Four Great Ways To Generate Traffic To Your Blog

[mgomes]

Your blog is up and you are busy writing and adding information but what you need more than anything is visitors to enjoy reading what you have written.

Here are four ways that I use to bring visitors to my blog.

Social networks
Social networks are websites that are driven by the community. So they provide community driven content which means you do less work if you own one (although moderating one is enough work in itself!)

This has to be one of my most active traffic generation methods and there are plenty to choose from including Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, MyBlogLog, and other less popular ones.

I join because they allow me to post events, classifieds, bulletins and messages that other people will read. In addition you also have your own profile that allows you to talk about who you are and link to your website(s).

Articles
Writing articles is still one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site. Not only because the article site will feature them but also because other people will use them in their blogs, on their websites, in their ezines and in other places online.
As each article contains your signature file with your details in it (which must remain as part of the conditions of people using your article) you are given free advertising on other people's sites!

Of course you also gain a link back to your site (back linking is still one of the MOST effective ways of driving traffic to your site)
There are loads of article sites on the internet and a search engine search will find them for you.

Podcasts
A podcast is an audio which has been given a special xml link.
The great thing about podcasts rather than audio is the fact that people can download your audio mp3 file and listen to it whenever they want to using their ipod, PDA, computer or other device.

The other great thing about podcasts is the fact that people can subscribe to them using an RSS link which is shown as an orange button. A subscriber clicks on that link and all your podcasts are automatically downloaded, which means they do not have to keep returning to your site to download your latest podcast.

It also makes your job as the podcaster easier because you only need to put your link into a podcast directory once and every time you update your podcast link (or feed as it is known) it will automatically be updated in the podcast directory. So once you go through the work of submitting your feed once you never have to do it again.

Social Book Marking Sites
It has now become popular to add your articles, blog posts, videos and podcast to popular social book marking sites like Stumbleupon, Digg and Del.ici.ous because people can vote on them as well as save them for future reference.

The more votes you receive the higher up your post is moved and the more it is shown on the site. These are fantastic places to get instant targeted traffic because people will naturally come over and take a look at your site after reading your post on a social book marketing site.

Also if people are interested in something you have shared or said they will also tell other people about it and this is one of the easiest ways. The thing to do here is to make sure that your post is key word rich so that you will also rank high if someone searches the site for that key word.

These are four ways that I use to drive traffic to my blog and of course there are many more so focus on discovering which four or five work for you and stick to them.


Article Author: Diane Corriette
Article Source: Depositarticles . com

[moneymatters]

Networking with other bloggers, and commenting on other blogs is another good way.

[amyschiff]

It seems counterintuitive that RSS and Podcasts would drive traffic to your blog, given that many people use aggregators which actually prevent them from going to the actual website to access the info (or does the feed traffic through an aggregator somehow count?)

In my eyes, content will always be king. No matter how many ways you get your content out there, people will stop visiting if it's not engaging.

[the weakonomist]

A podcast isn't worth implementing to generate traffic unless you already have a following. I can put up a podcast on itunes but that's like registering with a blog index, they don't do much for traffic.

You need to borrow traffic from larger blogs, and then have enough good content to keep some of the traffic. You borrow by commenting and guest posting.

You can always do SEO, but that is not sticky traffic. They are there and gone in a second.

[dschill]

Also try and look through Yahoo answers for questions regarding your blog then you can kindly answer there question and tell them your url

[ckeener]

Good list, these are few things what I use:
-Article marketing
-Blog commenting
-Forum marketing
-Viral marketing techniques: Creating a video and upload it to YouTube with your URL flashed on the screen. Or else just use viral widgets on your blog/web site to spread the word of mouth.

[hermione]

Another good way to generate traffic is participating in blog carnivals, especially if your post makes editor's pick.

[Kmarshall]

my ways are:

networking, commenting, posting (posts post post and post more), be unique and updated, make your blog look simple so that it loads fast.. direct to the point blogging.. getting all your readers wants on your log.. include some pictures... join bookmarking sites, social networking sites, directories, forums, and chats

[mikey123]

Originally Posted by moneymatters

Networking with other bloggers, and commenting on other blogs is another good way.

Yeah, I agree with your comment. And one good thing about networking with other bloggers is you have the same niche, thus you will be building a network of readers which are interested in the very same topic which your blog is aiming for, not just readers who are passing by.

[marts56]

That was a nice article. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I'm doing blog commenting, forum, article submission and some other things of submissions.