Lets face it " owning a blog takes work. You have to work to come up with topics, research, and posts that other people will find interesting. Then, you have to work to promote the blog itself.
But, if you want to get more traffic to your blog, follow these 10 tips:
1. Figure out where your current traffic is coming from
Even if youre only getting 20 hits per day, thats 20 hits that you had to work for " so see where theyre coming from.
Google Analytics is a free and easy way to track your traffic. Look at the past month of statistics, and see where your traffic is coming from. Are you part of a popular forum thats sending traffic your way? Did you publish a killer article on a directory that got syndicated by dozens of other websites? Are you ranked on page 1 for a certain keyword?
Whatever you did to get your current traffic, keep it up! If a particular technique is working, stick with it. If your traffic is coming from a forum, look for other similar forums. If your article marketing is driving traffic, write more articles. Its called the rinse and repeat marketing technique.
2. Try new marketing techniques
As helpful as Tip #1 is, you cant put all of your eggs in one basket. The best blogs use a variety of promotional tools. The more you get your name and your link out there, the better. If you havent started article marketing, try it. If you arent on Twitter, try it. If you dont bookmark your posts, start doing so.
3. Do some guest blogging
Look for popular blogs in your niche, contact the owner, and offer to write a guest post for them. Its great for the blog owner because they can take the day off from writing. And, its great for you because you get your name and link out in front of highly targeted traffic. All you have to do is impress readers with a great post, and theyll click on your link to see what else you have to offer. Theres no telling how many new loyal readers you can get out of your guest posts!
4. Invite guest bloggers
Well-known bloggers in your niche will bring an audience with them. And, theyll promote the fact that they wrote something on your blog " meaning that both of you are now promoting the site. A popular guest blogger can get people onto your site; then, you can wow them with the rest of your information, and convince them to keep coming back.
5. Capitalize on your peak days
Even if you have very little traffic, you will likely have days that are better than others. If, for example, Wednesday gets more traffic than other days, take full advantage of it. Concentrate your efforts on publishing the best posts on Wednesdays. It will make people more likely to start visiting your site on other days of the week.
6. Focus on building a brand
Write down the characteristics of your target audience, and keep the list handy. Your target audience has questions, concerns, and problems that they need you to solve. By targeting them, you will eventually build a brand. By building a brand, people will know exactly what they can expect from you, and they will start to rely on you for information " meaning theyll keep coming back, and even linking to you.
7. Dont enable comments right away
If you have minimal traffic, chances are there are no comments on your blog. A blog with zero comments looks unpopular. And, if people think youre unpopular, theyre not as likely to come back. Its human nature.
Instead, get rid of the comment section altogether. That way, people will have no idea what kind of traffic or feedback youre getting. Once your traffic increases, you can enable comments if you want to.
8. Take advantage of trackbacks
A trackback is a link to a related blog post in your blog post. When you post trackbacks, a list of each link goes at the end of your blog post, right before the comments section. And, when you post a trackback, the other blog owner gets notified, and posts a link to your post on their site. That way, people on their site can see your trackback, click on it, and visit your site.
The key, though, is to make sure the other blog owner has enabled trackbacks. If they havent, your link will not show up on their page.
9. Archive all of your posts properly
Dont delete your old blog posts! Instead, archive them so that searchers can still find them months or years down the road. By deleting posts, youre just throwing away all of your hard work. Plus, having all of those internal archived links is great for your on-page SEO, which can help boost your search engine ranking.
10. Make sure your content is compelling
This tip goes last because, without great content, the other techniques are a waste of time. Getting traffic to your blog is one thing; keeping it is something else. Make sure youre sharing new information, in an interesting way. Otherwise, youll never get the traffic you want!