Blog Traffic Tips for Beginners

A blog is a very different beast when it comes to traffic acquisition and search engine optimization.

Unlike static website content which is meant to inform visitors, blogs are supposed to inform and engage.

This interactive component is the key to building a popular blog with a large community.

The domain, hosting and blog software need to be finalized early and kept intact afterwards so that there won't be disruptions midway.

The possibilities range from a free Wordpress sub-domain to a purchased domain on paid hosting and a blogging platform like Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous, Joomla or Drupal.

Exactly which of these should be chosen will vary based on the kind of blog and the tools it needs.

Before the first "Hello world" post goes online, make sure to do some spadework about the subject of the blog, and the associated keywords.

This is important because surveys have repeatedly shown that blogs focused on a specific topic tend to do better as compared to general portals.

Use a keyword research tool to come up with a list of high value keywords that are related to the subject in question, and every post written from there on should target one of the keywords in the list.

Make sure the keyword is present in the title and the URL. Use it in the post body, but it has to be natural and conversational.

But remember it is more important that visitors should find the post interesting, so that should be the first goal.

Now this is the phase where the usual blogger tends to run up against a brick wall.

Most bloggers give up when they find that even after writing some pretty good posts, there are very few visitors.

Thing is that a successful blog needs two more things. One is a link building campaign, and the other one is a community building campaign.

Link building for a blog is slightly different from the usual search marketing and SEO done for a website, because this needs interaction with other bloggers through posts.

This means that a blogger has to build relations with other blogs, by linking to them in posts and adding them to the blogroll.

Do this and then ask for the same in return. It often works out, and the traffic is quite sweet.

In addition to the direct visitors sent by the other bloggers, the links provided also boost search rankings.

Don't forget to milk social media for the same thing, because links posted on social media provide direct traffic and get picked up by other blogs, which in turn adds to the traffic and search rankings.

But the thing that really helps a blog take off is a large community and a do-follow policy for comments.

In order to build a community of regular visitors and feed subscribers who read every post, it's necessary to nurture each visitor on an individual basis.

This means replying individually to every comment posted, and encouraging visitors to continue the conversation amongst themselves.

If visitors know that the blog's author is going to respond and engage, they feel motivated to come back and contribute with comments, and this helps in many ways.

For starters, it adds to the blog content without any effort. Secondly, it attracts new visitors from the search engines for related keywords because there's so much new content.

These new visitors feel motivated to post their own comments and join the community, and the whole thing just keeps snowballing into more traffic, more visitors and more comments.

This process can be given a bit of an artificial push or kick-start by adopting a do-follow policy.

This means that any links posted by visitors will be followed and counted by the search engines, and this provides motivation for other bloggers and site owners to keep coming back and post comments.

By the same token, blog traffic can be increased by going to other do-follow blogs and posting comments there.

How to change from no-follow to do-follow will depend on the platform.

It's not hard, though, and a quick search for something like "Wordpress do-follow plugin" or "make blogger do-follow" will provide a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

It's also easy to get hold of lists of do-follow blogs (search for "Do-follow blog list") where comments can be posted to help improve search rankings.

You could also use a browser plug-in like NoDoFollow for Mozilla, to check whether blogs you find are do-follow or no-follow.

There are a lot of other SEO tips and tricks to boost blog traffic. But the sum of it is that the blog posts need to be regular, unique and interesting with a healthy dose of humor.

To retain loyal visitors and boost the community, the blog posts have to focus on a common subject of interest, and there has to be a lot of give and take.

Anyone who can do this on a regular basis will easily be able to attract visitors and end up with a popular blog.