How Do I Get People To Read My Blog?
Here are two great questions from blog readers that I will answer below:
Question #1: How do I get people to read my blog?
Answer: In order to get people to read your blog, you must make it sticky.
Provide really great content that people in your niche want to read. Make it exciting. Add some great videos pertaining to the subject that you’re covering. Add images. Get people to register to your blog to alert them of any new post on the blog. These are just a few of the things that you can do to get people to visit more often and also to make it sticky. I don’t like too much clutter on blogs…you can’t even find the info that you were looking for in the first place. You find so many banners, adsense, adds, pop ups, etc. Sooo annoying.
If you are currating content like I do sometimes, make sure to gather the best content from the best sources, make reference to them, and add your own unique twist to the post. Be yourself. Don’t try to copy someone elses, “Blog tone.” Put your own personality into your blog and people would come back for more.
Also, make sure your blog’s content is not complete garbage. Here’s a video that would answer the question, “How do I get people to read my blog… by making sure it’s not filled with garbage content.” The video below is filled with great information and it’s also quite amusing. Enjoy!
Here is my long answer to the question (10 tips)
1. Write and submit articles. Although this can be tedious and time-consuming, it’s the old tried and true method of getting free traffic and quality back links to your site. However, you won’t get your articles posted in a timely fashion on some article directories like Ezinearticles.
Ezinearticles take at least a week to review your article before adding it to their database. Sometimes they reject your article and ask you to redo it. Then that takes at least another 7 days for a second review.
So instead of just waiting for your article to be approved by Ezinearticles, go ahead and submit a copy of that article on high profile websites related to your site’s niche.
For instance, a site like about.com, mashable, sitepronews, etc, are high profile websites and getting a link back to your site from sites like these can help you generate lots of traffic. Just make sure your article is outstanding with an attention-grabbing headline.
Many of these high profile websites have pages on their sites where you can submit articles. Sometimes you might see a tab that says, “Write for us,” on these sites. On some sites you might have to browse around a bit to find the page where you can submit articles.
Write quality, unique articles, and not articles that lack substance…articles providing no benefit or very little benefit for readers. This can ruin your reputation and instead of increasing your traffic, it can put a dent in it.
2. Make your articles talk by converting them into videos. Google loves Youtube. I think they also have a love/hate relationship.
However, if you want some serious link juice with highly targeted traffic beating down your blog door, make sure you fall in love with videos. Video marketing is HOT. Combine videos and articles together, and you’ve got winners.
3. Submit ads to a high pagerank and high traffic Classified ad site such as USFreeads and Craigslist. Goggle loves USFreeads also. Get Free Classifieds from USfreeads!
4. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.
5. Comment on other related blogs. Make sure the blog is a “Do Follow,” blog. Also you get more link juice by commenting on high Page Rank sites. Please do not spam.
6. Product testimonials. If you purchase a product that you actually like, then leave a testimonial. Leave your url in your testimonial and you should receive some traffic.
7. Email Signature. Whenever you send an email to someone, include your website url as a signature. Here’s an example:
8. Keep updating content on your blog. Make sure you provide great value for your readers. Try posting at least three times per week. The more you post, the better. As your blog grows, I suggest posting everyday. This will definitely increase your traffic.
9. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites. Grab the Onlywire plugin. I also use the Auto Social Poster along with Only Wire. Onlywire is a free plugin, but Auto Social Poster is not. Using both gives me more link juice. I make sure that both are not bookmarking at the same sites.
You don’t want to post the same article or blog post on the same bookmarking site twice. So every time I create a new post, Onlywire and Auto Social Poster bookmarks my post to over 40 social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking works really well for me and generates about 50% of my traffic.
10. Ping. Make sure you ping your blog after updates. You can use http://www.pingomatic.com.
I found the following article in the Huffington Post (“Twenty Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Website and Blog”). I’m sharing it with you because you can truly benefit from it. I am only going to add a few paragraphs of the article with a link below the article. Just click on that link below the article to go to the Huffington post to read the entire article.
Twenty Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Website and Blog
Increasing traffic to our website and/or blog can be a full-time job. But it doesn’t have to be. If you understand a few simple principles before implementing Search Engine Marketing (SEM), you’ll save time and build a strong and steady stream of traffic to your website.
First, it’s important to know how search engines like Google rank you and measure traffic online.
Page Rank: Google Page Rank, or GPR, is a number (between 1-10) that Google assigns to a website to indicate importance. The higher the page rank, the more important the site is. Sites like MSNBC have a high page rank, often 9 or 10. Niche sites are lower. Our site is between a 4 and 5. If you’re targeting sites for incoming links, make sure their GPR is high enough to matter. Not sure what it should be? Google your keyword and identify sites in your market. The top 5 to 10 sites will tell you what page rank you should seek.
Google’s System: Google ranks websites using two methods: Relevance and authority. Relevance means relevance to the search. Authority is different and critical if you want more traffic for your website.
Authority is how important Google determines your site is and depends not just on the content of your site, but the types of sites that link to you. If your site has 1,000 incoming links from sites with low GPR, you won’t get much authority from Google. Conversely, if you want incoming links you should pursue higher targeted sites and get fewer of them. When I started blogging for Huffington Post, which has a GPR of 8, I found that our GPR 4/5 site benefited from the inbound link the column provided.
Since the majority of us search through Google, understanding the intricacies of this massive search engine is vital to getting better results. Let’s look at some smart SEO tactics for getting website traffic:
Your website:
Social content: Have something “social” on your site, whether it’s a blog, forum or even social networking. The easiest and best of these is a blog.
Update often: Always provide fresh content. This helps your rank. What’s the best way to add fresh content to your site? A blog is often the quickest means.
Social media tools: Learn how to effectively use sites like Facebook and Twitter. To expert SEO people, they are considered “feeder sites,” meaning they can feed a lot of traffic to your website. My recommendation: use your Fan Page to promote your work and leave the profile for your personal life.
Keywords: The term “keywords” often conjures up the idea that hours of research are involved to find the perfect keywords for your site. Even if you can only invest an hour, it’s well worth it. The quickest way to determine the right keywords for your site is via Google’s keyword tool: http://www.googlekeywordtool.com. You’ll want to plug in your topic and see how people search on it. The keywords they use are valuable to you.
Ranking for a particular keyword: Many of us want to rank higher for a particular keyword or phrase. Here’s a little-known SEO secret for better ranking: after you determine what keywords you want to rank for, use them in your URL, YouTube channel if you have one, as your Facebook Page name and even for your Twitter account. It’s likely the search term you want to rank for won’t be available in any of these properties so you’ll have to be creative. Here’s what we did: Back in August 2010 I had our website redesigned.
I wanted to rank for Book Marketing. The results for our site were OK, but often we would show up on Page two of Google. I bought the URL bookmarketingAME.com because bookmarketing.com wasn’t available. Why bookmarketingame.com? Whatever you tack onto the end of your keyword URL doesn’t matter and AME are the initials of my company. Using your name or some other branding at the end of the URL is fine, what matters is the first word or words.
When I did that (and I renamed our Facebook Page and YouTube channel too, but not my Twitter account because so many people associate me with @bookgal) I found that within three months, our site went from Page two to Page one of Google, often sitting in the #3 position. Did it help with traffic? You bet it did. Click Here To Read The Rest Of The Article, “Twenty Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Website And Blog.”
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H ow Do I Get People To Read My Blog
How Do I Get People To Read My Blog
How Do I Get People To Read My Blog
