5 Blog Tips to Boost Traffic

Whether you are new to blogging or have some posts under your belt, everyone would like to be getting more traffic. If you are unsure how to do this or maybe just need a little extra “oomph”, you’re in luck because that’s what this post is all about – GENERATING TRAFFIC.

The list below contains some techniques that I have personally put to the test and found successful. Properly executing one or more of these strategies will definitely help improve the readership of your site.

1 – Make Some Influential Friends
Sometimes it really is who you know – kinda. If you gain the attention of some well-known people in the niche you are blogging about, it can really help you out in the form of links on their site, them blogging about you, collaboration on projects, and so on. There are a lot of ways to go about this but the ones I have found most successful are consistently linking to some of their posts from your blog, tagging them with your Facebook page, creating striking guest posts for them, and even just emailing them directly and introducing yourself and your blog. One thing is for sure, once you have gained the attention of 1 or 2 “heavy hitters” in your area, your traffic will grow by leaps and bounds.

2 – Leverage Facebook and Twitter

Let’s face it, if you aren’t incorporating these guys into your business then your growth is going to be anemic at best. But if you really work these mediums they can pay off handsomely.

If you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, then you have 10,000 willing participants to receive your tweets about your posts and blog in general. Don’t underestimate the power of following targeted users, many times they will follow you back and stay with you. And if they don’t you can just un-follow them. You should tweet every time you publish a post and at different intervals through the day to make sure you reach the lion’s share of your followers. (There are several applications that can schedule this for you.)

A well-constructed Facebook Fan page can also generate nice amounts of traffic for you once you start leading your readers there. One effective way to do this is to ask readers to “Like” you, which can be done through Twitter, your blog, or any other platform of your choosing. Ask and ye shall receive, at least a percentage of the time.

3 – SEO

This is a huge topic and we will hit many parts of this in greater detail in later posts, but SEO can’t be overlooked if you really want to draw readers. The All-In-One SEO plugin makes it really simple to optimize your WordPress site and increase your rankings in Google and Bing.
You should also try to get as many backlinks as possible from reputable sites, as this can really increase the ranking of your blog in search engines. This can be done by commenting regularly on well-respected blogs in your area, which usually allow you to have a link to your own blog, as well as writing and publishing articles that have links to your content. It can be a bit of work but you will usually get back what you put in.

4 – Write Great Content

Well written content that helps your readers in some way will almost always get you a solid reader base over time. All of the other blog tips to increase traffic simply serve to speed this up. If you did nothing else but produce terrific content, you would eventually have a ton of traffic just from doing that. However, if you don’t have good content, none of the other tips are likely to help.

5 – Constantly Try New Formats

Some of the most successful bloggers I know blog in many different formats, from video, to audio, to over the telephone via Skype. Plus, a good video series or audio series can really do a lot to add credibility to your blog. Try these out from time to time and you will find that they can really boost your traffic.
What are some ideas you have or some ways you have increased traffic in the past? Let me know in the comments.