Traffic for your blog is possible for everyone

I still remember the days when I just started this blog, just like many others out there I wish I would have some more readers and no matter how hard I tried it just didn’t work out the way I wanted. When trying to look for tips on how to get the traffic coming to [...]

I still remember the days when I just started this blog, just like many others out there I wish I would have some more readers and no matter how hard I tried it just didn’t work out the way I wanted.

When trying to look for tips on how to get the traffic coming to your blog you get to see the same things over and over, SOE, digg, guest posts, getting mentioned by other bloggers, etcetera. Looking at it realistically though, how often does a blogger really get involved with that?

I am quite familiar with scripting and web development which gives me a head start on many others out there, but the entire deal of SEO is something which I’ve pretty much skipped all together. In a recent entry on how search engines drive me an additional 100 visitors a day I’d say that becomes pretty clear once again.

Then there’s digg, how this would boom your traffic. All you have to do is just get onto the front page of digg which requires nothing more than writing up a good article. So, who here has managed to get an article ending up on the front page of digg? I know I haven’t, guess my articles just weren’t good enough but it’s a ridiculous tip in my opinion on how to get starting out with getting traffic.

Getting mentioned by others or writing guest posts perhaps aren’t too bad of tips, but the downside is before they can mention you shouldn’t they know you? So it defeats the purpose of getting started out, but definitely after the first steps it can get you starting up.

Since I’ve never been too much busy with these previous though, how did I start? I remember in my early days it was probably like many others starting out, I had about 10 visitors a day of which I didn’t have a single clue on where they came from. As time passes by it begins to increase and currently I’m getting around 600 unique visitors a day which peaks up to nearly a thousand at times.

Can it be more? Well, of course it can be more, it always can. But I’m quite happy with what I’ve achieved already, I never expected to make more than 500 visitors a day with a blog.

How did I do it though? Now here’s the million dollar question of course, how did I manage to get those numbers up from just 10 to nearly 1.000 at times?

Keep on writing and write steadily

This is by far the most valuable tip, if your blog has entries coming at completely random without any pattern in it it’s going to be hard for people to know when to check up again. If they keep seeing nothing new, many will be disappointed and not return.

You might be thinking “but what about a feedreader then?”, believe me when I say far from everybody uses one of those. I for example am one of those people who doesn’t use a feedreader, so for me to keep returning to a blog I expect to see content appearing on a regular basis.

If you got no time for this yourself, don’t worry. Let wordpress publish on a regular basis for you! This way you can write your articles when you feel like it and still have that new entry roll out every Monday and Friday for example.

Bring your entries to the public

No, I’m not talking Digg here since that’s just not efficient enough. But for quite a lot of niches there are sites to which you can submit your entry resulting in it to be placed in the spotlight right away, a good example of this is Tutorialized for those bloggers out there which write up their own tutorials on things like Photoshop or programming.

But there are other, similar systems out there. If you look around I’m sure you can find one which suits your niche as well, believe me when I say that these work. They don’t require your entry to be voted up first so it allows you to get some attention directly.

Do not abuse the system though by spamming all your entries to it, you will want to make a good impression to those coming in so only submit the entries which you consider to be your best. Chances are higher than that the people coming in will take the time to visit your other entries as well and possibly coming back at other times.

Comment on other blogs

A while ago I wrote about how bloggers enjoy to receive comments, as one of the points on as to why to comment was to get visitors back from it. This definitely doesn’t mean though you should go around spamming as many comments as possible and hoping people will just click on your link.

Just like with bringing entries of yourself into the public you will also have to give the same attention to your comments, think clearly about what you write in them and try to interest others on checking your site to get to know more about you.

Give it time

I will admit that some blogs have the potential to become popular within no time at all and a handful actually achieve that as well, the most of you out there just like me just don’t have that. Our process of blogging is an ongoing learning process, the increase of visitors comes along with this just like the many other factors.

As long as you keep in blogging with joy your entries will become better and better, you could nearly say it’s magic. It perhaps won’t go as fast as the digg effect but as long as you hang on to it you will get there.

With writing this entry my aim has mainly been to give various of techniques for increasing traffic which can work for everybody and actually are within reach for everybody. If you have any additional tips in regards to this yourself definitely do not hesitate to share them with us, I’d love to see in what ways you have increased the traffic on your own blog and how this could be helpful for others.