You have your blog full of valuable content on your domain. You have a piece of real estate in the Cyber-world but no one comes to visit your new house on the block. Traffic is the life of your blog. With the thousands of blogs littering the internet landscape, traffic is the most crucial element when it comes to getting people to see your blog. Only when you have traffic can you build a loyal following. Without it, you’ll probably be the only one reading your own blog.
So how do you drive traffic? This is the perennial question most internet marketers have. “How do I drive traffic?”
There are many ways to drive traffic ranging from free methods to paid methods. Generally, you should stick to the free methods till your blog is monetized and your free traffic is converting. When you are using content marketing in a niche to make sales, you have to bring solutions to your audience. Blogs build a following, create a sense of authority and a perceived relationship between the marketer and his audience. Unlike conventional websites monetized with salespages, blogs are more subtle in the approach. Let’s look at some of the ways to get your blog noticed.
Ping the posts
This should be second nature to you. The moment you make a post, you should go to a pinging website such as Pingler or Pingomatic and ‘ping’ it. This will alert the search engines and they’ll know that you have just added a new post to your blog. If all goes well, the search engine spiders will drop by your blog, check out the content and index the new posts. This will help your blog show up in the search engine results.
Social bookmarking
This is another SEO method that is recommended. There are many social bookmarking sites around nowadays. These are an excellent way to build backlinks to your blog and drive traffic to it. Twitter, Pinterest, Technorati, Facebook, etc. are very good for traffic generation to your blog.
Blog commenting
By commenting on other blogs, you will achieve 2 goals. Firstly, you will be able to build backlinks to your own blog. This is provided you’re allowed a signature link to your own blog. Secondly, if your posts on the other blogs are helpful and interesting, readers from the other blogs will be curious about you and click on your signature link and end up on your blog. Voila! You’ve just driven new traffic to your blog.
Look for forums related to your niche. Join the popular ones and lurk around for a while till you understand the lingo and vibe of the people in the forum. Once you’re ready, make posts in the forum helping others. Answer questions, offer suggestions, tips, etc. Have a link to your blog in your signature. Now, just like with blog commenting, you’ll be building backlinks and getting traffic from curious readers.
Forum posting
Look for forums related to your niche. These are not as popular as in years past, but there are still some active forums. Join the popular ones and stay around for a while till you understand the lingo and vibe of the people in the forum. Once you’re ready, make posts in the forum helping others. Answer questions, offer suggestions, tips, etc. Have a link to your blog in your signature. Now, just like with blog commenting, you’ll be building backlinks and getting traffic from curious readers.
Content/Article Marketing
Don’t panic. Content marketing is still very effective if done right. What you need to do will be to approach sites or blogs in your niche that have good traffic and offer them 2 or 3 free articles that are well-written and rich in content. Offer these for free and only ask for a link back to your blog. If the articles are accepted, you will have a backlink from a popular site and you’ll also be able to receive some of the traffic from the other site to your own blog. Isn’t that cool? Of course it is!
Use these five simple methods to generate traffic to your blog. You can’t expect miracles overnight… but if you keep plugging away and repeating the process, over time the traffic will build up and snowball. Always remember that success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out
All the best, see next time.
Hey and thanks again!
I was just on your post about ways to monetise websites and thoroughly enjoyed it, this post is no different. It should be bookmarked so that I can go back to it. I would like to go back through each idea and give them each a go. Pinging is something new to me, seems like I can definitely do with it so I think I shall start there.
Thanks again and have a great day!
Thanks for reading my posts and commenting. Glad some of my tips can help. best wishes for your success. 😉