What is The Best Way to Increase Blog Traffic?

[Brian Lee]

What is the most efficient use of time dedicated to increasing blog traffic?

-Forums?
-Comments on other Blogs?
-Submitting to social sites like Digg or Reddit?
-Making lots of friends on social sites?
-Submitting to web directories?
-AdWords?
-Guest Blogging?
-Contests?

What other activities have worked for you?

[SeriousKidding.com]

Aside from Steve, this guy has it all:
Copywriting tips for online marketing success from Copyblogger

[Caveman Joe]

Write quality, original content. Ensure that Google can see it and make sense of it. Update regularly. Ping after every post.
Aaaand that's about it! That's all I needed to do to make Project Wonderful Talk and JAMMA Forever appear on the first page of Google search results.

[Steve Pavlina]

I'm probably in the minority in saying this, but I still believe the quality of the content is the single most important factor in building traffic. You can try all kinds of tricks, but ultimately if you write great content that provides value to your visitors, you'll experience no end of referrals without having to resort to tricks.

When you hit the "publish" button, do you come away feeling you've posted the best you have to offer?

Content creation is the strategic aspect of traffic building. If you get lost at the tactical level and never get the strategic level correct, it's hard to grow beyond a certain point, and you'll always feel you're trying to game the system instead of simply giving your readers something that really matters to them. Plus you'll be doing something that will ultimately attract massive competition because just about anyone can duplicate your tactics. A good strategy is much harder to duplicate.

[Brian Lee]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Content creation is the strategic aspect of traffic building. If you get lost at the tactical level and never get the strategic level correct, it's hard to grow beyond a certain point, and you'll always feel you're trying to game the system instead of simply giving your readers something that really matters to them.

That's good insight, Steve. It's easy to get caught up in techniques, stats, etc.

[Joe826]

Yeah, quality content is key. Lots of content is also a really good start. Do some basic SEO on your blog, and the engines will pick it up automatically. Also go look for like minded blogs and arrange a link swap.

My blog is just for fun so my promotion strategies aren't very serious, but ultimately, content is king and word of mouth is a close, related second.

[Damara]

I agree, content is definitely king. But I also think you really have to take time to know who your competition is. And spend time posting on forums/blogs in your niche to build a reputation for yourself.

I'm also still a big believer of article marketing

[JasonS76]

Yup. Quality content is king indeed. No doubt about it.

[JerryS]

write what you're passionate about.

[Dave B]

No doubt about the content. Good quality and relevant content is vital...

A good practical way to increase traffic, which wasn't mentioned in the original list, is to post quality articles to your blog and then also to an authority article site like Ezine...the search engines visit Ezine regularly and your articles can get ranked highly if you set them up correctly...a simple link from your Author Bio in the articles back to your blog and you'll get traffic for sure.

Dave B

[restlesslimbs]

Yes, good content is key, but traffic takes a while to build even with outstanding content. It can be months before you even get a comment on your blog, let alone a link from another site.

If you want to build traffic faster, then you'll need to also advertise with Google, Yahoo, Msn, etc.

I think you should have at least 20 posts though before you waste your money on advertising (if your trying to monetize your traffic).

[John Wesley]

I totally agree with good content but you also need to get noticed so people start reading your content in the first place.

The best way to jump start this is with social media: Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon. The way to succeed with these sites is to write posts with a good amount of mass appeal and a provocative headline and list type format. It's hard to get a post popular, but when you do the exposure is great.

You shouldn't write every post hoping to get on these sites though because your content ends up becoming generic. These sites don't really like the best content, they like the content with the most popular appeal.

[kos]

As has been mentioned, the single best way to develop dependable, long term traffic is to simply keep posting!

Quality content of course, but at first it also helps to know specifically what people are looking to find out in your niche. Visit more popular blogs to view their chosen topics, use the web2.0 social tools to see which content is the most popular, and use forums/newsgroups to identify demands for information which have not been supplied.

Within a relatively short period of time (not more than a couple months with regular posting), you can begin using your visitor tracking software to look for keyphrases people type in to reach your site. This will provide you with a continuous source of new possible in demand topics.

Other techniques which are usually especially effective for blogs include forum postings, blog commenting & track-backs, and adding posts with well written headlines/descriptions to social networking sites.. how to's and top 10 type posts work well for this.

Of course, it also helps to have incoming links from other sites; acquire them from major directories and other legitimate, relevant websites when you can. However, continue posting new content and you will find both that you rank for unique, low competition keyphrases and that you will gradually acquire new backlinks as other webmasters find your website more useful.

And this is the major point everyone is attempting to make here. Once your website becomes a truly useful resource for many people, you have made a quality contribution to the web and to the lives of others. When this happens, you will become successful.

It takes more time, but I think everyone will agree with me - its worth it in the long run.

Kevin

[twins15]

There are many ways of building traffic...

Obviously content is king, but if all you do is create content and don't worry about anything else, you probably won't get a lot of traffic, at least not for a long time. "If you build it they will come" is generally not a good method of getting traffic.

Best ideas that have worked for me:
- Link Exchanges (obviously is key for search engines and generating traffic from there)
- Comments on similar blogs - Often results in a reciprocal comment or link

Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but that is what has worked best for me, along with the creation of good content.