Blog Traffic Questions

[impaul99]

I've asked this in another thread but I'd like to more specifically focus on it as it's own thread. This is especially targetted towards Steve and any other successful bloggers who have built a solid foundation of traffic to their sites.

Here are my questions:
1) How does commenting on other blogs relate to bringing traffic to your blog? Is it based on building more incoming links for search engine optimization in order to increase your Page rank on Google? Or is it actually meant as a way to build incoming links from people clicking on your link after reading your comments?

2) When I study traffic patterns on blogs, I almost always see no traffic for a period of time, like 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, etc. and then all of a sudden you see this HUGE leap from like 400hits a day to like 4,000,000 hits a day. How does that happen? Is this what's necessary to succeed? Some form of "publicity" to launch the popularity of your blog? If so, how can we control, encourage or create such an event? Do we just keep writing good solid articles and submitting to Blog Carnivals and commenting on people's blogs until we catch our "big break"?

[fiar]

impaul99

I think the idea of commenting on blogs is to have people read your comment, and feel compelled to visit you as well. There are 2 parts to this.

1. Leave a substantial and insightful comment when you leave one. It needs to be compelling.

2. Become part of a community. Don't just do "drive-by" commenting.

Ultimately, it's a slow, hard work method of building traffic, but it's also one of the most worthwhile. As you hone your content, and write more compelling headlines, each individual that you've built into a part of your community becomes and advertiser for you. They link to your posts in other places, they digg or stumble your posts, they email people to check out what you wrote.

It all starts with forging relationships with other bloggers.

I suspect that once you reach a certain critical mass, that's when your loyalists become a great enough number to get significant results from Digg et al. That would be the point you refer to things taking off suddenly.

I don't know. I haven't reached that point yet, but I do know that one of the reasons why I have dozens of daily - hourly even - readers is commenting elsewhere. When I leave more comments, my traffic goes up. It reminds people that have visited before to come back. Once in a while, it attracts a n00b.

Then the key is keeping that person coming back.

[fieldsofgold]

I think Fiar has done a good summary of how these things happen. If you comment on a regular basis your name will begin to register both to the readers of the blog and the author of the blog.

This will encourage traffic to your blog assuming that your comments have value and interest.

I'm not sure whether the figures you quoted were a 'one-off' or gradual increments for the blog you were looking at but if you make a comment on a heavily trafficked blog then the chances are that you will receive a spike in the number of visitors as a result. The trick then is to provide content on your blog that will interest them enough to return for more.

Actually, of course it's not a trick, it's good penmanship.

[Kiba]

Originally Posted by impaul99

2) When I study traffic patterns on blogs, I almost always see no traffic for a period of time, like 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, etc. and then all of a sudden you see this HUGE leap from like 400hits a day to like 4,000,000 hits a day. How does that happen? Is this what's necessary to succeed? Some form of "publicity" to launch the popularity of your blog? If so, how can we control, encourage or create such an event? Do we just keep writing good solid articles and submitting to Blog Carnivals and commenting on people's blogs until we catch our "big break"?

It is called exponential growth?

[finandom]

Originally Posted by impaul99

Here are my questions:
1) How does commenting on other blogs relate to bringing traffic to your blog? Is it based on building more incoming links for search engine optimization in order to increase your Page rank on Google? Or is it actually meant as a way to build incoming links from people clicking on your link after reading your comments?

The main reasons that I leave comments in others' blogs are

1. I have something to say
2. I want to show my participation and make friend with others especially the blogger

[GuerillaInternetMarketing]

One key thing to remember is that mosts blogs and forums have 'nofollow' attributes to links, which means they do nothing to help boost PageRank and visibility in search engines. Yes, you can get direct traffic from those links and build an audience, but it is not nearly as valuable as a quality link from a site with good PageRank.

All the best,
Brian

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by GuerillaInternetMarketing

One key thing to remember is that mosts blogs and forums have 'nofollow' attributes to links, which means they do nothing to help boost PageRank and visibility in search engines. Yes, you can get direct traffic from those links and build an audience, but it is not nearly as valuable as a quality link from a site with good PageRank.

All the best,
Brian

Yeah, exactly. That is why I'm wondering why people always say to do this? Even Steve says to do it, but why?

[fiar]

One key thing to remember is that mosts blogs and forums have 'nofollow' attributes to links, which means they do nothing to help boost PageRank and visibility in search engines.

It's built into wordpress by default, but you can install a DoFollow plugin. I did.