Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips

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. 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)



4. 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.




5. 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.



6. 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.



7. 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.



8. Ramen Junkie

Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.



9. 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.



10. 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.



11. Guido

Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.



12. 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.



13. 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.



14. 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.



15. 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).



16. 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.



17. 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.



18. 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.



19. 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.



20. 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.



21. 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.



22. 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.



23. 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.



24. 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.



25. 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.



26. 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.



27. 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.



28. 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.



29. 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.



30. 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.