As you know, creating a blog can be lots of fun. It’s also a lot of hard work, though, and that’s why it’s important to generate plenty of traffic to your site. After all, there’s nothing worse than pouring your heart and soul into your blog, only to discover that nobody is visiting!
So now for the $64,000 question. How does you effectively attract people to your blog? How do you actually do this and build up a blog site that will be known to many within a relatively short amount of time?
Today I’m going to talk about a few proven methods that bloggers and online marketers have used with great success. Here’s hoping these can do the same for you!
Article submission websites: Chances are good that you’ve heard of article submission websites before, but if not, you can be forgiven. The majority of bloggers and online marketers have yet to really tap into this activity which can produce some impressive results. In a nutshell, on the internet today there are a number of big websites that want your articles. You might pay a small fee for each article you submit, or it might be free.
Basically what happens is you write a useful article and at the bottom of that article, you include a blurb about yourself—who you are, what you do, your business name (if applicable) and of course, the all-important contact details—which at a minimum include your URL. You submit this article to an article submission website, and then other people will visit that site looking for articles to publish on their websites, ezines or in their newsletters.
If they see your article and like what they read, they can then publish it for free or cheaply on their website, ezine or in their newsletter with your full blurb and URL. That is the condition! In other words, this is exposure for you, and when you consider the fact that in many cases, these content-searchers have huge subscriber lists of their own, that exposure can be HUGE!
PRWeb: This is a fabulous website that can generate traffic for your blog fast! PRWeb is a website where you can distribute your press release online. It will be delivered to thousands of editors and people with an interest in your topic area around the world. All you need is a really interesting, compelling story and a press release written to PRWeb standards and you can see traffic as a result within 48 hours. Your press release stays online as well, so you can attract traffic even a year or two from the original submission date. Submitting a release will cost you anywhere from about $40 US—$300 US, but the results can really be incredible!
Blog and forum posting: This is an obvious one that you’re probably using right now. If not, it’s easy to get started and it won’t cost you a cent! Do a search on the web to find other blogs and forums that in some way compliment the blog you operate. Frequent those blogs and forums that attract the same sorts of people you want visiting your blog, and start commenting.
Be sure to post only genuinely useful posts, and whatever you do, do not “sell” your site to attract visitors. This not only annoys the owners of the blog or forum, but it also annoys the other readers. By posting useful comments, you win friends on these websites, and they will in turn be curious to explore your link, which brings them straight to your blog.
Pay-Per-Click: This is probably the quickest way you can attract traffic to your blog site, but it will cost you money (in case you didn’t guess that from the name). The beauty with pay-per-click advertising such those offered by Google Adwords and Yahoo! is that you can set your budget per day and cost per click. You can also change your pay-per-click ads and keywords whenever you want so you can test for the best results.
Those are just a few methods you can implement to attract people to your blog site. Proactivity is the key here, so develop your own marketing campaign using these methods and do it consistently—the hard work will pay off!
Great information. As an owner of an Article directory I can testify to the power of article marketing. Always go for original and interesting content for best results, and try to post to the right category.
Contextual ads operate much like traditional pay-per-click search engine ads. You bid for placement and pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad, but instead of your ads appearing in search engine results, they appear on web pages on other sites.
I like to compare contextual ads to ads you might find in a magazine. Pick up any special niche magazine and you’ll see ads for products or services related to the subject matter of the magazine as well as ads on subjects that might be of interest to readers in the magazine’s subscriber demographics.
Want a good reason to try contextual advertising? Think volume and exposure. Consider all the sites you visit each day on the Web. Most of these are candidates for contextual advertising. Cpxclick.com claims to have partnerships with over 500 search engine sites in the system already. For a company wanting widespread exposure on the web, I can’t think of another medium that has the potential reach of contextual advertising.
If your looking for immediate results then the PPC route is the way to go, but if your new to it you’ll have to go easy at first or it could put you in the poor house. I like the delayed gratification approach and use article marketing. As has already been said, It’s Free!
I agree with Gary wholeheartedly. A well thought out article marketing campaign and do wonders for a blog or website. As hes said the keys are quality and picking the right category.
I still get visitors from an article i wrote over 2 years ago and the reason is due to the quality of the article.
Mike