15 Free Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Get More Blog Traffic for Free

Generating traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. Without sufficient traffic your site and blog will never accomplish their purpose. And while there are numerous pay options to generate traffic, there are an equal number of effective and free tools and approaches. Here are some great traffic generators:

1. Free Traffic Source: Forum Marketing
Forum Marketing: Share your expertise with people asking questions about your industry. In return, you’ll get a steady flow of traffic to your site. You will be the expert, after all. To ensure that you get traffic from all the time you spend answering questions, be sure to spend time on your forum marketing signature. Your signature tells other forum members who you are and how to read more about you. As you begin in forum marketing, you will want to watch out for (and completely avoid) these 8 Common Forum Marketing Mistakes. 

Classify Your Blogging Business

Choosing the Best Business Structure for Your Blogging Goals

If your goal is to make money from your business blog and you live in the United States, you'll need to claim that income on your tax return. That means you'll need to determine the classification of your business for tax purposes. Choosing a business classification also affects how your finances and legal issues are handled.

Following is an overview of each business classification to help you determine which is best for you and your blogging business.

Sole Proprietorship

4 Blogging Strategies To Keep Your Audience Coming Back

Most website/blog owners know the most common way of having visitors come back to their website is by capturing their email address via newsletters or eBooks.

15 Free Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Get More Blog Traffic for Free

Generating traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. Without sufficient traffic your site and blog will never accomplish their purpose. And while there are numerous pay options to generate traffic, there are an equal number of effective and free tools and approaches. Here are some great traffic generators:

1. Free Traffic Source: Forum Marketing

Forum Marketing: Share your expertise with people asking questions about your industry. In return, you’ll get a steady flow of traffic to your site. You will be the expert, after all. To ensure that you get traffic from all the time you spend answering questions, be sure to spend time on your forum marketing signature. Your signature tells other forum members who you are and how to read more about you. As you begin in forum marketing, you will want to watch out for (and completely avoid) these 8 Common Forum Marketing Mistakes. 

7 Strategies for Growing Community on Your Blog

This week on ProBlogger we’ve been looking at the topic of building community on a blog. We started by identifying 9 benefits and 3 costs of community on a blog and then looked at 5 stages of building community on a blog. Today I want to dig deeper into some specific things to DO to build community on your blog.

1. Write in a Conversational Voice

This tip fits into the ‘it’s not rocket science’ category of blogging tips (as do many blog tips) – however as simple as it sounds I regularly see bloggers falling into the trap of talking ‘AT’ readers rather than blogging in a conversational voice.

The art of good conversation is as much as being ‘interested’ as it is about being ‘interesting’. Good conversationalists ask questions, pause to allow others to speak and listen to others when they are speaking.

Good bloggers similarly often write in a more conversational way and in doing so invite readers to respond.

Every bloggers needs to find their own style and voice but I’ve found a number of things have been helpful in writing more ‘conversationally’: 

How to Get More Content for Your Blog

One of the biggest challenges that bloggers face – whether they are blogging for themselves or their business – is creating enough content. Most people can’t just write a blog post in 15 minutes. Creating quality content takes a major investment of time and resources. If you’re struggling to create enough content, then here are some great ways to get additional content for your blog.

Supplement with Content Curation

If your challenge when it comes to content creation is coming up with original blog topics, then one way to fill up your editorial calendar is by adding curated content.  Curated content is simply compiling and organizing content from other sources into one post. The Ultimate Resource Guide to Guest Blogging and Blogger Outreach is an example – it is simply a list of networks and posts from other sites on how to have successful guest blogging and blog outreach campaigns.

Bloggers Take Heed: Affiliate Marketing Keeps You In The Driver’s Seat

Those of us who have been in the affiliate space for a while know that the industry is predicted to grow to $4.5 billion by 2016. Meanwhile, did you know that there continues to be a steady rise in the amount of active bloggers? According to Nielsen data, there are 6.7 million people publishing blogs on blogging websites and another 12 million that are writing blogs using social networks.

Given the rise of bloggers and the anticipated growth of the affiliate industry, it stands to reason that more bloggers would get on board. However, it’s not that simple. 

The Unintentional Thought Leader: Seven Steps For Small Business Blogging

When I launched Marketing Sparks three years ago, “thought leadership” was not a goal. Discuss issues I care about? Yes. Stoke my desire to write? Absolutely. Maybe even attract new business as a bonus? Of course.

Over time, though, I discovered that a certain style of writing could help position my small business blog as an authority and go-to expert. That said, I use the term “thought leadership” hesitantly and humbly—it tends to sound lofty—and there are no hard and fast rules defining it. When it comes to blogging, my definition revolves around having expertise on a topic, shedding light on issues, offering a point-of-view, and sharing innovative thinking…and doing this is easier than you might think.

Here are seven steps you can take to start your own thought leadership blog or tweak your current one to elevate your content from standard fare to superior must-read. 

How to Blog For SEO Benefits

In our previous post, “Top 5 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog,” we outlined the basic benefits of blogging on your company website. Among them, the fact that businesses who blog see 55% more traffic to their site. We didn’t go into much detail, however, about why it’s a necessary component in your SEO strategy, because that deserves its own post!

Before delving into how to incorporate SEO, it must first be acknowledged that content quality is always a priority. SEO benefits will wean if the writing you’re producing is low-quality and not worth anyone’s time. A business blog should be interesting, authoritative and educational – a reflection of your company and the ideas and products/services you have to offer.

5 Ways to Harness Your Online Reputation For Blogging Success

Quick: Picture that bad choice for a prom or bridesmaid’s dress years ago. Or the haircut that your mom made you get—the one that looked like a Tupperware bowl had been placed on your head. The one that didn’t go over very well at school.

Some memories do last forever, don’t they? This is true. But, hey, they are just memories. All good. No real damage, right?

Quicker: Remember one rumor that floated around your high school years ago. Who was doing what with whom>?! Remember how it spread like wild fire? And how old are you now? How long has that rumor stuck with you? Those were rumors. No proof!

4 Blogging Basics For Online Retailers

Retail websites are flush with product information, specs, and images of items available for purchase.  However, it may be difficult to find a way to provide detailed and engaging content for customers visiting a website when they’re just looking to purchase.

Starting a company blog provides a good opportunity to attract new customers and engage current customers with content about your products and other topics that are of importance to them.  It doesn’t matter if the items being sold are car parts, clothing, electronics or furniture, there is an opportunity to help solve pain points and arm your customers with information that encourages engagement and purchasing decisions. 

11 Reasons Your Blog is on a Road to Nowhere (And What to Do About It)

You’re smart.

You got drive.

You’re blogging, and blogging, and blogging. You’re producing good content. But somehow your efforts are not rewarded.

Your enthusiasm for checking your traffic stats is gone. Because the trickle of traffic makes you feel down, lonely, and maybe a little desperate. Are you wasting your time?

Let’s be honest.

Building a blog is hard work. It’s tough. And you need to be business savvy. That’s right. You need to treat your blog as a business. You need to get serious about marketing your blog. Because if you don’t market your blog, it’s going to remain lonely out there.

How to Write an Insanely Popular Blog

The most popularly shared articles online, regardless of industry, topic, or even author, often share these similar traits.

The most popularly shared articles online, regardless of industry, topic, or even author, often share a similar cadence, intonation, and anatomy--and that's no accident. Slingshot SEO's Enterprise Blog Post Optimization Guide reveals the trends and techniques found in highly shared articles and acts as a roadmap for blogging success.

Once you've mastered these techniques you'll be rewarded with increased traffic, conversions and a buzzing online community. Below are several important areas, according to our guide, to consider when crafting a killer blog post.  

Secrets to Writing Blog Post Titles That People Click

Learn the Headline Writing Tips the Pros Use

Want to get more traffic to your blog? If so, you need to learn how to write blog post titles that interest people and motivate them to click and read. One thing is guaranteed in blogging: if your blog post titles stink, few people will read your blog. Without readers, a blog's audience has no chance of growing, and you won't reach your blogging goals.

Think about how many people are exposed to your blog content each day through a feed reader, a Twitter post, a Facebook update, a LinkedIn post, or a shared link on a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon. Now, think about how many more people find your blog posts through Google searches or keyword searches using their preferred search engines. There are so many ways for people to find your blog, and most of those ways highlight your blog post titles, not the content.

Five Reasons to Consider Guest Blogging

There are many reasons why people blog, but for businesses it’s mostly to increase revenue and gain credibility while reaching new customers. One way to do this is to lend your expertise to other sites as a guest blogger. Now, you may question the benefits of guest blogging and wonder, “Why help somebody else get new content on their sites when I can be focusing on getting fresh content on my own sites?” Well, that’s a valid question worth exploring so here are a few reasons why you should consider guest blogging:

6 Warning Signs That Your Blog Is Deflating

Looking at your analytics and seeing that your blog traffic is going down is not a pretty sight.

For those of us who have been blogging for a while, the chances are that we all have experienced periods of downturn and are used to such stormy weather. But what if, heaven forbid, the situation is even more serious, and the downturn looks as if it is here to stay?

Nothing is more painful than seeing the demise of your labour of love; if you make your living from your blog, even worse!

The question is, “How do I spot the end of a growth period?”

How can we spot the warning signs that the decrease of visitor numbers is the start of a long downturn, and requires drastic action?

The Value of Comments to a Profit-making Blog

We’ve talked about the issues of blog comments before on Problogger.net, but never from a point of view of profit-making.

But as I was looking at the stats on dPS last week, I found that this short, helpful opinion post from 2010 was still attracting a steady stream of readers—and comments. I explained on Google+ why I think that post’s still so popular, but today I wanted to look a bit more closely at how comments can help a profit-making blogger.

So let’s step through some of the ways blog comments can—directly and indirectly—add to your bottom line.

What’s the ROI of Corporate Blogging?

In a few weeks this business blog will be 9 years old.  That’s 3,145 posts overall, of which I have written 2,537 myself.

If someone would have suggested to me 9 years ago that I should write 1.2 million words as a key component of my agency’s online marketing strategy, I would have dismissed them as crazy. And yet here we are.

I know a lot of companies have dabbled in blogging with mixed results and many are considering either starting a blog or scaling their blogging efforts. There are reasonable questions about how a business blog will add value to the bottom line. How will a corporate blog contribute to leads and sales? What is the ROI of blogging for each quater, month, week, day, hour and dollar invested? Those are great questions.

15 Free Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

Generating traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. Without sufficient traffic your site and blog will never accomplish their purpose. And while there are numerous pay options to generate traffic, there are an equal number of effective and free tools and approaches. Here are some great traffic generators:

1. Free Traffic Source: Forum Marketing

Forum Marketing: Share your expertise with people asking questions about your industry. In return, you’ll get a steady flow of traffic to your site. You will be the expert, after all. To ensure that you get traffic from all the time you spend answering questions, be sure to spend time on your forum marketing signature. Your signature tells other forum members who you are and how to read more about you. As you begin in forum marketing, you will want to watch out for (and completely avoid) these 8 Common Forum Marketing Mistakes.

Why My First Blog Failed … and What You Can Learn from My Mistakes

Where do you hope blogging will take you?

I’m thrilled that blogging’s got me to where I am today—with a successful full-time business, a bunch of ebooks, a membership site, guest posts on major blogs, two speaker appearances at BlogWorld, and a published book Publishing E-Books For Dummies).

To other bloggers, it might look like I’ve been successful.

And I have definitely had my share of success … but, like every single blogger you can think of,I’ve also had my share of failures.

Today, I’m going to tell you about my very first blog. It failed … but I learned a huge amount from the experience.

Here’s how it happened, and what you can learn from my mistakes.