If you search for this on the goog, you get a lot of great information. And a lot of results. I think it’s time I added my 2 bits to the mix.
- Write a post on getting more traffic to your blog
- Post. The purpose of having a blog is to share your experiences. If you only do that once a month, your readers won’t have any reason to come back more often than once a month. 3-4 times a week is a good place to start. Daily is tough unless you really have the time or really like to type.
- Do not fill the top of your blog with ads. Nobody will read your blog if they don’t see what you have typed above the fold.
- Be consistent. Try to post on the same days every week. Use the date change feature of your blog software if need be.
- Don’t blog about the damned iPhone. Nobody cares anymore
- Have something to talk about. Link blogs are cool, but if you are looking at doing some writing, it’s good to make sure you know something about what you are going to write about.
- Conversationalize your writing style. I write, for the most part, like I talk. I’ve been told it’s got a friendly feel about it and makes my content a bit more compelling, even when it’s not.
- Spell check. Something I fail to do here on occasion.
- Read your own posts. This will help with #8 above, as well as catch any weird grammar or word usements.
- Increase your font size from 6px to 12px. Honestly, nobody can read text that small.
- Link it up. Make sure you are in Technorati (even though it’s never done anything for me), link it up in message board signatures and use twitter on occasion. Don’t go crazy spamming people! Just subtle promotion.
- Get a drink of water. No, this won’t help get more traffic, but I’m sure you are thirsty about now. Have a drink.
- Check your layout. Remember, tables are for eating on, not for HTML layout. A ton of Flash at the top of the code? Maybe your sidebar is near the top (above the content)? Fix that. CSS for layout, move the sidebar to the bottom of the content (and fix the layout accordingly).
- Comment on other blogs. You should be subscribed to every blog in your blog roll and you should be checking those at least 3 times a week. I check daily, but that’s because I have the time.
- Comment on popular blogs. I’m not saying spam them or leave a comment just to comment. Leave good comments. That will help you get into that blog’s ‘community’.
- Call your mom. I know it’s been a while. Give her a call, she’s worried
- Respond to other blog posts on your own blog. Ping-backs, when not spam, are quite effective.
- Don’t be a douche bag. This is self explanatory
Not sure if these will help you, but they did help me. Especially the calling my Mom part. Doing that increased my traffic by a whole visitor. Hey! Traffic is traffic.
Recently I have annoying learned of one of the newest SEO tricks out there.
Not dating your blog posts.
Do you have any idea how annoying that is?
I do a fair amount of research using the Goog. Much of the time my search will lead me to a blog or 5, usually covered with ads and not showing the date of the post.
I need the date. I want to know if the information I’m finding is still relevant or still applies to a certain application that I’m researching. I don’t want to have to look at the comments for the date, I want to see it at the top or bottom of the post.
Using excerpts on archve pages? Ok, I can see that. Changing the layout to make sure the content is at the top when you look at the source? That makes total sense to me too. Even making sure the title is relevant to the site. All make perfect sense.
But not dating your posts? Can anyone tell me a good reason why you would want to do that? How does excluding the date increase your page rank? Increase traffic?
Like I have recently mentioned, I think a blog is useless unless you can easily get to the content. Part of that is having the ability to check if it’s relevant or not by looking at the post date.
Hiding it, to me, seems a lot like blocking your phone number when you call out. I’m sure there is a good reason, but I will never be able to wrap my head around it. If you can give me a good explanation for that too feel free, ’cause I’ve never understood it.
