How to increase the Blog traffic with free techniques

Look here and there what you find a normal blogger asking for? It’s very easy. Every blogger want to try to increase the traffic so that his earning might increase. Well we will look into such SEO (search engine optimization)tips for increasing blog traffic. I know many points have been repeated 100 times but I have tried to present it in new and easy manner. So after you apply those techniques feel free to share your experience with us. Well I am not SEO specialist but I will be sharing the techniques which I learned for getting traffic for my site. So without wasting out time we will discuss some facts and To Do things for getting traffic.

Submit your article to different Directories

Many people feel this option useless. But as far as my opinion is concerned, I will always recommend you to go for directory submission. Generally directories have higher PR and more traffic. So if you get nice traffic from such directories. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with. For some handsome collections of directories, click here.

Caution: Beware if you are submitting to unknown directories. Now spammers are creating fake directories to get more scope.

Nice Blog Design will always help you to get nice traffic

People always do this common mistake. Usually blogger is very selective about the Theme and forget about design of the Blog. So, it will look like just another Blog and you lose you reader. If you think readers point of view, nice themed Blog with necessary and easy to use navigations, will always help him to find right information and thus pleasing him. Normally, people get confused between Blog design and Blog appearance which is part of Blog design. Here, we will understand more about part of design which includes position of the various page elements such as,

Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Search, Feed Icon, About ME Page, etc.

So, with intelligent positioning of your various page elements, you can convince your reader about the quality of the content, your strength and in turn it will help you to get regular readers.

Here are some guidelines for placing various Blog elements:-

• Feed Icon, Search Icons should be kept at top of the sidebar.
• Extra Search box can be placed near your banner and at footer of the Blog
• Recent comments should be given least priority and can be placed lower level of sidebar.
• Recent post should be placed in middle of the sidebar where people come to know more about your recent post.
• Do NOT forget to add “related post” section at the end of the every post before “comments for the post” begins. This can be done by using plug-in for wordpress and for blogger you can follow PurpleMoggy's Method to show related post.

So, from this we can conclude that having nice Blog design with nice theme is very important. I also want to add small information, that blogger tend to choose top 10 Blog themes and even after his hard work on design do not help him to get more traffic because it will look similar. So for getting nice traffic and building nice traffic, your Blog should be unique in terms of Blog design & Blog theme. So try to choose some off topic theme which will attract your reader.

Listing down all your popular post under 2-3 categories

This is one of the most important things for novice blogger for retaining your organic traffic (traffic from Search engine) and converting them to regular readers. For getting more idea what I am saying about refer to following picture.

This example illustrates us about importance of main listing categories. This is simple theory, suppose reader comes to your Blog and after reading the content if he finds some meaningful information about hot topics, then only reader will build faith on you. In this way, you can succeed in getting another regular reader.

Guidelines on using this technique:

1. As you are making these places permanent, it is absolutely necessary to have some popular Tutorial content as they are not time dependent.
2. Select such quality content which define your Blog and raises your Blog from others.
3. Make two to three columns and then assign categories to them and place your popular topics there.

Pen Note: I have seen some blogs using this technique in different manner, they categorizes the columns and place latest hot topics there using plug-ins. I think this is also great idea if your posting rate is high.

Burn Your Feed

By using my previous tips, you will definitely get nice traffic. But now it’s very important to make your reader come again. For this Feed comes handy. Every novice blogger must know about these Feed services and it’s importance. By having powerful feed option, you can build your readership and keep them increasing. There are different types of feed burning services available at this time. Out of these, Feedburner come handy and serves our purpose as it is easy to use and allowing to earn extra income through your feeds.

Feedburner allows you to track your feed readers and makes it easier for people to subscribe to your feeds.

Select your feed-count tab suitable for your Blog theme and keep them at suitable position where your readers can quickly find it out. It’s very important for keep your feed count increasing.

Give your readers different feed options

When reader likes your content, then surely he will search for feed option. Many blogger provide only general feed option containing all the categories. So if you are posting rate is more then it’s advisable to differentiate your feed options.

Example: Suppose I have 10 categories, from which 5 categories are occasional and other 5 are your prime categories. Now for example your prime categories are

1. Money making
2. Adsense Tips
3. Wordpress Tips
4. Increase Blog traffic
5. blogging

So if readers only like your Adsense tips content and other categories are not useful to him, then he will surely develop tendency to ignore other content, this can be harmful if readers try to avoid all the content including his favorite Adsense tips.

Setup your Feed on My Yahoo

Many of us don’t know about site submit service for yahoo. Well My Yahoo is not similar to SiteSubmit from Google, but it act as SiteSubmit service. So, setup your feed on MyYahoo will help you to get indexed in yahoo search engine.

Bookmark Your Blog

You can bookmark your posts on social bookmarking sites. After writing a good article submit it to Digg and it will automatically be picked up by other social bookmarking sites.

Write a ‘how to’ post that walk your readers through a process that teaches them how to achieve a goal they might have (similar to this post) and they are more likely to want to bookmark it. These types of posts are often listed in del.icio.us Popular Page.

You will get huge amounts of traffic if your posts come up in Digg’s Frontpage or del.icio.us Popular Page.

Link to the source

If you post about some interesting news that you just read on your favorite News site, link to it (the source). Chances are readers from that news Blog will visit your Blog from the pingback on the site. Also, it helps make your content look informative.

Answer Your Comments

It’s very common that every Blog site do have a comment section for every post. So whenever your readers comment on you Blog, answer it as early as possible. Follow some guideline to Answer comments from readers

• Answer your reader’s comments as early as possible.
• Start with thanking word for first 5-6 comments for particular posts.
• This will help to build relationship with your reader and in turn getting more traffic out of it.
• If your reader makes some interesting valuable comment (generally related to review of post with some outstanding suggestions) then personally mail him for valuable comment.
• This will encourage him to give more valuable comments on your site, turning your site into quality.
• If you are novice blogger then be careful while answering to first time commentators. Do not fill your comments with only thanking & greeting words. But do make some technical comments.
• If you are novice blogger, then emailing your first time commentators and thanksgiving him will definitely help.

Always try to give relevant links while commenting outside:

It’s not always hard and fast rule that you have to always link to your site while commenting outside. Of course if you find another relevant article or relevant source for particular topic you can always link to that source.

How it will help me to gain readers?

It’s very easy theory. If you are commenting on some medium level site with any out bound links then other regular readers are likely to be more curious about you when you inform them about your article. More people are expected to visit your site for getting quality information.

Ping your articles regularly:

Pinging your articles is very important, for getting handsome amount of traffic. Pining is service that notifies all other search engines about your latest post. It helps a lot when it comes to hot and cracking post. Pining can be done effectively with the help of Pinomatic services. Personally I found it very useful.

increase blog traffic, promotions, seo tips, feedburner