I’m not new to business but I may still be new to keeping up with a successful blog. I’ve read a ton of books over the past year and I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting online trying to find ways to increase traffic to my blog.
Here are a few things that I’ve done to bring in more traffic and in turn create more advertising revenue.
1- Submitting your posts to forums: This is the best way to get people interested in what you have to say. Now of course you need to make sure you are putting your posts on the appropriate forums. Some forums will allow you to put a synopsis of your blog post into a forum thread with a link back to your blog where the whole post can be read. This is a great tool for getting people excited about what you have to say and then forcing them to visit your blog in order to get the rest of the story.
There are some blogs that will not allow links in the actual post. In this case make sure you have a link to your blog in your signature so that in your thread you can let people know to look there. The key to driving traffic to your blog from a forum is to not give away the whole post. Give them a taste and then let them know they can get the rest of the info by visiting your blog.
2- Article Submission: A great way to increase traffic and awareness for your blog is through submitting your posts to different article submission sites. Below is a link to the top 50 sites like this. Here you can give people a chance to view your posts and to show them what your blog is about. Don’t be afraid to invite them back to your blog for more reading. Article submission sits are also a great way to build back links to your blog.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2880412/50-Free-Article-Submission-Websites
3- Back Link Campaigns: I typically outsource this part of my site development. You want to find a reputable company to do this for you. There are a ton of offers out there who will submit your link to 10,000 sites for $29.95. Stay away from those. A good campaign should cost you about $250 for 500 backlinks to PR1 & PR2 sites. The price goes up for PR3 and for PR4 you can expect to pay as much as $25 for a front page permanent link. Prices will very significantly based on what company you talk to and the quality of their work. Shop around, look for the best price, and ask for references. Also, any company that is worth the fee will provide you with a detailed report on what they have done for you. You can do this yourself but time is money so if you have a little this is where I would spend it.
4- SEO: You can not have a website with out having it optimized for search engines. If you are planning a blog and you do not have SEO in your marketing plan then you are already going in the wrong direction. Again I outsource this on all my sites. I’ve found that there are people out there that have been doing this for years. I’ve done a lot of research and I’ve read a lot of books on this topic yet still I know I’m better off paying the pros. I’m an entrepreneur not a developer or a web marketing guru. As I post this article I will have about 20+ blogs up and running some of which I’m the only contributor (www.rcbryan.com) and other which are set-up for multi-contributors. In order to make all my blogs successful I outsource my SEO and I would be glad to share my partner company with you if you like.
One other aspect of SEO is to make sure that you use a service like WordPress which is optional built in SEO packages. These can make all the difference in the world when it comes to tagging your posts for maximum exposure.
5- Social Bookmarking: If you look at the bottom of this article you will see eight different social bookmarking programs. It is OK to bookmark your own posts. In fact if you are going to take the time to write a post then you better bookmark it! The more exposure you get for your articles the better. I’ve always had problems keeping up with this. The evidence is overwhelming that you have to do this. If you want your blog to go from 10 visits a day to 500 there is no easier way.
I by no means am trying to sell myself as an expert on this topic. I’ve spent about a year reading every possible book I can get my hands on. I’ve also put a lot of time developing a team of top notch developers, authors, marketing guru’s, and SEO guru’s. I’m happy to share my team with you if you can tell me you are ready to take your blog to the next level.
Check back to my blog in the coming months as I will be offering a free one year hosting package that includes blog design and set-up to correspond with the launching of my online consulting company.
Remember if you like what you’ve read show me you have.. bookmark this article!
SEO Consultant Roger Bryan