First of all a big “thank you” for every one who participated. As I said before the number of entries surprised me (and the quality as well, I will definitely apply some of those tips myself).
Now, without further delay, the 30 Traffic Generation Tips:
1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.
2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.
3. Yousif H
The secret to any traffic generating strategy starts with crafting a powerful and effective value proposition that shapes your brand’s image. Make sure to clearly echo your company’s value proposition on your website, stationary, postcards and even business cards to ensure consistent messaging.
4. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)
5. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.
6. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.
7. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.
8. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.
9. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.
10. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.
11. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.
12. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.
13. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.
14. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.
15. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.
16. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).
17. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.
18. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.
19. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.
20. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.
21. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.
22. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.
23. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.
24. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.
25. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.
26. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.
27. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.
28. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.
29. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.
30. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.
31. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.
Hi Daniel,
Good Idea-collect answers to put up an article. Nice to see what works.
However i see lots of participants saying the same-comment on blogs.
It does work, for sure.
But only if your comment meets 3 criteria:
– Firstly, it’s important to start with a personalized greeting to the author or community. This will show that you’ve taken the time to read the article and engage with the content.
– Secondly, try to make your comment stand out by highlighting a specific point that you found particularly interesting or relevant to your own experience. You could even share a personal anecdote or case study to reinforce your point.
– Thirdly, be sure to add value to the discussion by offering insights or recommendations, recourses or tools that could benefit other readers. This could include sharing a useful resource or tool that you’ve found helpful, or offering a different perspective on the topic at hand.
it’s important to ensure that your comment adds value to the discussion and doesn’t come across as spammy or self-promotional.
I hope these tips help you write an engaging and effective comment on the article you mentioned. Good luck and happy commenting!
And here is my suggestion to get TONS of Traffic:
QUORA.
These are the people who are asking questions-they are hungry for knowledge>
You can answer the questions in your topic, and then put a link to your blog post and say something like
BOOM. Shakalaka.
Tons of traffic knocking your doors ???
Rina
Those are classic tips from some of the most experienced bloggers out there.
This is awesome man. I like this great post. Thanks a lot for sharing these with us.
Good luck.
Great collection of traffic generation tips there.
I would add “quality content plus quality high volume keywords, should result in a steady flow of traffic to your site.
Many of these tips are timeless. Thanks!!!!
about “Leave comments on other blogs.”
does it generate any traffic? I feel its more due to backlinks that people write comments on blogs
Love all the points. Practical as well as relevant.
what a great collection of novel ideas to boost the traffic. Many of them can be practically tried without much trouble and cost. Thanks for taking pains and providing such a consolidated views on such an important aspect. thanks for publication.
Great idea to have different voices on same topic i really like the idea behind the post and tips
I really liked this post. I’ve been stagnant on a creative writing blog that I created, and I’ve lost focus on increasing traffic to some other blogs and a website.
I’m really passionate about it; I just got exhausted on my last web project.
Reading this post helped. It was like a collage of really good tips to get me excited again.
Thanks. 🙂
I think one of the fastest way now is by using the single submit to all social bookmarking like onlywire services. It really increase my visitor to 200%.
This is very useful information. It looks like I might have some work ahead of me, but I’ve also been able to confirm that I’ve been doing some of the suggested things already.
Thanks again for another great post.
A very resourceful post! One way I like to bring traffic to my blog is through Social Network sites such as MySpace & CafeMom. I create a profile that has information related to my blog (and personal info on myself, business, etc. ). Then I create my own group and go around and invite people to be my friend. When they accept my friendship, I invite them to be a part of my group which has a link back to my blog (or other websites).
I also use the journal feature in my profile to make posts to daily with links back to my blog. Works well.
Looks like this article was posted in 2007 but I still find it top of the line when it comes to traffic generation. I’ve recently started a blog on traffic generation myself, in order to give our clients more info on it and was looking for new ideas. My next post will probably mention this article as a great one. Thanks, great work.
Nice and simple. I would love to participate in such blog projects. Thank you for the whole effort. I will use most of the advices for promoting my blog as well. Thanks. Keep it up.
So, I’ve been able to gather a couple of things from reading this entire list. The underlying suggestions point to generating links, and keeping relevant. It seems to me that is the total effect of the article.
What I appreciate, though, is that there are specifics, like which sites to go to, what kind of sites generate the most buzz, and tips for keeping things fresh.
Although this post is old, it is still valuable. I have heard of almost all of them, but a couple were new.
I’m not a blogger, but an information site owner and agree with Santosh above. There is no substitute for hard work.
Great ideas here, I’ll be trying out some in order to increase traffic to my site.
I’d also recommend using StumbleUpon as a great way to get both spikes and constant traffic. To get the best out of it you need to put in the time and become an active community member but it can be worth the effort.
All the 30 tips are really perfect. I am going to try these tips for my blog. This post is a great treasure.
Driving traffic to a blogsite can really put your SEO skills to the test. But here’s what I really love, there are tons of effective marketing tools out there and you will never run out of options. Some of these great tips were discussed here and two of my favorites are article marketing and blogging. Blogging is a great marketing tool. Selecting the right keywords is extremely important for SEO. Some minor tips for bloggers: you have to be interesting and unique so that people will feel their time wasn’t wasted while reading your post. Eventually, you’ll gain loyal subscribers who may become potential buyers to your online business (if you have one) and before you know it, your business is up and running.
Tips you shared are very informative and i like very much. I will use your tips to get a good traffic.
One thing i surprised that everyone advising that forum signatures are the one of the way to get a good traffic. Is that effective ?
Does forums are better than blogs for getting good traffic ?
I searched on google, but nobody answered perfectly, could you please give me this information.
Thanks
This just goes to show how writing a great post, like the one above, is the best way to get traffic. This post is three years old and yet the information is timeless and still very useful. This kind of post is what I am talking about!
From experience I have to say I disagree with the point made about the value of del.icio.us. I have a great many pages signposted on there and my traffic reports tell me that very few visitors (literally 1 or 2 a month) come from there.
It is related to the tips from you Daniel (no.6). I think that by buying hosting in the U.S., I do not need to install plugins to translate the contents of my blog. However, according to your tips, in fact many visitors that the original language is not English. After this, I will consider to install a translator plugin.
All these are very common techniques. I was hoping to discover something new. I have blogs that get an average of 7k visits per day – after about 10 months of starting. What have I been doing?
1. posting regularly – few post per day
2. visiting other blogs – and leaving useful comments with link back to my blog pages.
3. Posting in forums with my signatures
4. Submitting to article directories
5. Twitter account – tweets each time I post
6. I have a ask a question module – and answer all queries very religiously
No substitute for hard work – follow the bes practices and earnestly “earn” the traffic – its a long term game!
i hopped in here searching “traffic blog” 😉
It’s a relevant. High page rank is a tell tail sign that you have good content, links in, etc.
The main point is that I think is being made is to be social for one and it will come back around. Similarly, leave comments that are helpful and most likely you will receive that in return.
The other thing that is of importance is to show that you are an authority. If you provide quality content people be interestedif you are a pioneer in the industry, of course people will come to you for that information.
You can have great content, but it must be promoted. Sites like Digg and Delicious, blogs and message boards help out.
Quality web site traffic is a longer process to achieve than most web owners or bloggers understand.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed in this article. These tips are all fantastic and I’m going to try and implement them all in my new blog. Thanks!
Driving traffic to website is really very important to make your site visible and to do this I suggest you do all the techniques listed in this post because we cannot succeed if we do just 1 or 2 strategies, I have an idea to add to this post because there are millions of people going online each day to play game. I used YourKidsClub games as it has wide variety of games that are related to my niche and can help generate more traffic.
It’s a relevant. High page rank is a tell tail sign that you have good content, links in, etc.
The main point is that I think is being made is to be social for one and it will come back around. Similarly, leave comments that are helpful and most likely you will receive that in return.
The other thing that is of importance is to show that you are an authority. If you provide quality content people be interested…if you are a pioneer in the industry, of course people will come to you for that information.
You can have great content, but it must be promoted. Sites like Digg and Delicious, blogs and message boards help out.
Quality web site traffic is a longer process to achieve than most web owners or bloggers understand.
I have to agree with Thriveni, you main thing should be to increase your overall rankings, when you do this you are almost guaranteed to get more traffic.
Most of these methods don’t really generate traffic, but increase your backlinks. This in turn increases your rank and increases your search engine traffic.
Unless you have a link from a hight traffic site.
Im really getting into reading other peoples blogs and making contributions to them. Im thinking a good blog is well worth putting the effort into.
Your project served me in two ways.
Firstly I got some great perspectives on marketing from the content.
Secondly, I saw how great a response this had so have started my own project, to get productivity bloggers to talk about productivity and then post the results on my blog.
Thank you doubly so.
Nice article I really loved it. its always
1. Reading others blogs
2. Commenting on them
3. Get the ideas and writing good articles
4. Publish them with back links
5. Bookmarking them in Social Networks
That’s it. At the end of the day you have done your basics right and acheived your goals
Great List.
We all are in need of traffic so this will be useful.
Glad that so many person participated in this topic. There are so many ways on how to improve traffic in a blog. I definitely agree with Megan Taylor that conversation is the best way of driving traffic on blog. Reader engagement is one of the most important thing that you have on your blog. “Don’t just tell the story. Ask your reader what they want.”
I really liked this article and it gave me a lot of new ideas! I’ve actually tried to create more traffic to my blog even though it isin’t finished yet (designwise). I’ve found a lot of blogs writing about ways to increase traffic, but this must be one of the best. Especially because this article isin’t written by one blogger that did research on the topic, but because these are bloggers who have tried the stuff out and are now giving their opinions on what worked for them.
Great list as usual.
Got some work to do now for my new blog, thanks to you lol.
Leaving valuable comments definitely seems to work best, along with guest blogging for others in your niche.
Great list, thanks!
I like the idea of participating in yahoo answers. Unfortunately yahoo is extremely strict and they will rip your post if they even get a whiff of spam.
Yeah, the most is very informative. It a great help to me & others will also like it. Do visit my blog.
Thanks! Does anyone know any specific tips for image-only blogs? My Farside-esque blog makes it difficult to have lots of keywords and link—hm.
I wonder if posting comments on blogs generates traffic? I don’t often click on other comment poster’s names but maybe somebody will click on mine?
Google Analyticator, tell me if it works please 😉
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed in this article. These tips are all fantastic and I’m going to try and implement them all in my new blog. Thanks!
What I have mostly noticed here is the FREE methods of generating traffic. Although using PPC for advertising written post on blogs is not a popular method, I have seen a few successful bloggers doing that, too.
Well, why would I bother myself to pay while I could generate more traffic for FREE?! That’s why I see only free methods mentioned above.
Anyway, we have to always think about 2 main goals when we are trying to get some traffic.
1. Generating Traffic which means getting real targeted visitors to our website from different methods and various channels.
2. Branding which means making people to see you as the expert in the industry and getting more and more popular.
Hope we take these tips into account when we are trying to promote our blogs and websites.
Thanks for this informative post which is a great combination of valuable thoughts and ideas. It’s really appreciated.
Cheers!
Hooshmand
Thanks for all the advice, my colleague has learned quite a bit.
Cheers
Eric
Thanks for the info!
Hi, dont forget mix.com as well!