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Increasing traffic to my website
Centipeed
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a blog, and I'd like to increase traffic to it. Not for any commercial reasons, but more out of curiosity to see how many views I can get in a day etc.
As far as I am aware, I've done nothing so far to try and increase the traffic intentionally, so I was wondering what I could do in that sense, as long as it's both natural and non-intrusive, as well as free.
Essentially I'm looking for handy hints that'll help increase my website traffic without resorting to any methods which visitors may not agree with or appreciate.
As far as I am aware, I've done nothing so far to try and increase the traffic intentionally, so I was wondering what I could do in that sense, as long as it's both natural and non-intrusive, as well as free.
Essentially I'm looking for handy hints that'll help increase my website traffic without resorting to any methods which visitors may not agree with or appreciate.
Centipeed on
0
Posts
The 'blogosphere' is a community, similar to forums like this one but spread out over hundreds of websites. Nurture the subset of that community you belong to by engaging with them outside of your own blog as well as posting relevant articles within your own blog and you won't go far wrong. Of course, remember that it is a community and don't do anything that you wouldn't like other people doing to yourself, such as intentionally spamming other people's blogs without valid contribution. It's a community that can (and probably will) bite you in the ass if you even think about abusing it.
The motherload is having a breaking news article or simply a very well written and useful article in your own blog which lots of bloggers then start trackbacking and referencing in their own blogs.
- Consider a redesign to the blog if it's just some generic template, has no images or banner, etc (dont know what yours looks like, so might not apply, but image is a major factor in return visitors, doesnt have to be insanely detailed or cutting edge, but some small things go along way to differentiating you from the million other blogs out there)
- Link to other blogs in your posts or nav bar. Not just random links, but if someone writes an interesting post , you can comment and link to them and give your thoughts on the subject. This shows up in that persons technorati or other metrics that you linked to them and they usually come check your site out and possibly give you a link back. It never hurts to link to others.
- Post on other blogs and forums in your niche. Don't post "come to my site LINK". Make thoughtful posts and comments. Most allow you to have a link tied to the name or even to sign posts with a banner or sig with your name and link to site. People read good comment and click link to go to your site.
- Respond to any comments on your blog. People want to feel like they are part of something. If they comment and nothing ever comes back to them, they feel like it was pointless and possibly move on to a more friendly or interactive similar topic blog.
- Update frequently. Once a week won't see huge reader gains. I don't know your schedule, but Mon-Fri is a nice schedule that gives you some free time on weekends if you don't feel like posting. Once ad ay is a good way to have people coming back more often, but it's also a bit rough having to post every single day and becomes a chore for some people. Find a happy medium for frequency of posts, but try to have at least 3-5 posts in my opinion.
- Promote the RSS feed. Get people to add the blog to the feed and you are going to see more traffic and readers coming back because the feed makes it easy. Getting them to add the feed is the hard part though.
- Blog indexes. Technorati is a must. Find more in your niche and sign up for them.
- Evaluate your content. Are you posting about your daily life or a million different topics? You most likely wont find too many new readers unless you are funny, intelligent or inciteful to the extent it can make just about any topic interesting as you might be targeting say video games, tv, movies, high school life, hockey, baseball, music and a dozen other topics all at once. Try to focus on a single topic or broad genre, like sports or video games. Again, don't know what your blog is about, so you might already be doing this. People usually go to sites for specific things. Giving them a million things when they want only video games makes it a chore to find the content they want and they move to something more specialized. People come back for more when they see they can find interesting things on what they want.
Basically, it comes down to whoring yourself out. Talk to other bloggers in the same niche, comment on dozens of other blogs with meaningful posts, submitting to the numerous blog indexes, maybe doing guest posts with other blogs that would see a link back to you and anything else you can think of.
Social media is ahuge factor, but it doesn't usually work that well if you are the one doing the submitting to digg or delicious or stumble upon, but if you can leverage links in posts to make it easier for others to submit the content, these can be a huge thing. I received about 500 uniques from a stumble upon the other day and all I have are little links at the bottom of each post and never even ask people to click or make any prominent display about them being there. Try to cover all your bases and eventually people will start doing the promoting for you.
I guess I see now that seeing as my blog is about my personal life, I'm going to find it hard to get a wider readership unless I start blogging about something wider and more engaging. I'll work on that. As of right now, I have a regular readership, but they're all my family and friends. Expanding beyond that is going to take some creativity.