Traffic, everyone wants it and is trying really hard to get more people to their site. Good news, there are creative ways to bring people in without doing a lot of work.
1) Social Bookmarking. It’s been around long enough that some people know all about it and have a tendency to just search del.icio.us or Furl for what they want. Social sites are basically like a user defined search engine. Are you listed? Make sure to bookmark yourself every now and then and add social bookmark links to your blog posts and/or web pages so others can bookmark you too.
2) Use Flickr! Yes, it’s true, the social photo sharing site can drive traffic to your site. I now post all my pictures that I’m going to use in my post to Flickr first, with good tags of course, then I write my blog post. Once I’ve published my post, I copy the post URL and add a note to my Flickr image. I paste in the URL, hit save and it turns into a clickable URL. Now, if people find my stats screenshot on Flickr they’ll see my note and may click on the link back to my site for more information.
3) Read and comment on blogs. TUAW is one of my favorite blogs. Since I’m a Mac geek, it’s a perfect match. Whenever I feel so inclined, I comment on stories. Since I’m able to add a URL when I comment, it gives me a live link. On some stories, I may have something on my site that is related, so I’ll drop in a link to my blog post about the same topic in the comments box. This usually draws decent traffic. Keep in mind, the post you are commenting on and your post must be very related or else it may be seen as spam and deleted.
4) Forums. Use forum signatures to promote your site with a live link. Also reply to topics with good information and maybe a link back to your site for more info and people will visit. Again, you must be sure to give valuable information or people will perceive it as spam.
5) Widgets, Themes and Extensions. It’s true, everyone has Widgets anymore. Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and the list goes on. And then there are themes and extensions for Firefox. All can be simple to create and quite effective in driving traffic.
6) Friends! Yes, get some friends who feel that you know what you are talking about. Maybe they’ll talk about you on their blog, talk to their friends about you or even interview you. Interviews are all the rage right now. 😉
7) Industry specific sites. As noted above, I’m a Mac geek so I know lots of Mac sites. One in particular is MacBytes. I know that if I write up a review, opinion, some cool scripts or something related to Apple, I can submit my story to them and, if approved, they’ll post a prominent link to my site for all their visitors to click on. I’m sure there are other sites like it out there for cars or baseball or whatever you are interested in.
8) Guest Poster. As blogs get bigger and more popular, some sites ask for guest posters. If you sign on, they may just let you link to your own site every now and again.
9) Podcasts. Reach those that don’t like to read by giving them an audio or video podcast. If they find your podcast interesting, they may just decide to look you up.
10) Submit your feed. If you have a blog it should be pinging everywhere it can and be submitted to the many blog directories out there. A feed can drive traffic from a site that won’t allow regular websites to be added. And, quite a few of them, don’t come looking for you, you have to submit to them.
In the end, it’s not all about traffic, it’s about giving the user something they think is of value. You could drive thousands of new people to your site, but if you don’t give them a reason to stay, was it really worth it?
My ideas above may not generate tons of traffic, but they are creative ways to drive traffic. Do you have some other ideas?
-Thanks Thomas 🙂
If you send out an eNewsletter, link to your blog posts that have proved to be popular. Your eNewsletter database is likely to be interested in your topics.
http://www.thuk.co.uk/blog
I’ll follow your advice by posting my own response to this!
I’ve found the one sure-fire way to improve traffic to my blogs is simply this: content. The more frequently I post, the more hits I get.
great blog…but one question is why do u not have google ads or any other ads on this site?
Thanks for another EXCELLENT post Thomas!
Good tips Alan and Paul!
Jack, you’ve posed a great question and it’s true. We don’t run any ads on this site at the moment. For the most part, that’s because the blog itself is an ad for our SEO firm, TopRank Online Marketing.
However, with a new blog design, there will be space allocated to ads.
Thanks for the tips…
I’m new to Internet Marketing and appreciate any information to help drive traffic to my blog as well as web site at http://www.rogerloh.ws
Like Paul Bradshaw I’ll start to follow your suggestion leaving a comment here. Very useful tips, congratulations on the article.
Some really nice suggestions. I definitely will try some of those for my blog.
good information.And here is My experience with website traffic
Very good suggestions. I definitely will try some of those for my and my customers websites!
Thanks for the ten tips.Will check out and act on the flickr tip!
Keep well.
Very good ideas for taffic building
One important factor that Thomas forgot was to write worth a read posts, exactly like he himself has done here. We bloggers have to give something to our readers to read, otherwise no matter how much you market it – it’ll flop.
Waise I’ll try flickr idea from today onwards. Sounds good idea.
Great ideas! I see 2 in particular I’m going to make use of (enewsletters with popular posts – I already have a decent newsletter base and forum posting..) Other ideas I’ve tried and it’s true… the do work. 🙂
Hello
Very clearly written. Thank you.Great ideas!
Regards
Alex Bell.
Wow! fantastic. i learn something from your blog. keep it up! i will visit your blog everyday
Yes very Nice TOP10 and easy to remember. We are a server hosting center and i think maybe 80% of alle customers dont know seo, traffic building and link building. Best regards from Copenhagen.
Thanks a lot for your help ful advice. I am trying to build traffic to my site right now. I want to get at least 10,000 visitors to my site every day. Hope your tips will help.
@jack: because most people don’t like ads or don’t even see them thanks to adplus. And you don’t get any money for them in return. I had GoogleAds on a blog and kicked it after I found users wanted content and not ads (just like me, surprisingly).
And thanks for the tips Thomas, I didn’t know that Flickr thing. Though, keep in mind you all, it’s not the posts themselves that will get you better search results but links created for that good content found there. A lot of forums do add a rel=”nofollow” to user-created links.
Hello Thomas:
Thank you for helping us new bloggers. A few other tips to add is advertising your blog on free ad sites, such as craigslist. In addition, writing articles for sites such as ezinearticles and associated content, can help you promote yourself in your niche.
Best regards,
David
Traffic building is ok but it needs to go hand in hand with interaction once people land on the website. Basically you have 3 steps in the web-process
A. Attraction
B. Conversion
C. Follow-up
Step B is undervalued but essential to go to step C.
Nice blog on this topic blog.netmining.com
Thank you for this article. Great ideas!
Regards.
Hadrian