30 Most Effective Tips For Getting More Traffic

Getting more traffic is the first and foremost demand of every blogger. Now I will discus some effective way  to drive more traffic in your blog. These tips will increase your blog traffic and ranking.

1. Sridhar Katakam
Track blogs related to your niche and leave effective  comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a My blog Log widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page. 

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog. 

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup. 

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense, you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic. 

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site. 

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors. 

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now. 

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works. 

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

12 Effective Tips to Stay Your Visitors to You Blog

A blogger’s first and fore most demand is to get more traffic, more dedicated readers. Here I will discuss how to encourage your traffic to stay in your blog. Good content is the King of the blog no doubt but if your blog is not reader friendly  reader may not come back to your blog. I’ve put together 12 ways to compel your visitors to stay.

Whether you’re looking to increase your readers loyalty, improve your website’s accessibility and friendliness, or build a community these tips will help you achieve your goals.

1. Simplify your websites navigation - You should focus on the most important elements of your website and display those in your navigation and eliminate the rest.

It can be very confusing and annoying to make visitors click on everything.

Your navigation should give them clear direction to what your site is about and how to navigate it.

2. Choose an engaging color scheme – Your website should have two or three primary colors that stand out.

You want to break your content apart and allow your audience to see your website as different sections of content

Don’t overdo it though. Too many colors can turn visitors away as quickly as it can entice them stay.

3. Use images to break up the content and add personality – Images have a way of speaking to people the way that words never can.

Use images to convey emotion and draw your audience in.

4. Make your websites header (logo) and tagline stand out – It’s one of the first things a visitor sees on your site and can make your site look either professional or glued and pasted together.

Your headline and tagline should be clean and clearly display what your website is about.

5. Add more calls to action – A call to action is simple and often only a sentence long.

Ask people to comment, twitter your post or take some other action.

Whatever you decide to do get them in the habit of taking action.

In fact don’t forget to comment at the end of this post

6. Create strong, emotional headlines – Other than your posts picture your headline is immensely important.

If your posts title doesn’t get any attention readers aren’t likely to click on your little read more icon.

In fact they will probably ignore your post all together.

7 . Simplify your readability – While your content may make perfect sense to you it doesn’t mean your reader gets it.

Most readers want the information they are looking for to be easy to read, highly memorable, and easily accessible.

8. Offer more at the end of your post – Your post was absolutely amazing, now what?

Did you add a related posts section, a call to action or a request to comment?

If you want people to stay engaged give them more of what they want, or they’ll find it somewhere else.

9. Use sub headlines to break up your content – Most readers like to skim content. I know I do, and I bet you’ve done it too.

If your writing a long post or speaking on multiple topics break your content up with bold, larger, or different color sub headlines.

You’ll please the skimmers and the loyal audience, and most likely get more return traffic.

10. Change your content or change your audience - Your content may be great, monumental even, but if your audience isn’t reading it then you may need to change your audience or change your content.

If they’ve already heard your content a million times over by everyone else, then you need to teach it to an audience that hasn’t heard it as much and wants to learn it.

Or create fresh and new content for your existing audience.

The reason teachers have students is because students don’t know as much as their teachers.

If they did then we’d have no schools.

You need to find fresh minds to grow and build relationships with, which brings me to my next tip.

11. Create a monthly post questionnaire – You know it all don’t you? I know I do (just kidding

Writing a post every month or so and asking your audience what’s most important to them will do wonders for your blog or business.

It’s about as direct as you can get.

Ask them to comment about what’s on their minds, what they need the most help with, and what they think you can do better.

It will help you uncover topics, and idea’s you’ve never thought of “guaranteed!”

12. Build relationships with peers – We all love the A list bloggers, but building relationships with those that are at the same level as us is a great way to gain additional insights, followers, and contributors.

It helps you expand your reach, get your name into the blogosphere, and become known.

One of the best things about sharing idea’s with those in your niche is the motivation that you get.

It helps you reshape your thinking and build new principles to help you reach success.

If these tips have helped you than please contribute in the comment section with your own tips.

I’m sure it will not only help me improve, but help those that read your comments as well.

Your participation is just as important as this post! Thanks again, and have a great week

10 Signs that Evaluates Your Blog Is going to be Professional

You have started a blog or having a blog, how you will evaluate your blog that your are achieving your goal in blogging. I am going to discus some signs that indicates your blog is on the right track. To build a successful blog you have to stick with it a make a passion for blogging. Many bloggers finally give up or did not update their blog regularly as  they feel like they are not getting anywhere, when in my opinion they are on the right track.

Hopefully if you are doing the right things and making progress you will recognize your growth and accomplishments, but not all do. Here are 10 signs that your blog is on the right track. If several of these items apply to you, don’t give up just because the achievements are not coming fast enough. I think if you give it some time and continue to work, you will reach your goals in time.

1. Growing Subscriber Count

If your blog’s subscriber base is growing, even slowly, you are making some progress. Gaining trust and subscribers is not easy, so try not to get your expectations unrealistically high. If you have realistic goals for subscriber growth you will more likely be able to feel good about your progress and stay consistent with your blogging.

2. Increasing Numbers of Inbound Links

Links are important for any blog. They help with click-through traffic, search engine rankings, and recognition. For bloggers, incoming links are also representative of how well you are known in your industry and your number of links will grow as you start to become recognized as an authority.

3. Increasing Numbers of Valuable Comments

If your blog is receiving a decent amount of thought-provoking comments, that is a good sign that people are reading and paying attention to you. Comments are the lifeblood of blogs, and those that have a lot of valuable comments from readers become even more useful for readers.

4. Increasing Visitors, Pageviews, and/or Pagviews Per Visit

Many bloggers are stats junkies. While growth in traffic isn’t always representative of meeting or surpassing your blogging goals, it certainly isn’t a bad thing. Hopefully, over time your blog stats will increase as more and more readers visit and subscribe to your blog.

5. Consistent Posting

If you are posting consistently on your blog, you’re already one step ahead of the vast majority of bloggers. It sounds pretty easy, but consistent posting is a huge challenge for many. If you’re able to keep posting consistently, good things are likely to happen.

6. Improving Quality of Articles

Quality is always going to be a somewhat subjective issue, but I think most bloggers can look back through their archives and get a pretty accurate idea of how the quality has trended over time. I know that when I look back at my first few months of blog posts I’m kind of embarrassed at the low level of quality, and I don’t think I’m alone. Growth in quality is natural as you will become more knowledgeable about your topics and as you learn about blogging and writing in general. Take a look back at how your quality of writing has improved and I think you will be encouraged to keep going and see what happens.

7. An Ability to Clearly Define Your Niche

One of the most overlooked items when starting a new blog is being able to accurately define the audience that you will be targeting. As time goes by, you’ll learn what types of content your readers appreciate (and what they don’t respond to) and you’ll most likely get a better idea of where you fit into your niche. Knowing your place is very important for branding and creating a blog that is appealing to the readers that you are targeting. If you know precisely where you fit into your niche, you’re on the right track.

8. An Increasing Network of Bloggers

Networking is probably the most crucial aspect of blogging outside of content creation, and in some cases it can be even more important. If you are continually meeting new bloggers and strengthening the relationships that you have made, you will drastically be in a better position for the future. Building a network will help you to learn from others, gain valuable and loyal readers, increase inbound links, increase votes at social media sites, and much more.

9. A Knowledge of at Least 1 Specific Way to Get Targeted Readers to Your Blog

As you continue to blog, you will learn more about traffic generation and getting people to read and recognize what you have written. If you have even one specific method that consistently helps you to reach your target audience, you are better off than most bloggers. Maybe you have spent some time writing guest posts for other blogs in your niche, maybe you’ve had success with leaving intelligent and relevant comments at other blogs, or maybe you’ve developed a strong profile at a niche-specific social media website. Whatever the source is, if it is something that you can continue to use in the future, you are one step closer to blogging success.

10. Achievement of Goals

Many bloggers have long-term goals, such as making a living with a blog, or getting 10,000 subscribers. But what many bloggers lack are short-term goals that will help them to take the necessary steps towards those long-term goals. If you are setting monthly goals for blogging revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc. and you are achieving those goals, don’t give up because you are not getting to the long-term goals fast enough. Take pleasure in meeting your short-term goals and keep challenging yourself.

4 Steps Must follow to Drive More Traffic to your Blog and Increase the Ranking of Your Blog

Blogging success depends upon getting more traffic to the blog. One of the main goals of blogger is to increase the number of traffic to the blog. Here I will discuss some simple strategy that will dramatically increase traffic of your blog. To drive more traffic to blog and promoting the blog you have to follow the 4 steps of blogging strategy.

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Content is the king of promoting your blog. Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing for creating killer articles. (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on). Keep in mind that your have to create one killer article every week. If that is not possible then at lest one every 15 days. For branding and ranking the regular update is very much essential.  

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing but a long and structured unique article that bears a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

• create a giant list of resources,
• write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
• find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
• write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

• commenting on other blogs in your niche,
• linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
• interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together. 
 

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

• letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
• letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
• getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
• getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
• posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

• a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
• a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
• a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
• a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

17 Tips for the Beginners Must Follow Before You Start Your Blog

Starting a blog is not so hard but very few is able to make their blog professional. There are tons of blogs in the web world, and most of them get nowhere because they don’t have a blogging strategy in place.

 

In this post, you’ll learn 17 effective blogging steps for beginners to make dramatically your blog professional and increase your chances of success.

You haven’t started a blog yet, it doesn’t matter, these tips will make a great turn for blog and your life of blogging.

Now, let’s have a look!

1. Passion

First you have to fix your goal. Why do you want to start blogging? Don’t  try to run after making money by your blog. There are no shortcuts to success.

If you want to build a blooming blog that brings success, you will have to work hard, and to stay motivated, you have to find something you’re passionate about. Make your passion with your blogging.

2. Purpose

When your purpose is weak, your chances of giving up somewhere along the way go up dramatically.

So ask yourself the following questions:

• Why are you starting a blog?
• What do you want to get out of doing this?
• Why do you want to succeed?

If you have a strong reason for starting your blog, you will go far. This is a long-term game. Always remember that.

3. Niche

The next step is to find your niche. The best way to stand out from all the millions of blogs out there is to become an expert in a highly targeted area.

Think opt-in conversion expert instead of email marketing. Think turning your blog into a book instead of just general blogging tips.

Get specific and you will go far.

4. Solve a Problem

One addendum to finding your niche is to make sure you solve a problem.

Money is made by solving problems for people. If you can help someone get more subscribers on their list and make more money, you’re solving a problem.

So think about what problem you’re solving, and then do some research on if people are willing to pay for having that problem fixed.

5. Personality

To really stand out from all the noise, you have to inject your personality and expertise into your blog.

There are too many people out there teaching something they have no experience in.

If you don’t have experience, get some. The more you know, the more you can share with your audience, and the more they will grow to know, trust and like you.

6. Come Up with a Domain Name

There are many ways of coming up with an excellent domain name, but in the end, you alone have to decide what kind of name and brand you want to build.

A few tips for coming up with a good domain name is to make it:

• Unique
• Memorable
• Easy to spell
• Concise

Coming up with a name is tough, so go for good enough instead of perfect.

7. Tag line

Coming up with a tagline is not absolutely necessary when you’re starting out, but it can be a lot of fun.

Go for a tag line that communicates who you help and what you help them with. If you help small businesses get more leads on their email newsletter, a simple tag line could be:

“Turn your readers into leads, and your leads into raving customers.”

8. Pick Your Web Host

Avoid using a free blogging option like WordPress.com or Blogger.com. If you’re serious about blogging, you need a self-hosted service.

There are plenty out there, like BlueHost and HostGator. They are just a few dollars a month and will get you started on the right path.

9. Pick Your Theme

Next up is picking a WordPress theme that makes your blog look professional.

Again, there are several free options out there, but I recommend you spend some money and get a good premium theme. Some of my favorites are:

• WooThemes
• Thesis
• Genesis

If you’re strapped for cash right now, go with a simple free theme and upgrade later.

10. Pick Your Plugins

Once you’ve got a web-host and a good looking theme, it’s time to get your plugins in order.

Keep the amount of plugins you use to a minimum. Each plugin you add will (usually) make your site slower, which isn’t the best thing you can do.

Here’s a list of plugins I use:

• Akismet — to prevent spam.
• Audio player — to play interviews and podcasts.
• Broken link checker — so I can remove and fix broken links.
• Contact form 7 — so people can contact me.
• Google XML sitemaps — to create a nice and simple sitemap for Google to crawl.
• Popular posts — to help people find my best content.
• Sharebar — so people can share my content on social media.
• WP smush.it — to reduce image file sizes and make my site load faster.
• WP super cache — another plugin that helps my site load faster.

11. Analytics

The next thing you have to do is get analytics set-up, which will help you keep track of how many visitors you get, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site.

If your traffic isn’t growing from month to month, something needs to change, but remember, traffic isn’t everything.

If your goal is to make money with your blog, you should be building your email list, and converting that traffic into email subscribers.

12. Content Strategy

You need to have a solid content strategy in place, so think about the following questions:

• What kind of content will you produce? (audio, text, video)
• How will you produce it?
• How often will you publish new content?
• How will you make new readers aware of old content?
• How will you use your content to grow your business?

Your content is what will build authority and trust. The more you can share, the more people will trust you.

13. List Building

I mentioned building your list above, and it’s crucial if you want to make money with your blog. Think about how you will get people on your list, and what email service provider you will use.

One of the easiest ways to start is to give away a free 5 to 10 page report when people sign-up. There are many email list service providers out there, and they do cost money, but it’s an investment worth making. One of my favorites is Aweber. I’ve been using them for over 5 years.

Do not skimp on starting an email list, because while you may save money now, you will end up losing thousands in lost opportunity down the road.

14. Monetization

The next step is to think about how you will monetize. How will you make money with your blog?

If you don’t want to make money with your blog, you can skip over this step. But I see so many people jump into blogging without having a simple business plan.

You have to have an idea of how you will generate revenue. You don’t have to be crystal clear, but there needs to be opportunities for you to do so.

Look at what people are already paying for. Go to ClickBank, Amazon, or just use Google to find products and services people are selling in your market.

15. Traffic Generation

How will you get traffic to your site?

Write down at least three traffic generation strategies that you will start off with. For example, I started with blog commenting, but I quickly moved over the guest blogging, because it was so much more effective.

To this date, I’ve written close to two hundred guest posts for different blogs, and they all keep bringing traffic to my site and building my list, and consequently, my business.

16. Outreach

How will you connect with peers in your field?

If you blog about knitting, how will you connect with other knitters?

This part scares people, and it scared me for a long time. Or to be honest, it still scares me, but in reality, it’s about making friends and being yourself.

Just write down how you can connect with fellow bloggers. Maybe you can comment on their blogs, see if they hang out on Twitter or Facebook, or simply shoot them an email.

Start connecting with people right away. Think about how you can add value to their lives and people will appreciate your help.

17. Expectations

Last, but not least, write down what your expectations are. Here are a few questions to get you going:

• Where do you expect to be with your blog in 6 months?
• What will happen if you don’t reach those expectations?
• Why do you want these results?

If your expectations are unrealistic, you will be in for a disappointment, and you’ll probably give up.

But if you equip yourself with the truth, you’ll know what to expect, and you will keep going when the going gets tough.

Summary

Whatever you do, don’t just move on and read another article. Pick one of the tips above and implement it.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, look at the first few tips on passion, purpose and finding your niche. Sit down and brainstorm some answers and then move forward.

Starting a profitable blog is not easy, but it is worth it. It opens doors, helps you grow as a human being, and if you work at it, can help you make a living working from home, just like it has done for me.

It’s not easy, but it can be done.