Blogging for Profit – Part 4

Yesterday, I talked about making your blog more visitor-friendly. Today, I want to talk a bit about boosting your blog traffic. If you
want to make more than a few dollars a month blogging, increasing your
blog’s traffic and readership is the best way to do so. 

1) Read Blog by Hugh Hewitt.
This is my number one recommendation to all bloggers, especially
beginning bloggers. Check your library if you’d rather not buy it.

2) Pick a topic.
The biggest impact Hewitt’s book had upon me was to pick a focus for my
blogs and to try and stay on track with those. When you come to this
blog, you have a good idea what you are going to get. I love blogging
and I love saving money, so meshing the two together into a blog called
MoneySavingMom was perfect for me.

When
you pick a focus for your blog, try to go with something that is broad
enough to encompass what you are passionate about and broad enough to
have a large enough market for it. Also, aim for something which you
think you could write about for years and never tire of. 

3) Write often.
One of the best ways to boost your blog traffic is just to blog. If you
are trying to increase your traffic and readership, I recommend you
spend the bulk of your time improving your blog and adding content to
your blog. Updating your blog at least three times per week helps you
establish a regular readership. When people know you almost always post
everyday or every other day, they are more likely to visit your blog
more frequently. 

4) Write well.
I don’t claim to be a "good writer" but I do try to at least follow
basic grammar rules, avoid repetition, and abstain from typographical
errors (though I do make those regularly if a post is typed somewhat in
haste!).

After you type up a post, read over it before posting it, and
then check it again after you’ve posted it to make sure it posted correctly
(sometimes fonts or layout will be haywire and your audience will
appreciate you for fixing this before they read it). 

How
do you learn to write well? Well, write. 🙂 That’s one of the best ways
to learn. The more you write and have people critique your writing, the
more your writing will improve. In addition, read well-written blogs
and books. Over time, by filling your mind with good writing and constantly
practicing your writing skills, your writing will invariably improve. 

Write
often, write well, and have an eye-pleasing blog and you’ll never have
a problem having some traffic–probably an ever-increasing amount of
traffic.

Not only will you find that writing often and writing well allows viral marketing begins to take effect
(someone finds your blog, likes it, links to it, and then their friend
clicks on the link thus finding your blog, likes it, and links to it
and on and on it goes), but you will also notice that you start getting
picked up in search engines.

Having search engines (i.e. Google) find your blog is one great way to easily drive more traffic to your blog.
In fact, this is where I get probably 30% of my blog visitors from–many of whom find my blogs initially through a search engine search. They like what they see and start regularly visiting my blog. The more
content you have with relevant search terms and the more often you
write, the more readily search engines will turn up your blog in search results.

5) Link frequently and liberally.
If you find another post which you liked or found interesting, link to
it! The blogger will love you for it and just might return the favor
sometime. In addition, link to and promote blogs you like. Not only is
this a great way to show appreciation to a blogger but it will often
land you on their blogroll as well.

Here are a few other ideas – some are things I’ve done, some I’ve heard work well: 

-Join blogging "leagues"–there are thousands of these and I’m sure a few would be a fit for you.

-Put a link to your blog in your email signature.

-Send the link to one of your best posts out to friends and family. Or, be pro-active and send it to some of the widely-read bloggers whom you think might be interested

-Submit posts to Carnivals–Again, there are thousands of these and I’ve heard that participating
really boosts your traffic and introduces your blog to many who have
probably not heard of you before.

-Comment on other blogs–well-written regular comments on blogs can often bring a nice stream of traffic your way. But please, pretty please, do not leave comments just to get people to your blog. Comments which sound like an infomercial for your blog or which serve no purpose other than to try and get people to click over to your blog are not something most bloggers or blog readers appreciate. Join in the discussion, share something helpful and thought-provoking, and you’ll likely find other people will wander over to check out your own blog as a result.

For a more exhaustive list of ideas, check out Super Blogging’s post on 75 Ways To Increase Your Site’s Traffic. 

How do you know where traffic is coming from? Install a Sitemeter or Statcounter on your blog.
It’s free and easy to do, and then you can have real-time visitor
information. I highly recommend you do this from the get-go as it is
not only exciting to watch your traffic count, it also gives you the
ability to figure out what is working and what is not working as you
can track where visitors are coming from.

 For those of you who blog, what are your best tips for boosting your blog traffic? Share them in the comments section.