Hi,

What can you suggest for a newbie to blogging as far as increasing traffic? What do you do?

thanks,
jenn

Thanks for posting this. I was wondering the same thing.

:lurk:

In my (short) experience, the best thing you can do is offer really good content and content that isn't all over the place. Really think about what you want your blog to be about--it should have a clear and definable purpose because if it has a purpose it will soon have an audience. Is it a gardening blog? A cooking blog? A craft blog? A blog about your family? It shouldn't be all four mixed together.

Also, invite your readers to take part--ask them what they think of the subject of your post, or if you've outlined "ten ways to peace" or how to declutter your garage, at the end of the post ask your readers what they do to achieve inner peace or ask them for their decluttering tips (or whatever ...). This encourages readers to comment, and readers who comment are readers who come back.

Make it personal with graphics. Your blog should have eye appeal. That can visually separate it from the myriad of other blogs out there. It's easy, just add a header or something. But while you're making your blog personal, don't go too crazy with font colors and stuff which can make it very hard on the eyes.

Next, start browsing blogs. If you have low traffic, it's probably because people simply don't know about your blog. Search for blogs, and when you find one that kind of jives with what you're trying to create (e.g. if you blog about vegan cooking, find a vegan cooking blog or if you blog about vintage knitting, find a knitting blog), start commenting. And don't comment by saying something inane and pushy like, "If you like XYZ, you'll like my blog at XYW." It's so transparent and seems like spam. Instead, post a genuinely interesting and supportive comment--the blogger will check out your profile and the link to your blog and might start coming by. If you keep it up, eventually you'll land in someone's blogroll and that can be a great source of traffic.

My traffic on Green Mommy (http://green-mommy.com)--a blog I've had for about a year--comes from other bloggers who've blogrolled me, my MDC signature and google searches on the subjects I've posted on.

GL! I hope what I wrote was helpful.

Thanks snowbunny, your suggestions are very helpful. I think I need to keep my blog focused on unschooling.

best,
jenn

p.s. I'm going to go check out your blogs now :)

you can also go to Pingoat.com and ping the search engines whenever you update. I don't know what it means, but go to the website, fill in your info and check off the boxes.

Visit other blogs with similar content, and leave comments. Real, good comments, not ones that are just so you can leave a link to your blog.

If someone else blogs about something interesting, comment on it on your blog. If you have a blog roll you can exchanges links with people.

There are carnivals you can enter.

Basically you post something and your link is included in a bunch of others as a carnival.
There is a carnival for frugality, one for made at home, etc.
Here's a link I googled, I don't really know if they are good or not.
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/clist.html

Join blogrolls, leave comments--I also ask questions at the end of a post if I can. It draws people in.

I have one blog that has a lot of traffic--it happened to get mentioned several times by other people. My other blog is pretty much under the radar;) that's ok.

I don't think you have to limit it to one focus though unless you're a business. I love blogs that share their life whether it's a new recipe, or a craft project they're working on, or a child's lost tooth.

Our lives are multi faceted and I think our blogs can be too.

A good way to get indexed in search engines is to write several articles for sites like ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, etc. This is usually used to drive traffic to blogs that are monetized with adsense, etc, but should work even if you're just interested in the traffic. Submit your article, for example, about unschooling, and then add a link to your blog in your resource box.

HTH

This is a great subject. I just started a blog associated with the magazine I run and I have been looking for good ways to increase traffic as well. I just discovered digg.com. I suggest you add 'digg' functionality to your blog, then when people like your posts they can 'digg it'. Once you(or someone else) adds your story(or blog post) to 'digg' it shows up on their upcoming news page and drives traffic to your blog, as well as in the future if it gains popularity.

I also added a link exchange page to the blog so mama centered sites can easily exchange links with us.

Good luck!!!

And along these lines,
How long do you think it takes to build up a modest readership? I've had my blog for a month - thus far it's only linked on MDC - and it's had about 240 hits. Is that good for a first month?

I really appreciate the feedback, thanks :D

I have a small blog and I get 100-200 hits a day with about 1000 page views a day. Some months I've had more, others less.

Personally, unless you're hoping to sell something, I wouldn't focus too much on hits at first. Just blog. The rest will follow. It's a very organic process and you'll build momentum with time.

Commenting on other blogs and reciprocal linking will also help build an audience. If someone writes something you really like, link back to it and say so along with relevant commentary.

Oh and try to respond to anyone who comments as it makes them more likely to revisit you.

Also, if you just want hits and don't care about quality, working in good metaphors and similes or jokes on hot news items will increase your hits. I made a joke about Angelina Jolie once and I get a ton of hits off that, but, of course, they aren't looking to read my stuff, so it's not a true hit, you know? For a while I was #1 on searches for Ethiopian p*rn stars (don't ask, it was an unfortunate joke) and guess what? There are a lot of people googling that particular term. Way more than you would think.

V

Thanks Violet. Some good points to consider :) I do love when there is some dialog in the comments. Makes the blog come alive for me.

snowbunny has all the same advice I'd have given. Good luck!