How To Increase Traffic to Your Blog

By Terry Detty

One important topic for blog owners is how to increase traffic, which is easier than it seems, once you know how. In this article, we cover 7 specific methods of increasing traffic to your blog.

Tip #1: Sign up for pinging services
It seems pretty obvious, but many bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging, pinging means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated. People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated.” Pinging services include Yahoo’s blogs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search and ZingFast.

Tip #2: Sign up for Technorati
If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog.” Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati and see your Technorati link. Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog listed there.

Tip #3: Sign up for FeedBurner, an RSS service
FeedBurner basically helps you to promote your blog’s content, and to build and measure your audience.

Tip #4: Bookmark your blogs at places like del.icio.us
You can set up an account and profile at del.icio.us. From there, you can add links to your blog, as well as excerpts. When a user visits your profile on del.icio.us, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts. There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. All of these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs
Here, you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name(along with a link to your blog). This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site—you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from.

Tip #6: Ask owners of other blogs to post a link to yours
Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular (if they have a good amount of comments for each post), contact the owner of the blog and ask if they will add a link to your blog. Offering to link back to their blog is a way to sweeten the offer. Reciprocal linking helps to increase traffic.

Tip #7: Use keywords in your blog
Like regular Web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page. (FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, use 2-6 keywords per blog post. This creates a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad. Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. This will help to increase your traffic.

Terry Detty, 42, enjoys all aspects of Internet marketing and occasionally getting out for a breath of fresh air. He has several sites, covering Internet marketing, time and attendance and credit repair.

How To Increase Traffic to Your Blog - WebReference.com

The 6 Most Common Reasons Why Web Sites Fail

Every year there are literally hundreds of thousands of web sites that fail to work out. The majority of these sites fail due to one of the six reasons we are about to cover. If you can avoid making these six big internet marketing direct response mistakes you will be ahead of the game.

1. Capturing Info.
The first and most biggest reason why Internet marketing web sites fail is because they fail to capture the name and email address of their visitors. On even the best sites 95% - 98% of all visitors will not initially buy your product.

To help higher your conversion it is mandatory that you collect the names and email addresses of your visitors. To do this simply put an opt in page or pop up that will ask your visitors to join you mailing list or ezine list. To help persuade them into doing this offer an e-book or e-course that is relevant to the subject you are discussing. Now you can continually market to these potential customers when ever you feel like it.

2. Poor Product Selection.
The second reason many internet marketing web sites fail is because they are selling a product that nobody is interested in or has a very low demand. Often times the products maker will tend to think they are the customer. Just because the creator is interested in the product does not mean that others are willing to pay for it.

Before any product is made some tests should be done to see if there is any demand for the product. To do this you can simply go to Goggle and type in the subject and see if anyone is using the PPC ads on the right to promote a similar or related product. In the Internet marketing world some competition is good.

If you know that others are making money in your niche you can bet that people will be willing to buy your product as well. Another thing you can do is start a blog and simply give people a poll or even better yet have them join your list so you can communicate with them directly.

3. Lack of Objective.
The third reason most internet marketing web sites fail is because the site does not have a clean and clear objective. So many direct response marketing sites are loaded with mistakes in the design. To help make your site more efficient take a look at one that you know is. See what they are doing different and make adjustments to your site. Once you have tested all you have to do is add more traffic.

4. Plain
The fourth reason most internet marketing web sites fail is because they don't stand out. Your site will have to grab the attention of your visitors. You generally have about ten seconds to do this. If you cannot get them interested that quickly you will most likely loose them forever.

One test you can do is this. Load up your site. Now load up your competitors. What instantly grabs your attention on their marketing web site? Now take this information and try to do something similar on yours. It is vital that you site stands out and grabs the reader by the eyeballs and sucks them right in. Making your internet marketing web site stand out is vital above the fold. Focus on that first part of your page and then the rest will start falling into place.

5. No Traffic
The fifth reason why most internet marketing web sites fail is due to lack of traffic. We really won't go into much detail on this one since it is a very large subject. Some of the things you can do to get free traffic are to write site relevant articles and submit them to the article directories and write site relevant press releases about products in your niche as well as your site.

If you are willing to spend a few dollars to get your internet marketing site some traffic you can try your luck at PPC. Your best bet is using Google AdWords. This may cost you a little due to the saturation that Google has in most of its keywords. Another alternative may be to use several lesser known PPC sites to try and achieve the same effect.

6. Sales Copy
The sixth and final reason why many internet marketing web sites fail is because of their sales copy. Copy writing is an art. If you are not a fairly experienced copywriter or good with words by all means don't try and write your own copy.

A professional copywriter may end up costing you thousands of dollars but if you know that your product will sell you are much better off going this route. If you do not know what you are doing you may spend weeks if not months testing and tweaking your copy until it sells well. If this is the case I strongly suggest reading a book or two on the subject.

So there you have it, the six most common things that will cause your internet marketing web site to fail. If you take the time to avoid these mistakes you will be leaps and bounds ahead of most others. It sure is not easy to get your page running to its best potential but the rewards are sure worth it.