Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Attracting Traffic To Your Blog - What Works and What Does Not

Continuing my experiments with Blogging ... and Traffic ...

Commenting on blogs by others works. The most effective mechanism of guaranteeing at least one visitor. However, to truly use the power of commenting, try and add value in your comment. The best method I found was to leave a comment and indicating that my blog has more on this. This ensures all those who comment will look up your blog. Commenting on blogs that are on Technorati increases your authority rating on Technorati. So watch out for blogs that appear on Technorati.
But ... commenting on blogs that already has 100+ comments does not. Your comment just vanishes in the crowd. Unless the blogger responds to every single comments. Also commenting on blogs that has no similarity whatsoever with your blog also doesn't help.

Joining forum helps. Ensure that you do not only push your blog. Contribute to the threads in a meaningful way. People will look you up.
But ... joining any forum does not help. You need to join forum of like-minded bloggers. I generally read existing threads to check out if I like what I see.

Becoming a follower or subscribing to posts of interesting blogs help. It is likely that the blogger will return the gesture. Get a good avatar of yourself. Or use your photographs. Blank silhouette is no good.
But ... subscribing to or following a blog that already has hundreds of admirers does not help.

Blog surfing applications (for lack of better name) helps. Two that I know of: Alphainventions.com and Condron.us (Alpha gives you more traffic). You are assured of traffic.
But ... you need a great heading and relevant and good content to grab attention. Otherwise you will get huge traffic - each of less than a fraction of a second.

Photographs, pictures, cartoons, images, etc. help grab attention. Guaranteed. Stock.Xchng is an excellent source of free stock pictures. Subscribe to Stock.Xchng and you won't regret. Their search utility is excellent.
But ... the image should match the content of the blog. Otherwise it is a turn-off. It is better not to have any pictures than having something that is a total mismatch.

Blogging about blogging helps. Most of the bloggers are hungry for ideas. So I expect a good traffic here :-)
But ... repeating what is available on 1000's of blog does not. You need to be genuine. Hopefully this one is.

Blogging about "how to earn by blogging" helps.
Huge number of hits is assured. Bloggers flock to such blogs.
But ... there is no quick way to riches.

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2 comments:

Ram said...

Amitabh:

I have always enjoyed and appreciated your posts in Indiblogger's forum.

Your knowledge of SEO and blog traffic is quite impressive. I can clearly see that you are putting a lot of time into it. I hope it pays rich dividends for you over time.

Stay in touch,
Ram

pawan said...

hey to add to the definition of serendipity > it originated from "Serendip" an old name of sri lanka famous for accidental discoveries fortunes and blah ..

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