7 Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

Is your blog collecting dust and not getting enough traffic? It’s a common problem for bloggers. Their blogs are good, but no one is coming to visit.

They want to know how to increase traffic. Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems — provided you know how. Let me go over 7 specific methods of increasing traffic. These are guaranteed methods to draw more visitors to your blog.

Tip #1: Sign up for pinging services

It seems pretty obvious, but most bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what pinging means, pinging basically means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated.

People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated”. Pinging services include Yahoo’s blogs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search, and ZingFast.

There is also a little know plugin that wordpress uses called Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger. This does the whole process for you. Create your post and click on the Publish button and it automatically pings all the site you have presellect for you. This is a great tool!

Tip #2: Sign up for Technorati

If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog”. Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati, and see your Technorati link.

Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog on there.

Tip #3: Sign up for FeedBurner, a RSS service

What FeedBurner basically does for your blog is it helps you to promote your blog’s content, build your audience and measure your audience. In other words, it helps you increase your blog’s traffic.

Tip #4: Bookmark your blogs at places like delicious

You can set up an account and profile at delicious. Then, using that, you can add links to your blog along with excerpts from your blog. Anytime someone visits your profile on delicious, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts.

There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. The bottom line is, using these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs

No, this doesn’t mean you should go and spam other blogs with comments that are only there to promote a site. It means that you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name (along with a link to your blog).

This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site—you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from.

Tip #6: Ask owners of other blogs to post a link to yours

Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular (that is, they have a good amount of comments for each post), you can try to contact the owner of the blog to add a link to your blog if they have a links section.

To make them really want to do this, you can offer to link back to their blog on your blog. People do this reciprocal blog linking all the time and it does help to increase traffic.

Tip #7: Use keywords in your blog

Like regular web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page.

(FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, try to use 2-6 keywords per blog post. 2-6 keywords in a blog posting of 200 words is a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad.

Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. Then do it. It’s a surefire way of getting more traffic to your site!

To your success,
Matt Gaines

P.S. Signing up with a service like Technorati is a quick, painless way of increasing traffic to your blog. So sign up today!

Getting A Free Blog of Your Very Own!

Over the past few years, blogs have become incredibly popular. Just about everyone who uses the internet also has a blog. You want to get in on the action, but do not have your own website or not the techie type and you’re not sure how to get your own blog.

Luckily for you, sites like Blogger.com wordpress.com and many others have made it easy to set-up and make posts on a blog. Let’s go over everything from signing up for a blog on Blogger.com to choosing a template (look) to finally making a first post.

What is Blogger.com?

Simply put, Blogger.com is a site that hosts blogs for free. This makes it even easier for you to have a blog because there is no need to set up a web site and host the blog yourself. All you have to do on Blogger.com, once you’ve signed up, is login to your blog, write a blog post and click submit. It‘s that simple.

What will my web address be on Blogger.com?

Your web address will be http://yourname.blogspot.com. One thing that people dislike about Blogger and other free blog sites is that they don’t have as great of a freedom in choosing a name. You are limited to choosing only what is available. So if you’re looking for http://mattgaines.blogspot.com, you probably won’t be able to find that.

Signing up for a blog on Blogger

The first thing you’ll do is go to blogger.com. Next, you’ll scroll down the page and click on the button labeled “Create Your Blog Now”.

You will then be taken to a page where you will enter an email address(used to log into your blog), a password, and a word verification. You’ll also have to check “I Accept Terms of Service”. Click continue.

Next, you will be taken to a page where you will choose the blog title, blog address, and another word verification (which is done to prevent auto-signups). When you type in your blog address, you can click a link that says “check availability”.

This will tell you whether or not the desired name is available. If the first name you wish to have is not available, keep typing in different variations of the name until you find one that is available.

After you have put in all the information, click “Continue”.

Choosing a Template

After you click “Continue”, you’ll be asked to choose a template. The template can be changed at any time after you sign-up for the blog, so you don’t have to choose an “official” template now.

If you scroll down, you’ll see a variety of different templates. Click on the one that you like best and then click “Continue”.

Your First Blog Post Read more »

Blog Equals Fast Search Engine Rankings

Here are a few ways to start increasing the traffic to your site by getting it rank higher on the search engine pages. First page in position 1, 2, or 3 would be perfered.

Google Matt Gaines and you will see I am ranked in the #2 position. I am working on getting that #1 slot. You can do the same with your blog. Just follow the simple steps below.

How do I get pinging on my blog?

You’ll have to register with a site that offers weblog pinging. The most popular pinging program around is weblogs.com. Other programs offered include Yahoo’s Blogs, BlogRolling, and Technorati.

There’s also a plugin called Ultimate plugins Smart Update Pinger, which will automatically ping sites for you once you publish your post. It will ping the sites only on initial post and not any edits or updates you may do to that particular post.

Once you’ve decided on a pinging service or plugin, you’ll have to follow the instructions to install it on your blog. When you’ve done that, your blog will start getting pinged and visited by search engine spiders.

What is linking?

Linking is basically having another blog or site link to your blog. When search engine spiders visit that site and see a link to your site, they’ll visit your site. Linking is effective both for sites with blogs and those without it.

How do I get linking?

You get it by visiting sites/blogs that are relevant to what your site is about. Then you contact the owners of those sites/blogs, asking them to post a link to your site on their site. In return, you will probably have to link to their site on your site. That way, both of you are able to benefit from the linking.

Why is the use of keywords important to my blog? Read more »

You Should Post Regularly Because…

Here is an interesting topic about posting I thought you should know about.

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest.

The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months.

They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea.

A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about.

It is important to find a balance—frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis? Read more »

What are the Benefits Of Blogging?

I thought it would be a good idea to start off about blogging, it is another tool to assist you in your list building and Business.

Blogging, what is it? You’ve heard talk about blogging but are one of those people who don’t quite understand what it is. That’s alright, as we’ll go over what a blog is, the history of blogs, and what they are used for you will start to understand why they are important to your online business.

What is a blog?

A blog is essentially like a journal where people can post their thoughts and have them read and commented on by anyone.

What is a blogger?

A blogger is someone who creates a blog and posts information on it.

Brief history of blogs

Weblogs, simply known as blogs now, haven’t been around for that long. The roots of the blog can be traced back to 1994 when people kept online journals (diaries) in which they wrote about things in their life.

Our current blog has been around for an even shorter period of time. In 1998, Open Diary created a site in which its users could post blogs that had the ability to be commented on by other people.

The popular free blogging site called Blogger was created in 1999 by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. Blogger was later purchased by Google in 2003.

Despite the fact that blog sites have been in existence since 1998, they have only been popular for 5 or 6 years. In 2001, how-to-blog manuals were published and the phenomenon has only taken off since that point.

What are blogs used for? Read more »

A List Building Technique Using Twitter

I am always looking for ways to make list building easier. Tools, software, and websites are everywhere you look. I like to take my time when choosing the method which will fits my style.

HA! what style I like to use what works and I found a very interesting program I think it will help alot of people especially if you are a Twitter fanatic.

Here is an example of how it works, go to this link Click Here Now fill out the Twitter form and walla!

It really is that simple. You build your twitter followers and at the same time start a viral following. Pretty neat!

I hope this will help you!

Have a great day!
Matt Gaines