Blog traffic: 7 easy ways to get LOTS more…

How did I smash my record-best traffic day–by 34.21 percent?

Note: this is to fellow noob bloggers; no “advanced” tips here today.

I’m no expert yet, but I’m learning fast.

Several things happened all at once yesterday. I will give you seven quick bullets…

• Write and publish a new post: Duh. New content makes all those invisible search “spiders” and “bots” out there wake up and take notice… some times you’ll see a bump in traffic for no other reason, especially once you develop a solid archive filled with topically relevant, keyword-searchable content. It probably didn’t hurt that my content was rich in said relevance… and announced a contest with a cash prize!

• Integrate yourself into the blog community: Get busy (and regular) taking part in linked-up conversation with several other bloggers who cover the same general topic as you. Share your two cents. Agree, disagree, whatever… and be sure you lavishly share links to your blog’s home and new posts.

• “Syndicate” yourself: I published my brand new post on several social networks where I maintain a robust presence (Facebook, MySpace, etc). On Facebook (for example) I use the integrated app called NetworkedBlogs, which lets my FB friends “follow” my blog–and thousands of others–in a clean, easy-to-use interface.

• Set up “feeder” sites that update themselves: Not much different from the point above; on my primary business profile pages on (LinkedIn, BrightFuse, etc) I use a blog plugin which automatically grabs the RSS “feed” from this blog, and posts the title or title-and-summary as an enhanced feature of my profile. Serves double duty as a traffic-builder and, for me, as a supplemental work portfolio element. Cool. And I didn’t so much as lift a finger.

• “Ping” a few blog aggregators: I know about two so far, called Condron  and AlphaInventions, which seem a bit weird at first if you’ve never run across this sort of thing before. They are automated sites which scan the web for new blog content and, when they find it, syndicate it to the world right then and there. I admit, the traffic you get from brute-force aggregators like this can be less valuable… but some, like Condron, let you sort your blog into a topical group that can help filter you the more likely prospects. How to ping them? For me, it’s all done by the code. (Tip: the fact that I mentioned them by name here will actually make it happen again, and cause them to check me more often.) Depends on your blog software or host, and I don’t even have the Wordpress software that lets me customize ping settings. Yet.

• I got automatic coverage: in Wordpress.com, my blog’s hosting domain, thanks to a thorough and relevant list of keyword “tags.” Today, other Wordpress bloggers searching keywords to see what else is out there, got a page loaded with new posts tagged with the words they searched; I saw several hits on my post from those searches. Tag your post with all the most useful, relevant keywords you can.

• Do all these things at once: Yes, I know that sounds like what I said just before the bullet list, but the key is this–the “confluence” of activities was deliberate.

There ya go. A quick laundry list of little things. When it all came together yesterday, for me, it amounted to a pretty big thing. I set my personal new best traffic day, by a good hefty landslide. In full disclosure, I must say that my blog is new, about five weeks old now. But I got traffic up by nearly a full third over my high mark.

Watch for lots more to come on this topic, as I learn! For now…

Write what’s Right,

Ken