The ultimate guide to boosting your blogs popularity

Introduction

Ironically enough, I know little of improving the popularity of a blog or increasing traffic to a website.  I can't (and won't) claim of being the author of this guide.  Out of my own drive to learn about blogging and increasing blog traffic, I searched the internet for some of the best articles and posts available on the topic.  It was then I began to disect, aggregate, remove, modify and tweak this knowledge for my own personal blogging improvement. 

I welcome any additions or critique you may have to improve this guide. 

The content from the following sites were used, in no particular order:

Please note that I may be directly quoting from these experts, but because of the nature of how I grouped and organized their content, it would have been a horrendous task to cite each individual thought or quote.  This may be a big boo-boo on my part since a good blooger should always give credit where credit is due.  Feel free to flame me ;)

On that lovely note, I'd like to state that equal credit of this guide goes to each of the original authors listed above.  I thank each of you for sharing your wisdom and expertise with the blogosphere.

Onward and upward.
- Jared Prins

 

"Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean anyone knows about it or reads it. Like any other website, you still need to do some promotion to drive traffic. Otherwise you’re just a needle in the haystack." - Cameron Olthuis



Table of Contents

  1. Timeliness
  2. Interactivity and the Blogosphere
  3. On Writing Posts
  4. Writing Style
  5. Topics
  6. For the Readers
  7. Be Patient
  8. Dont's
  9. Helper Services
  10. The Blog Tool
  11. Technical Stuff
  12. Statistics and Tracking
  13. Other



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#1 Timeliness

 

  • Publish posts now only if they need to be read now.  Otherwise, delay the publish date.
  • Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.  That said, post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.  Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days.
  • Linkbait: Should you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer and your depth of understanding.  Basically, for that period of popularity, get in the zone. 
    This lets your visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
  • Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks.  Include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts.  I’ve heard bloggers who swear by writing loads of posts per day to encourage readers to come back numerous times per day as one such technique.  As time goes on, try not to go longer than a week without posting. Or the blog becomes a ghost town.
  • When posting frequently, some blogging software allows you to set the date when to publish your post.  It will appear as though you are writing daily, even though you may not have written anything for weeks.
  • The more you post, the more food for the spider, which can cause the spider to react by splitting up its job into several visits, whereupon you have even more content, and so on, until the spider just adds you to a more frequent schedule of returns.
  • Instead of pinging at 15 minute intervals when your site hasn't been updated, or even pinging after every single post, you can actually get better results if you update or ping just once during one of three sweet spots in the day.
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#2 Participation and the Blogosphere

 

  • Encourage others to respond or blog on the same topic.
  • Related to the above, write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
  • Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
  • Build an Interactive Blog - one way to get readers coming back to your blog many times over a day is to have a blog that people want to interact with.  Some ProBloggers will visit a site at least 10 times per day just so that they can engage in the conversation that happens in comments.  Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
  • Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
  • Participate at related forums & blogs.  A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
  • Don't be afraid to email other websites with a tip about your content (should you think your content is worthy).  You never know, they might post it. Even go so far as to send a polite email to the editor-in-chief or webmaster.  Even if it doesn't get posted, you will establish some rapport between that company or person, which may help you out in the future.
  • Also, holding a contest can greatly boost traffic. Even if it is for something small.  You will be amazed at how many people find out about it. You can establish a relationship with some of your readers, and they might link to your blog on theirs.
  • Added the ’subscribe to comments’ feature on a blog can have readers coming even more than normal.
  • It's about conversations.  Participate in the blogosphere.  Participate on "big player" blogs.  Post useful comments on other related blogs. Leave your blog URL. 
  • Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
  • If you have a lot to say about another blog post try writing about it on your site instead of leaving a comment. But make sure you leave a trackback link. Do this everytime you quote or refer to a blog.
  • Good bloggers read all the trackbacks on their site b/c they want to know what others have to say about their posts.
  • Get Linked. Turn on your site feed(s) and use them to promote your blog. Robin Good's guide can get you some great one way links.
  • Share linklove and expect some back.
  • Do email interviews with the well-known.
  • Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
  • Invite Guest Bloggers. Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.

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#3 On Writing Posts

 

  • If writing long posts, make them definitive (serve to define, be reliable).
  • If writing short posts, make them meaningful.
  • Coin a term or two.
  • Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
  • Build a Brand - Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member.
  • Exclusivity, insider jokes and emails with regulars can push away new readers although they are solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.
  • Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
  • Edit yourself. Ruthlessly. [Note from Jared - Some readers like to see the authenticity of the occasional spelling mistake.  It it shows you are human.]
  • Use a Human Voice
  • Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. Be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it.
  • If there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
  • Go Beyond Text in Your Posts.  Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
  • Reveal as Much as Possible.  The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. [Note from Jared - be careful here.  This only applies to personal blogging, not corporate blogging or when you blog about work.  Be careful not to get dooced].  Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
  • Highlight Related Posts - one of the more common practices of bloggers to encourage readers to read multiple pages on their blogs is to to highlight related posts at the end of your article.
  • Interlink within Posts - a similar but perhaps more effective technique is to highlight relevant posts within the content of your posts. If you’re writing a post that mentions something similar to what you’ve written before simply link to your previous post from within your article.
  • Series - While you need to be a bit careful with writing series of posts over periods of time, they are a great way to keep readers coming back and once they are complete to have them surf through multiple pages on your blog.  Don’t just do a series for the sake of increasing page views of course - this can really frustrate readers but use them on longer posts or when you’re genuinely wanting to interact with a larger topic over time.
  • Write high-quality posts / quality content - This should go without saying but needs to be reinforced. Obviously if you write quality content your readers will want more of the same. Useful, original and interesting content should leave your readers hungering for more. Work on the quality of your blog and you’ll find that things like traffic levels and the numbers of pages being read should look after themselves and be on the rise.  They don’t have to be long but they need to be good. Give a unique view of your opinions. Try writing something that will create a buzz and get other bloggers to talk and link about your posts. (Should you ever write something good enough to get on Digg that alone will bring in 30,000 visitors and a few thousand links to your site).
  • Keyword Choices - Some keywords drive traffic.  They don't necessarily drive repeat traffic.  If you blog specific to an industry, use keywords for that audience.
  • A recent article in Information Week stated that the highest conversion rates from search engine traffic comes from people who do four word queries.
  • Two and three word phrases also can bring you traffic and sales.
  • As long as there are new developments, new products, services and trends, you'll never have a shortage of these terms if you learn how to discover them.  Where does a person go to discover them? Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery are good places to start.  [Note from Jared - Also try Google Alerts].
  • Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind. First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
  • Keyword Placement - Your blog can be set up to repeat the keywords in your post titles, your category names, the pages URL names, or even a combination of Technorati tags and the text of your permanent links that appear after each post.
  • Point to useful but little-known resources.
  • Excerpts on Front Pages - I know there are a segment of ProBlogger readers that detest seeing excerpts (extended entry feature) on blog front pages and are very cynical that it’s just a ploy to get more page views. While I personally like using excerpts on front pages it is not about page views for me (although I guess it is a side benefit of it). Personally using excerpts in this way is more about keeping my front page manageable and highlighting multiple posts on the front page. ie if a reader can come to my blog and see not only the last post but the title of the second and maybe even the third post then they are more likely to explore more than just the last thing you’ve written. I tend to only use the extended entry feature on longer articles and allow shorter ones of a paragraph or two go up on the main page - unless I either forget or see the post as an important one.

   

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#4 Writing Style

 

  • Don't interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
  • Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
  • Link Intelligently - Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
  • Use lists.
  • Write posts to have a long shelf life, that is, write such that they will be readable in a year.

 

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#5 Topics

 

  • Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers--like gadgets and web 2.0.
  • Write about Google.
  • Write about blogging.
  • Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don't bore your readers.
  • Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive (reliable).
  • Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
  • Write stuff that people want to read and share.
  • Cover Topics that Need Attention. In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
  • Learn enough to become the expert in your field.  Write about that.
  • Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
  • Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
  • Break news.  Announce news.
  • Be among the first with a great blog on a topic.

 

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#6 For the Readers

 

  • Answer your email.
  • Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
  • Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
  • Burn that Feed! : By now you may have a few extra readers, but how can you help them come back? Many blog users will immediately scan the page for an RSS feed if they like your content. Most blogs, such as WordPress, already have RSS feeds integrated for entries and comments. Using the default feeds may suffice, but you won’t have any idea about how many people you will be catering to. The FeedBurner service will take your feed and reproduce it on their fast servers while tracking reader statistics. I highly recommend signing up for the service and letting them burn your feed. I won’t through the steps of signing up for FeedBurner, but once you’re done with that find the “Publicize” tab. Click on “FeedCount” and activate the service. FeedCount lets you post a little icon on your blog that displays the current circulation of your feed as well as make it easier for people to subscribe to your feed. Select the colors you wish to use for the icon and post the code somewhere on your blog. Come back a few days later and you should see some detailed reader statistics under the “Analyze” tab on the FeedBurner website. (As long as you are going the FeedBurner route, replace the current RSS links on your blog with the FeedBurner link. This usually means digging through some code to find that link and replace it. I really can’t go into details as it varies greatly by publishing platform and theme.)
  • Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
  • Don't include comments, people will cross post their responses.
  • Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
  • There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private. [Note from Jared - I actually disagree with having comments turned off.  You've just created a one-way conversation.  You gotta start somewhere, you can't go from 0 - 100 mph in 0 seconds....  If you are active in the blogosphere, I'd suspect the comments will follow.]
  • When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
  • Excerpts in RSS - Once again there is always debate over this topic of full or partial RSS feeds. I know some bloggers main purpose in partial feeds is to get bloggers directly onto their blog - thereby increasing their impression/page view count. While this is certainly a benefit of partial feeds it is not my own reason for using them. Rather I use them for copyright protection and to stop people scraping my full content onto their site’s via RSS. Whatever reason you choose to use partial/excerpt feeds - you should also realize that doing so will cause some readers to unsubscribe to your blog completely. I know in going only with partial feeds that there are some other bloggers who refuse to visit my blog - this is a cost/benefit scenario that individual bloggers need to weigh up.
  • Make sure you have a RSS feed that people can subscribe to. This will help others keep track of your blog. Very important for repeat visitors. Don’t forget to subscribe to my feed.


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#7 Be Patient

 

  • Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
  • Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
  • Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
  • Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.
  • Many first time bloggers automatically assume that once their blog is setup and they put a few posts on it, they will get some hits and regular readers. This is quite untrue. You won’t get any traffic if no one knows about your website.

 

 

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#8 Dont's

 

  • Don't write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
  • Don't promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader's attention.

 

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#9 Helper Services

 

  • Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
  • Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
  • Post your photos on flickr.
  • Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
  • If you haven't already submitted to blog directories, you are missing out on some great one-way links. Many of the top directories can be found on Robin Good?s Top 55 list at MasterNewMedia.org. (http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/) (But before you head over there and start submitting, you should know a little about how to optimize your blog. Then your new listings can help your site get the best keyword placement in the major search engines.)
  • Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates. http://www.bloglet.com
  • Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com) http://www.my.yahoo.com
  • Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish. http://www.pingomatic.com
  • Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com
  • Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.
  • Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box. 
  • If you post guides or reviews on your blog that you think many people can benefit or learn from, I suggest posting a link on del.icio.us or Digg.
  • Technorati is Your Best Friend: Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. It makes your blog much easier to find when people search by technorati tags. Technorati is also a large blog ranking engine. Based on the number of links to your blog from various websites, your blog is given a rank. The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things. A higher rank gives your blog greater credibility in technorati. If you don’t already have a technorati account, get one. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog. Go to Account and then down the page to Your Blogs. Enter the URL of your blog in the URL field and then hit “Claim this weblog.” Once you’ve done that go to “Configure this Blog” and fill in what you can. Click the checkbox to select “Include this blog in Technorati’s Blog Finder” and fill out as many tags or keywords that accurately represent the content in your blog. When you’ve done that, click “Save Changes” and then grab your claim code. There are two types of codes that you may put somewhere in your blog for technorati to verify that your blog exists and keep track of it. If you have a blog that is Blogger powered or some other blog host that does not give you direct control of your blog files you will want to use the “Link Code” and post it somewhere on your blog. If you are using a more versatile blog publishing system, such as a custom WordPress or Movable Type installation you should copy the “Embed Code.” You can edit your sidebar, header, or footer file and put it wherever you like. You also have the option of posting a Technorati search box or various links on your blog without altering the code you just pasted. Select the options you like and click “Save Changes.” Everything is done by automatically by Technorati. One last thing you might consider is adding the Technorati ping link to your weblog. Doing this will let Technorati know when you have updated your blog. Find out how to do that on Technorati’s Ping Configuration page.
  • Submitting your website to a blog network or blog ring is another excellent way to get more readers. There are many of these networks but the one that I use is BlogTopSites.com. BlogTopSites is a blog ranking website that makes your blog easier to find and search for as well. After you sign up for an account on their website, you just need to copy a bit of code and paste it somewhere on your site just like we did with Technorati. Make sure you select an appropriate category to post your blog in. If you are not careful, you’ll find yourself in the same pool with some heavy hitting blogs and your ranking will be fairly puny. For WordPress users, you can join Blogs Of The Day by simply installing their plugin, which uploads your blog stats directly to them.
  • Tag Your Content. Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty is worth your while.   

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#10 The Blog Tool

 

  • Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
  • Run no ads until you're popular. I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
  • Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
  • Take the time to research different blogging solutions.  Pick one.
  • If you want to set yourself apart, create a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users.  The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish.
  • Archive Effectively.  The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
  • Implement Smart URLs. The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL.
  • Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.
  • If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
  • Blog Usability: Before I get into getting your name out there, your blog has to have some style. Most web users are instantly turned off by tacky site designs or extreme neon colors. I know I won’t stay at a website too long if the layout or navigation annoys me. The goal is to have a unique blog, different than all the other weblogs on the net. The one thing I really stress to others is making it easy for your readers to contact you. It shouldn’t take a reader more than a click, if any, to find your email address or a contact form. This makes the reader feel like someone actually runs and cares about the website. An about page is also a great asset to have on a personal site or blog. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content. I highly recommend reading this weblog usability article by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.
  • Content - Your blog’s usability goes hand in hand with its content. You can specialize in a niche subject as long as you have an idea of how many people might be interested in that subject. If you do well with your niche subject matter, you could get some crazy traffic for being the only decent blog online with that type of content. On the other hand you could have widely used content, such as some aspect of technology, but add your own twist with your opinion or comparing/contrasting from other tech analysts. People won’t go to your site to read something they could have read on CNet or Tom’s Hardware, they want a unique take on it. If you learn anything from this article, I hope its that reblogging is a very bad thing. The one thing to kill your traffic is having identical content to another several hundred blogs. I suggest taking a glance at Mr. Veloso’s Evils of Constant Reblogging to get a better idea. Finding out what your content should be is a key element of your blog’s identity and the type of image your blog will ultimately emit.


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#11 Technical Stuff

 

  • Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
  • Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. [Some will let you do domain mapping, is this the same as hosting on your own domain??]
  • You have found your unique blog style, mastered the type of content you want to deliver, and gained some regular readers but you want even more. If you are still on a free blog, get rid of it! Even if it is a paid TypePad account, you still have a shared domain name (e.g., yourname.typepad.com). It is time for you to become independent and get your own domain and hosting.
  • Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously. (Jakob Nielsen)
  • Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
  • You will also want to search for a plugin for your publishing platform that supports Technorati tags. For WordPress users, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior. Installation can get a bit complex, so moving to a WordPress theme that has support for UTW, such as K2, is a good idea. Basically, when you post an entry you can supply it with Technorati tags. Update: WordPress 2.3 has built-in support for tags. 
  • Enable links in RSS Feeds - Another way that I know a couple of bloggers use to get RSS readers to actually surf to their blogs is to enable the ability to post html/links in their RSS and then using links to previous posts in their blog, especially in the first paragraph or two of their posts. This is not a technique I’ve tried but I know of one blogger who swears by it and says it significantly impacted the number of visitors to his blog from RSS as well as the number of pages that they viewed.
  • Search Function - most blog blog platforms have the ability to use a search feature on your blog which enables users to search your blog for keywords. This feature obviously helps your readers to locate other posts on your site and as a result increases the potential for a multiple page view visit.


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 #12 Statistics / Tracking

 

  • Pay Attention to Your Analytics.  Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.  
  • Getting To Know Your Readers - The next step is tracking your visitors, seeing where they came from, what they saw, and how they left. You will be able to easily assess what content your readers appreciate the most and concentrate on that aspect of your blog. Most webhosts include some type of stats monitoring applications such as the Urchin suite.
  • Check your web site statistics. If you're getting spidered every two weeks or even monthly, you can increase your number of spider visits by blogging on the anniversary of the period that the spider comes to your site. It takes a bit of monitoring, but you can often predict when the date of your last spider visit was.

   

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#13 Other

 

  • Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
  • Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.
  • Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.


Keep in mind these things that work for you:

 

  • Blogs naturally attract search engine traffic.
  • Blogs already have optimized site architecture with clear navigation and every page is set up to link back to the other main pages.
  • They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

 


Final Thoughts
Don’t give up. It’s hard to build an audience and takes a lot of time and effort. It won’t happen over night, unless you’re already somewhat of a celebrity. Stick with it, if you write unique content eventually you will build a good following.

Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition.