Increase Your Site’s Traffic

1. Write more content. If you want traffic, you’ve got to write content. People will not visit your site if you don’t write a decent amount of good quality content, and new visitors definitely won’t come back. So keep writing great posts!

2. Have a good design and layout. If your site or blog’s design is messy, sloppy, hard to navigate, a rainbow of colors that don’t match or are hard on the eye, or full of errors, you will instantly go down the drain.

3. Get your own domain. I promise that if you have your domain, you will get more traffic. You will linked to more and people will more easily remember your URL. Try to get your own domain and have it from the start.

4. Start using StumbleUpon. I have had a HUGE success with StumbleUpon. When the right article from your blog meets StumbleUpon, expect a lot of people to rate your post a thumbs up, and then even more people “stumbling upon” your blog.

5. Guest blog. Offer to write a post on someone else’s site. Even better, have the post already written up and then let the blogger know you have a post ready to guest blog on their site, if it’s okay with them. When you write your guest blog post, find a post on your own blog that’s related and link to in your guest blog post. A link for you on their blog, and more traffic.

6. Begin tagging your images. When you have an image in your post, it should always be tagged properly. Make sure the width and height are clearly defined. But most importantly, fill out the alt and title tags with the image’s keywords. To learn further and learn how this helps, click here.

7. Respond to your comments and email. People love a blog whose owner is interactive and thoughtful, an owner who gets back quickly with response to their comments and emails. If you can do this, except more loyal readers who will love you. Then expect more traffic and more linkage.

8. Use MyBlogLog. Make sure you have an eye-catching avatar. Then join all the MyBlogLog communities you can (daily limit of 15). In no time your avatar will be all over all the MyBlogLog blog and community pages, and you’ll see more and more visitors coming to you.

9. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time with crazy “money earners” such as those that pay you to click, pay you to read, pay you to surf, pay you to search, or anything like that. Those aren’t worth anything. Instead, spend your time writing quality content and the traffic will follow.

10. Pay attention to your stats. Pay attention to your stats and Google Analytics. See what keywords are getting you the most traffic and what posts your readers like and don’t like. Use this knowledge to keep writing more popular posts filled with great keywords.

11. Link to other posts. When you link to posts on other blogs, that creates a trackback, or pingback. When you link to another blogger’s post, if they have trackbacks turned on, you will receive a link back as well in the comments section of the post of which you linked.

12. In your posts, ask your readers questions. Readers like to feel important and a lot of them like to talk. The next time you write a post, ask them a question or their opinion on something. You’ll receive a lot more comments and many of the visitors will be more likely to come back.

13. Make a lens on Squidoo. On Squidoo, you can make your own lenses, aka, pages, on their site. Make a lens that is relative to your blog or site’s topic, and then be sure to link to your blog on the lens! Did I mention you can also make money on Squidoo? Click here to read more.

14. Comment on other blogs. When you comment on other blog’s 99.9% of the time there is a box you can write in your own site’s address. Then from there, when people view your comment, they can click through to your blog or website! Comment on as many different blog’s as you can. Maybe even set aside a day of the week for commenting. The more comments you leave, the more you are noticed, and the more traffic you get.

15. Write list posts. Everybody loves list posts. This post is a list post. Examples are “Top 10 Blog Themes”, “25 Uses for Vinegar”, and “5 Helpful Website Tools”. List posts are usually linked to a lot more and get a lot more traffic than normal posts.

16. Submit your blog to search engines. Most people get the majority of their traffic from search engines. When people search for your keyword and find your site or blog, there’s more traffic! Click here to submit your blog to be indexed in Google if it hasn’t been already, and remember to keep writing fresh content for the engines to chew on!

17. Establish relationships with fellow bloggers. Develop relationships with all kinds of bloggers, especially those also in your niche. Comment on their blogs, have conversations, link to them, make friendships. And before you know it, they’ll be linking to you too and maybe sending some traffic your way.

18. Use traffic exchanges. I’m not quite sure if you can be penalized for using traffic exchanges, but they can bring you loyal readers if your blog is good enough, besides the continuous traffic. See my post on the BlogMad traffic exchange.

19. Link to your other posts as often as you can. Link internally to posts on your own blog. This helps your rankings and also helps your traffic. If people who come to your your blog have nothing else to see, they will leave. When you link to your other articles, they will most likely choose to go read those as well before leaving, and will stay on your blog longer.

20. Sign up on Yahoo! Answers. On Yahoo! Answers you are able to answer other people’s questions, help them, and give answers. There is a box where you can write the source of where you got your answer. Answer questions in your field and link to your blog posts as the source!