Traffic to this blog has grown steadily since I launched it in January 2008 but it’s really started picking up lately. It doubled last month and is on track to double again this month. I attribute it to several things:
1. Timeliness – Writing about timely subjects, such as the story of Roxana Saberi, the freelance broadcast journalist who’s just be convicted of espionage in Iran. I blogged about her situation last month and each time there’s been a development in her case I’ve seen daily traffic spike to four and five times the usual amount.
2. History – My blog’s now 16 months old and people who write about the same subjects – freelancing and digital media – have discovered it, link to it, leave comments on it, etc. I do likewise on their blogs. All of that has added to traffic, though not as much as #1.
3. Consistency – When I first started blogging I was a very inconsistent poster. Then I did a month-long blogathon and posted every day, which gave me a nice bump. After that I blogged M-F for the better part of 8 or 9 months, until earlier this year when I had so much writing work going on I dropped back to MWF. That’s been enough to keep people coming back and traffic increasing.
4. Standing features – Awhile back I started running a recap every Friday of highlights of the week’s news and developments in freelancing and digital media. Now my readers look forward to it – I know because they tell me. I also run Q&As with freelancers on a regular basis. I know other writing bloggers have had equally good results with the standing features they run.
5. Guest posts – Writing guests posts for other bloggers introduces you to potential new readers of your own blog. Likewise, when you ask someone to write a guest post on your blog, hopefully their regular readers will follow them over for the day, discover your stuff and become regulars.
6. SEO – Using tags and keywords helps move your posts up in searches on Google, Yahoo, etc., and that brings more people to your Website. Putting pictures in your posts – and labeling them – is another way to show up on top of search results. Some of my most well-trafficked blog posts got those click throughs because of the pictures I used to illustrate them. Is that cheating? Not really. People may click through for the image, but if you’re lucky they’ll stick around to read the blog post too.
7. Web rings – I’m a very part-time member of a Web ring of freelance writers who help promote each others’ work on social bookmarking services like Digg and StumpleUpon. The few times I’ve asked people to promote blog posts it’s pushed traffic up significantly. If you’re interested in this type of thing, though, you have to be prepared to give as much as you receive, which means spending some small portion of your day Digging and Stumbling other people’s blog posts.
8. Twitter – One of the things I use Twitter for is to promote my blog posts, and it’s not a surprise that traffic to my blog started to really take off right around the same time I joined. When I write a new blog post I tweet about it and include a link. When people follow me, I DM them to say hi and introduce myself, and include a link to my blog. When I see a question about something I’ve blogged about, I’ll answer, and include a link to my blog. That sounds like a lot of promotion it really isn’t, because I also tweet about a bunch of other things. I did an analysis once and figured out that I included links to my blog in only 1 of 10 tweets, and I’d estimate it’s an even smaller ratio now.
9. Links – If you link out to source material that’s related to what you’re writing about and your readers click on those links, pretty soon the owner of that blog is going to come investigate where the traffic is coming from. When that happens, you could take the opportunity to leave a comment on their blog or send them an email – in other words, get acquainted. After that happens, you might offer to exchange links, you put their blog in your blog roll and they do likewise. That drives traffic up for both of you.
10. Good content and good writing – Have something interesting to say, and say it in a compelling way. You can use all the tricks in the SEO book, link like mad and use every social bookmarking trick there is, but if your ideas and writing don’t sing, people will stop in once and never come back.
There are other things too – keeping posts short, lists, sexy headlines, etc., but these are the top 10.
What’s driven traffic to your blog?
How do you label photos?
Leah: I’m pretty sure your blog is on WordPress.com too, so here’s a link to the WordPress Support instructions for uploading New Media, which includes screen captures that show where to insert a title, caption and description for a photo. Does that help?
http://support.wordpress.com/media/media-add-new/
Michelle R.
Yes, I’m on WordPress, too. Thanks for the link. I’m going to go check it out.
Leah
I’ve spent the last three months focusing on what I need to do to drive traffic to my website. I added a blog and just recently added Twitter to my “tools”. However you are the first person to give me an ideal on how to really utilize twitter. I’m no SEO expert but it’s having a good affect on my site. I’ve written several blogs on the subject and my success so far at http://www.atlwebstudio.wordpress.com. Thanks for the info.
Blog and they will come.
drtombibey.wordpress.com
This is the best list about this I’ve seen yet, Michelle. Well done.
Hi Michelle,
I started blogging about do-it-yourself publicity on Sept. 1, 2007. Now, my blog is enjoying consistent and escalating readership because I follow many of the tips you suggest and also follow the advice of http://www.problogger.net‘s Darren Rouse. His site is among the most popular on the internet today for monetizing the blog.
I gave a talk a week ago about what blogging has done for my business. I cover how I overcame the fear to get started, how often I post, a few fun ways I’ve found to grow traffic quickly. You and your readers can listen in for free by visiting this link:
http://www.mainstreetmediasavvy.com/if-you-missed-my-talk-about-blogging-here-is-the-free-audio-file-offering-nitty-gritty-details-including-metrics-and-dollars
Michelle,
This is great info! Thanks for posting it. I bookmarked it and will definitely be referring to it as needed, particularly during this blogathon.
Michelle,
once you have great content, thinking about parallel interests those who red that content might have is one way to grow traffic. For example, I write about Irish music, Scottish music, folk/Americana music, and the creative practice of being a musician. Connections with websites, agregators, and bloggers in areas of travel, history, religion, and business as well as regional sites connected to specific artists have all proved good sources for traffic over time.
This is great advice! Thanks.
thanks for the tips – this helps me a lot being a new blogger.
I find the consistency part is something to put on my forehead, i know and have not been doing that well
another 3 sites i find good blogging information are
1. http://www.johnchow.com
2. http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/
3. http://www.dailyblogtips.com
thanks again!
Indeed these are all great things to do to get more traffic to your blog. I have recently started my blog and have learnt a lot over the last couple of months. There is so much more to learn still. Thanks for the info.
These are some excellent tips. Some are ones I knew and some I didn’t.
http://amanandablog.com
This is an awesome post. I will use a few of these tips and then come back and comment on my results. Thanks.
Great list. I’ve started traffic building just a few months ago and I see great results on my blog. Most of what helped was backlinks from niche forums. Of course I offered valuable info and even saw others build links to my posts, which was very nice to see.
I’d add using Google Analytics which helps a lot in figuring out where the traffic is coming from and what searches in Google are bringing you traffic. I have a dozen Blogspot blogs and use Analytics on all of them, it’s fairly easy to integrate. WordPress has its own analytics tool at the Dasboard, in my view not as powerful as Google Analytics, but it gets the job done.
Great info, certainly a treasure for a newbie..thanks for sharing this 🙂
Thank you immensely for these tips. I am going to try out some if not all ;). I found the additional hyper-links very useful and I now see what you mean by directing & re-directing traffic.