I just got serious about blogging in December of 2007.
I had a blog on Blogger.com for 2 years, but rarely updated it.
Then in November of 2007, I installed Feedburner and discovered I had 430+ subscribers. I was shocked due to the fact I hardly ever blogged.
I didn’t want to lose those subscribers or the traffic, so I decided to challenge myself and see if I could generate an even larger readership.
After switching to WordPress last December, I got more serious about my blog efforts.
I subscribed to Darren Rowse’s blog, ProBlogger.net – a very informative and inspiring blog to newbies and seasoned bloggers alike.
Then I started doing some key things…
1. I am More Selective With My Topics
When I had my Blogger blog, I would often re-write information that was already on my site. I didn’t put much effort into the subject matter of my posts.
(Yawn!)
Now, I’m much more selective. I try to think more about my audience’s needs and what they would find interesting.
And even if I choose a topic that has been blogged about a lot, I try to add my own spin to make it unique. For example, how many articles have been written about “How to Write Good Content” or something similar?
Too many, right?
Well the reality is, most people don’t write good content and they find it a chore or get writer’s block.
So I blogged about this very issue and addressed it from a new angle in a blog post titled “Is Writing Content a Chore for You?” An email I received inspired much of the content in the post.
2. I Make Use of Some Handy WordPress Plugins
Some people go hogwild on the WP plugins. While there are some really cool ones out there, you don’t want to make your blog so plugin-licious that it’s difficult to navigate and read.
You can have too much of a good thing, but there are a few that really come in handy.
Two plugins I believe made a difference in my traffic and readership have been the SiteMap and Related Post plugins.
The SiteMap plugin is important because it generates and submits your blog’s sitemap (an XML listing of all your posts) to all the major engines. Once you install it, the plugin works its magic automatically.
Some of my posts get found in the search engines only hours after I create them.
The Related Post plugin is useful because it encourages people to read more of my blog. It helps them discover posts they might not have discovered had they not seen the “Related Post” link at the end of a blog entry.
Before installing this plugin, I noticed my most recent posts always received 95% of the traffic. Now, older posts are getting more traffic.
3. Visual Appeal
I doubt my graphics have made a huge difference in my traffic, but every now and then I get an email or comment from someone who says they love my blog images and graphics.
One lady says she can’t wait to see what kind of graphic I’ve created to go with the post.
Some of my graphics include pictures of people and things found on Photos.com (I’m a subscriber because I want to make sure I have rights to use the images on my site.)
Usually I’ll add my own flavor to the images with good ole’ PhotoShop.
However most of the graphics like the one in this post were created by me. Learning PhotoShop has been a great asset to my business.
While the content is what really makes or breaks a blog, a few appealing images and graphics can help round out your blog’s appearance and give it a more professional feel.
4. I Blog More Often
Blogging more often is not always a good thing. If you don’t have anything interesting to say then no point in blogging just for the sake of blogging.
It’s not worth losing your subscriber base so be sure your posts have substance.
When you blog often, the search engine spiders will visit more frequently, and this could help your traffic. Blogging often also keeps your subscribers coming back regularly and keeps you on their radar.
5. I Interlink My Blog With My Main Site
I am fortunate enough to have a site that already receives over 7,000 visitors per day, so of course that’s a huge help. When I create a new post, I look for relevant content on my site and provide a link to that entry.
When I used Blogger, I didn’t cross promote all that much. Now, I’m much more conscious of opportunities to interlink the two. So if you have a website and a blog, keep your eyes open for ways to link the two together.
6. Competitor’s Blogs Keep My Juices Flowin’
First and foremost I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting you copy someone’s content. Not only is it illegal but it’s highly unethical and dishonest.
But there’s nothing wrong with getting ideas from another blogger’s topics.
For example, if you see a blogger has written about the iPod Touch features (a topic that is overdone); rather than just re-wording what they wrote, create your own entry but take a different approach.
Maybe your post could be something like, “10 Reasons the iPod Touch is Better Than the Zune”. You’re writing about the same topic, but you’re taking the content in a new direction.
Not to mention you could capitalize on a new audience – people looking to compare the Zune and the iPod.
I encourage you to take a look at your competitor’s blogs, get ideas and look for ways you can create your own fresh, unique content.
7. I Switched from Blogger to WordPress
I wrote a post about this a while back, but it is worth mentioning again. I really do believe WordPress is a much better platform because of all the plugins and flexibility.
Blogger is probably easier to setup, but WordPress is pretty user-friendly too – especially if you have a Web host that offers CPanel. (I use HostGator and setup this blog in 5 seconds.)
I have much more control over my layout without having to edit the raw code (like you do with Blogger). Plus, WordPress breaks up the template into separate files so it’s easier to figure out what file controls what section of your blog.
Not to mention, WordPress has much better design templates, in my opinion.
And as I said above, additions like the SiteMap Plugin also help get your posts spidered and indexed faster.
8. I Craft My Titles More Carefully
I discovered titles that pose a question or contain a bit of shock value generate the most clicks. My recent entry “Would You Like $57,000 In One Month?” has a little of both.
Usually my newest post wins the “Daily Traffic Award” but this post is 2 weeks old and still beats out my newer posts on some days.
Taking time to develop a good title can make a huge difference. Particularly since more and more people use RSS to keep track of their favorite blogs.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so make that title count!
9. I Give Away More Freebies
Who doesn’t love something free, right? Plus, it’s a great way to build loyal fans and viral traffic (because they’ll tell others who tell others and so on.)
But I have to be careful with this one because I want my freebies to have value. I hate it when I see Webmasters giving away items that have been distributed over and over again, or freebies you can find anywhere.
How insulting and unoriginal.
If you want your freebies to go to work for you, take some time to develop something useful and unique.
Here are some of my favorite freebies I’ve offered from my blog…
- The Perfect Site Guide
- Free RSS Icons I Created
- Free AdSense Book (PDF) (for beginners)
10. I Share My Personal Success
I wasn’t comfortable doing this at first. I felt I was bragging, but I slowly found it builds credibility. And I noticed other successful people often do the same thing.
If you’re trying to teach people how to do something, it helps to show them how your advice has worked for you.
While I don’t offer specifics about my income, I may display an AdSense check here and there or remind people I am making a living online.
It’s important that my audience knows I am actually walking the walk since I often talk about making money. See my record AdSense video below.
In Conclusion…
Doing the above things has not only helped double my blog’s traffic in 2 months, and my subscriber count is up by nearly 100 subscribers.
Which of the above strategies can you implement on your blog?
And if you’ve done anything to help boost your blog’s traffic that I haven’t mentioned here, feel free to share.
Thanks for the info, Lisa. I’ll go do that soon.
One thing that will also help you increase your traffic is host your site on a reliable web host service. I transferred mine away from Hostgator, cause their shared hosting was giving my headaches already. After I have transferred to the new hosting, my traffic increase steadily, and yes I do not really focus on backlinks. Just content.
Lisa, how do you put Adsense Ads where you want them? I thought Google does that themselves?
No you get the code from your account and paste it where you want in your site. Google cannot control where ads go on your site since they don’t have access to your login details.
Great transition. Your sharing is awesome. You have mentioned that your migration from “Blogger” to “WordPress” helped you also. I’ll also try this soon after registering my own domain. Currently my blog is hosted by Blogger. Thank you for sharing these precious tips.
I run a site that features and promotes Independent and unsigned musicians. I have found that using Yahoo Answers is a great way to drive targeted traffic to my site. I have a lot of experience in the music world, both on and off stage, so I use that experience to answer music related questions. Visitors from Yahoo Answers have spent over 3 minutes on average on my site with nearly 3 pages/visit. I would suggest people use their expertise on Yahoo to drive in some quality traffic.
Lisa, I have never read or followed a webmaster as successful, kind and generous as you. I have been struggling to get traffic to my 10 month old website and was about to give it up, though I know my content is very good. Now I know I should keep plugging away and keep following you for online help.
Thank, Lisa. You are an inspiration.
Hi Lisa, I find the content of thi article and the site in general very inspiring, well exposed and delivered. congrats! and thanks. I saw you in the videos on you tube first and then got here. I am focusing on content first as you wisely suggest. I am sure you don’t take seriously wedding proposals written on web forms (and I wouldn’t too) but imagine you got one tonight!
thanks again
i agree that quality content is the best option. Ur article is great keeping in mind the latest panda algo update….thnks for sharing
Simple, yet great advice for doubling traffic.
Would it be possible to update this post and add new tips to increase traffic since there are many things going around with google. and competition is really getting tough.
Hi Lisa, you have shared really good tips to increase blog traffic and i will definitely use given tips while writing my blogs. thank you.
i agree that quality content is the best option. and sometimes you just have to “browse” what others are doing to know how to go about adding value to your blog as well…
You inspired me dear…
Thanks..
Pdf is really helpfull.
It’s always a joy to find some inspiration. Thanks for this. However, what happens when you keep trying all these and you’re still unnoticed, with less than 10 visitors daily?
How about sharing personal success using videos? I watched some of your videos and I can say that your approach really connects with your viewers, something that can help increase traffic to your blog.
Hey Lisa,
Thank you for Sharing your experience.
You have some pretty good points that are informative, the process of driving traffic to your blog is actually challenging, with good contents I believe this is not impossible as we always say “Quality over Quantity”
And I like how you use the competitors blog to your advantage, what i used to say when I see them is ” it is research I never copied someones work, just the thought of it. LOL
Best,
I love your story and I’m gonna follow on your foot steps.I have been trying to earn money online since 2006 and the highest amount I have ever earned is $50 in one full year(sucks).
Great videos,and detailed instructions.Thank you
Point 3 actually sticks out to me most. Never underestimate the visual appeal of your site. After putting a nice textured background and adding a lot of blue (seems to work from my experience), the quality of my traffic improved. People were staying on my site for much longer. Reposting from Tumblr seems to help too; a lot of the content there goes viral for a good reason.
I don’t want to brag, but I doubled my site’s traffic in a day, not two months. Of course I went from 5 to 10, but still…
I like the suggestion to add related posts above the comments, but got a little overwhelmed by the number of plugin choices. I ended up choosing the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’ve noticed that some sites include a thumbnail with their related posts. Does anyone know if that makes a difference?
I actually like the thumbnails but I was having issues with LinkWithin (the plugin I was using) slowing my site down. I’m sure there are better plugins now.
Thnxx lisa mam I have made my new blog and was in search on information like this site consist of …… Thnx a lot
I use SEO by Yoast in my wordpress blog. It automatically creates the sitemaps for the newest content in my blog. Do I still need to us the XML Sitemap Generator?
Nope, not if you use Yoast.
Really? i was completely unaware of that and i have yoast on all of my wordpress installs i have been using a second plugin to generate the sitemap! Great information!
As long as the plugin generates and submits the plugin, which Yoast does, then Google can find it. I didn’t know that either for some time until I went to create a Google Webmaster account for a new site and when I went to submit my sitemap, Google already had it listed. I was like Ohhhhh! lol
I have been reading your blog and following you on youtube for a long time. I think you have the best tips on website creation. I think creating catchy titles is a good idea as its the first thing someone reads and then decides if they want to read the rest or not.
hello lisa,
glad i found this artcle, you are doing an awesome work by inspiring peoples who are willing to do something in blogging. your work is great and google is rewarding you for that, nice tips for new bloggers and it is also very inspiring for all of us.thanks for sharing your experience with us. will try these things
Hello Lisa, From the post I guess it’s a day to day work of taking your blog to perfection. Like you mentioned above it’s not any one particular strategy that helped increase traffic but a combination of all those little things. I guess this post was made back in 2008? May I know what’s the kind of traffic you are receiving per day to your site?
Dr.Spencer Jones
Doing well. My static site and this blog combined are well into the 5 figures per month.
Thanks for your reply Lisa. Your 5 figure per month achievement is simply awesome. Have been following you for a while. I know you’ve been heavily involved in adsense. But just wondering, Is adsense still working well for you after the Panda and Penguin updates ? Another question: Is it affiliate marketing or adsense that’s earning you the most money ?
Thanks for your reply…
Dr.Spencer Jones
Yes, I’m still way ahead of the “record video” I posted in 2009. It has dropped as it usually does in the summer but no complaints.
I agree with you that the option number 7, that I do on some of my blogs.
but the others I have not done so.
Thanks for sharing such an inspirational post. And the point you define about Traffic is very useful.
Thanks for the article I feel that increasing blog traffic takes time and I like the tip that you have given about posting often.Its better to have more content on site.I looking ahead for your another post.
Have to agree with the related post plugin I used to have a 60% bounce rate even with a lot of videos on my article no its down in the 40,s Thaqnks for a great blog
Great site, thanks for doing all this work. I saw your idea for the related post plugin here a couple of weeks ago and installed it a few weeks ago. What a difference it has made!! Previously my bounce rate was well over 50%, since I installed it the bounce rate is about 30% and heading lower.
Thanks very much 🙂
You have used great techniques to improve site traffic. Obviously all our earnings are dependent on visitors, quality visitors are a necessary.
Really i like this post very much, before reading this post i was not serious in blogging, but now i promise myself to be serious for blogging. Thanks for telling us the way to increase your traffic. Plz help me in one thing i have a bounce rate of 75% how to reduce that?
You are right, Lisa. when we talk about CMS that gives us better traffic and better search engine result, WordPress has not been surpassed by any other CMS blog. Even blogspot, which belongs to google, cannot beat it.
rak toko
Thanks For this post…
And one of the best plugins on wordpress is probably the commentluv plugin.
Great info thanks
I’ve used WordPress before and found it very frustrating in finding everything to start blogging immediately, that’s why my son built me the SimpleBlog V1.0 it’s a static website / blog script for beginners who simply have content they’d like to share check it out under website scripts on our website, link is on twitter page. It’s the same script we use on our own blog!
hi lisa
your aticle helps me lot to uderstand in this topic and inspire me work hard on my blog ,i am just waiting for your next article in this topic
you can never underestimate the power of the actual content. its always painful to go to a well optimized site only to find empty content that doesn’t really meet your need.
Thank you for sharing this information. I just started a website almost a year ago and I’m working on increase traffic. I’ll try some of these tips you mentioned here. Thanks again.
I hope I can do the same, Lisa, you did very well. Thanks for share your personal experience 🙂 Keep sharing.
I so enjoy coming by here and getting inspiration from your posts. I’m building a new blog and these are good points to keep in mind because I want it to be a raging success. Just reading this, I realize I need to spend more time on your blog before I build mine. I sincerely appreciate the information you give out.
Bruce Cagle
Good article ,Thank you.!
I feel that increasing blog traffic takes time and I like the tip that you have given about posting often. I think this is the most important thing because more content we have, it is better for us. I also feel that we should focus on the unmet needs of our audience which the competitors are not fulfilling. This will help us to carve out our own niche.
I really enjoyed this article. Glad I came across your site! You have given many great ideas here. Thank you.
I have read your post and it is fantastic! I am still deciding though to switch from Blogger to wordpress – I still have reservations and don’t want lose any of my content etc when I transfer over. any tips?
Lisa,
Is WordPress better than SBI Blog it? My website is an SBI site and I’d like to stay within the one platform, unless WordPress is so much better. What’s ur opinion?
Both have advantages. With SBI! you’re getting the marketing help for building a long-term business and forum support. WordPress will give you much better functionality but it’s a completely different platform that you will have to learn to use. So they are both “better” in different ways. Depends on what you really value.
earning money with adsense is really cool idea but to earn from blog u must need traffic.. better to do the above stuff on regular basis and success will come to you.
I thought social media sites only give no-follow backlinks? Meaning you won’t get any PR juice from them? Also, I never understood how article sites give a PR. When you create an article that URL doesn’t have a PR; usually only their homepage has a PR
I’m not talking about using social media for backlinks. I meant to use it to build actual relationships. I’m not a backlink chaser — never have been. My links are usually gained organically by people who link to my site voluntarily.
lisa you told “Use YouTube to showcase your personality, build your brand and trust (and traffic)”.Do you have any article on it as i am not familiar with it.Please do reply.
This is what I love with the Internet. It´s always surprises around the corner. As you mentioned about feedburner. You are spot on about the headlines and when they are put like that, no one say´s No *S*
That was a good article and I must also start to put freebies on my site.
Lisa, these are all valid reasons for why you get some much traffic.
If you were to start a brand new website…how would you go from being a 0 to being just like this blog?
What do you consider CORE methods of building traffic and also sustaining a website like you have.
1. Find a UNIQUE angle/approach that your competitors aren’t using and make sure you narrow down your niche. Instead of fitness (too general) do pilates exercises for example. I think too many people start off wrong with going to broad and paraphrasing what’s already out here.
2. Start a mailing list and keep in touch with your visitors. Send EXCLUSIVE offers/mailings to keep them engaged. Biggest mistake I made was not starting a list and not spending time to learn how to keep them engaged.
3. Use YouTube to showcase your personality, build your brand and trust (and traffic)
4. Spend time on social media and network with other people in your niche. Work out joint ventures, land a few guest blogging roles, etc.
5. Do contests/special promotions to keep people coming back.
I think this is your crucial tip – keep your readers ENGAGED! And how many of us really do start an email list to keep readers up to date? I love your adsense video – awesome result and very inspiring, especially the youtube tips.
My top traffic tip:- join StumbleUpon, stumble your blog posts and share them via the powerful su.pr link on Twitter with relevant hashtags like #diet or #makemoney – this one method gets me most of my instant blog traffic for free!
seriously, i like your story, this will make me to boost my spirit to stay in blogging
Nice post,i will try tkese tips to build my traffic
Hi there, I do believe your blog could be having internet browser compatibility problems. When I look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine however when opening in I.E., it’s got some overlapping issues. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Besides that, fantastic blog!