Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

4 Tactics To Increase Your Blog Traffic THIS WEEK

December 14, 2009 | traffic

Do you want more traffic to your blog?

Well, why wait? Don’t let grass grow under your feet. Here are some tips you can put to use THIS WEEK to bring more traffic to your blog.

steps_to_goal Write a Guest Post.

Find at least one blog in your market, author a guest post and send it over.

You don’t have to ask first. Just do it. The worse that could happen is they say “no”, in which case you just send it to somebody else. Here are some tips on guest posting.

Increase Social Participation.

Go out and comment on other blogs.

If you do not already have a bunch of related blogs set up in your feed reader, do that right away. Then, start commenting when you have something to say. Do the same on Twitter and Facebook. You’ve got to be a part of the conversation to be noticed.

For this week, make a goal to post 20 meaningful comments or tweets per day. Or you could go crazy and apply Christian’s Power of 100. :)

Create A Piece of Link Bait

Link bait is a post written specifically to be attractive and thus spread virally.

Now, here are the keys to link bait:

  1. Make it useful.
  2. Make it so thorough that most other people would be too lazy to recreate it. Why? Because they’ll just link to you.

Classic link bait would include big lists (“50 Ways To XXXXXXXXX”) or huge lists of resources.

So, spend some time, create some link bait. Then post it and seed the content launch.

Performing a content launch is something I talk more in-depth about inside the Blog Masters training program. But, in short, you seed the launch then give it wings.

Hint at the content coming soon (much easier to do if you have a mailing list). Then, when you post it, blast it to your list. Simultaneously, inform other bloggers in your niche about your piece of stellar content. Give it wings by having the major social networks linked up so people can share your post.

If you can’t complete a piece of link bait and launch it in a week, then get started on it and launch it next week. :)

Get An Attitude

People respond to posts which make them react emotionally. Your job as a blogger is to push their buttons.

Realize that you can inform while also pushing buttons. Nobody is saying to go all “shock jock” on anybody, but at the same time, writing like a corpse isn’t going to make you popular.

So, get controversial. Show an attitude. Be funny. Tug at their heart strings. Show your personality. Review the concept of the pattern interrupt.

Remember, too, give your content wings.

With that, you have your homework for the week. I’m purposely limiting this post to items I think you can do in a week. There are plenty of things that should be done for long-term growth, but that’s for another post. :)

Be sure to report back!

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  • I like the link bait idea. Thats a new one for me and its quite clever. But wouldn't lazy bloggers just copy and paste with some some changes? I mean like make it their own?
  • I have used one of your tips in this post which is "Comment on others blog". And all I want to tell you and DavidRisley dot com readers is this is one of the most effective techniques to generate traffic to your blog.

    But it do takes a lot of time before you can gain visibility for your blog. Whatever it is, you still gain traffic. So, the main thing is to keep your content useful to readers.

    To your success.
    - Aqif
  • jeanjp
    I really like the link bait idea, something that I have not tried or done. Where would you say the best place to market this would be though?
  • To the point.
  • Hi David,
    At your level do you still need to reach out to establish relationships and if so how do you go about doing it?

    Cheers.
  • Of course. And I mainly do it via Twitter and live events. Once I have an "in" with somebody, Skype/email.
  • Guest post is the hole in my current strategy.

    Tough one for me because some of my articles often take 8-12 hours to finish. Then again, these tend to weigh in at 1200 words of technically dense material and seem to attract a fair bit of long term search engine interest.
  • Funny, I ended up on your site today while research a quick thing on Thesis. Wonders of Google.
  • Some great reminders here in the end of the year David...

    Hope you also send them to our emails "New Posts at DavidRisley.com!"..

    You are for sure adding on to my action steps here for new Social Media/Blog Strategy for 2010.

    Cheers.. Are
  • Well, I notice small positive changes in my traffic every day, I must be doing something good, right?
  • You must be. What are they?
  • Yes, that is it. I am going to right a quest post weekly now. Thanks for this nice piece of advice
  • Oh So I Have To Work? lol

    Great post, just another way to say you need to bust your ass everyday to build your traffic.
  • Pesky "Secret" of the gurus.... action. Weird. ;-)
  • lol yes the "secret" to many will miss completely.
  • Guest posting: Check, 7 written, it's awesome and easier than I thought!
    Commenting: Check, it's fun and I'm making a lot of new connections
    Linkbait: Check, it's probably not as good as it could be, but it's a start
    Attitude: Semi-check, I'm working on it and finding my voice more and more as I go along.

    I'm loving guest posting so far. My goal is to write 100 guest posts in 2010 and so far I've written 7 and it's not even 2010.
  • Well done. If you ever want to write something about how you've found success with your blogging, I'd be open to having you guest post here. :)
  • I'll definitely keep your offer in mind and get back to you once I've gotten further along my journey, or if I come up with another topic I can write about sooner that will blow your mind ;)
  • After last Friday, I can say guest posting is one of my new favorite ways to generate traffic. I had lots of great people check out Daily Shot Of Coffee.

    I like this power of 100, I may give that a try and see how it goes. I already leave a lot of comments, but I'm sure I can boost that up a notch and find other ways/places to create personal connections.
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