publish on my blog ?
how to post links?? realy i don´t have no experience in blog but i would like to make my blog more nice. Can you help me?? Saying how to post?? what´s means tag?
i´m completely lost ; ((
; ))
thanks
patricia
Thanks, it’s a very good article.
The FeedBurner website is very slow and requires your name and password everytime you click into a new window. I’ve been unable to do ANYTHING beyond burn my feed. Not even retrieve code to copy into my blog template to advertise FeedBurner to my readers. Useless!
Paul, I found your article useful and informative. Thanks
I got to your site via a link in Technorati and found your site very interesting, helpful and interesting. It feels good to see that there are people like you who are concern with helping out other people enhance their web blogging experience than focus on how they could make their own site more popular. As for me, my primary motive in blogging is to harness my writing skills and it is just now that I am learning to tap the vast opportunities and resources that I could do and have with a blog. Paul, I must say, keep up the good work and for sure, you will be able to achieve your ambitions.
Oh, btw, I like to add you on my links. May I have your permission Paul to put your site on my blog links? Thanks in advance. In return, you may also add me to your links if you find it a good idea as well.
I’m really thankful for articles like these. It was a good help into a fresh start with blogging. Thanks, mate.
Nicely written. I am returning to blogging after a long off period, so I plan to follow some of these practical suggestions.
As for design – I’m absolutely crap at design, drawing, designing, layout, etc. But I find that flickr.com is a good source for illustrative photos which you can ue as eye-catchers in your posts. Look for the images released under Creative Commons / Attribution License. And of course make sure you link your use of the image back to the flickr image for attribution — it’s just the fair thing to do! There’s a lot of talented people on flickr!
Oh, and P.S. – One of my pet peeves as a reader: If you’re not just reblogging, but writing long and potentially interesting posts, *please* make sure your Blog stylesheet supports clean printing. Print(ed) matter(s)!
Great article. I have 2 blogs and I was making changes as I read your article. By the way, I found your blog over at technorati.
You mention links get your rating up and therefore your traffic. I’ve been on Technorati for 4 weeks, have at least 4 links yet they say I have zero links. How often are links checked and why are they not listed. Any clue?
I beg to differ on the statement Technorati is your best friend. More like my worst nightmare.
I am here because of it. 95% of my traffic is depending on them due to the Washington Posts “read what the blogs are sayin” I am slowly developing other bases but you can’t sneeze at 300 hits in two hours over one tiny post.
HOWEVER Technorati has some problems. They don’t spider when pinged. They have attempted to correct this several times with my blog all ending in me frustrated and finally deleting my claim and reclaiming. The error always occurs again down the line.
I am not the only one. I wish they would either fix this ongoing bug or that another service could rival them right now.
It isn’t only my lost traffic, I have to wonder when I in turn read what the bloggers are saying how many are saying something I don’t see that I might want to see.
Excellent and educational. Thanks for taking the time to write this to help others. I don’t entirely write off blogger.com addresses of a blog as being less serious. Sure, it can mean the person is not doing it as a committed blogger but some great intelligent people can post comments on their blogger.com site. And, I think they are more worthy of being taken seriously than people who still have aoHELL.com as their email address. :-)
Imran
http://imran.TV
Wowee… Great post. It looks like I have a lot of work to do. I still don’t understand all of what you said, but I’ll just dive in and see.
Cheers,
Jason
GoldenProse.com
Thx for the great tips. Found many useful info in your post.
I’ll definitely look into that. Thanks for the tip.
Thanks for the great article. Just a couple of things extra that I do to boost my blog traffic: 1) I belong to the StockXchange (a site where photographers, like me, share their digital stock photos – most of them royalty free), and whenever I use another person’s photo, I email them with a link to my blog. Sometimes I get hits from them, and their family and friends when they view the photo. 2) If I use a photo, quote or text from another site, I always write them to ask “permission to use site content”, again with a link to my blog. I’ve gotten some great links to my site by doing this. I even got an invitation to pilot a Gravity Car (designed by Ferrari) in an attempt to break the speed record. (I know writing lots of letters may sound time consuming, but it’s not if you use form letters, and just copy/paste.)
I’m really thankful for articles like these. It was a good help into a fresh start with blogging. Thanks!
Hi Paul, thanks for the great article. Just to add on, Ordered List has a FeedBurner plugin for Wordpress that redirects entry feeds to your FeedBurner URL. I’ve found it quite useful since it means I don’t have to mess around and make changes to core files in Wordpress.
Hi Paul, thanks for the great article. Just to add on, Ordered List has a FeedBurner plugin for Wordpress that redirects entry feeds to your FeedBurner URL. I’ve found it quite useful since it means I don’t have to mess around and make changes to core files in Wordpress.
Oops sorry forgot to add the link.
http://orderedlist.com/articles/wordpress-feedburner-plugin/
I followed your steps and my site traffic has gone through the roof!! Thank you so much Paul.
Love junglejamie
Thanks for the tips! I’m a new blogger and have much to learn more on how to generate traffic. I’ll try the feedburner idea. Didn’t know about this until I came across your blog!
The only article i like :-)
Great Post, very helpful.
If you like viewing other peoples posts, I recommend BlogMad. Its a link exchange site thingy where you get credits (and views in return) every time you view another persons blog…like I said worth a look if your interested in other people blogs.
Great advice and very clearly presented. Thanks! I’ll apply a lot of these ideas to my blog right away.
Alan
http://www.alanbaxter.info
Helped me a bunch! Thanks big time.
(And moi is still lost in this world of blogging, among many other worlds :-S ).
These tips and tricks are cool and I am going to try them out on my blog too.
I add my kudos to the huge pile. Thanks, Paul! I’m always trying to find resources that can help Know More Media’s 50-plus authors.
Thanks for the useful tips. I found that digg has become my major source of new visitors and am constantly looking for more services like it to direct more traffic to my site.
Does anyone have recomendations on it?
Thanks for the great info. I find that PageRank does not help us in the positoning in Google Search Pages. How about you?
Here is another site that has a series on Blog Traffic tutorial:
http://www.johntp.com/2006/03/24/how-to-increase-your-blogs-traffic-part1/
Excellent article! Reminds me I need to get fix up my “default” wordpress theme and add a better looking masthead. Good read…I’ve posted a link to your article on my blog.
James
Great article on such an important thing.
Thank you so much for writing this nice article, very helpfull.
regards.
Paul,
Just had a quick thought.
I am constantly referring to other posts I’ve made in the past when posting a new item (only if rellevant of course). this gives me an additional space to pitch my older posts as well as to allow readers interested in my post to navigate my site for more data. I see that almost all sites use this technique, yet no one discusses it.
Thanks for that, it was a very nice read.
Off i go then to find out about all these new things!
S
great tips! thanks!
Very useful stuff! Thanks for the help.
great article
Thanks, Paul.
So many tips, so little time…
It’s great to have someone offer up some info to help tose of us neophyte bloggers who are getting into the buzz. Thank you for the great information.
That was tremendous help. Thankyou
Great post…as a beginning blogger, I appreciate seeing what is out there and learning more about this world.
I am going to help a friend out
http://deepbutter.blogspot.com
lets see if this works
Hey Paul,
I just finished reading this post, and I wanted to say thanks for all of the very useful advice! I have been trying to do what I can to promote and make visible my blog since January, and this is by far one of the best articles I’ve read in terms of what to do and effective steps.
Keep up the good work!
Misterteacher
http://learnmegood2.blogspot.com
Thank you for this article. It was very helpful for me. As soon as I have more time I will start to adopt some of you suggestions. If it wasn’t so time consuming sometimes…
:-)
Nice article, very good information!
Hi I know this may seem like spam, but Pixel advertising has become a huge craze and is a great source to bring traffic to your blog. Also publishing in articles is a great way.
Also important is your PR in Google obviously the higher your ranking the more likely you will get clicked on.
>> Hi I know this may seem like spam, but Pixel advertising has become a huge craze
You meant something like the million dollar homepage? Well, I dont think such ads would help …
wow! i learned a lot.. thanks for the info..
Some awesome tips and advices there, fabulous read! Great work!!
Awesome guide!
You’ve saved me a bunch of time but not having to figure all this out by myself.
Thank you very much. So much usefull info on your site it’s unbelievable especially for a total blogging n00b like myself :0D
Question.
how to get a lot of link from other side to our blog..
Great read… I will definitely follow your suggestions…
Cheers,
Apostolis
Great info. Thanks!
But do I really have to do my own blog. I have blogger and even that is a bit much for my html knowledge. Putting links on it… ou scarey.
Yikers… help
Paul, I love your site and the information you and your readers provide to those of us who fall in the category of neophyte bloggers. I have learned more from your site than many of the other ‘how to blog’ sites combined.
Thanks and keep it up man we need ya!!
Thanks for the tips ! I needed them !
Hi
Blogs are like your credit card, email address and like your cellphone. Traffic is always a problem with a blog or website. Thanks for giving info on how to increase more traffic.
I think you should create soome video tutorials..
Keep it up
nichebrainstorm.wordpress.com
Very nice article. I appreciate all of the advice!
Nice tips. I’ve already followed most of them, and haven’t had much success yet. We’ll see how things go when I follow the rest :)
Please visit my blog if you get the chance!
Nice Blog btw!
–Jon Z | http://jzencovich.blogspot.com/
PaulStamatiou.com †HOW TO: Boost Your Blog Traffic
I think it is good for first time Bloggers. You also can boost traffic in traffic exchanges.The company I use is on my blog. Submiting your blog to search engines. I use Web Ceo. Also set up a newsletter for your blog. You can get a lot readers. Sending a newsletter in they mailbox every week. I think it is really cool blogging. Just relax and blog your way to success. PauL is a proven winner.
Great blog! Thanks for the read!
Great article! Thank you so much for the info.
A very useful article for someone just starting out with blogging. Thanks.
Great stuff!
thanks paul.
its an eye openinf article and shoul be read and practised everyday.
warm regards.
cheers!!!
jhaji.
http://jhaji-jhaji.blogspot.com/
Great information! Thanks I will put it to use!
Thanks. There is much to learn, but mainly the links are great. I am happy that I am reading it just before setting my own blog.
Great advice. THanks for the tips!
Hi Paul ! The information you have shared about how to boost the blog traffic is truly amazing. Thanks !!
Thanks for this great article. This is an awsome writeup.
I think you have a 404 Paul.
The Evils of Reblogging is now at http://avalonstar.com/2005/09/21/the-evils-of-constant-reblogging/
very nice read thank you….has helped me gains some information :)
Hi,
I’ve been contemplating a migration from Blogger to Wordpress but am concerned about losing previous posts (about 250 so far) and various settings. Is there any online resource that details the procedure and pitfalls to look out for?
OMG! this is more than a tip… thanks for this.
Uh, eve, it’s technorati.
Just remember its not enough to get traffic to your blog, you have to keep them there. If someone subscribes to your feed but they haven’t seen an update in a few days, they will stop checking it out. People nowadays have so little free time that if its a waste of time to check it every day, they won’t.
While I already knew about many of these ideas, there were a couple such as the BlogTopSites and Mint sites that I hadn’t come across before.
Thanks for the pointers!
Good ideas, this helped when I started out. I’ve now compiled a more indepth plan of attack for those interested at
http://marginoferic.blogspot.com/2006/09/blogging-102-make-yourself-known.html
Sort of a new bloggers view on the whole situation. But I have to give props to this site for doing it’s part. Thanks!
Nice Info. I would try to implement these for my blogs. But gettting your own domain name is not for free…. it costs.
Actually Technorathi helped a for my blog…
It really does good job…
try with it.
I’ve bookmarked this page. This is great information. I’ll be using it.
really informative. Hi Paul Small world. Learned something new in regards to the “So Now You’re a Serious Blogger” reference and changing hosts. Will be revisiting this conversation to make changes to my sites. Thank you for sharing.
Thanx for all those tipps, i am a beginner blogger but, it helped me really to get right startet. I think that it ist quite important for beginner bloggers.
Now I can build my “Schnelles Lesen” Blog correctly.
Chris.
Great article, I will Try this
Thanks for the tip Paul, about Inman’s Mint. I’ve been using the tools from my provider but will look into those peppers you talked about. I am also a flash programmer and have made flash modules at 4food.biz and also an online TV site with over 500 streaming channels at http://www.zenwired.com check it out and play some of my slapping flash games.
Take care and good luck with pingdom.com
Wow, tons of great info here, thanks for sharing and for doing it visually, thats a big plus….
Thanks for writing this great guide. I started my blog just recently and it helped me out for starters.
Before even I read your article today, I followed it almost to every bit since I setup by blog on 1st Nov’06. Must say, it really works. All new bloggers must setup an account on Technorati and digg. I had written article from my experience for getting your blogs in search engines in less time. It’s here [http://www.bloghash.com/2006/11/howto-get-your-blog-indexed-in-search-engines-in-less-than-one-month/] if anyone like to read it.
Good luck!
Great article.Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
i find it hard to see the need for fame, but thanks for the ideas
someone make us fame, fame fame, ok
Hi paul and thank you for the great tip.
Esthanome perifanos otan vlepo Ellina na proodevei.
Congrats.
Efhomai oti kalitero ;-)
Great article!!!!
Thank you for these tips and advises.
Is tehre any way to submit a blog to thousands of directies, and majority of search engines?
Thanks
Hey really helpful article. I was searching the same for lot of days..and i think got a good one..
Also can you tell me is there any free tool to post on blog to track the comments (like the same in which i am typing this comment)..I want it on my blog main page..
thanks a lot !
thanks for the info on how to get traffic to my blog. Yeah its true technorati do work.
Excellent article. Great points and insights. Well worth reading.
Kathleen Gage
Very useful information! Although it lacks a bit of info, it is a great starting point.
Nice post thank you !!
is there anyone that can tell me if my layout is – boring strange good flowing or other. i am deeply confused.
greatings from the THREE EYED DIMENSION
If anyone needs help, this blog was a great resource for me, and is updated everyday.
Thanks a lot for your helpful advice. It is helpful for us to express our own opinion worldwide much effectively.
Thanks for such a great article, As a newbie in Blogging I really appreciate this!
Good day!
Yazi
Excellent info. It shows your hard work and research. Thanks for the info.
What a great site. After all this is my favourite subject.
Keep up the good work
Thank you very much. I have certainly benefited from your tips.
I’m new in this subject. Even though many people suggested this optimization techniques I’m still skeptical about the result. But I think it’s still nothing to lose to try. Thank you anyway.
Paul,
I have been coming back to your article on How To Boost Your Blog Traffic-PaulStamatiou.com and am greatful for all the time, energy and tips that you have put into this website to help bloggers learn how to get better rankings on Google and other search engines. I am glad that I get an e-mail everytime there is another article written here by other bloggers that are trafficing your site, sharing there blogging progress. Paul, you are doing a remarkable job here on helping others to achieve and like the energizer bunny, I see no reason for articles not to keep going and going. When you reach out and help others,giving of your knowledge and time, then you will reap the rewards. God Bless You! Dee
Hey Paul, I am new to the blogoshpere and this article has been a great eyeopener.
I just wanted to thank you for the great article and as I made two plugins for wordpress, which someone might be interested.
one is feedburner category feeds and the other is content related rss feeds.
You can get more info at:htt://www.2very.com
Just realized this is an old post, but wayyy ahead of its time with information. Thanks!
Excellent article. For new bloggers like myself I must say that this article was very useful! hope that my blog kicks off now!
Good post !
That was a fantastic article, Paul. Kudos.
The blog populations have just been increasing exponentially, and it really needs a serious strategy to come out uniquely, profoundly and strongly.
Good articule Paul,
I did some work to help bloggers find out which Blog Directories are linking back to their blogs and which are only trying to increase their own PR (page rank)
Great share for all!!
Nice tips. It’s always useful to read something from more experienced than you.
anybody can give a tip on boosting traffic to a website, not a blog? email me =)
Great info! Whoa, its a little outdated but does it still apply and what changes have been made since? Thanks for the info and keep up the good work!
Great advices thnx!!!
Interesting set of ideas. Thank you for sharing.
What the? what happened here?
This has been such a great help for my website. I just started a few days a go and already have quite a few visitors. I really hope to gain more readers and boost my ranking. Thanks again for the information. Good luck.
Great article, lots of good comments on how to improve traffic. Thanks again!
I just read this. This is great work Paul. Keep it up and all the best in your studies (from a fellow engineer and former McGill graduate).
thanks/tony
Excellent read, specially for a newblogger like me :)
GS
That’s a useful article. I found Technorati to be great for getting traffic.
Hey Paul,
Great article. I think there are other things to focus on as well, and thats fantastic content and being aware of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). The search engines love related content, and will look for words similar to the theme of your site and post and give it more or less relevance accordingly.
I think the main thing is to ensure you keep your website structured into silo’s (categories separated). You are able to do this with Wordpress by using categories and then adjusting your permalink within wordpress to something like: -
/%category%/%postname%-%post_id%.php
(Then your posts will be sorted by category, then title of the post, then an id). This really helps you get good rankings in the search engines.
Cheers
Tim Buchalka
http://overwhelmingtraffic.com
Thanx for all those tipps, i am a beginner blogger but, it helped me really to get right startet. I think that it ist quite important for beginner bloggers.
Now I can build my “Schnelles Lesen†Blog correctly.
ohhh
Paul, thank you for sharing these traffic tips with your fellow bloggers. Most I already knew, however you can always use a refresher course. Keep up the great work!!!
Great post, thanks for the advice. I’ve got a lot to learn apparently. :)
I have writen a rare subject which is the most essential to know about. I have writen about Alfa state mind. Alfa staete mind is the nacked mind where we accept anything. If suppose we want to be the king Alfam mind takes it and next day morning starts reacting to it. When I enger a word alfa in the google nothing opens out for my subjet.
Taid Govindarajan
Keep the right mind set and you will learn the secret… Blog about what you know and in so doing you will be helping others and before you know it you will start reaping rewards. Keep learning from post like this one! You are what you think. Think positive and you will see that everything around you will all come into harmony!
Dee
Thanks for the wonderful article on How to bost the blog traffic . one of my fav article.
Thanks for your suggestions. Very useful for new blogger friends.
There are many advantages of your web blog above a website, except it’s easy to setup and free. You can put every thing in your blog: from a couple of lines what it is on your mind or your new article just published elsewhere, or a product review. In principle, a blog is the same as a website, but you will need to update more frequently to get the visitors to your site. A major advantage of your web blog here above a website to getting major search engines like Google and Yahoo to visit your blog frequently is a technique called “pinging”. It’s a method of notifying all of the major search engines and blog directories, each time that you have updated your blog. The search engines will come and to take a look at your blog, thereby increasing traffic to your blog. If you link your blog, the search engines will follow the links from the blog pointing to your sites. This will help the search engine rankings of your sites as well!
Thank you very much for the tips that is given here to increase the traffic.
Thanks for a clearly written, potentially helpful article.
Great article ! Thanks Paul !
In fact to boost my website I also concentrate on content and try to write daily news.
As we are a city guide in China, I just try to find any subjects like a new restaurant opening, a celebration, a theater play to come and I post a few lines on my website.
I can clearly see my web stats going down if I stop posting for more than 2 days. Then if I restart to post, the curve will slowly raise again. So it’s clearly a non stop challenge….
Cheers !
Great tips! I bought Mint because of this!
fantastic information..awsome work
I have a very lovely blog but am not too happy with my traffic.
Please kindly help me review my blog and advise me how I
can increase the traffic on my blog. Your constructive criticisms
are welcome. Thanks all.
My blog addy is http://www.freelancez.blogspot.com
And you can also send me a mail on freelance911@gmail.com
Thank you
Hi,
Would just like to say thanks for this amazing article.
I know have difficult it is to start up a blog without any knowledge of what to do…
- William :)
I have learnt alot from these post. I am still learning. Paul Stamatiou has help alot of us! Thanks Paul
Yes Its an different approach .Timely played, Because in this current trend, every one is having their blog/sites.But the individuality plays vital role to drive traffic.
Good Content is hero for all the time. Every one is eager to read the rich content site. To get relevant and regular visitors, you have to play different approaches and methodology.
In my blog you can find different strategies has to be followed to retain the customers.Because The site having good page rank may lost their ranking in overnight.That is the history of past years.So You have to keep on changing (not only in content) and your method you look.
Hello. What steps did you take to get your technorati rank so high? Would you like to exchange blogroll links?
Thanks for these tips. Really helpful!
Great idea.
I’ll need to bookmark this page and come back to it. Lots of information on there.
I think the most important point with anything on the net right now, is valuable content.
That’s what makes the internet world go round.
Is there any benefit for getting traffic by optimize blogroll and trackback? Do you have any article about them?
Another great article on this website i think i have to regularly visit this website to keep myself updated.
I am trying to employ all these techniques onto my website.
Regards,
Samir.
You have a nice list here. Definitely worth a bookmark. Thanks Paul!
Thanks for the article Paul.
Definately going to incorporate some of these ideas into my blogging efforts and see if Ii can double my current readership (from three to six!!!)
ciao.
great article, now that I am finally writing regularly on my blog, I now have some great tips to help get more traffic to my site. thanks!
That’s a useful article, thnx
Billy
I have the blogrush widget on my blogsite and its traffic coming from it is considerable good.
http://www.blogrash.com/blogrush-widget/
I added it two days ago, and it gives me more unique viewer just like signing up for google adword. I love it because its free. And it really works!
You’ve got great advice – I’ve already used some of your ideas on my kid safe blog :>)
This is really an informative article.I have a very new blog but I am seeing the growth by simply following some strategies.I have shared a post on this in my blog http://123hodgepodge.blogspot.com. Technorati, mybloglog, blogcatalog,blogrush are very good for referral traffic. Also directory submission, sitemap submission to google for your blog are also very useful for indexing in search engines.
Interesting and useful information. I plan to try to implement some of these tips. Thanks!
Great Post! I love that you put blog usability and content first. :)
One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website or blog is by optimizing your site. Optimizing your site will enable you to get a better ranking with the search engines. This is very important considering 95% of your traffic will be coming from search engines.
Very nicely done article with lots of helpful tips and links to other articles. I also like the neatness and organic flow of this blog. It only goes to show that it is more difficult to simplify than to “complexify” :)
Thanks….. Nice tips, it helps. Keep writing buddy!
Great article, even after all those years. There is a shortcut, however, to becoming a famous blogger. It’s easy to follow and it’s free – more on this on my blog. [Note: If you don't speak German, simply click on the word "hier" in the last sentence of my blog post, it will lead you to a flow diagram]
Hey, thanks for the tips! I’m a new blogger trying to learn and get traffic so this is exactly what I needed. Very helpful and straightforward guide to getting started. Nice job.
thanks
Super helpful, thanks.
I haven’t started a blog yet, it really seems like a lot of work, and I would like to concentrate first on my website.
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.
As a newbie, I heard digg.com can really bring you good traffic. But I do not know how. Now that I found you. . I will take your advice as much as possible. Thanks for the great info. Keep it up! Thank you. Paul. :)
Been doing all that you teach Paul, getting some readers, but not as many as I’d like.
I’m posting on politicians and the current stupidity that they all seem to engage in on a daily basis.
I’ve joined the lolcat speak meme, and most who come visit find us funny, some just don’t “get” it and of course you always get the flaming idiots.
But thanks a bunch for the information. You’re a site and poster that I refer to a whole bunch. There aren’t many useful Blog Traffic posts, but this is certainly one of them.
Thanks for your ideas especially about Technorati. I didn’t know about it until I read your post!
This is a nice post! Actually, I’ve done everything that’s posted up there except for feedburning and buying a domain. Currently, my weblog (-=}{oT~dEv1L 666=-’s HQ) is being hosted on a free hosting service. My blog’s filled with plugins, lots of content and everything, much like other pro blogs, but my credibility is low, as I don’t even have a Top-Level Domain Name to call my own. I’m still a student, so purchasing a domain is out. Well, do you know any sites who are willing to sponsor me a domain in exchange for some ads on the footer of my blog?
I was blown away and thanks so much for the information –smile
A very interesting read, and very useful ;)
i think the articles is very useful. from your alxa rank, i know all tips will working good. thanks
Thank you, this has been helpfull.
Good Post It Will Help Me in Boosting My Traffic.
Actually Technorati is not what it was used to be.I think Burning feed is the best thing to do.As well as some Good SEO.
Very nice article I will try some of your pointers.
Nice article.It was worth reading.I don’t agree to all.But its a good compilation.Nice work.
Great information. Came here from Technorati and it was worth the link!
That’s a great article, thnx
Great find, thanks!
http://datababble.blogspot.com
thanks…been wondering why nobody stops by blog. I plan on applying everything I’ve read.
Hello I follow your blog and thought you might be interested in an advertising service that just got interviewed on WSJ recently. Basically you make money with every visitor because they get played a short 5 second audio ad. I don’t want to spam so I won’t post the link to you, if you want more info just shoot me a quick email howiegray(at)gmail(dot)com.
Thanks,
Howie
I agree. Is actually pretty amazing how without noticing it, some readers become like “your followers”. I had another blog which I closed and I was amazed. I didn’t think people were actually following the stories post by post.
Great advice Paul…I stumbled on your site from Lifehacker…I’m trying to boost my site to folks interested in contests|sweepstakes|giveaways|freebies and with some gossip|news|daily grind news… hopefully it will pick up once I get use to the SEO industry…
Ciao! http://thedailyblender.blogspot.com
Great article Paul! I’ve implemented most of these tips on my gaming news blog! Thanks again!
This is what I call a great articles. Thanks for the info
A great blog post. Im very new to blogging, and these kinds of tips are perfect for the stage im currently at, so thanks a lot, and keep up the great work.
Great article. I just have a question about submitting to bookmarking sites. There are those who say it’s fine to submit your own content and I’ve also heard that unless you just wait for readers to naturally get your best posts on Digg, etc. is like committing social bookmarking suicide.
I personally would only suggest submitting the best of the best, not every little thing you post if you do submit your own content. I’m just thinking that newer blogs might have great stuff that would fare well in the bookmarking sites and if they subscribe to the “suicide theory” they may not be seen until they’re old news, if at all.
Another concern I have, in regards to the “get to know your readers” section is a technical one. I have come from a blogger blog to a wordpress hosted blog and I can’t figure out how to add all of the stuff I used to add (that are bits of code) where I used the “add page elements-HTML/ Javascript” feature in blogger.
I want to add my badges and stuff (i.e. MyBlogLog) can anyone help?
Sheree
The biggest traffic *multiplier* is guessing what your audience will search. I use CyStats because you can see what people are searching, but I am still experimenting. The blog I play around on is quite small http://fresh.gridfusions.com but it’s surprisingly high traffic.
My trick is to anticipate what someone would Google. For example, as soon as I saw the latest MacBook Air advert, I posted the music. Instantly 5 comments. Now it’s at 16 and still growing. However, blogging of this nature is only for short-term traffic. Soon the advert will stop *air*ing (bad pun, I know) and the traffic will decrease to normal again. Either I keep it up, or focus on keeping the visitors via RSS or some other technique you mentioned above.
I’m glad I found this posting. Thanks!
I’ve been a good guy so far, but am probably going to have to cheat somehow.
Awesome information, Paul. So many people tend to forget that first and foremost is content. If you’re not producing good consistent quality content, readers will dwindle away. But even for new visitors to your site, if they don’t feel drawn in by your content – they won’t be there more than about 30 seconds.
Layout is also important in order to increase your readership. If you have a confusing layout, or hard to read text, again – good content will not be enough to keep readers interested.
Lastly, community participation is a must. Whether it be through commenting on blogs in your niche, forum participation, or social networking – without becoming part of the community, your blog may not get the recognician it deserves!
My formula is basically this: Quality content + community participation = TRAFFIC!
Great read . Will also check your other posts . You have got one more reader :)
Good post. Really helpful.
Thanks :)
I have to admit that I’m a blog geek NOW. But I have no idea on what a traffic is and what’s it for.
Some good advice. I also found that being genuinely interested in other people’s blogs can help, if you contact them and hook up with them (share links). I found that the best thing to do is to have great content. People won’t visit my site unless I provide good stuff.
My site about Japan and the Japanese language has gotten a pretty good amount of traffic for a brand new blog. I’m honored that some people have even bookmarked it, even though it’s in the earliest stages (only a handful of posts).
Very nice advices,,,I hope these can help me to increase traffic in my new blog:
http://funnyhack.blogspot.com
Interesting to note that the first comment dates the article at 2005, the latest (b4 this 1) dates it 3 yrs later. Wow!! Still relevant after three yrs!! You Rock!!!
Good read and make sure you stop by and read my blog on how to get a perfect body. http://www.pathtoaperfectbody.com
Thank you for this very useful information. I hope I can gain some new readers from it!
Thanks for the tips…going to try out blogflux
Thanks, Paul, I found your section on Burn that Feed useful, and I’m sure others have. That’s what I love best about blogging, you get to share knowledge about marketing and software and how-to in a totally relaxed and non-commercial environment so everyone wins hands down. That is always the best of the internet: no holds barred private user sharing information tips.
Thanks! Up on some of this but always on the lookout for ways to say “hey world here we are” spots to put our blog. Just investigated BlogFlux and we are awaiting approval :)
As Ipsofacto said, you forgot about posting intelligent comments on blogs like this to increase traffic. It’s nice to hear that you do that yourself Paul, not just complete newbies like me!
Great post by the way; you have introduced me to the great world of technorati.
Over and out.
Great Article. I’ve found that promoting my feed has been one of best ways to accumulate regular traffic.
Excellent tips. Very authenticated way of getting the traffic through systematic methods. This is comprehensive and mostly complete no-nonsense guide.
Keep it up.
thnkss….gud work
if we can all get free traffic we can all be rich for life lol
great job!!
i will try this on my blog !!
great site !!
Good information
Nice thought provoking post.
Another big way to increase your Search Engine ranking (and therefore increase traffic) is to get as many other sites linking to you. That is, produce good content that others will reference on their sites.
There’s many tools available that checks how many external links a website has. These are usually a good indication about how popular a site is and they are free. See here:
http://www.info-express.org/website-popularity-checker
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/link-popularity.html
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/link-popularity
I have to be honest, I disagree with the comment about having your blog hosted on blogger. I’ve found many successful blogs hosted there using the .blogspot address. I’ve found the comments about having this as a domain comes from tech snobs.
Other than that, this was very useful to me. Thank you for the post.
@brandon – I’m not saying great blogspot blogs don’t exist, but the consensus seems to be that there is a certain stigma associated with blogspot blogs, which can be avoided by hosting yourself.
@ Brandon, I think part of this is because in the early days of the internet, having your own domain name was a big thing, versus geocities/tripod/aol/etc websites.
The blogging “revolution” has changed things, and the decision whether to host a blog or use blogspot/typepad/etc boils down to a list of trade offs for each person to consider. That list of trade-offs is a good idea for a future post :) In my case, the trade-offs point to using blogspot, but I do recognize that there are disadvantages in doing so, and that’s where the trade offs come in which has a different weight for each person/blog.
A number of successful and critically acclaimed websites are using .blogspot/typepad/etc, such as “Post Secret”, “Strobist”, “The Online Photographer”. And you can always get the domain name and redirect it to the actual blog, so you can have an easier to remember url to promote.
I am very happy with blogger hosting my blog!
Give yourself time and write informative articles.
God Bless!
Dee
Thanks fo rsuch a lovely post…
Even you can get through
http://innovideas.blogspot.com
I have updated it.
GREAT post….I’ve added a little to the subject here: http://natespost.com/index.php/blogging-for-traffic/
Great article!!!. I just started blogging in my site and this article has been helpful
-Shweta
http://www.shweta.lotlikar.in
Just what I needed at this point.New to blogging your information is a blog saver.Kudos!!
You can view my blog @ http://lifeasafirsttimeparent.blogspot.com.
I still found these tips useful three years on…
Technorati, Technorati, Technorati, one day I’ll figure it all out!
Thanks for this wonderful information!!!
Man I love you. This was great information. And I’m definitely going to put it in my bookmarks!
Hi Paul, this is my first visit to this blog. I think there will be more visit later. I am a new blogger and not English speaker, really enjoy your content.
Hi,
I got to your article via google and I actually went ahead and did every step told in it. In addition, all those comments made to this post made it more valuable since there is wealth of information that one can use to truly increase traffic. That is what I am working on now, which is take this knowledge and apply it.
Thanks,
http://www.moodygamer.com
I subscribe for your consistently great advice. I am one of three authors on a political blog, so I got to stay sharp with the news and on blogging.
Getting traffic is challenging for most of Internet Marketers. Nice post, it gives me new knowledge
Excellent information. I know that Technorati has helped me quite a bit.
Thanks for a great article! I don’t see blogtopsites on your page anywhere, possibly because you get plenty of traffic without it. If it’s for some other reason, please let me know– I just took your advice and added it! I’m curious whether any of the advice, suggested sites, etc. would be different if this were written now as opposed to 2005… if you have any updated thoughts I’d love to hear them. I also just took the advice of the first commenter and included my url…
Sound advice paul, real food for thought. Just got to put it to work now.
Thanks for the help!
how amazing is it, nice write!
olimpiadetoki.blogspot.com
Thank you for this excellent article. I have not come across those method and I believe it could improve the traffic of my blogs.
wow, this is great post about boost blog traffic I’ve ever found. Thanks bro.
http://pardontheimitation.blogspot.com/
I know, t’was a joke hehe.
Awesome points there, you go alot deeper into how and why you should spend time doing these points than other bloggers with similar content! Always appreciated :D!
http://tooeasy.blogsome.com
Nice post! Very informative! Excellent!
Thanks for the information. I will be using quite a bit of it , some of it is not for me at the present time , but for the most part right on target.
Thanks for all the great tips and advice. I can only dream of the day when my blog is getting 150K hits a month
April Rain
http://aprilrainskinscience.blogspot.com/
You have provide a lot of information in your site thanks.
Very helpful! Thank you very much. I also bookmarked this page so I can come back later on, haha :]
Thanks for advise! it really helps.
Thanks for advise. it helps!
The post has been very thoughtfully written. Very useful for anyone learning seo.
great tips…i’m on it!
For a person who has created a new blog a couple of weeks back this article is very useful. I thank you for your tips.
http://masug.blogspot.com
Tried using some of those tactics on my own site!
http://woojin.weebly.com
Check in to see how it’s going!
I’ve dedicated a whole page to present the results.
How is it that so many good blogs go unnoticed, even using all those things you mentioned, while some very, shall I say, suspect blogs just rake in the traffic? Obviously, quality is not that important. It couldn’t be.
Very helpful! Thank you very much.
Really interesting, I need to try out feedburner though I already have an RSS feed, not sure this will make much difference as I have stats from my blog package.
Not seen BlogTopSites so will try that out.
If it helps anyone :-) , this is how my blog has grown…
http://www.carlknibbs.net/blog/2008/12/18/growing-blog-traffic.html
carl
Thanks, I need to try out feedburner though I already have an RSS feed, not sure this will make much difference as I have stats from my blog package.
Not seen BlogTopSites so will try that out.
If it helps anyone :-) , this is how my blog has grown…
http://www.carlknibbs.net/blog/2008/12/18/growing-blog-traffic.html
carl
10 ways to boost your websites popularity.
It helps check it out!
http://www.tonykim.weebly.com
woh………….! very fine ideas….i will apply them in my blog tonight
http://themes4orkut.blogspot.com
and come back to you after one month to see how far your advice had helped me.
thanks a lot
neel
Welcome to my blog.
Amazing that this post is 3 years old and still getting fresh comments. Wish I could be so lucky.
http://valleyofthegiants.blogspot.com/
Thanks for this wonderful article. I’ve a website which is having magazine style theme installed in wordpress and having latest gadget or software reviews as well tutorials on Java, PHP etc.
Hi and thanks for this post.
I’m considering registering a domain, but I don’t know much about coding, let alone starting a page from scratch. Are there any websites to help me with this?
Thanks,
Conrad
Gr8 help
Thanks a lot man…
great info! luv it! thanks for sharing. ;)
Wonderful Tips it helped me to Boost my Blog Traffic.
Thx a lot…..
Useful tips about blogging and generating traffic. Great!
Had been blogging since 2 years but didn’t know how to expose my blog on the www and get traffic. This post has helped me alot to understand the basics.
Thanks!
http://exspecto.com/
Wow Great read! I read this entire thing on my ride to work this morning on my cell phone and really enjoyed it! great ways to get blog traffic im going to put all this to work
Thanks this is really a good overview and I will follow most of your tips!.
Great thoughts, this topic definitely comes up in my line of business. Also, I’ll just add that blog comments are almost useless unless the person making them is adding something to the discussion. Why not take a few extra minutes and put something of value into your effort?
Excellent and very informative article. I found it very useful and easy to read.
Paul I’ll be checking you for other articles too, keep up the good work.
Greetings from Greece
Chris
Wonderful Article…I am poor of traffic,hope this one can help me…
thanks for this, it was really useful!
Thank you for the spent time. Very useful information
You mentioned site design. For me, a page this bright is hard on my bad eyes. I don’t know if that bothers most people, but if the page is “too bright”, I won’t stay there very long.
I am a huge believer in finding a niche that people are interested in and providing them with as many different variations of ways to understand that specific topic you chose to blog about. The look and feel is important to gain trust up front but you need to have valuable content that is helpful so people will remember and spread the word.
How do i increase my technorati ratings? unitl now i havent seen an of my posts in google search.. i’ve been blogging for about 3 mos. now..
Thank you for the useful article. I have started following the tips. Lets see!
Thanx again!
Cook advices, thanks buddy!
Great Article
and great advice, I implemented a few of your steps as I was reading..
Thanks
WordWiz
great advice
thank you
thanks for your advice.
The advice is as good today as it was when this article was published three years ago.
Paul,
Do you find twitter helpful? I have started using twitter and hope to gain alot of followers. I also enjoy these post and the ones at twittermoms. If you twitter I would like to follow!
http://twitter.com/herbsandmore
A very constructive article, made me retthink some of my traffic techniques.
Thanks for sharing your point of view!
Thanks, wise words indeed! I shall begin my seo quest!
@dee I have found twitter does bring a small amount of traffic to my blog, but not as much as sites like stumble upon or technorati.
http://twitter.com/thedesignlondon
DesignLondon
Thank you, hope this article can help me.
Great advice. Hope I can apply these techniques you have shared.
It’s amazing that these tips are still useful four years on. Great job pal!
Thanks for the info – I wonder how many sites/companys use this in their practice?
Those are good techniques to use for boosting traffic. Thanks for sharing your valuable information.
thanks for this, the section on wordpress plugins was really useful. A bit of work to do!
Thanks for the useful info – i will definately put a lot of this into action on my site.
Nice tips but LOL your missing the one that brings me most of my traffic to my blog Comfy Money Blog.
Great blog post and its still fresh. This blog is very helpful for newbies.
Nice article. I’ve used Twitter and ezinarticles in an attempt to generate traffic, with low-to-middling success, and I’ve also just discovered Hubpages, which looks like it could prove even better. You can post articles on hubpages and earn page impressions and ad revenue from any clicks whilst people are reading your articles, but, better still, if you link to a Hubpages article externally, you can earn a percentage of the hits and ad revenue generated whilst the person who clicked on your link is on Hubpages, whether they are reading one of your articles or not. Should a user sign up for Hubpages after clicking on one of your referal links, you are then entitled to additional page impressions and earnings based on any articles the new sign up posts. Which is a superb program.
Check it out here
Good info that I still use to this day. Legendary post..
Two Voices | Two Guys
I just started a blog for my website and am still figuring out the ins and outs. Thanks for the technorati and blogtopsites tips!
Link baiting another way to drive traffic to your site. It is very powerful and effective. I rearly see internet users use this method.. The Ira Glasses guide to link baiting
many thanks you have just made my life a whole lot easier
Great post. Would you mind if I wrote a little article on my increase website traffic blog about this?
My blog is still very new so I am always looking to get more quality content on it.
My readers I am sure would benefit greatly from this information. I will of course link back to this blog
as being the original blog where I got information from.
as long as your article is original and doesn’t copy more than a tiny excerpt (as usual with these things) I think we are all good. thanks for stopping by
I think that commenting on other blogs is quite important, getting involved in communities, groups and forums all helps
very useful information. Thnaks!
I’ll implement this with my blog
Really really great post! So useful, exactly what I was looking for :) I didn’t know about the Technorati thing so I’ll do that ASAP!
Very informative info on creating free traffic to your blogs and using many free techniques. Thanks for the info.
Very useful article, Thank you.
I have been enjoying these post for several years now! Very helpful articles!
fabrica sofas fabrica mobiliario
Honestly, I’ve been following religiously to what you have preached. However, instead of Urchin Site and Mint, I’m just using analytics and webmaster tools. Are they better?