The visitors who visit your blog day after day, sometimes even multiple times throughout the day. With millions of blogs online, the greatest challenge in generating traffic is, well, generating traffic: getting those blog visitors to find your valuable and insightful content in the first place. There are a number of ways to quickly and easily generate a lot of traffic to your blog, but all traffic is not created equal – some traffic is worth less and some is just worthless. A thorough traffic-generating campaign will ensure the first visitors see your blog and spend some time there. But remember, it’s your content that will keep them coming back day after day. Let’s take a look at some of the more popular ways you can generate first time traffic:
Traffic Exchanges
How would you like to have hundreds, even thousands, of visitors to your site, each of whom is guaranteed to spend 20 or 30 seconds looking over your content? Would you like them to review your blog? Rate your blog? How about if they voted for your blog in a head-to-head competition with the blogs of others? If it sounds great, that’s because it is.
Blog traffic exchanges are sites that guarantee visitors will visit your blog and spend a pre-determined amount of time there. But there’s a price: for each visitor that views your blog, you have to view the blog of another in the same manner.
Here’s how it works. When you register your blog on a traffic exchange, you create an account specific to your blog. You earn credits to your account by visiting the sites of others, which are displayed inside a frame with a timer that measures how long you must remain at that site. After an amount of time determined by the site, you enter a code into the frame (this ensures that individuals are actually at their computers) and move to the next site. For each site you visit, you receive credit which is “spent” by your blog being viewed by others. The more blogs you visit, the more visitors you will receive in return.
Most traffic exchanges do not give 1-for-1 credits, meaning you’ll have to visit more than 10 blogs to receive 10 visitors. In fact, the ratio is usually only a half-credit per visit, meaning you’ll visit 20 sites to receive those visitors, but free, bonus, or mystery credits may be awarded randomly to keep your ratio a little better than one visitor for two visits. The excess credits are generally sold by the traffic exchanges to advertisers who pay for visitors and save themselves the time of waiting at the various sites.
You’ll get traffic in proportion to how much time you spend surfing (and don’t tell anyone, but you can often have separate browsers open to separate traffic exchanges for simultaneous surfing), but it’s important to realize what kind of traffic you’re receiving. To learn the thoughts of your visitors, take a look inside your own head: you’re visiting, not to read the blogs, but to get visitors in return…and so it everyone else. Does that mean the traffic is worthless? Not at all. When you look at hundreds of blogs, you’ll find a lot of them with features worth emulating and content worth a link or two. You’ll also receive visitors who are looking for the kind of content you present. Like-minded and even opposite-minded readers will leave comments, link to you, and may eventually become regular readers. However, it’s important to understand that the vast majority are only visiting to get visitors in return and are probably filing their nails while they wait for the allotted time to expire. Then they move on to the next blog.
If you lack the time to sit at your PC manually generating traffic, many traffic exchanges will sell you their surplus visitors for as little as a penny apiece. Five bucks will earn you 500 visitors, a fair price since those visitors are in no way targeted to your content; they are bloggers who are trying to earn your visit in return. You can also purchase banners on many traffic exchanges, which will give you fewer visitors (they are sold by impressions, not clicks) but they will be more interested visitors.
Many traffic exchanges, like the blog directories and blog rings discussed below, will require you to place a small banner on your site, which may limit the number of traffic exchanges you join unless you have room on your page for 15 or 20 tiny banners all in a pile.
One final note: before you join a traffic exchange, try to get a feel for how established it is, i.e. how many blogs it features. A brand new traffic exchange may only have a few dozen blogs. That means not only will you to look at the same 20 blogs over and over, you’ll have the same 20 bloggers visiting you. Unique traffic is valuable traffic, so stick with those traffic exchanges that can deliver hundreds of unique hits to your blog.
Here are a few of the more popular traffic exchanges:
BlogXchange
Blog Clicker
Blog Explosion
Blog Soldiers
Blog Directories
With the popularity of blogs increasing every day, it’s nearly impossible for a reader to know what blogs exist and where to find them all. That’s the beauty of the blog directory: it organizes and categorizes the thousands of blogs listed its database so readers can find your blog more easily. Blog directories are generally free to the blogger, though they will often require you to feature a small, approved banner on your site.
To get listed in a blog catalog, visit them and submit your site, accurately describing your blog (an inaccurate description will result in less targeted traffic). Check their requirements for banners and be sure to use the link they generate for you – this will ensure you get credit if another blogger joins from your page. Most blog directories will require you to host their images on your own server space, so be sure to follow their directions. Stealing their bandwidth is a sure way to get de-listed in a hurry.
Here are a few of the more popular blog directories, in alphabetical order:
Blogarama
Blog Catalog
GetBlogs
Globe of Blogs
LS Blogs
Blog Rings
The concept behind the blog ring is a simple one: similar blogs join in a ring, each placing a link on their page to the next blog in the ring. Visitors interested in the subject those blogs feature, be it model trains or Green politics, are encouraged to click on the link that leads to the next blog. It’s usually a bad idea to send your visitors away, but in this case you’re receiving a price for the service: other blogs in the same ring are sending their traffic to you.
The number and type of blog rings is limited only by the types of blogs online, which is to say that unless your blog is absolutely unique in the blogosphere, there is probably a ring or three that will meet your needs. But be careful joining a ring simply because it exists – remember, you’re sending some of your traffic away, and it’s not often wise to send traffic to your competitors. That’s why it’s important, before you join a ring, to surf it around once or twice. You’ll not only get to see the competition, you may learn a way to one-up it, making your blog stand out in a sea of similar information.
There are specialized blog rings for Australian blogs, romance writers, even those who blog about knitting. With a little searching, you can find a blog ring that fits your content perfectly.
Link Exchanges
A number of programs, known as “link exchanges,” will allow your link to be listed on the blogs of others, so long as you carry on your blog a small ad that lists the blogs of others who are members of the same program. A link exchange works the same way as a blog ring, tying all the featured blogs into a big circle, with the exception that the blogs you link to may not be similarly grouped as they are for most blog rings. When you sign up for the link exchange, you’ll receive credits every time your page displays the links of others, and your credits are used up as your blog is displayed on the blogs of other members of the link exchange.
While link exchanges are a convenient way for you to have your blog prominently displayed on the blogs of others, there are several possible side effects that you need to examine before signing up for any link swap program.
The first caveat is that, because link swaps are generally not grouped by subject or content, you may find that your blogs is linking to content that you may find objectionable, like adult content, opposing political blogs, or competitors in your industry. Since it’s important to keep tight control on where you send your customers, it’s a good idea to watch the blog swap closely to ensure that you are displaying the content you want and that you’re not going to alienate your customers and readers by displaying offensive content.
The second issue you may have to deal with is the speed at which some applications operate, especially if they download a java application to your page. Many load more slowly than the average page, forcing your customers to wait or ‘jerking’ the page they are reading back to the top once the application is fully loaded. If the link exchange application is causing your loading speed to suffer, it’s probably going to cause you more trouble than it’s worth. Remember, your readers want to jump right in and read what you have to say. Jerking the page around as soon as they dig in to your content is not going to make many friends.
A final issue is one of cosmetics. Because some link exchange applets are one-size-fits-all, the layout size or colors may clash with your blog. Be sure that you can modify the application to make it unobtrusive before you put something on your page that will prove a distraction to your readers. You want them to notice the links, but like everything else on your page, they should add to it rather than detracting from it.
Here are a few popular link exchange programs:
Gotlinks
Gotop
LinksPal
Be sure to look farther than this list, however, as there are certain to be link exchanges that cater specifically to your content or your geographic location.
Visiting Other Blogs – Meet the Competition
Once you have staked out your little corner of the blogosphere, it’s time to really size up the competition. You may have met a few of them through blog rings and traffic exchanges, but now it’s time to really read their sites and – gasp – get to know them. Just because a blog is a competitor does not mean the blogger is an adversary, and an excellent way to build your reputation and increase your traffic is to introduce yourself to your fellow bloggers and their readers through the comments section of their blogs.
Bloggers love comments because readers who are engaged in a discussion in the comments section will return to a page again and again. Some popular blogs have hundreds of comments on some entries, and for every commenter you can be sure there are dozens who are following along but who do not care for whatever reason to get involved in the discussion. Comment areas will usually allow you to enter your email address and blog address in addition to your name, so for every comment you make, you’re insuring that another link to your blog is placed in front of people who might be interested in what you have to say.
However, avoid “comment spam,” the practice of dropping comments just for the link or blatantly advertising your site without adding anything useful to the discussion. It’s not only a good way to alienate potential readers; it’s a good way to get you banned from a site. A good commenter will often earn a link from the host, and if the host has more traffic than you (and it’s a good idea to comment only on those blogs that are more established than yours) you’ll often pick up readers who see your site linked from that blog. Be sure to reciprocate quickly and thank the other blogger for linking. You’ve made a friend who will consistently send targeted traffic your way. If a site has an established link policy, be sure to follow it to the letter. You want to give other blogs every reason to link you and no reason to cut you off.
Traded Links – a Valuable Asset
Here’s a little lesson in supply and demand: your demand for links will be insatiable but your supply will be limited. The best possible world for you as a blogger would be to have every blog in the world sending traffic to you, but your blog will have only room to send traffic to a small percentage of them in return. As a result, your links are valuable, and you should treat them as a treasured commodity: hoarded until needed and then spent with the attitude that you must squeeze the most value out of each one.
As you begin building your Blog Empire from a small duchy on the outer edge of the blogosphere to an empire covering much of its virtual continent, you will, to be honest, not have a lot to offer other bloggers. Your traffic will be small. Your brand will be unknown. The big blogs will ignore you and the little ones will do you no good. However, that’s no excuse not to start trading your links for whatever you can get for them.
Do an occasional internet search for pages that link to you. Many times, your control panel will pick up any page that links to one of your entries, but much of the time it will mean using Google, Technorati, or MSN searches to see who is linking you. Then check out their blog to see what it might have to offer. If it’s a teenage girl’s rant blog that seems to have 3 visitors a day or if it’s a blog that is updated monthly, it may not be worth a reciprocal link. However, if you discover that it’s a popular destination for people who might be interested in what you have to say, then it’s probably worthwhile to drop in, thank the blogger for the link, and join in the discussion. Those readers who are interested in your entry will probably pay you a visit.
Just remember, your links are valuable! Check them constantly to ensure that each one points to a blog that is earning its keep on your front page. Those blogs that have gone into hibernation or that have dropped you should be eliminated. Cull your links repeatedly and mercilessly and always be on the lookout for opportunities to upgrade.
Search Engines and News Engines
There are a million sites out there that promise to submit your site to hundreds, even thousands of search engines. Before you choose one – giving them your money or email address – think for a moment about how many search engines you use. You probably have a favorite or two, as do most people. And in many cases, they are the same ones. That means that so long as your site is listed in the major engines (Yahoo! and Google and MSN, to name a few) there’s really no need to pay for someone to submit it to a search engine no one uses or to give them your email address (which will coincidentally be deluged by spam from that day forward). It’s worthwhile to manually submit your site – ONCE – to the bigger engines, but once you have a few blogs linking to you, search spider programs find you anyway by following from another site.
A second way to avoid paying for others to submit your site to search engines is to pick a blog host or software that features a blog ping, an automatic submission engine that tells blog search sites that you have updated. Many of them allow you to choose which sites you’d like to submit your blog to (choose them all, of course) though there may be a restriction on the number of times you may ping the engines per day (e.g. Blogspot has a once-per-12-hours limit) because over-pinging, like multiple submissions to search engines, can result in your blog being blacklisted. It’s far better to err on the side of caution and let the search engines do their own work.
News engines are a different story. If you do a search of Google News for any specific subject, you’ll find a number of blogs listed right along with the major media outlets. Some of these independent outfits, like the Blogger News Network may even beat the major news outlets to a story. If what you write is original and newsworthy, submitting your site as a news source will ensure that someone looks over your content for inclusion along with CBS and the New York Times as a source of news. In this case you have little control – other than to ensure you entries are newsworthy – over whether blog is included as a news source. However, a successful listing is worth its weight in gold and is definitely worth pursuing.