The following post on how to increase website traffic was submitted by Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes.
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I started the PC Doctor blog in May of 2005 and for the first few months my traffic was really low – down in the few hundreds of visitors a day. It was pretty depressing I can tell you and there were times when I thought about quitting. I knew that the site was in the Google ‘sandbox’ and so I either had to keep on plugging at it until it was out or I had to give up.
Fortunately, I decided to keep on posting but in the interim I decided that I was also going to do my utmost to drive traffic to my site manually until Google kicked in. I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month.
- First, I made the most of Technorati tags. I tagged every key word in each of my posts. Initially I did this manually but them I discovered a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags that made the job a whole lot easier. I found that by tagging my post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site!
- I leveraged my existing website. I’ve been running my business website for a few years and that was getting modest levels of traffic that was relevant to my blog – so why not try to drive some of that to my new blog! I placed a few FeedBurner headline animator blocks on some of my most popular pages and after a day or so I noticed a significant increase in traffic for 5 minutes worth of work on my part.
- Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!
Using these three simple techniques, I took The PC Doctor blog from a few hundred hits a day into the thousands in less than 30 days. This kept my interest in the site until it came out of the Google sandbox and I started to receiver some serious traffic. However, I’m convinced that these actions I took at the early stages have helped me create a loyal and targeted readership that continues to benefit my blog today.
Further Reading: If finding new traffic for your blog is what you’re interested in – check out 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – a month long set of exercises to help you develop content but also build a well read blog.
Good ideas, this helped when I started out. I’ve now compiled a more indepth plan of attack for those interested at
http://marginoferic.blogspot.com/2006/09/blogging-102-make-yourself-known.html
Sort of a new bloggers view on the whole situation. But I have to give props to this site for doing it’s part. Thanks!
Just adding the Technorati tags alone has increased my traffic about 25% in a month. Great article.
–Chris
Trackback is probably the greatest of the three. Although Tagerrrati and Deli.cio.us placing are very helpful – if you can get them.
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I see 105 comments already to this “no so bad” article by Problogger, but I am not sure how much it can help me increase traffic on my blog.
I have to say that I do get considrable amount of traffic everyday but I need more. I mean what about that third stage??
nice post ;) yeah, I think qumana can be something useful when it comes to do that technorati tags ;)
I personally use them for my blog. What I want to know is.. is that trackbak thingy u do we call linkbaiting nowadays?
Thanks for ads adsense tips
[…] Three Simple Tips from Pro Blogger […]
Thats interesting just with 3 tips you could generate so much of traffic. Driving traffic needs consistent efforts.
Thanks Darren, your tips are awesome. I am trying to get more readers but am struggling. I will give these a shot.
WP SimpleTags is awesome. Thanks for all the tips…I hope they work as well for me as they have for you.
For someone who has been blogging for years, you tend to think you know everything when starting over. Unfortunately the blinders are usually on when starting over. These 3 simple tips have increased my traffic to my professional blog http://russell.ackner.com already – within the first week.
I’m new to the blogging world, and I’ve been looking for ways to create trackbacks when I post to my site (http://www.lucasmcdonnell.com). While the tips posted above are extremely helpful, I have yet to come across a really simple, step-by-step approach to how to properly create and manage trackbacks.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
[…] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days […]
3 steps, but all depends who make this steps, problogger or just newbie…
[…] Problogger blogging tips […]
Thanks so much for the tips!
Great tips
this Plugin is jst cool
Hi thanks for the tips. I will be putting this knowledge to work for my website http://www.lonewolfradio.com right now it averages about 50 U.V. a day so i’ll update in a month.
Darren’s site is always useful & informative. I hadnt thought of adding tags to help improve website traffic. I plan to go back & add tags to all my posts (manually since I have typepad) and see if it helps – or based on others comments, see if it directs traffic away. Time will tell. Thanks for an informative site.
hi darren
i need your help for the two things below
when i type the word i want to tag
Question1 : Is the above correct way of tagging words to technoratii
Question 2 : Why when i try to get into have a feedburner it give several reasons for not validating it. What shall i do?
Question 3 : How can be a feedburner be bringing traffic? a little confuse
regards
gazzali
hi darren
i think my message is distorted.
Question 1 : i use [ key for tagging but it doesnt work – the bracket is printed in my pages
i use
hi darren
sorry for so many comments. Message distorted again.
Q1: shall i use bracket key or arrow key for tagging. Bracket is not working.
Q2 : How to tag technoratii
Q3 : How to install a feedburner. I have tried but to no avail,
Q4: Still not sure how a feedburner gives traffic
[…] Original post by PageRank RSS Feed for Wikipedia powered by BlinkBits.com and software by Elliott Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Great Ideas , simple but excellent advise .Thanks so much for all the information .
Hi.
Nice resource here with good tips for people like myself with new blogs and who are still new to blogging.
Many thanks.
[…] because his writing style is immensely approachable and very helpful. In one of Darrens’ many posts he addresses the subject of ways to drive traffic to your site. Those hints are listed […]
[…] Three Simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days – Please note that EdithYeung.com also use […]
Great article , I am looking forward to trying them out on my blog at http://www.freeebooksonline.blogspot.com
Wow this really helped. I hopefully can get more people to my site which needs more hits badly.
Written very well.
Really cool article, I will start doing that… thanks a lot.
Wow!!! Good job. Could I take some of yours triks to build my own site?
Decent tips but the advice to hide the tags with display none seems shady and unimportant, just div position absoulte and locate the tags to the side or in the footer section for each post, nobody will click off your site as they are away from the article and not tempting to click and not hidden with shady display none.
Tips #1 and #3 are fine, but I just don’t see how they can possibly substantially increase traffic if you don’t have much to start with. I think tip #2 is the real deal, but if you don’t have another sucessful web site to leverage, I guess you’re screwed.
I’ve been running a blog for about a month now, and I tried all the above (except leveraging another web site, since I don’t have one).
Right now, my traffic is so pitifully low its embarassing. Above you say you were depressed when your traffic was in the low hundreds. Imagine having far lower than that. What I want to know is, how did you start with that much traffic to begin with? I check everything every day in Google Analytics. Technorati brings in only 2-4 hits a day, sending trackbacks and leaving my sig when commenting on other sites (and if I really hustle) only brings in 6-12 hits or so. Search engines bring in about 10 hits a day.
And feedburner, atom, rss, etc. I admit I don’t understand all the differences fully yet, but doesn’t someone need to go to your site first before they’re going to subscribe to your feed? In any case, no one has signed up for mine yet as far as I can tell.
I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on my site, but few people find it. (About 50% of my traffic is direct) I even tried Ad words and Blog ads, and they worked, but only while the ads were running, and in the end I was spending about 1 dollar in advertising for every 4 hits I was bringing in, not a great ratio. And since my site is not commercial, I’m not going to spend a huge amount on advertising. I tried everything else, announcing the site to friends and family, leaving my sig when commenting in google groups, registering with every search engine service, using Digg and Reddit, exchanging links with others, etc. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’m all ears. Help!
I’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked
Yes, they are right… Most of my blog visitors will click the tag instead of adsense. My adsense revenue greatly drop down… Thinking whether is there any way to change the placement of tag…
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”
Thanks for this, I think I’m gonna do some experiments with trackbacks and tagging and see how much of an effect it has (if done right I assume).
Ha ha. You only had hundreds of readers, Louis? I still only receive about ten page views per day. So it sounds like you were doing pretty well, especially when you compare yourself to me.
WOW! You see it just goes to show how 3 simply ways that were staring you in the face can easily DOUBLE your website traffic. It’s like a butterly effect, small actions make for big responses…
There are many advantages of your web blog above a website, except it’s easy to setup and free. You can put every thing in your blog: from a couple of lines what it is on your mind or your new article just published elsewhere, or a product review. In principle, a blog is the same as a website, but you will need to update more frequently to get the visitors to your site. A major advantage of your web blog here above a website to getting major search engines like Google and Yahoo to visit your blog frequently is a technique called “pinging”. It’s a method of notifying all of the major search engines and blog directories, each time that you have updated your blog. The search engines will come and to take a look at your blog, thereby increasing traffic to your blog. If you link your blog, the search engines will follow the links from the blog pointing to your sites. This will help the search engine rankings of your sites as well!
thanks for the advice
consider this my effective use of trackback!
If you want to achieve a high ranking on Search Engines, quality content text is essential. However, the Search Engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
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Wow. Nice and easy! Thanks for your advise…
– William
I tried to make money from blogging. But my traffic is extremly low that it is below 50 per/day. I tried different topics, but i couldn’t find success. I deleted my blogs because i had no profit from it. I want to strat from the beggining. Can you help me?
HI ..PLS HELP ME ON HOW TO INCREASE TRAFFIC ON MY WEBSITE..HOW TO PUT AN EFFECTIVE META TAGS..IM JUST EARNING A MAXIMUM OF 2 $ A DAY FOR MY ADSENSE
Take a look at a new approach to boost web site traffic: http://www.jointeffort.com. In essence, this is incorporating a large social community application onto your web site. Joint Effort is a complete turnkey solution that allows partner sites to instantly create an active online social community on their own web resources under their own branding, link it to an existing database of users, and thus increase their web site traffic and profits. Visitors of your site receive an additional reason to return again and again: to socialize via the social network, and therefore they will spend more time on your site, not to mention inviting their friends and new friends they have made.
There’s many links to my website but very little google traffic. Somehow I must’ve ruined by google pagerank.)
This is the exactly the kind of information I have been looking for. It seems like whenever I google ‘website traffic’ all I get is people trying to get their hands on my money with what I would suggest might be unproductive results. As a new website owner, it may take me a while to wrap my head around what I have to do – but I will start looking around now. A sincere thanks.