Write more content. If you want to increase site traffic, you’ve got to write content. People will not visit your site if you don’t write a decent amount of good quality content, and new visitors definitely won’t come back. So keep writing great posts!
Have a good design and layout. If your site or blog’s design is messy, sloppy, hard to navigate, a rainbow of colors that don’t match or are hard on the eye, or full of errors, you will instantly go down the drain.
Get your own domain. I promise that if you have your domain, you will get more traffic. You will linked to more and people will more easily remember your URL. Try to get your own domain and have it from the start.
Start using StumbleUpon. I have had a HUGE success with StumbleUpon. When the right article from your blog meets StumbleUpon, expect a lot of people to rate your post a thumbs up, and then even more people “stumbling upon” your blog.
Guest blog. Offer to write a post on someone else’s site. Even better, have the post already written up and then let the blogger know you have a post ready to guest blog on their site, if it’s okay with them. When you write your guest blog post, find a post on your own blog that’s related and link to in your guest blog post. A link for you on their blog, and more ability to increase site traffic.
Begin tagging your images. When you have an image in your post, it should always be tagged properly. Make sure the width and height are clearly defined. But most importantly, fill out the alt and title tags with the image’s keywords. To learn further and learn how this helps, click here.
Respond to your comments and email. People love a blog whose owner is interactive and thoughtful, an owner who gets back quickly with response to their comments and emails. If you can do this, except more loyal readers who will love you.
Then expect more increased site traffic and more linkage.
Use MyBlogLog. Make sure you have an eye-catching avatar. Then join all the MyBlogLog communities you can (daily limit of 15). In no time your avatar will be all over all the MyBlogLog blog and community pages, and you’ll see more and more visitors coming to you.
Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time with crazy “money earners” such as those that pay you to click, pay you to read, pay you to surf, pay you to search, or anything like that. Those aren’t worth anything. Instead, spend your time writing quality content and the increase in site traffic will follow.
Pay attention to your stats. Pay attention to your stats and Google Analytics. See what keywords are getting you the most traffic and what posts your readers like and don’t like. Use this knowledge to keep writing more popular posts filled with great keywords.
Link to other posts. When you link to posts on other blogs, that creates a trackback, or pingback. When you link to another blogger’s post, if they have trackbacks turned on, you will receive a link back as well in the comments section of the post of which you linked.
In your posts, ask your readers questions. Readers like to feel important and a lot of them like to talk. The next time you write a post, ask them a question or their opinion on something. You’ll receive a lot more comments and many of the visitors will be more likely to come back.
Make a lens on Squidoo. On Squidoo, you can make your own lenses, aka, pages, on their site. Make a lens that is relative to your blog or site’s topic, and then be sure to link to your blog on the lens! Did I mention you can also make money on Squidoo? Click here to read more.
Comment on other blogs. When you comment on other blog’s 99.9% of the time there is a box you can write in your own site’s address. Then from there, when people view your comment, they can click through to your blog or website! Comment on as many different blog’s as you can. Maybe even set aside a day of the week for commenting. The more comments you leave, the more you are noticed, and the more traffic you get.
Write list posts. Everybody loves list posts. This post is a list post. Examples are “Top 10 Blog Themes”, “25 Uses for Vinegar”, and “5 Helpful Website Tools”. List posts are usually linked to a lot more and get a lot more traffic than normal posts.
Submit your blog to search engines. Most people get the majority of their traffic from search engines. When people search for your keyword and find your site or blog, there’s more traffic! Click here to submit your blog to be indexed in Google if it hasn’t been already, and remember to keep writing fresh content for the engines to chew on!
Establish relationships with fellow bloggers. Develop relationships with all kinds of bloggers, especially those also in your niche. Comment on their blogs, have conversations, link to them, make friendships. And before you know it, they’ll be linking to you too and maybe sending some traffic your way.
Use traffic exchanges. I’m not quite sure if you can be penalized for using traffic exchanges, but they can bring you loyal readers if your blog is good enough, besides the continuous traffic. See my post on the BlogMad traffic exchange.
Link to your other posts as often as you can. Link internally to posts on your own blog. This helps your rankings and also helps your site traffic increase. If people who come to your your blog have nothing else to see, they will leave. When you link to your other articles, they will most likely choose to go read those as well before leaving, and will stay on your blog longer.
Sign up on Yahoo! Answers. On Yahoo! Answers you are able to answer other people’s questions, help them, and give answers. There is a box where you can write the source of where you got your answer. Answer questions in your field and link to your blog posts as the source!
Sign your blog up on blog top lists. A blog top list is a chart of all the blogs that are in it. The list is numbered and your blog can go higher on the list when it has more traffic, more votes, more incoming visitors, etc. They’re very simple and easy to join. Plus, they can rake in the traffic! Click here to see some top lists you can join and learn more.
Submit to site directories. Some directories list hundreds of sites, some list thousands. The backlinks are great, but the traffic from the directories will be less than a trickle, most likely nothing. However, submit with your site’s name using your keywords, and then you could be ranked more highly on Google for those keywords, which means more traffic!
Don’t use link trains. This does not directly related to traffic but it’s still good advice. I made the mistake of joining in on the ViraLink and ViralTags, and you should never do that! Besides, your readers will appreciate it and they’ll stick around longer.
Reread, edit, and go over your posts. No one wants to link to a post that is poor quality. Even if the post is a brilliant idea, if it’s full of spelling and grammatical errors, it won’t be linked to. And no links means no traffic.
Submit your posts to blog carnivals. Go to the Blog Carnival website and submit as many of your articles to as many carnivals related to your niche as you can. When the carnival edition you submitted to is posted, not only will you have linkbacks, but you’ll have more visits to your blog. If you don’t understand what a blog carnival is, read about it here.
Hold your own blog carnival. I think blog carnivals are very fun to hold. People submit their articles to your carnival. When you publish your carnival, almost all of those people go to the carnival edition to view their link there. And you carnival can also be featured on the Blog Carnival website homepage.
Link exchange with other people in your field. Whether the link exchange is on a sidebar on every page of the site, on one page of the site, or in a post on the site, it’s up to you. But link exchanging with others who have related blogs can be a big help. And when their sites grow, an even bigger help!
Use Feedburner for people to subscribe to your blog. When people subscribe to you via RSS or get your blog updates in email, they’ll see your posts whenever you make a new one. This is vital for keeping people in touch with your blog and getting them to come back.
Use Youtube. Make an account on Youtube, and then on your profile you can list your website address. List your site or blog’s link there. Then start making videos and when people view your profile, some of them might click through to your website!
Ask the bigger blogs for a link.I can’t stress enough that you’ve got to do this right or not at all. You need to be polite and not beg. Start building your conversation with the A-lister and developing the relationship before you ask for anything. Make sure you give to them, link to them in your posts. Before you do anything, read Kumiko’s post on this. I know if I got such a polite email as this instead of a begging spammer, I would have to say yes. And if you do get your link, not only will this help your page rank, but you should get a very decent amount of traffic.
Use Technorati tags. Getting into more categories in Technorati will get you a lot more exposure, which means more traffic. If you don’t know what Technorati tags are, read Court’s post.
Write a post about a celebrity. No matter what your niche is, you can find some way to relate your topic to a celebrity. For example, 6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You About Blogging. People search for celebrities all the time and love the dirt on them. Quadruple your traffic when you right a post about a celebrity right after a big event in the celebrity’s life. For example, the shaving of their head, the birth of their child, their marriage, or their death, to name a few.
Encourage others to Digg your articles. Digg is a site that lets people vote on articles, on whether people like them or not. Your blogger friends will most likely Digg your work for you if you politely ask, or even better, add a Digg button at the bottom of all your posts. Make sure your best articles get Dugg and started in the right direction, and if the post is good enough, it can generate thousands of visitors a day.
Get a plugin for the social bookmarking sites. At the bottom of this post you will see a line of buttons that lets people submit and vote my articles to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and others included). I’m using the AntiSocial plugin. If you have this plugin implemented you are WAY more likely to be submitted to social bookmarking sites, which in turn means a lot more traffic.
Link to the A-listers. This ties in a little with asking the A-listers for a link, or sort of pushing them in the direction of giving you one, but this is much for subtle and much more nice. The more you link to the A-listers and probloggers in your niche, the more they will probably notice you. Then they might link to one of your posts as well, which could send huge amounts of traffic your way!
Write a pillar post. This is not only a list post, but a pillar post as well. This post is a long, authoritative, instructional post (and has also quickly grown to be this blog’s most popular article). Pillar posts should take a long time, hours, to write. You should link to your pillar posts often in your blog, and make sure they get top exposure. Pillar posts will get linked to and receive decent amounts of traffic.
When a major holiday rolls around, write about it. When Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or another big holiday comes, make a post about it a month beforehand. Give yourself time to be indexed and linked to. When the holiday comes, it will be searched for a lot and your site could be found!
Use smart URLs on Wordpress. If you’re using Wordpress and are using their messy URLs, you’d better get this plugin to switch to the URLs that include the date and post name in the link. Using that plugin will not make you lose your search engine stats or anything, it is a redirect.
Make your readers feel at home. If you are rude, never give back, don’t answer your comments or emails, don’t help other bloggers, or are always uptight and don’t make your readers feel at home, chances are they might stop visiting your blog. When you make your readers feel at home, you get more traffic.
