Driving Traffic To Your Blog

Okay, so you've got your blog up and running and ready to make money! Now how do you get people to read this thing?!

Here is a brief overview of some of the things you can do to drive traffic to your blog.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way for web browsers to organize and share their bookmarks with each other. When a blog is bookmarked, it is referenced by a popular website, which increases its visibility on Google and also its exposure to web traffic.

Websites such as Socialmarker and Onlywire allow you to bookmark your blog to multiple bookmarking sites with relative ease. There are also programs like Socialbot that will automatically bookmark your site for you, without any effort on your part.

Article Marketing

A great way to drive traffic is to write articles related to your niche and submit them to article directories. Some of these directories include Ezinearticles, GoArticles, and ArticlesBase.

These websites receive thousands or even millions of visitors per month, and every article you write allows you to take a small chunk of that traffic and drive it to your website.

In order to be successful with article marketing, you need to submit lots of articles, preferably on a regular basis. Some bloggers drive their traffic SOLELY from article marketing.

Of course, it does require a bit of work. Some bloggers find it exhausting, after updating their websites with fresh content, to go back and write a bunch of unique articles on the same topic.

Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your blog. Register at forums related to your niche and put a link to your blog in your signature.

Post regularly and become known on the forums as an “authority” in your niche – someone who knows what they're talking about. People will naturally be drawn to the link in your signature because they'll want to learn more about you.

Don't actively promote your website in your posts and definitely do NOT SPAM. Just write intelligent, concise posts on a regular basis and soon you'll begin to notice an increase in traffic to your blog.

Guest Blogging

You can benefit from another blog's traffic by becoming a guest blogger. Many popular bloggers have used this method to drive traffic to their own blogs.

 It's highly effective for bloggers who wish to rise from obscurity in the blogosphere.

Basically, you write a blog entry for another blog in your niche – preferably one that gets a lot of traffic. If your blog post is interesting and well-written, naturally readers will follow the link to your own blog to check out more of your stuff.

Organic Search Engine Traffic

One of the best ways of driving traffic is by ranking organically in Google. This is where the keyword research and competition analysis discussed earlier in the eBook comes into play.

Your blog should be properly optimized for your keywords (preferably, your keyword should appear in the URL, in the title, and around 2% density in your blog posts-- bolded or italicized).

In order to rank for these keyword phrases, you'll need to build backlinks. A backlink is an incoming link to your website. The more backlinks to your site, the more important it appears to Google and the higher it'll rank in the SERPS. It's particularly important to gain backlinks with your keyword as the anchor text.

You can gain backlinks by writing articles, posting on forums, commenting on other blogs, and using the various backlink “packages” that are available for purchase.

The higher the site's PR (Page Rank), the more weight your backlink will hold in Google's eyes. So try to concentrate on getting high PR backlinks.

If you conducted proper competition analysis, ranking on Google for your keyword(s) should be a fairly manageable (although time-consuming) task. However, if you chose keywords that are too competitive, you'll probably have trouble getting anywhere near the first page of Google.

This is why keyword research is so important for niche bloggers.

In Closing...

You should now have a good general idea of what it takes to be a successful blogger. You should have enough knowledge to get your first blog off the ground and making money in a short amount of time.

This guide only skims the surface, but your knowledge and expertise will grow the longer you work on your blogs. You can read as many guides and ebooks as you want, but that alone won't be enough to make you any money. Only through taking action and learning by trial and error will you be able to become a truly successful blogger.

With Your Blogging