Blogging 101

[Boogie]

More Traffic

so now you're RSS feed is active. you've set it up at pingomatic and you've done some google and yahoo searches looking for the newest and hottest places to feed your feed.

You should be seeing some traffic now each time you update with your topic. IF you're using wordpress you should be seeing traffic from your categories tag via technorati. These hits are good and, like search engine hits, targeted. Nothing better than a pre filter.

One of the goals here is to be updating often enough and writing good enough content and having a solid enough site design that the surfers who find your site from these places remember it. Was it your catchy logo? Was it your sizzling content? Was it your unique writing style?

Whatever the reason, the important thing is to have something that makes these folks think to themselves "this site is worth viewing". The reason is twofold.

First, bookmarks are invaluable to a blog. The idea that someone will come in every day and read what you write, INCLUDING YOUR ADS, and click what you link to, INCLUDING YOUR SPONSORS.... well, that's pretty much the heart and soul of blogging.

The second reason is that your blog absolutely has to grow organically. Links have to appear in other blogs, not just as link exchanges, but simply because people like your content. If people are not linking to your articles, you'll need to change something soon, because this is the lifeblood of blogging.

There is little more success to be had in the game of blogging than when a big name blogger links to one of your articles and gives it the thumbs up, not because he was going to get a traffic or hardlink from you, but because they genuinely liked your articles.

The single most valuable traffic source for a blogger is other bloggers.

They're sending you over their trusted, bookmarked, and favorite readers because they like what you're doing in a day. That's pure gold.

One of the most confusing part for most bloggers is that, they dont realize that if all they do is link to offsite content, there is little to no reason for a blogger to link to their BLOG, rather than the content itself.

Sure, its great if some dude out there pics up your hosted gallery and sends a few hundred hits that way, but isnt it so much nicer if that content is on site and you get a few bookmarkers out of it in the process?

Another trick is to have weekly features. I do "movie monday" and "flash fridays" as a way to remind the viewer that each friday or monday when you come back there will be more of what brought you here in the first place. That's the kind of thing that really encourages bookmarks.

So, start working on creating valuable linkable content. Start working on getting eyes on your blog. Start finding other bloggers to read your content and if they like it, link it.

This will open the gateway into our next topic, link trades.