How to get more traffic to your blog
Traffic is the reflection of success of a blog and blogger. A blog can be regarded as successful if it gets more number of hits and it is unsuccessful if it has lesser number of those. This is the reason why every serious blogger is quite obsessed to get a lot of traffic and constantly tries to get more number of hits on his blog. Here in this post I would like to share some of the tips (some new little known and some old goodies) to generate more number of hits on your blog.
First of all I would like to give you a little idea about the basics of traffic. It is quite necessary to get these basic ideas before switching to the strategies to get more hits on your blog. ( you would discover later in this post tat why it is necessary to have those basic ideas)
What is web traffic?
I know you are quite comfortable answering this question if yo are blogging for a while. But let us take a look at the definition of web traffic as defined by wikipedia.
Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit.
Source: Wikipedia
It is clear from this definition that traffic is a measure of site's activity usually reflected by the number of visitors and number of pageviews visitors generate.
Now the visitors can be of two types-
- New visitor who has come to your blog for the first time
- Revisitor who has visited your blog in past
My point of telling all this is, since new visitors and revisitors are separate groups ,so, the strategies you should ploy to get more hits from these group should be separate. Furthermore, The strategies are separate but they go hand in hand and not one at a time.
Traffic = New visitors + Revisitors
How to get more hits from new visitors?
Before planning a strategy to increase hits through new visitors you must have some knowledge on the sources that send these new visitors. I have identified 4 sources that send new visitors to a blog. If you have some more to add you are most welcome to do that through comments. Those four sources are-
- Search engines
- Referring sites like , other blogs of the niche and forums
- Social media sites
- Word of mouth
Each of these has a great potential to send a few hundred or even more visitors to your site provided that you use them wisely. Now I will discuss each of these sources separately.
How to get more hits on your blog through search engines?
You must have heard bout search engine optimization if you are blogging for a while. I am fan of this topic and has written many post on it including a full series of posts titled-
Organic search engine optimization.
Search engines are one of the best sources of getting traffic to your blog but you have to rank high for the targeted keywords if you want some purchase from this. Although I am not vastly experienced in this area but with whatever experience I had with search engines for past one and half years, I can tell you that ranking high is not a problem if you just target your keywords judiciously. Keywords are the base of all SEO campaigns and you need a solid keyword research to get some hits from search engines.
Although a lot has been said about Search engine optimization all over the web (including this blog) but the very basic steps of search engine optimization is-
- Solid in depth keyword research
- A good keyword density of about 5-6%
- Internal linking to related posts
- Use of html tage like heading ,bold and italic tags
- Link building
This is just the basic and a detailed account of all these above points can be found at the
organic search engine optimization series that I had written earlier.
How to get more hits on your blog from referring sites?
For most of the bigger blogs referring sites are the the single best and largest source of traffic. In fact they are also he most reliable and a source of long time traffic. Search engines algorithm can change, your rankings can change and this would affect number of visitors on your blog. But if you are for a long haul , I would advice you to focus upon this source of traffic. I have identified 5 types of sites which can act as a media to send visitors to your blog-
- Other blogs
- Forums
- Article directories
- Website directories
- Sites like google groups and yahoo answers
Getting hits from other blogs-
One of the highly talked source of hits to your blog is another blog of the same niche as yours. Now there are three ways you can utilize these blogs to get hits on your blog.
- By commenting on them- Choose some highly trafficked blog in your niche and regularly pour in some useful and thoughtful comments on them with a signature link back to your blog. Let us suppose you just comment on 10 posts. In months time you will have 300 comments and if each of these sent just 1 visitor a week you will have 300x4 = 1200 visitors a month. Isn't this incredible. But make sure your comments are unique, thoughtful and make the visitors inquisitive.
- By Guest posting- Guest posting brings in a huge amount of traffic to your blog if you persuade a key layer in your niche to write in his blog. There will be an instant spike in traffic and many of those who visit your site will become regular visitor and subsribe to your feeds.
- Through Trackbacks- Trackbacks are a tool that enables a blogger to write about someone else's post in your blog. You just post your opinion about some other blogger's post on your own blog. The trackback link appears in yours as well as other blogger just below the posts. This link can bring in some hits to your blog.
You can either use one of them or all these three methods. If possible use all these three methods to get better results.
Getting hits from forums-
Forums are sites where people ask question o other forum memebers and others answer them. All the forums allow you to leave a signature link below the posts you make. Just identify some high trafficked forums in your niche and make useful contribution to it by answering people's question. You might get some visitors if you are doing this job perfectly well with an intention to help others.
Getting hits from article and web directories-I
I don't have an idea about the amount of success you get through these sites but some bloggers has advised to submit articles and links in some quality directories like Dmoz and yahoo directory. I had limited success with these but I think you must try this out as you might not get some hits from these but they will pass some link juice to you.
The same can be said about article directories.Although in terms of traffic article directories give better results than web directories but still the amount of traffic they send is not impressive. (at least it hasn't worked for me). I think they are better sources to build links and gfetting more hits from them is hard to accomplish.
Getting hits from sites like google groups and yahoo answers-
I had some success with google groups. I have answered many questions in google groups and it sends some visitors to this blog on regular basis. Similarly , I had some success with yahoo answers which sent some visitors to my "
India travel guide" site.
I haven't been much active in these type of sites. Just commented and answered some questions on a couple of occassions. I am of opinion that these sites can be milked for even more hits for your blog. Just you need to answer the questions and post your useful opinions. You have to be active here to get some traffic out of it. 10 postings in these sites daily can give you good results.
Web 2.0 has come to its full effect on the net and it can be seen on the sites like stumbleupon, digg, facebook ,Myspace and many other networking portals present on the net. With rise of web2.0 social media sites can't be overlooked if you are looking for a long time haul in blogging. Actually your blog can also be regarded as a mini social site where you put your opinion forth and readers put their own opinion through comments.
Social media sites are not only effective in bringing your blog to limelight in short span of time but also it has potential to long term and consistent hits on your blog. But how to usce them is a big question that need s to be answered.Here I will discuss just the basic points that you need to remember while using these sites.
- Choose a social site that meets your need. Not all social sites are suited for everyone. For example , Digg is best suited for those bloggers who write about news items or tech stuffs. A blog about shoes might not get anything in Digg. So, be choosy in deciding the social sites. For most of the bloggers stumbleupon is quite suited. It has a large number of categories ,so, there is all liklihood that your blog will be accomodated in one of those categories.
- Use these sites to help others- One f the reasons most of the bloggers fail in these sites is because their action is driven by making traffic or sales. Please keep in mind that social media sites are a place where poeople share stuffs and socialise. So, over promotion on these sites can bounce back on you by bringing a bad reputation to you and your blog.
- Network with other like minded people to vote your posts- I don't find anything wrong in asking people to vote your posts. But don't do this for every posts you have written. Just do it for a post that you think is useful and is value packed.
Getting more hits on your blog through word of mouth
This is perhaps the most effective way of getting more hits on your blog. No traffic generation strategy can equal the potential of word of mouth spread of your blog. One of the finest way to do this type blog promotion is by placing a 'tell a friend' script at the bottom of each of your posts. Many of your readers might just email your posts to others in their network thus bringing in some new visitors to your blog.
Even better technique to do this is by giving away something in return like, free ebooks and reports in return of referring a friend. That did the trick for some of the bloggers I know although I haven't tried it yet.
How to get more hits on your blog through revisitors
Uptill now I have covered the strategies to bring in more hits through new visits. In my opinion it is easier to get new visitors but it is quite tough to mke your visitors come back to you unless you have a quality and unique content.
People surf the web to get information and they return to only those sites that provide it quite regularly. Some of the strategies that you can ploy to make your visitors repeat again and again are-
1) Giveaway something free to get your visitors isubscribed to your feeds or newsletter. They might return to your blog once they find some of your items if it souded appealing to them.
2) Organise competitions on your blog on regular basis. Many of the visitoirs like to take part in competitions if you are giving away something exciting to winner. They will come again and again in search of those contests.
3) Write quality content on regular basis. The primary reason why a visitor come to your blog is because he needs some information or answer to some questions. If you are providing the content the visitor demands then he will return time and again to see updates from you. They won't come to your blog unless you are providing solid reason to come back in form of quality content.
Traffic generation and getting more hits on a blog is a time taking process. It is not an overnight process. But once you are doing the things that I just mentioned rightly , Iam sure you would get many many hits on your blog. Referring sites and social media sites are the biggest source of traffic and you should a pay particular attention to them.
