‎7 Tips for Increasing Blog Traffic

Itcould be that you have a good
reason outside search engine
...optimisation to feature a blog,
but maybe not. Any good SEO
service will tell you that having
fresh and original material on
your site is important when it
comes to SEO. A site can be built
to perfection in terms of style,
but if new content doesn't
appear then search engines
won't stay interested, and all-
important exposure through
search engine ranking will be
lost. Any good search engine
optimisation agency will inform
you of this and stress the
importance of having a blog. So
after you've realised the
importance of new, high quality
content and put a blog on your
site, how are you going to
increase traffic to it? Here are 7
tips for increasing blog traffic

1. Blog Domain
Be sure to host the blog on your
own domain. Hosting it on a site
that's different from your
primary domain will not help
your site and search engine
optimization specialists would
probably call it madness.
Remember that a blog,
especially a good one, will
attract links, attention, trust,
publicity, and search engine
rankings.

2. Title Tags
Think about two audiences
when writing title tags.
Remember, of course, that the
blog exists primarily for people
who visit your site regularly or
have a subscription to the feed.
Besides them, you really need
to keep search engines in mind,
particularly if it's a new blog.
Title tags that are smart,
relevant and memorable are
what you need. Think about
keywords users will type into
search engines and which ones
you want to use to bring users
to your pages.

3. Get Involved
Get involved in blogs and
forums that relate to your own.
Keep in mind that whatever the
nature of your online
enterprise, there's a pre-
existing community of related
forums and bloggers. You can
increase your exposure by
purposely involving yourself
with the established online
community. A good way to do
this is to search using
technorati.com, and of course
to pay attention to links. Be
aware of your image and how
far your blog can take you if
you get things right.

4. Adding Comments
Launch your blog without a
'comments' function and add it
later. If you want to avoid a
scenario whereby you have a
lot of blog entries openly
displaying that there are '0
comments' then simply delay
the introduction of comments
until you're sure of some traffic
to your site. This will prevent
those visiting your site early on
from assuming that it's simply
an unpopular blog on an
unpopular page.

5. Be Unique
Try to stand out from the
crowd. Make your content
unique, valuable and interesting
for people to read. This might
sound like an obvious tactic,
but many sites fail on all fronts.
If it's not interesting then
people won't want to read it
and you'll lose out. It's as simple
as that. So if all related blogs
are covering the same thing,
take the time to wonder how
you can do things differently
and better.

6. Link Intelligently
Search engine optimisation
experts will tell you how
important it is to pay attention
to the quality of the links in
your blogs when it comes to
offpage SEO and website
optimisation. Remember that
links should be relevant, useful
and valid. It's far from optimal
to have a lot of random links on
your page, and as SEO experts
know, when it comes to links,
less is often more.

7. Select the Correct Blog
Software (or Make it Yourself)
When it comes to creating a
good quality blog, those who
want to stand out from the
crowd and attract readers
know the importance of using
the right blog CMS. You'll want
to decide early on where
content will come from and
what features you want the
blog to have. If you're writing it
yourself then custom-made
software will allow you to
produce it in exactly the way
you want. Think about how you
want comments, archives,
categories, sub-pages, multiple
feeds, and user accounts to
operate. Remember that
increasing traffic is what's
important and so you want
your blog to be as good as
possible. Don't just accept a
standard format and include
cheap substandard text. Not
many users will read beyond
the first sentence or visit your
site again.
A blog can help your site in
many ways but it's going to
work for you only if it's
nurtured. Even if it's only there
for SEO purposes, give it love
and attention if you want it to
work.