Today’s discussion is all about getting more traffic to your site with your blog. If you’ve been blogging for a while, and have seen a dip in traffic, today’s posts may be useful to you in figuring out why. If you’re new to blogging and don’t really get where the traffic will come from, this should give you some more detailed information.
So, first, let’s talk about that – where does blog traffic come from? If you understand that, it helps to realize a bit better how to get it to flow through your site.
Blog Traffic Source #1 : Site Links Pointing In
Your on-going source of new traffic will often be from other sites that link to you. While search engines are certainly a top source of discovery, links are often a basis of continous traffic. I’m not just talking about linking out to other blogs, and forming relationships that end up in permanent links back to you.
I’m also talking about tagging, trackback and commenting (when done responsibly, and not purely as a way to get more traffic), social bookmarking, specialized blog-promoting sites, articles and syndicated headlines.
Now, just because you have a few hundred links back to you doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get visitors out of them. Your best bet for linkback traffic is to get mentioned in the context of a larger discussion, which is why all of your linking efforts need to be topical, as well of interest to the targeted group.
Blog Traffic Source #2 : Returning Visitors and Subscribers
Once you get them, you’ve got to keep them. If you find yourself constantly running after new visitors, and yet seeing a decline in traffic, then you’re probably not keeping the visitors you’re getting. So why is this?
It could be because your visitors don’t understand, or haven’t seen, where they can subscribe to your posts. Maybe the content you write the most about isn’t of interest to your audience.
Blog Traffic Source # 3 : Major Search Engine Traffic, and Specialized Directories/Search Engines
It’s no secret by now that your blog can become a major search engine draw. What seems to confound people is how to blog in a way that primarily satisfies your audience, and secondarily, gives reasons for the search engines to pull your posts into their databases, as well as list them in search engine results.
(If secondarily is not a word, I hereby invoke my poetic license. So there.)
What’s more, you can also get traffic from directories where RSS feeds and Blogs are tracked. As an added bonus, those pages that are linked back to you, some of which update to reflect the headlines of your latest posts, can help improve your rankings with the major search engines as well.
We’ll talk more about some methods you’ve heard of, and some you haven’t, for bringing an increase in traffic from all of these sources next.
