How to Blog: Getting the right traffic

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Posted by Felix Okoli on Friday January 28, 2011 at 17:30:44:

It's one thing to blog and another thing to having the right visitors come to your blog. Now, does every blog really need traffic? When blogging first started, most people may not have really wanted anonymous visitors or strangers visiting their blogs. Blogs were not set up to get more visitors or make money, it was more about keeping online reference. People used to blog in order to keep an online record of their activities in life and may not have wanted it to be so public as blogs are becoming today. Blogs for the 21st century have changed as they have become a very powerful tool that influences the way people live on the internet and even in the real world. Blogs are moving people and are being moved by people and with the way blogs have become commercialized in this day, getting traffic to a blog can be really vital.

What kind of traffic do you want
Is your blog targeted to return traffic or search engine traffic? Do you wish that people visit your blog for entertainment or for your opinion on life issues? What is the kind of demographic you need for your blog? DO you need younger or older visitors, students, entrepreneurs, workers or web techies? The kind of blog content you have ultimately determines the kind of traffic you get and so tailoring your blog content in the particular direction will get you your desired traffic.
If you want to increase your traffic ten fold, then you would have to increase your page content ten fold, if you wish mostly job seekers to come to your blog, then you need to make job related posts or even create a category for that on your blog, if you wish students to keep coming to your blog, then you need to write on more academic topics, so the kind of traffic you get and retain is based on the kind of blog you have.

A blog without web traffic is one that is not publicly known
Having a huge readership base is good for a blog since your main goal is to share knowledge with as many people as possible. If you have a blo or just started blogging and has been having little or no traffic despite the good content, it does little good. Blogs are much better if it has a god authoriy on the web for particular topics. Blogs are good if they are educative and enlightening.
If your blog has little or no traffic, then it is probably because of any of the following reasons:

- It has not been publicly known yet
- It is still new
- Blog may not be attractive and helpful to users
- It may have been over-commercialized
- Search engines don't rank it high
- You may be using a poor blogging software

What kind of blog do you have?
Is your blog about making money online? Is it about the society or environment? Is it about jobs, education or business? Is your blog mostly about entertainment such a videos? Is it about gardening tips, pet training or babysitting? The kind of content your blog has determines the kind of blog you are running. Whatever kind of blog you have, there is always a way to keep bringing in useful traffic which is always beneficial in the long run. There is even a successful blog about blogging.

Tips for driving traffic to a blog
How do you drive traffic to a blog in order to keep it successful? Well here are my tips for bringing in consistent traffic to a blog:

- Write for your audience
- Allow comments that are useful
- Use feeds to deliver content to subscribers
- Blog with the trend. For e.g bloggers are writing more about Twitter and Facebook and even the Tunisia revolution now
- Keep your blog informative without asking for a reward
- Try to make longer blog posts or plenty of short and direct ones
- Make your blog load faster by limiting the number or third party softwares on it like advertising, referrals and plugins
- Be friendly to users and if possible, create a online community

How to monitor your blog traffic
Now that you must have started getting traffic to your blog and I'm guessing it must have existed for more than 6 months, monitoring the type of traffic to your site may actually help you to write better and more effectively. You can do this by looking into your web stats after logging into your web hosting account. It should offer you a list of important and popular keywords to you site and which you should expand on to keep increasing traffic. Here are other ways to monitor your blog traffic:

- Set up Google analytics which requires that you install a javascript code on your blog
- Submit a sitemap and feeds to Google webmaster and also use the webmaster tools to view rising traffic sources
- Get to know which blog posts get the most comments. This will also tell you which niche to focus on

Should I make money with my blog?
Making money with a blog will certainly help keep a blogger motivated about writing posts. However not all bloggers would want to commercialize their blogs. Why should you commercialize your blog? It depends on you and on the goal you want to achieve with a blog. If you are a professional blogger, then it's a good thing. If is a company blog, offering other services, then there really is no sense commercializing it since you could just use it to promote your products as well as interact with an online audience. There are certain blogs that do well if commercialized, some do better if selling things directly, others do well in just keeping an online community.

Comments:
Re: How to Blog: Get started Posted by Chika on Tuesday March 1, 2011 at 23:56:29:

I want blog&i like what u explain

Re: How to Blog: Get started Posted by Chika on Tuesday March 1, 2011 at 23:56:29:

I want blog&i like what u explain