Traffic Tips To Grow Your Blog

Everyone wants traffic to their website, no matter what. Traffic is what will generate the viral marketing effect, sales, business, and popularity. And who doesn’t want any of those things? But if you aren’t using a free social media website such as Squidoo or Facebook, it can be quite a challenge to get hits to your website. Well, that is where this post comes in. Now I’m not going to give you everything, because I simply do not know everything about traffic generation on the internet. But what I will give you are some great, free, and cheap ways to increase your traffic as well as some ideas as to how to continue to generate more. So if you are struggling to get consistent day to day traffic as well as increased traffic, read on, this is for you.

First Things First

First, and this may seem quite obvious, but are you posting frequently enough? Everyone likes new, fresh content, and if a user likes what you have to say, chances are they will be visiting often. And that is good! So give them solid, unique content on a consistent basis. It doesn’t have to be daily, but that is a good habit to get into. I am still working on it! Some professional bloggers post twice a day, everyday such as John Chow.

You Got The Content, Now What?

So now you may have 20 to 25 posts and are in the habit of updating daily. The next habit to get into is to submit your blog to as many different sites as possible. Why? This is how you can start getting your blog in front of people that you may not know. Chances are, you don’t know them at all. But that is OK. So one way to get your blog out there is to add it to your social websites. Here is a short list that you can add a link or a plug-in of your blog on these sites.

• LinkedIn – this is a great site in general for professional networking. Now they have teamed up with WordPress to allow people to link their personal blogs to their profile on this site. It allows potentional employers and your network to see and learn more about you!
• Facebook – I bet you already have your blog linked to facebook. If you do, great! Keep networking on Facebook and mentioning your blog or website. Not in a spamming kind of way, but in a helpful way.
• Twitter – Who doesn’t twitter these days? If you don’t, you should! It was the mega-hit online application of 2008 and looks as if it will only grow and become more popular in 2009! Great for building a base of followers and a lot of fun too!
• Slideshare – This may seem that it doesn’t fit into the mix, but it is always good to go against the grain! This is a great social application that allows you to share slideshows. So how can this help you? Create a slideshow that gives information and teaches on a topic that you talk about on your blog. Do some networking on this site as well. It is amazing what is out there.

Get In The RSS Feed Game

If you aren’t already, get in the habit of submitting your RSS feed as much as possible. Why? Lots of people subscribe to RSS feeds and so if you submit yours, there is a chance that they will subscribe to your feed. Here is another impartial list to submit your site to. The key to these is to submit after you have updated your blog- at least once a day is a good rule of thumb. Because remember, you are updating your blog at least once a day right?

In no particular order:

1. Ping-O-Matic
2. Ping the Empire
3. iPings
4. Feedshark
5. Pingoat

All of the above mentioned sites allow you to add your website and rss feed for free. They will then submit your information to all of the different social bookmarking sites they are partnered with. Ping your site every time you update it.

Two More Places To Submit Your Website

Have you heard of OnlyWire? It is a site that will let you post to about 19 sites in one click. You just have to sign up for each one, then submit your login and password information to your OnlyWire account to sync, and you are good. Once you have signed up for all the sites on OnlyWire that you want to join, you can then download the application that will allow you to quickly submit your posts to OnlyWire. It saves you time and gets your blog more exposure which will lead to more traffic.

Get Started and Keep Building

The internet is continually evolving so in order to keep up with it, you and your websites and blogs must continue to evolve, adapat, and change. The more you continue to spread your website out across the web and network with other bloggers, webmasters and business people, the more traffic your site will get. What I have presented are just a few of the free ways to start to build your traffic up.