With a head's up to The Daily SEO Blog for their 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts and encourage you to add yours in our comments section.
More blog traffic is a key wish for many of our bloggers. I'd say "all" but some of us aren't as concerned about more traffic as we are with great traffic. They are not the same thing.
More traffic is increasing your monthly pageviews - from 10,000 to 50,000 for instance. That involves getting more eyeballs to your blog via search engines, referrals, and other means (sharing on Facebook or Twitter, for instance).
Great traffic involves getting the right people to your blog. Getting people who are keenly interested in your topic of conversation. Getting people who will come back again and again. Sometimes, that's 500 a week or month -- sometimes it's 5000 and in rare cases, it's 500,000. Wouldn't we all love that?
The Daily SEO Blog shares some key insights and advice on blog traffic building, none of which is new. You've heard it all before. Yes, it bears repeating but how many times do we have to repeat it, for folks to 'get it'? And, I include myself in that statement. I don't do everything I should be doing to get Scratchings & Sniffings more traffic. <sigh>
Here are some of their bits of advice, and my thoughts.
Target your audience. [This is key and easy to do. Who is your audience? Only you can decide that. Is it cat people? Dog people? All pet people? If your topic choice is limited - ferrets, for instance - you may want to include content that will attract all pet people. Teach us and invite us to quiz you. Many pet parents are woefully uninformed about ferrets and other out-of-the-ordinary pets. (hop over to the Daily SEO blog's site and check out their great graphic)]
Participate in communities. [You are a member of the BlogPaws' community, yes? And you do participate, yes?]
Make your blog SEO-friendly. [They have links to great resources on how to do this - use them!]
I won't go on and on. If you visit the Daily SEO Blog site, you'll get all 21 tactics. We've discussed many of them: adding video and audio to be compelling; guest blogging and/or accepting guest bloggers (to guest blog on this blog, contact Robbi, our blog manager); create great design - something some of us overlook - and worth a post of its own; and more.
In the end, upping your blog traffic requires work. It requires daily attention. It requires commitment. To make it manageable, break it down into smaller chuncks and create a process where you accomplish only 2-3 things every week. Eventually, you'll be doing everything you should be doing, on a regular basis and your blog traffic will soar.
I absolutely aqree with your statement that getting traffic takes time and work. I'm sure alot of web businesses are trying to get traffic and are having problems. I have a few free books that may help at http://shupeenterprises.com
Posted by: Karen | 01/23/2012 at 11:13 AM
Thanks for sharing this post - lots of great tips. #5 (install Google Analytics) has been one of the best things I've done. I found a few traffic sources that I would have never guessed sent me so much traffic, and a few that I expected would but didn't send much. It's been really helpful at targeting where I promote my blog to people who will appreciate and share the content. It's so eye-opening.
Posted by: Sonia Singh | 01/24/2012 at 10:25 AM
Great reminders! Also, if you don't already utilize Facebook, you are truly missing a great way to drive traffic to your site. Most of our clicks now come from Facebook, it's a real game changer.
Posted by: Aimee @4TheLoveofAnimals | 01/24/2012 at 11:58 AM
I agree that facebook is a game changer but the clicks from it are yet to prove that they are converting into sales/responses. I mean, I've had a lot of traffic coming from facebook but having a very low conversion rate from them.
Posted by: seo outsourcing | 03/01/2012 at 09:45 PM