One of the biggest challenges any blogger will face is getting traffic. With so much competition out there, it can be hard to make your blog stand out.
You will therefore have to promote it in order to get some traffic. Not all promotional techniques are equal, however, so you need to determine what works the best for you.
Your goal is to receive as much quality, targeted traffic as possible.
Here is a list of the ultimate ways to promote your blog:
Article directories
Most webmasters and bloggers agree that article marketing is extremely helpful in bringing in targeted traffic. It’s perhaps the most effective type of “bum” marketing. Article directories rank very high in search engines, and you can get two or three backlinks for every single article you submit. This not only serves in helping you get traffic to your blog, but it helps your blog’s ranking go up as well.
Forums and message boards
Most forums allow users to have a link in their signature line, which is great for getting visitors and backlinks. Participate and contribute useful ideas and information at forums associated with your niche. You can’t just spam, however, you need to make intelligent and thoughtful posts. That way, readers will be interested in visiting your site to learn more. If it’s a public forum, your posts will end up being indexed in Google, as well, which means your link will be exposed to more people.
Social networking and bookmarking
Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are often overlooked by bloggers. Make sure you don’t overlook or underestimate the importance of networking with other people; you can never have too many contacts on the internet. Most of these sites have forums and chat rooms as well in which you can participate. Once again, however, make sure you contribute quality information and never spam.
Social bookmarking sites are also very useful. In fact, if you want your articles or videos to go viral, then your best bet is to promote through bookmarking sites. These sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. If your article or video goes viral, your blog hits will literally skyrocket overnight!
Other blogs
One way to promote your blog is through other blogs. Post comments in other people’s blogs and leave a link to your own blog. You especially need to leave your link in “do-follow” blogs so that the search engines will pick it up. Your blog’s ranking will improve a bit if your do-follow comments are accepted by other bloggers. Make sure you leave an insightful post and not just spam. Return back and respond if someone (the blogger or other readers) responds to your comment.
All of these promotion techniques are free. Some take a lot of work, but they’re definitely worth the time and effort you put into them.
Try doing all of these, if you can, in order to promote your blog as much as you can. If you notice some methods work better than others, spend more time on those that work. You need to be consistent and persistent in order to promote your blog successfully.
What’s your best method of promoting your blog?
Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.
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Andrew is a website builder and helps small businesses with their on-line presence…so they can grow their customer list and increase sales. That’s it! That’s what we do each and every day.
I have found that article marketing and submitting all of my blog posts to social media hotspots like Twitter and Facebook has worked well…
HOWEVER, it only comes with consistency. Back in my all brick and mortar days I used to tell people, be prepared to not make a decent profit on anything for 18 months to 3 years if you plan on doing it right and being in for the long run.
Low and behold. Same is true of blogging. Consistency, a commitment to stay with what you believe in, good content and a lot of backlink building and away you go 🙂
Thanks for the great info in your blog.
Wag more!
“Same is true of blogging. Consistency, a commitment to stay with what you believe in, good content and a lot of backlink building and away you go”
Totally agree. It’s a shame so many think it’s a quick way to make money.
Andrew
My major promotional method was blog commenting – that worked really well for me. Being active on forums helps (I get a lot of traffic from the A-List forum), and Twitter and Facebook both bring a fair amount of traffic. And then there’s guest posting which I seriously need to do more of when I find a nice pile of time somewhere 🙂
Jean,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – will have to check out the A-list forum myself.
Must admit, I do like guest posting.
Andrew
I use social media and blog commenting. So far, these have been the best ways for me to increase traffic. I haven’t really done much bookmarking, but I’m relatively interested. Thanks
Julius
That’s a great start…social bookmarking can be a great way – you going to try?
Andrew
Hi Andrew
I have implemented what you have taught on your excellent blogging course. Blog commenting; especially on dofollow blogs and also social media. Over on Twitter have met some great people and that has led me to their sites and more commenting. Often they have returned the favour and that is getting me regular return visitors to my blog.
Commenting on other blogs has me feeling more a part of the blogging community and is also teaching me heaps.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia,
Thanks for the nice feedback.
What you are doing is simply awesome.
The biggest critical decision was choosing your niche and it seems to be attracting some great followers and helping you very quickly, build relationships.
Andrew
Andrew. I prefer to promote my blog on other blog by commenting
I’d say Guest Posting is the best way to promote.
Article Directories are dying. Last time I checked – most of new articles on EzineArticles got less than 10 views. Most of them were at something like 2 views (which are, I guess – the original author and me). Barely worth the effort.
Although maybe the situation is better with lesser known article directories.
Slava,
I don’t think Article Directories are dying. I still get hundreds of views on some of mine plus I get the backlinks.
Andrew
Ok, hundreds of views, but do you get actual visitors to your site? How many?
(I’m just keeping in mind that visitor count could be easily artificially inflated)
Slava
Approx 11% convert to come over to my site.
Andrew
Thanks for the whitehats strategies. These are free techniques but takes a lot of your time.
Buying traffic and PPC advertising are alternatives if you have a budget and your main concern is profit not fame. But it requires knowledge too because you might end up losing than gaining.
Ronald,
Any particular guide or course you’d recommend for PPC?
Andrew
Thanks, Corinne and don’t forget to use your keywords…
name @ keyword
Andrew
Probably the best thing I did to bring in traffic was to install a plugin call Tweet Old Ppost, it tweets an old post on Twitter as often as you want.
Dean,
Sounds like a good plugin – I shall check it out.
Thanks for sharing.
Andrew
Great little overview of blog promotion methods, thanks. I like to use them all in mini content launches that lead you along from site to site. I will write a blog post and then announce the new post to social bookmarking and media sites as well as other blogs and forums. It has become all part of of the posting proccedure for me. If you use wordpress there are great plugins that blast your post to several places.
Terry
Thanks for dropping by.
Any paricualr plugins you’d recoomend to ‘blast your post to several places’?
Andrew
“You especially need to leave your link in “do-follow” blogs so that the search engines will pick it up.”
This is misleading. Search engines index both DO & NO, the difference lies in the fact that NO doesn’t pass the PR juice. Although Matt Cutts has said that even no follow links pass “1 point” of juice, whatever that means.
I’m shocked you didn’t mention guest posting, and I see I’m not alone. Some have even started saying it is beating article marketing.
While directories, forums and message boards are certainly each A method, I dunno if I’d say “ultimate” nowadays.
I don’t mean to be a downer, just sayin’. 😉
Dennis,
You are right – it is misleading. I meant exactly what you said!
Don’t be shocked – guest posting is the “ultimate ultimate” – that post is for another day!
Andrew
I love to use the blog commenting method to drive traffic to my blog. At the same time, i will get a one way backlink from this method too. In addition, i can learn a lot of new information and idea from reading the blog article.
Thanks for your sharing Andrew! I am still trying to improve my blog traffic now.
Kok
Good luck with increasing your traffic.
Keep writing great content and people will come.
Andrew
Facebook and Twitter are very helpful social networking sites in blogging, but there are still those who do not use it for promoting their blog sites. Promoting one’s blog can be tiresome, but as long as you enjoy doing it, I guess it is well worth it.
I use Twitter and Facebook…perhaps too much!
Andrew
Guest post, blogpost and blog comment on dofollow blogs are one of the best ways to traffic and BL for your sites and blogs.
Every serious blogger should have do the above mentioned activities for make their blog socially active. All are the best traffic building strategy of our blog.
Look like I haven’t done two of the most important thing in your list. But I have not choose what my niche will be, can I just try to submit any article?
“But I have not choose what my niche will be”
Why not?
Andrew
Recently I’ve gotten into joining groups on Facebook and meeting people there and posting a few of my posts, it’s been a rather great way to get some interested visitors to check out my posts and get them commenting on the post.
Aaron,
Facebook is my 4th largest traffic source…so well worth doing.
Andrew
Guest posting is the most effective technique nowadays. It may be time consuming since you’ll be writing high quality content articles but if you’re fond of writing, then this method is perfect for you.