For each online business we operate we rely heavily on at least one blog in that market to generate traffic, generate initial interest and attachment, establish trust and credibility, convince visitors to participate and return as well as convert visitors into buyers.
As you can see from that list, blogs work incredibly well and are a critical part of our overall marketing effort.
One trick though…in order for blogs to work someone must visit them, so how does that happen?
SERIOUS TRAFFIC GENERATION FOR YOUR BLOG
1. Keywords, Keywords, Keywords…people searching online think in terms of context and use keywords to express that context. For example, someone looking for ways to lose weight are more likely to search for solutions to their specific weight challenges such as belly fat, love handles, abdominal fat, etc…So a huge part of effectively generating traffic to your site is to know your market’s desires and how they express those desires in terms of keywords. You can pick these up from looking at competition, watching their activity online in discussion forums, watching your search engine logs for keywords used to arrive at your site and through testing.
2. Social Bookmarking...it’s considered a given that each post you make you will bookmark that page with Twitter, Facebook, Google, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc…yet I still talk to many people who do NOT bookmark their posts. I have found that bookmarking not only gets you some additional direct traffic (sometimes a significant bump), but it also provides some quality backlinks that help your content rank in the overall search listings. Just do it!
3. Syndicated Articles. Just because you choose your blog to communicate with your market doesn’t mean that once a week you shouldn’t still write an article and link back to your blog. Articles also provide solid backlinks to your site, but also can be syndicated across dozens of other sites with millions of eyeballs which bring in extra traffic to your blog
4. Guest Blog Posting. Search for your keyword + guest blog post to find blogs who are open to allowing guest bloggers a platform to share their content in exchange for a link back to their site. Again, this is much easier than many people think – just one guest blog post each week can result in hundreds of unique visitors that continue to add up over time.
5. Encourage Participation. Search engines love when blog posts continually update via user participation – I have several blog posts that have hundreds of comments that continually rise in the search engine ranks purely because the posts have done a great job at invoking comments. You can encourage comments in a number of ways including a) Taking a controversial or taking a stand on something within your market where people feel the need to chime in b) Ask a question c) Use plugins to post the links of those who post comments most frequently d) use contests for most or best comment of the week/month, etc…
6. Free, Viral Products. Assuming you have a product to promote, a good way to get the word out about your blog (and get leads into your sales funnel for affiliates) is to produce a free video training, mini-ebook or report, or software tool that is in high demand where you give the resource away with links back to your blog. Affiliates are willing to give these freebies away because they are both useful and can lead to affiliate income for them.
7. Social networking. I am very active on both Twitter and Facebook and typically post back not only to the latest blog articles, but often refer back to previous blog posts in context of a discussion or answering a question when involved with social networking. You should, of course, also put your blog’s address in as part of your social networking profile
8. Discussion Forums. Another great way to get daily traffic to your blog for nothing is to participate actively in discussion forums related to your marketplace. Pretty much every market has them and most allow you to put a single line or short signature into each post you make – the more active and helpful you become, the more people will click though to your blog
9. YouTube videos. We have generated tens of thousands of hits to our various 3-8 minute informational videos driving most of that traffic back to our blogs. You can actually accomplish two things at once with this approach. You can create tutorials, tips or opinion-based videos, place a link back to your blog within the description and as a lower-third under your video and then also use the video as content on one of your blog posts to help provide useful and search engine friendly content on your blog.
10. Press releases. I’m a big fan of issuing a press release each week (more if you can) across different PR networks (some free, some I pay between $50-$100 to get premium listings) – these often get syndicated (especially if the topic is of current appeal) and also get posted online to accumulate quality backlinks for SEO advantage in the medium-term. I have also been able to get extra publicity from press releases where interview requests or joint venture projects come directly from someone seeing the PR – this will happen to you too if you are consistent and become proficient in writing interesting PR.
Adding just a few of these techniques to your arsenal can result in very large traffic to your blog. Do not be overwhelmed by all that possible, but rather focus on taking action on one or two of these techniques to begin seeing results quickly.
YOUR TURN…
What traffic techniques have you found work for your blog? Let us know by leaving a comment.
