Monday, November 12, 2007

How to increase blog traffic without financial investments (Part 1)

You created your first blog, and made several well-written posts on the important topic. You also linked your blogging account to the AdSense, and you are looking for visitors. But, visitors are not coming. You see that clearly on the post statistics and AdSense statistics. If you established your Web presence in the big communities, you can just wait for the community members to find your post, or for your hosting site to submit your post to the main search engines according to the topic of relevance. But, you want to see results immediately. I want the immediate improvement of my traffic statistics as well. So, I went online, and made the thorough search for the recommendations from the professionals and fellows bloggers.
The following article is an overview result from the multiple sources on the topic: “How to increase blog traffic without financial investments.” The list of the links that were used for the article preparation, will be enclosed in the final part of the topic, for your convenience. I want to thank all the authors who contributed to the topic’s review.

Part 1: Blog Content

1. Provide quality content. It is hard to explain in simple words, how the quality content can be separated from the non-quality content. But, if you read an article on topic of your interests and you see say to yourself: “That’s it. I knew that, but the author put the staff on the blog quite nicely”- this is a quality content. Share your expertise generously with other people, so the readers recognize it and depend on you and your opinion.
2. Provide original content. There are many sites with free content for your blog, and there is nothing wrong to use once a while an article that fit to topic of your discussion (definitely, if you provide the information about author, and your blogging host supports non-original content posting). But, the most readable blogs are not those that collect articles from other primary sources, no matter how good the posts are.
3. Personal Voice. Through your posts readers should see an author – you. As blogs are more like personal journals, they need to have a personal touch of the creator, giving the visitors feeling that you personally like they came, you write for them, to make their life easier and more fun. This personal touch might be provided through the humorous comments, examples from your experience, etc.
4. Provide an interesting and expert content. Everybody has the topic(s) where she or he is an expert. Choose the topic for your posts that it is interesting for you. Do not choose the topic, before they seems to be the most profitable. If you do not have fun, writing your posts, the visitors will not have fun, reading them. Be constantly aware on all new trends on your topic of interest and became an expert in this area.
5. Look on your posts from your visitor’s perspectives. Try to review your post as the post of some stranger you stumbled online. Is this post is keeping your attention till the end, or you get bored right away? Try to be objective. If this post would be written by somebody else, would you like it?
6. Controversial Content. If that is applicable to the topic of your discussion, prepare the posts with controversial content, that might evoke the discussion and polemics, which will increase the blog exposure and will eventually drive more traffic. One of the methods of increasing user’s participation is posting provocative questions and touch “hot topics”. These posts should be related to the topic of your discussion and you should use them carefully, as your blog stylishness and integrity are more important for your long-time success.
7. News and long-lasting content. Try to create articles with the long-lasting content to ensure your posts readability next year, next 10 years… Definitely, it is from not easy to impossible for the topics related to the Internet, technology, or other topics with enormous speed of development. If your content will loose actuality fast, be first to deliver the news, taking the traffic the other way.
8. Track back links to your other posts. While writing new post, try to include the relevant links from your older posts, promoting them the most natural way. These intra-links should not be accepted as shameless promotion, but should be integral to the post.
9. Writing Style and Design. You should develop your own, easy-identifiable style as a writer. But, anyway, reader will always appreciate if you make his comprehension easier by using the proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalizing letters as needed, proofreading you posts, and using the blog design and Themes and will help your reader to focus on the post, and avoid distraction by the reading obstacles. By investing your time in these simple actions, you will actually show the respect to your reader.
10. Regular Updates. Update your blogs regularly, let your fans to be addicted to the new post they can enjoy on the regular basis. The rule is “the more regular you blog, the more traffic you will get”. It is increasing the overall knowledge base, you are presenting to the public, combined with keeping the most devoted your readers not to be disappointed by your extended absence.
11. Pictures and Videos. Use pictures and videos naturally incorporated in your posts. They give more flavors to your articles, make them more readable, and attract the public attention.
12. Blog Title and Description. Do not think that it is not important! It definitely is! Gets a cool relevant, straight-forward, and keywords-rich title that makes people check your site for the first time. And the description should match the title, giving the brief presentation on your topic, approach, and character of presentation. This will also assist you in getting better indexing results in the search engines.
13. Most Popular Posts. You have the posts that you like most, and your readers like most. Why not putting them the permanent links to them on the sidebars, or add the few “killing” posts in your signature, when you are finalizing your regular posts? Your best weapon should be utilized as much as possible.
14. Length of the Posts. It is recommended to keep the overall posts and paragraphs inside the post short. It is better to offer your visitors to come daily, checking your new pieces of the information, than to get them tired reading one long article. It does not mean that you should always right the short posts. If the long article can be divided into the self-sufficient components, it is better to split it and arrange separate parts submission.

I am going to use the last recommendation for myself, and leave other aspects of the blog traffic increase to the following posts. Happy Blogging!

1 comment:

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