How To Get More Blog Traffic: Get Real

Are you checking your web stats everyday, only to be dissappointed with less visitors than the day before?  Is your Feedburner count hovering between 0 and 2 (and you’re one of those 2)?

Look, everyone wants to get more traffic to their blog, but the fact is, not everyone is going to get it.  If you’ve stumbled on to this post, you’re probably sold on the fact that you will be one of the people who drives their blog traffic off the charts.  You’re looking for that one thing that will spark an endless stream of web visitors who will not only devour your latest post, but eagerly await each new post you read.

I sincerely hope you find the one thing you’re looking for.  But for now, I’m going to ask you to get real.

I’ve come across many people online who are looking to increase their blog traffic who have just started their blogs – some just days earlier.  This is quite possibly the biggest mistake someone can make when they start a blog.

I’ll ask them things like, “What is your blog about?”  I’m surprised at how often the theme of the blog is generic because the author wants to be able to write about anything.  One of the first things you want to do is narrow down a topic to something relatively specific.  It doesn’t need to be about something so narrow as “cat food” – although it could – but “cats” would ne narrow enough.

So your topic is selected and (I hope) you’ve gotten yourself familiar with installing WordPress.  You’ve picked a basic theme for now (because you don’t want to waste time over-customizing, right?  The point here is to get more blog traffic) and you’ve made sure that your blog pings some services to notify them your blog exists. (If some of this went over your head, ask some questions in the comments and we’ll help you out)

At this point, you can also install Google Analytics and Feedburner if you haven’t already.  But let me warn you right now… after your installation of these tools, it should be the last time you look at them for 2 months.

Yes, I’m serious.  If building web traffic to your blog is your main goal, there is one thing and one thing only that will do that.

Content.

For the next 2 months, you will do nothing but get yourself in the habit of creating quality, original content as often as you’re comfortable with.  Because content is the #1 traffic driver for blogs, it makes sense you want to spend your time not only creating a habit of writing regularly, but also increase the quality of that content.

“But what about getting people to read my blog?”  Although a blog isn’t necessarily a “build it and they will come” business – a quality blog is.

Whatever you do, don’t get yourself caught-up in the beginning by going out and link trading, spamming other blogs’ comments, over-submitting to Digg and other book marking services, and other methods that some renegade traffic generation services teach you.

DO NOT use automatic posting and expect anything but a ban on your domain from Google.

The ONLY thing you can do for the initial term of your blog to gaurentee yourself long-term, quality traffic is to create great content.

Great content – content that truly appeals to others, has an effect that lasts much longer than after you hit the ‘publish’ button.  Think about it…

You create a informative post about a glow-in-the-dark cat collar – right after it’s submitted one person notices it at Technorati from an automatic ping.  They see it and think it’s great and share it with 3 friends via email – one of them really loves it and submits it to Digg where 200 other people see it.  10 of those people add it to their favorite sites in Stumbleupon which then creates over 1000 more visitors.  In 6 months, you’ve long forgotten about that post you wrote, but many other people blogged about your post, linked back to you, and now you’re ranked #5 in Google for “glow-in-the-dark cat collars.”  You’re getting 50-250 visitors per month, automatically, just by creating one quality article.

THIS is how good blogs are built.  You can look into some self-promoting techniques in a few months after you have 10-20 solid “pillar” posts and are being consistent with your articles.

As a review:

1.) Pick a narrow topic that you love and know you can write about every day.
2.) Set the blog up – basics only!  WordPress, Analytics, Feedburner
3.) DO NOT check your stats for at least 2 months.
4.) Do nothing but create quality content.

Get real with yourself and follow these steps faithfully for 3 months or more and I promise you’ll see your blog getting more traffic than you thought possible with little to no promotion at all.  It’ll take some self-discipline for a lot of you to not check stats and worry about things like that – but trust me – get over this and it might be the best thing you’ll ever do for yourself.

The great thing about this is that there ends up being a compounding effect for your blog traffic over time.  The more popular it gets, the more people share it, the more people find it and share it and so on…

I highly recommend getting a free copy of Blog Profits Blueprint by Yaro Starak if you haven’t already read it.  It’s one of the best materials on starting a blog I’ve ever read – and like I said – it’s free.

Good luck to you and your new blog!

Posted on Dec 28, 2008
Filed under: Marketing and tagged with: blogging, traffic, wordpress.