Want More Traffic For Your Site?
Everyone wants more traffic right? Is there such a thing as too much traffic? That would be like too much money or too much chocolate. You can always find room for more. Today as I started my rounds I came across a post about traffic and getting more of it on Just 4 Families. You know I am a sucker for anything family so I have to give her a little plug there. Well, her post made me start thinking about how much is not said in blogs. I wanted to bring it all up. We are all in this together we might as well help each other out. First I would like to talk about Entrecard since so many people are using it right now. It can be a powerful door opener in the beginning. It provides people with a way to advertise on other peoples blogs for free. Most people will drop on whoever has dropped on them. So the more you drop the more traffic you receive from drops. I would like to point out that not all drops are created equal. I will drop on anyone that drops on me but if I am dropping more cards than that I only drop on people that would be interested in my site. Many people that power drop are dropping on "guaranteed drops back". If you are dropping on people that are hunters and you are a vegetarian blog you may have just gained a drop back but that is it. You want to get people to come to your blog and like it. Maybe they will keep coming back and spread the word about it. Next let's talk about blog catalogs/directories. I do believe that this can help get you some exposure for your blog. I have not seen much traffic coming in from some of them yet but I just joined them so it probably takes time for the traffic to come in from them. It is free so why not do it. I do not bother with some of the smaller ones. They seem to be mostly just blog owners that post their blog but do not visit other people's blogs. Not many regular readers go to them and what you want is more traffic for your site so they do not help much. Communities and forums are a great way to gain traffic for your website. You can not just show up and push your blog though. Be a real community member and make friends. You get a profile page of your own that you can use to promote your site and any product you sell. Plus most of these sites allow you to make a signature that goes along with your posts so you can create a link for your blog. Best of all it is yet again free. CafeMom has many groups of women with all kinds of interests just waiting to meet new people. They do have a strict no spam rule though so you can not just try to get visitors you have to talk with people that will then see your signature and maybe check your profile. I recently started a community to go with my site but it is pretty lonely in there so far. You are all more than welcome to join and promote your sites, blogs, or products if you would like. Yahoo Answers has not only been a good tool to get more traffic but very fun also. They have an endless supply of people looking for answers to every topic imaginable. Just start answering some questions in a topic that you know. They have a place under your answer to add in a URL as the source so people then see your link again for free! Be warned though it is addicting because you gain points and compete for best answer. I am at 51% best answers. LOL Link Swaps are a very big deal. I do not want to piss off anyone here but I will just say that I have never paid for advertising. That is actually kind of my thing. I want to see how much I can do without ever paying for anything other than my one bill to host the main site. That is not even that much because now Yahoo! has that awesome unlimited data storage and bandwidth.
There are many sites out there that have link pages that you can be added to and the most it costs is a link back. I have had many people contact me from my main website asking if I would do a link swap with them. Free traffic for your site!
Links help you in two ways. One people see the link and click through to your site and two search engines use them kind of like points. The more "points" your site has the better your site looks. Search engines want to give the best search results so they show sites that have the best links. If a site is good people will create links to it. When making link swaps remember a few rules. Not all links are created equal. Search engines give links a kind of points system. The better ranking the site that is linking to you is the more that link is worth. Also if the website that is linking to you is of the same kind of subjects as what you have it is worth more. It shows that your site is really about that topic. So a link on a site that is ranked high and in the same topic area as your own can be worth 100 links on other websites. There are a lot of link farms out there. DO NOT EVER DO A LINK FARM!!!! This is very important. Search engines are too smart for that and they become smarter everyday. Being part of a link farm is like getting the plague. Google will not come anywhere near you. You really want search engines directing traffic in. They are a huge source of free traffic. Content, content, and content... very important! No matter what you do to get more traffic if they do not find your site interesting than it was all a waste of time. You need good content to keep people on your site and talking about it. How many times have you found something you liked and blogged about it or told a friend? You want to be creating that buzz that people are talking about. Content is also very important to search engines. If they do not see good content they will not add you to search results. Look at my silly post last week about making Edible Playdough . It was just a little post with a recipe but I talked about my other playdough recipes on the main site so Google saw that "edible playdough" had a high word percentage so it was seen as a good result for that key phrase. Now that silly post is on the first page of results if you Google those words. (We will have to get into that more at a later date.) Okay so now you have a good start to getting more traffic to your website or blog. Remember all of these are free ways to get more traffic for your website so don't just try one. Try them ALL! I have always believed in trying everything and if it is free then you have nothing to lose. Who would not want to get more traffic for their website or blog? Especially free traffic! Thank You I have really enjoyed writing the post this morning so thank you Just 4 Families for the idea. I think I will be writing more posts about this topic in the near future. So make sure to check back. If anyone has anything to share, a questions, or wants me to discuss something in my later posts about this feel free to make a comment. Remember that we are all in this together so lets start commenting on each others blogs and talking about it. Again you are all welcome to join my new community where you can talk, learn more about each other, and promote yourself. I Apologize I would also like to apologize to those that have entered the contest already. I am going through and checking out each and everyone of your sites and blogs. I am really enjoying them. I had wanted to be ready to announce the first winner today but I got side tracked with this post and it became longer than I first planned. I am going through the entries though. To everyone else, You can still enter the contest. I am always looking for more entries so keep them coming.
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That is a very interesting post. I also have not paid any money for anything that I have. I also have not ever entered any contests. I do use Blog Catalog and Bloglog. You are right we are all in this together. We are all trying to make something from our blogs.
Ladyhawkcj
Hi and thanks for visiting my blog - just 4 families, and I am glad to see it sparked some creative juices.
I tend to agree with everything you say except the paid advertising, I don't mind the occasional paid ad to get some traffic rolling in.
Thanks for a great article. I have you bookmarked to come back again. :)
les
Wow, what a helpful post. I am a new blogger. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Good tips in your article--thanks for sharing! You are so right--we all want more traffic--there can never be too much!