Six Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Why am I writing to you about ways to drive traffic to your blog? A few days ago I wrote Happy New Year! How To Keep Your Resolutions In The New Year in response to my Yearly Traffic Report For Makobi Scribe 2013. My numbers had dropped when they should have moved in an upward trend. My resolution was to get back my traffic! I outlined how I would do this by creating a no-fail plan on keeping resolutions. This post is step two.

2. Create a plan on how to accomplish your resolutions. Make sure you set a series of short and long term goals with attainable deadlines. Write it down. Be flexible and allow your plan to change as you go. Flexibility is key when things do not go just as planned and you can continue on an alternate path to your goal instead of just giving up.

I am going to start with an easy list and then go further in detail in later posts (after all I have 31 to write this month from the Ultimate Blog Challenge) When I started my blog back in Nov 2010, I wrote a few posts like How to Become A Product Reviewer and different ways to drive traffic to your blog. Time to update and get back into the swing of things!

“The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.” Denis Waitley

You Can Drive Traffic To Your Blog By Following These Suggestions

1. Pay attention to your blog. If you look in either Google Analytics or your blog dashboard for site stats, you can see what terms people are searching for to get to your blog. The answers are already there no matter how insignificant you may think they are. The traffic has arrived via search term so why reinvent the wheel. Use what you have!
2. Be your own biggest fan. Link to yourself. Often. Steer people around your blog. Breathe life into your old posts. If it is a topic that relates, people are interested and click through. Just make sure you check the handy box that says open link in new window, so they don’t lose their place. You can get easily sidetracked and lost when you start following the rabbit hole.
3. Use plugins. I am a big fan of work smarter not harder. If there is a tool to help me do something and it is just as effective, I am all for it. You can find a related links plugin like Nrelate or TweetOldPost to recycle old traffic.
4. Exchange traffic with other sites by hosting a widget your blog from Crowd Ignite. You can find my post about it here.
   
5. Be Creative. Many bloggers talk about the silly search terms they get on their blogs. Some are gross, off-the-wall, and downright make you think part of your audience is really, really odd. You can use it! My friend, Shelly ranks for some really odd search terms, but she gets hits often. She already has a trickle of the “traffic pie,” but what do you do with posts that get search terms for Anne Hathaway’s Feet and women over 45 wearing pantyhose? Hyperlink those phrases is related posts. For example, a post titled, “Trends in Hosiery Over the Last 5 Decades” can explore just that and contain the statement, “Many women envy Anne Hathaway’s Feet because she is able to wear a sandal over a bare foot. Worries of varicose veins and other ailments most women over 45 wearing pantyhose have are not her concern. Then lead into the trends of hosiery.
6. Utilize Google Plus. Google is the King of Search. Google Plus is the tool they want you to use. Connect the dots. What do you think gets ranked first? A post amplified on the Search King’s baby or Facebook? Exactly. I will show you how in a later post (That I will remember to come back and link here of course – weaving and interlinking)

What do you do to get traffic to your blog? Is it working?