You have written your best blog post in months. You’ve spent hours, in fact days, writing and perfecting it. It’s a unique and very valuable blog post.
You are very proud of what you have written and now you want the whole world to see it.
You now want to increase blog traffic with your blog post.
Here are the top 15 proven ways to ensure your perfect blog post gets as much exposure as possible:
The first 7 ideas are tasks you should have set-up for your blog.
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Before you post your perfect blog post:
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1. Do some keyword research to find the best and most appropriate keywords to use within your post. I can thoroughly recommend Market Samurai. This tool is free to download and use for keyword research. Once you start using it, you will wonder how you got by without it.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Some of you who downloaded Market Samurai have stated the owners have asked you to purchase the product. If you only want to perform keyword research using Market Samurai you can ignore the requests to purchase. The free version of Market Samurai allows you to perform as much keyword research as you wish – you do NOT have to buy the full version. That may change in the future but for now that functionality is free.
Here’s a short video of me using the tool:
The tool I use for keyword research
Once you have found the best keyword phrases for your blog post, how should you use them for best effect?
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2. Install the WordPress plugin, All-in-on-seo
The “All-in-one-SEO” plugin is one of the most popular plugins to use because it helps bring traffic to your blog, for the rest of your blog posts life!
When you first install this plugin you change the settings for your blog. You add a relevant title, description and you add all your best keywords (6 – 8).
Here’s my short video of how I set up the All-in-one-SEO plugin:
How to use the All in one SEO WordPress plugin to your advantage
When this plugin is installed, you can also add ‘alternative’ titles and descriptions and tags when you publish your blog post.
For instance, the title of this blog post, “How to increase blog traffic with your blog post” included the keyword phrase “increase blog traffic”.
When I published this post, I gave the blog post an alternative title using the All-in-one-seo plugin. The alternative title, “How to get blog traffic with your blog post” and included a different keyword phrase, “get blog traffic”.
That way I am providing the search engines with 2 titles and 2 primary keyword phrases that help boost the blog posts rankings.
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3. Whenever you add a new post, WordPress will automatically use “Update Services”
Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a PING each time you create OR EDIT a post. People browsing the internet have more chance of seeing your post.
See I have put the words “OR EDIT” in capital letters and in bold. That’s because we DON’T want WordPress to send a PING each time you edit a post. That can come across as ‘spamming’.
We only want WordPress to ping when we create and publish the post.
To do this I install the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
By installing the FREE “MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer” plugin, when you create a new blog post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that the blog post has been created. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly. What it doesn’t do is notify them if you were to EDIT your blog post.
After installing and activating you have to register the plugin to make it work.
Click on the link under “settings”, called “MBP Ping Optimizer” and register like so:
Enter your name and email address and click on the ‘Register’ button.
You will receive an email that you will have to confirm. Once confirmed, the plugin is registered and working.
But we want to make some changes to this plugin, to make it even more effective.
Click on the link under settings, called “MBP Ping Optimizer” and you’ll see a screen like this:
Inside the box, it has the web domain, http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ (you may have more).
We are going to add more website domains to this list. Copy and paste the following into the list (ensuring you still keep http://rpc.pingomatic.com/) :
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
Once you have added the complete list, click on “save settings”.
Now each time you create and publish a blog post, all those “update services” will be informed.
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4. RSS feeds are a great way to generate continuous traffic to your blog. By submitting your blogs RSS feeds to different online Feed Aggregators you create one-way inbound links, get each new blog post quickly indexed in the search engines, and create a steady stream of organic traffic.
Submit your blog RSS feed to some (if not all) of the following:
www.feedagg.com
www.rss2.com
www.feedage.com
www.rssmountain.com
www.weblogalot.com
You can also add all your blog category feeds (click on your category link and then add /feed – by doing that you have your RSS category feed).
You don’t want to add all these RSS feeds in one day. Just submit your main blog feed to all the sites on one day, then a couple of days later add one of your category feeds, then a couple of days later, another category feed, etc.
You only have to submit your feeds once.
The good thing about the RSS Directories is that you can add your feeds from your twitter account, Facebook, Ezinearticles and numerous other sites. That way you are building a huge network all linking back to your blog.
You can submit all your feeds manually but if you want to speed up your submissions and save loads of time (like I do!) I can recommend this tool: RSS Submission.
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5. I like adding images to my posts and if you do, you should add the plugin SEO Friendly Images. SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according to the options you set.
This helps with the search engine optimization of your blog post.
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6. Add a Social type plugin to allow your visitors to submit your post to the different social bookmarking sites.
The ones I recommend include:
TweetMeme Retweet Button. See the green button at the top of this post which says ‘tweeted’ and a number. Click on it and you’ll see the number increase by one. Why? Because you have just ‘tweeted’ my blog post – thanks! Isn’t that simple? It’s a must have plugin.
Both plugins Sociable and Share This make it easy for visitors to “vote” for your posts.
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7. Add the plugin Twitter Tools. This plugin will automatically inform Twitter of the blog post you have just published.
So a little bit of work to be carried out BEFORE you post your blog.
Please note, apart from keyword research, all of the previous ideas only have to be completed once, NOT per blog post. Just install the plugins and submit your feeds and that’s it.
Then publish your blog ensuring you use the best keywords when creating it.
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Here’s the post publishing activity that generates even more traffic:
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8. Twitter
As per point 7 above, the plugin Twitter Tools will automatically inform Twitter of the blog post you have just published.
A couple of hours later, tweet about your blog post again. You could always use the alternative title you used when publishing your blog post with the All-in-one-SEO plugin.
You may wish to see these Top 10 Twitter Tools to increase your Twitter followers.
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9. Send an email and link to your customer email list. Tease them by telling them a little about the blog post and then provide a link to the rest on your actual blog.
If you don’t have a list, start building one NOW!
Provide a free giveaway. Make it unique and valuable to your visitors. Set-up an Aweber account and add the opt-in form on either the top left-hand or right hand side of your blog. Your free giveaway can be an e-book, a series of videos, podcasts. Just make it something you know your visitors would love to have and want.
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10. Social Bookmark your post at the major social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Propeller. Sign up with www.onlywire.com and you can social bookmark your post to numerous sites with one click of a button.
If you really want to get into Social Bookmarking, here’s another tool I use to spped things up: BookMarking Demon
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11. Ask a few friends to vote for your blog post. Join up with a group of friends who are willing to vote on each others blog posts at certain social bookmarking sites. If you do join such a group, don’t vote every post that comes your way and don’t ask every one of your posts to be voted. We are talking about your best posts and at a maximum of one vote per blog site per social bookmarking site per week.
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12. Go to the forums you are a member of and mention the post. I am NOT saying join forums and start mentioning your blog posts. These are forums where you are already a member. A forum where you already have a presence and are known.
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13. Submit your blog post to the relevant blog carnivals. Again, I use software to do this for me as it only takes a couple of minutes and I get 20+ backlinks to my blog plus some extra traffic from the carnivals themselves. I use this software: Blog Carnival Submitter
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14. Email your blogging buddies and let them know about your post. Depending upon your relationship with them, some may mention it on their blog.
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15. After about a week of the blog post being on your site, submit a version of the post to the major Ezine Directories like:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.isnare.com
www.searchwarp.com
www.goarticles.com
www.ideamarketers.com
Doing all these activities will ensure you get great exposure for your proud blog post.
So what do you think? Do you use any of these tools with success? Do you have others to share? I’d like to hear from you. Just type in your comments below.
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Thank you for the great blog post. I have a blog and it was great to use the directions you give to help my blog. I love the way you explain things in such great detail. It is so easy to follow your directions. Even us non technical people can follow the way you teach. You are bookmarked and I shall return to learn all I can from you. Thank you again Andrew.
Debbie
Thanks Debbie for those kind words.
I hope the post does make a difference to your blog.
Andrew
Great post Andrew, a few things I hadn’t thought of there. Oh,the link to feedbomb.com goes to a generic holding page, perhaps it doesn’t exist any more?
Thanks again.
Thanks Joel.
Looks like Feedbomb has bombed!
Andrew
Dear Andrew,
As usual, fabulous ideas and excellent new plug-ins to add to my blog. Looks like I’ll be setting aside a couple of hours to dig in and see what’s going to work best for ThatGirlisFunny.
Thank you!
Cheryl
.-= Cheryl from thatgirlisfunny´s last blog ..51 Must Know Habits for Staying Young – from the Inside Out =-.
Cheryl
Thanks! Please come back and tell us what changes you made and what differences you experience.
Andrew
Hi Andrew
An interesting and timely article as I doing a workshop on ‘Traffic’ to both the Melbourne Internet Marketers group and a sister group in Sydney next week. So thank for some material I can refer to…
Re the ‘All in One SEO’ plugin you might wish to look at the ‘Platinum SEO’ which has all the functionalities of ‘All In One SEO’ plus Optimizes your WordPress blog for for search engines
Thanks again for your excellent posts – much appreciated
Ian
Ian,
Glad it will help you. Thanks for the suggested plugin, Platinum SEO – I shall check it out.
Andrew
The tweet MeMe plugin is something that has dramatically increase my traffic since adding it!
.-= Tom – StandOutBlogger.com´s last blog ..Using Alexa To Highly Target Your Blog Posts =-.
Andrew:
Thank you for this article; It’s phenomenal! Some of this information can be so hard to come by, I’m so glad that it’s all in one place.
Sophie
Sophie,
Nice words – now you need to implement!
Thanks.
Andrew
Thanks! I picked up some new ideas. I’m going to bookmark this and return for reference.
Cya at PB.com
Lakita
Lakita,
Great! I hope some help and make a difference.
Andrew
I love this blog. I have to come back to this post as well as many others and get some tips on how to make my blog better. I already have most of these components on my blog, but with your post, I will learn to tweak my posts and make them optimal. 🙂
.-= Gerlaine´s last blog ..Cleaning of the Mind | Lifetime Goal Series =-.
Gerlaine,
make sure you come back and tell what you implement and what makes a difference.
Andrew
Lots of great tips here. Seems I have some more work to do. In particular I need to get into the social bookmarking side, currently I have no idea how it works, I wouldn’t even know how to vote for a post.
.-= BobinOz´s last blog .. =-.
Bob,
nice to see you here!
I would start with setting up a StumbleUpon account and adding their tool bar. Then you can start voting for other websites by simply clicking the ‘thumbs up’ (on the tool bar). Then start getting some friends within StumbleUpon. If you Stumble their posts they tend to stumble yours.
And of course there is Twitter – you can get from free Twitter video course here: http://www.twittercraze.com/
Andrew
I like all in this post, it’s same as we have to make a good preparation before clicking the publish button.
.-= Phaoloo´s last blog ..14 Free Tools To Record Sound On Your Computer Effectively =-.
Thanks for this post Andrew. It’s well constructed and sure to make noticeable differences for everyone that applies these ideas.
I especially like the MaxblogPress auto pinging plugin,.. must give it a test spin.
Keep the good stuff coming bro!
Russ
.-= Rus´s last blog ..27 Random Things About Me =-.
Thanks Russ. The MaxblogPress plugin is well worth adding.
Andrew
Andrew,
This is a wonderful comprehensive list of things I must do to optimize my blog. The timing of this blog post couldn’t have been better because I’m in the initial stages of creating my blog.
I’m also going to check out Gerlaine’s blog because I can also benefit from a little “Cleaning of the Mind” to avoid information overload!
I just stumbled upon your blog today. I will bookmark it because I definitely will be back — GREAT information! Thank you!!!!
.-= Iris´s last blog ..Why It’s Time to Get Fit and Well =-.
Iris,
Thanks for dropping by and those kind words. I can recommend Gerlaine’s blog!
Andrew
Very informative and interesting. Actually, some tedious repetitive works are really ridiculous. I just started making use of some of your suggested plug-ins to see how it works.
How do you suggest to integrate an automatic way of publishing each blog post to both facebook page and twitter?
.-= Website Promotion Blog´s last blog ..How to Use Twitter for Business to Business =-.
@Website Promotion Blog
I hope the plugins make a difference. Let us know if they do!
re: facebook. I don’t connect to facebook but this is new: FaceBook Connect.
re: Twitter. I use the plugin Twitter Tools to automatically connect to Twitter.
Andrew
Thanks for sharing these plugins, Andrew.
Definitely a ReTweetable Post!
Igor
.-= Igor Kheifets-IgorHelpsYouSucceed´s last blog ..PLR Marketing For Beginners. Tiffany Dow “PLR Marketing Queen” on How To Market PLR Products =-.
Thanks Igor.
How things with you?
Andrew
Andrew,
Thanks for introducing these plug-ins. I appreciate it.
Keep on doing the great job!
.-= Website Promotion Blog´s last blog ..How to Use Twitter for Business to Business =-.
good post.i found all in one seo to be very useful.other point like submission to rss dir are new.how it help in traffic i dont understand though 🙁
Zeesu,
A lot of people visit the RSS directories and if they see your blog post link, they come and visit your site. And remember, you only have to set up your blog feed on the rss directories once and all your future blog posts will be added automatically.
Andrew
Awesome post Andrew… Full of content and useful info!
Thanks Jamie for visiting and commenting – I really appreciate it.
Andrew
Andrew, great post really. Very detailed and to the point, I use alot of these tactics to get my blog post noticed and they do work for sure, I also picked up couple more from you that I didn’t even think about. One of the best ones I’ve been using is the “Tweetmeme Plugin” just this one alone drives around 100 – 300+ unique visitors to my blog post alone, thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Terrance.
That “Tweetmeme Plugin” makes things so easy, doesn’t it? Which points have you picked up?
Andrew
What a great post! Thank you, you are offering a wealth of information that anyone, newbie and seasoned marketer alike, can benefit from.
Just as I thought I knew all about generating blog traffic, you alerted me to a ton of more strategies available!
Thanks!
André
I hope some work for you! Come back nad let us know.
Andrew
Hi Andrew and thanks for this excellent article. I have bookmarked it so that I can read it through again whenever I need to.
I was using a blog supplied through one of my business opportunities – but it was deleted when I failed to make a new posting within one month.
So I want to set up a blog that I actually own and info like you are supplying is vital to someone like me (I have little knowledge of how blogs actually work)
Cheers
Kevin
Kevin
Thanks for dropping by and your kind words. You might be best to download my free guide “How to make a profitable blog in 45 minutes”. Enter the contest at the same time and possibly win a Thesis theme. Here’s the link: Make a blog contest
Andrew
Thanks for your submission to the Sixty Ninth edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live:
http://thatsblog.com/blog-carnival-blogging/blog-carnival-blogging-sixty-ninth-edition
-ThatsBlog.com
What a great blog post. Wow you share a lot of content here! People will see traffic if they follow even a few of your steps.
Cheers!
Christine
Thanks Christine.
Which steps work for you?
Andrew
Hi Andrew! Thanks for your sharing! I will use all the ways you stated to drive the traffic. But i still don’t know how to submit my blog to RSS. I don’t wish to pay as i’m not afford to do so. Can you teach me how to do it manually?
Give me a few days and I’ll write a blog post about doing it manually.
Andrew
Hi Andrew I bought Blog Carnival Submitter it seems to keep stalling on me do you have any problems with it ?
Mark,
I use it every week and no problems. What do you mean by stalling?
They have very recently changed it so you have to enter a ‘captcha’ for each submission. Do you get that far?
Andrew
Hi Andrew that’s what happens I assumed it was automatic when I use submit articles, it goes to the fist one and then stops the others don’t load unless it’s me.
It seems quite slow my end
Mark,
let’s talk via Skype.
Andrew
Great post. Would you mind if I wrote a little article on my increase website traffic blog about this?
My blog is still very new so I am always looking to get more quality content on it.
My readers I am sure would benefit greatly from this information. I will of course link back to this blog
as being the original blog where I got information from.
.-= Increase Web Traffic´s last blog ..How To Increase Website Traffic With Newsletters =-.
Of course, go ahead. When done, let me know and I’ll Tweet it and help drive some traffic to your site.
Andrew
I don’t know why the WP gurus don’t fix that pinging problem. I use Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger, does the same thing as the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, I believe.
.-= Rich´s last blog ..The 4 Basic Steps to Business Networking =-.
Rich,
Thanks for dropping by and I hope to see you again, soon.
re: pinging
I believe the 2 plugins are similar. For those reading this comment, make sure you update your ping list, regularly.
I use this post to update mine: http://www.instant-info-online.com/wordpress-compressed-all-inclusive-ping-list.html
Andrew
thank you for the article, and I try to learn your article.
.-= Zaiful Anwar´s last blog ..Upgrade Swift Themes =-.
A very complete guide about blog traffic.
I have just bookmarked this post.
Thanks for sharing.
.-= Bintang´s last blog ..Blogger Indonesia Dukung Internet Aman- Sehat -amp Manfaat =-.
Thanks, Bintang. I welcome your feedback once you have reviewed the guide.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Are Your Blog Posts Indexed =-.
This a great post about the pinging services to add for the Max pluggin. Until reading this post, I have never even heard of this particular pluggin. I can’t wait to download it. Thanks Andrew for another great post.
Omowali
Glad it was of help.
Using the plugin is worth it.
Andrew
Putting in time and effort play a large part in the attempt to increase traffic to your blog or a particular blog post. Without traffic, there’s really no real point in building a blog. Doesn’t really matter how good your posts are. The tips provided here can definitely help in driving traffic to your posts. Thanks a lot!
Nice post, a good summary. However, I must add to the smart urls (generally on page optimization), like any other site look at how the SEs see your blog. For example I was wondering for quite some time why don’t you use metatags at SEOmoz which causes this because of -is there a limit to links? I can’t seem to get the second link to display, just click on the “repeat the search with the omitted results included.” to see what I unseccussfully try to link to-(notice the same snippet on all entries) I am not actually sure if that hurts rankings but I prefer to be on the safe side.
I really find the “All-in-on-seo” Plug in from WordPress really am a great tool. It help you not only with SEO it help you determine what are the missing point for your post to be SEO friendly.
Nice informing post,
i will surely try to implement some of the ideas discussed here thanx for sharing
Such a wonderful post but I have question related to SEO plugin, you have recommended “all in one seo” plugin but I am using “WordPress Yoast” plugin, any differnce by using Yoast instead of All in one SEO?
THanks
Sohail
These days I also use Yoast’s SEO plugin.
Andrew