11 Ways To Create Your Own Traffic Jams
Adnan is busy creating his empire so this is a guest post from Bill over at The Blog Entrepreneur. You can grab the feed or check out his site for yourself.
Opportunities
The goal of nearly any blogger is traffic. We all seek that warm feeling of approval that a steady stream of traffic to our blogs provides. Traffic is a measure of your success and opens up a wealth of opportunity for you as a blogger. With traffic comes RSS subscribers, Comments, Alexa rankings, potential backlinks, potential pagerank and more.
Traffic opens up a world of opportunities for bloggers. But how do you get traffic?
This question has been posed daily ever since the very first blog ever arrived on the scene. Today we will share some of the tricks of the trade that we have used to go from a million plus Alexa to what should soon be sub 100k in just 3 months.
Traffic Jams
If you are a blogger who is trying to generate revenue via your blog then you must know how critical traffic is to your success. In any advertising model it would make sense that the more people you can put your ad in front of then the more of a chance you have of success. It doesn’t really matter whether you are an Adsense junkie, affiliate marketer or you are selling private ads….the more traffic you have then the better chance you have at being successful.
When it comes to making money online, monetizing your traffic is the more difficult challenge. It isn’t all that difficult to generate significant amounts of visitors but too often bloggers try to monetize a dead site. That’s putting the cart before the horse. This is a blog post for another day as today we are going to discuss traffic jams and how to create them.
Here are my thoughts:
- 1. Content – The key to high traffic is obviously great content. We all know that great content is a must but I would challenge you to look at your content from a different point of view. I challenge you to plan and write your content around the needs of your readers. What need are they trying to satisfy by reading your blog? Are you writing for them or for yourself? Too often we plan our content around our own needs….we try to make money off our posts rather than say teaching our readers how to make money from THEIR posts.
- 2. Satisfy a Need – If you buy a drill at Home Depot, you aren’t buying a drill….you’re buying a hole. The need you have is a hole and the drill allows you the means to satisfy that need. What do your readers NEED? They probably need or WANT to know how to make money online or become a better blogger or simply to be entertained for a few minutes. What they don’t need is to get suckered into signing up for www.thelatestpyramidscheme.com that will allow you to make money from them.
- 3. Blog Design – Any regular readers of my blog know that your Appearance is critical to your success. I know that every guru out there declares that Content is King, but I am here to tell you that if your blog is ugly, nobody will even give your content a second glance. This might be shallow and judgemental but it’s a judgemental world we live in and first time readers will decide in the first few seconds of viewing your blog whether they want to invest any time in it or not. Spend the time, effort and/or money to get a unique theme and brand yourself. You need to stick out from the sea of blogs competing with you for readers.
- 4. Update Frequently – Nothing will come out of my reader faster than a blog that doesn’t offer content regularly. Don’t even try to kid yourself that your content and information is so very much different and/or unique that people will wait for your posts. If you aren’t there to satisfy that “need” that we discussed earlier then someone else will. You don’t need to post daily but at least 3 times a week is what I would recommend. Don’t post so frequently that you sacrifice quality for quantity.
- 5. Be Social – Take advantage of the traffic that the social media services can offer you. Stumble, Digg, Sphinn, Delicious…are but a few options that you have available to you. They all can provide a great deal of traffic with the first two being the clear Kings. A couple of good stumbles can send you 3-500 visitors in a couple of hours. Some blogs don’t get 500 visitors in an entire week.
- 6. Commenting – Network with your fellow bloggers by commenting frequently on their blogs. Leave a meaningful thought out comment that shows that you have something to offer. Don’t spam their site and you will be surprised how much traffic a few comments will provide for several weeks down the road. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
- 7. Interaction – Interact with your own readers. It never ceases to amaze me how many bloggers fail to take advantage of the opportunity in their own comments section. You can develop a relationship and grow regular readers by interacting here. Don’t overlook some of these obvious little tricks. It may not grow your traffic but it will encourage readers to return.
- 8. SEO – Optimize your site for search engines. Google can provide a great deal of targeted traffic if you are able to capitalize on it. You don’t need to stress yourself over this, a few basics can go a long way. Install the All in One SEO and set it up properly and you will be in better shape than a lot of bloggers. Work your keywords and use h1 and h2 tags properly and you will be surprised how well you can do. My own blog is still fairly new so my organic traffic is growing weekly but one thing that is consistent, the search engine traffic tends to read more pages and stay on the site longer than any other type of visitor.
- 9. Guest Posting – I would encourage you to both accept guest posts on your site and offer your services to other bloggers. If you are going to guest post on someone else’s blog, make sure you offer some great content. If you are going to submit a post that is nothing more than a weak attempt at backlinks you will not help yourself. Readers can see when you phone it in and will punish you accordingly.
- 10. Stumble Upon – I already mentioned the social networks but I would be remiss not to mention this one again. Stumble can bring you traffic in droves and it brings it quickly. You can increase your own stumble power by being an active stumbler. Install the Stumble toolbar and as you browse the net, give a thumbs up to some of the best content you run across. The more sites you rank and the more friends you develop then then the more power your stumbles will have.
- 11. Forums– An active role in forums can deliver a significant amount of traffic to your site. Set up your profile so you have a signature file that links to your site and then participate actively. Digital Point, Warrior Forum and Bloggeries are a few suggestions but their are literally hundreds out there.
Conclusion
These are the tips that I have used to grow my traffic from zero on December 1st, 2007 to as many as 20k monthly visitors just 3 months later. My Alexa is sinking like a stone but I know I still have a lot of work to do. I am happy with the progress that I have made in the short time that I have been blogging and these tips above are how I have grown my traffic consistently.
If you want more tips on growing your traffic or generating revenue via your blog then make sure you grab my feed so you don’t miss a thing.
What traffic driving tips work for you that I didn’t list here? Where does your traffic come from? Share and make us all better.
