The blogosphere is growing at a very rapid pace, doubling every five and a half months as of this writing. Personal journals represent a part of that growth, with around 9 percent of new blogs being spam or machine generated. While we can't say the rest of these sites are business blogs -- blogs that are established for branding, online promotion, etc. -- we can be quite sure all of them need traffic.
You can't get enough of it, can you?
Reading through some blog and marketing forums, I realize that many people don't have a hint about how to promote their blogs. Most of the blogs will be abandoned due to lack of interest and traffic, but yours doesn't have to end that way.
Here are 10 different ways you can promote your blog and get traffic:
1. Write compelling content
The first and probably only reason people visit and revisit your blog is content. This should be common sense. If you want readers to come back and subscribe to your blog, provide interesting content.
Apply online copywriting techniques to attract them to read further down the post. Repeated visitors are probably the best type of traffic you can get, which are more likely to talk about your product or service, or become customers themselves.
2. Offer incentives to link
Great content is an incentive by itself. And often other bloggers are generous linkers, who will point to useful information that enriches their readers' experience. Original content that you write yourself -- instead of summary of news and other people's post -- will attract the most links.
You can do more by actually offer them a reason to link. Let them change the link under the post to their affiliate links and to your products. Offer a special report if they put your blog on their blogroll, etc. Be creative.
3. Syndicate articles
Repurpose your blog posts into high quality articles. Web and email newsletter publishers are always looking for great content for their readers. You can contact webmasters directly to have them publish your article.
Alternatively, syndicate your articles through article directories. Many publishers will pick them up, giving you more publicity, traffic and link popularity. The latest will increase your ranking in search
engines.
4. Submit to blog and RSS directories
Blog and RSS directories are valuable resources you can use to get one way links from high traffic sites. If your blog is new, web crawlers will visit your site sooner if you get it listed. It is a perfect way for them to find you.
Savvy blog readers often use blog directories to find blogs to read. As long as you're in, you have the chances to get more readership.
5. Comment and trackback ethically
Comment and trackback are useful to establish conversation. They are not to be abused, as spammers are doing. Used properly, they are a great way to start networking with other bloggers.
Leaving comments on other blogs allows you to establish your credibility and promote your blog at the same time.
6. Don't forget to ping
Ping popular services to notify them about the new post you've written. It is one of the greatest benefits of a blog. Technorati, for example, uses ping notifications to index blogs, finds new posts and tracks conversations in almost real time.
Most blogware allows you to ping popular services automatically. You just need to feed the software with a list of services to ping once.
7. Properly categorize and tag
Don't use catchy names in your categories. You want visitors to find information easily. Choose an obvious name tha
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