Improving Blog Traffic

I was planning on writing an article about how to increase traffic to a blog today, however I remembered a post that Rand from SEOmoz did earlier in the year, so went to find it. I did and having read it through realised there was actually very little to add to what he had already said on the subject, so decided to make this post more of a referral over to his original article which you can find here.

How do I get more visitors to my blog?

This is a pretty common question and there is no quick and easy answer, however his post lists the 21 tactics suggested for long term blog traffic, just remember that there is no quick fix or magic stick which will catapult your blog to the top of Google and thousands of daily visitors, without a fair bit of hard graft, so expect to put in the legwork. His 21 tactics are:

1. Targeting content to people who are likely to share and promote your content to others

2. Getting involved in the online communities where your audience is

3. SEO your blog and individual posts

4. Use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your content

5. Using Google Analytics

6. Incorporating images and photographs

7. Keyword research

8. Linking to your own posts and other peoples (when relevant)

9. Join social sharing sites, such as Stumbleupon and Tumblr

10. Participate in guest blogging, both on your own site and other peoples

11. Make the site look good

12. Comment on other related blogs

13. Get involved with Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers

14. Set up and use RSS feeds

15. Get involved in events

16. Utilise email and signatures to promote your site

17. Use surveys

18. Add value to a popular conversation

19. Include “the best of” type posts

20. Link your web profiles to your blog

21. Copy your competitors backlinks

So there are Rand’s top 21 tips for bloggers to attract more traffic. It’s well worth a read, although it’s a very long post, and probably double if you read all the comments too, but there are more good points made in there.