Generating Traffic For Your Blog and Website
Dec10Written by:
2009/12/10 09:39 AM 
Blogs and website live and thrive off traffic. If you get none or very little traffic to your blog or website then your site just becomes another “Cyber Squatter”. The whole purpose of setting up a blog or website is for people to read it, be affected by it and take action through it.
There are no real ’secrets’ you need to learn in order to increase your blog traffic. Most of these points are common sense.
This is a relatively long post. I do recommend reading the entire post if you are to benefit from my advice. But you are also welcome just to cover the topics that interest you.
Identify your niche.
The internet is a vast universe with millions and millions of users. You have to realise that you cannot, and won’t reach them all. You have to start by identifying your target market in order to develop your message. You're trying to reach a niche market and must plan accordingly.
The first steps to take are:
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Identify -Identify your target market; start with geo targeting and work with the demographics from there.
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Perception - Decide how you want to be perceived by this target market and decide how you'll foster this perception.
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Value - Identify and refine your value to this market and how you will meet that.
You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived in a specific way. Decide who you are and what value you can offer. From here, you'll need to maintain, develop, grow or alter this market position as you and your blog grows.
Before you pick your final niche, make sure:
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You love the topic you are going to be writing about.
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There’s a big enough audience for you to reach.
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Set a goal to become the niche leader
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There are other blogs in the space that you can interact with.
Brand Yourself.
You need to build up a name for yourself in your niche. Big corporations spend millions on branding every year, that’s how important it is to them. Coca-Cola does not need adverts to make sales. Their adverts are about brand awareness.
Get an Avatar
I strongly recommend that you pick an avatar (a small image) that is going to be used to represent you and your site on the various platforms you use. If you sign-up on social sites and don’t fill in your details or upload an image then you are going to look like every other lazy member of that community. It can be something that represents your niche but it certainly doesn’t have to.
Register on Social bookmarking sites.
Whether you are a fan of these or not, they do have huge traffic potential. Only signing up on the ones that interest you and you will use. Here is a list of some of the popular ones:
Join a micro blogging network.
Sites like Twitter, Friendfeed, Gatorpeeps, are all micro blogging networks. These micro blogging network services allow you to share 140 character updates with the world. But the best use of the micro blogging networks is their social engagement. Use them to build a community around your brand and blog or website.
Following is not something that you can just do on its own and expect to get traffic from the site, instead you want more people to follow you. Some quick tips to get more followers include:
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Link to your twitter profile from your website
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Establish relationships with friends who are already connections on the likes of StumbleUpon & Mixx
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Ask interesting questions that people will reply to, then their followers will find your profile
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Offer great tips and advice in your industry so that people would be missing out if they didn’t follow you.
You can use TwitterFeed to automatically update your followers of all new posts to your blog.
Aggregate your Blog.
Find one of the hundreds of blog aggregators around and join and submit your blog and feed. As content on the web continues to grow exponentially, consumers have turned to content aggregators to filter their information.
Some aggregators are manual while others are fully automatic. While some of them might seem more effort than reward, they do trickle traffic to your blog. The important thing is to join ones that can promote your niche and ones that you will be actively involved in. Here are some of the ones I use.
Aggregate your RSS feed.
If you do not have an RSS feed of your blog, then you seriously need to set one up. RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.
Submit your RSS feed to a feed aggregator. While most feed aggregators only have a small user base, one like Feedburner is the perfect place that allows users to get your RSS feed.
Register your blog at blog directories and communities
There are few blog related community portals and directories that have very good rankings in Google and other Major Search Engines Results. Getting exposure for your blog is essential to building sustainable traffic, a following, readership, and perhaps someday even revenue.
Every website and indeed blog thrives on back links. There are many ways to build links to your site or blog such as link baiting, link swapping, paid links. But the easiest and most cost effective way is submitting to blog directories. If you want some good link juice, then this is the way to go.
Write compelling content.
If you get nothing else out of this blog but this point, then you have achieved a lot, and I will be pleased that I have helped someone. Blogs are all about content. What distinguishes one blog from a great blog is the content. But not only just any content, content that is compelling, thrilling, helpful. Remember this, Content Is King. But relevant Content is King.
Anyone can just assemble words together to create content. In fact there are tools out there that will create content for you automatically. But it has no personality, it is not relevant, it does not reach out to the heart of your readers. It does not answer their most compelling questions.
If your blog can achieve this, then you have a great blog.
Here are some posts to read on how to get those content juices flowing.
Niche Engagement
Niche engagement, as the name suggests, means immersing yourself in all aspects of your niche in order to get targeted traffic back to your blog. Blogging is about building a community. How else are you going to build that community if you do not interact with others. How else are people going to get to know you?
Read other blogs in your niche
Learn from other bloggers. Find out why they are so successful. You can find some great and wonderful ideas for posts by just reading. You will be able to understand your niche and your audience.
Comment on other blogs
I cannot stress this enough. The more you comment, the more you become known, the more traffic you generate. Blog comments are a good way to become ‘closer’ to the author of a blog, in which they might link back to one of your blog posts or simply add you as a friend in other social websites.
There is also potential for visitors of the site you are commenting on to click your name (link) and arrive at your website. But be forewarned, when you comment, add value. Don’t just write something for the sake of adding your URL. Things like; “Nice Post” or “Cool website” just does not add value does it.
Guest Posting.
Guest posting is a good way to build up a reputation. It’s best to do a guest post on a blog in your niche because that way the people that come across your site are much more likely to subscribe to your feed. When you do try guest posting remember that it is quality over quantity. You want to display the best possible side of yourself and your blog.
Forums.
Find a forum that closely resembles your niche. Join and start being active. Start off by just observing, then when and if you can, start answering questions posed. A site like LinkedIn is a good place to start.
Forum posting is something that can be tedious for little results, however you are looking for targeted traffic right? This combined with all the other tips, will result in good traffic generation. Remember a dam is not filled instantaneously, but drop by drop. To eventually become a huge force of water.
Conclusion
Traffic generation is not a once off deal. There is no magic formula, neither is there any magic website that will direct traffic to your site. It is going to take time and lots of blood, sweat and tears. But be patient, it will pay off.
Traffic also does not come from one source. Large traffic is as a result of lots and lots of other small trickles. Some of the largest and most powerful waterfalls in the world, Niagra Falls and Victoria falls, starts off not with a massive river, but with a tiny stream. In fact, hundreds of tiny streams and other water sources join up to create this awesome force.
Generating traffic for your site is no different. Concentrate on many little trickles. These will in then turn out to be large waterfalls of traffic.
Related reading:
7 Tips on How to write effective blog titles that solicit traffic
Want traffic and exposure for your blog - get involved in post swap
If you want more traffic for your blog, you have to give more traffic.
Blogengage: Promote your blog, get involved, worth it all.
How to Grow Your Blog’s Readership.
How to promote your blog by networking
Your comments make content more valuable
Promoting other blogs will help promote yours
Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog
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