Building Traffic for a Brand New Blog

[OMPundit]

I am curios how many ways people have tried or used to build initial traffic when launching a brand new blog.

[watocw]

Well, when I started my new blog I went to my favorite tech forum I am a member of and made a few threads there. Since I had been there awhile I got a lot of traffic fast.

[frankie712]

Blog comments are the safest way to build back links. Do follow and no follow, mix it up. Give it a month before you start building a link wheel.

[ehustler]

I recently created a post about traffic building tips a few weeks ago. Some really great ways to increase traffic to your site are;

1. Article Marketing
2. Video Marketing
3. Pod casting
4. Forum Posting
5. Social Bookmarking
6. Torrent Marketing
7. Writing Press Releases and submitting them to PR sites such as PRlog and PRweb

Blog commenting isn't that effective for me when it comes to increasing my site's traffic.

[JakeSmithOZ]

whether its new or old blog, if you wanna boost it up then same strategies and techniques should be implemented..

[DeMeloDe]

I would call myself a small time blogger with a still developing audience, but I would site that my biggest help in blogger traffic was providing marketable content on my blog, and incorporating this content with Google's image service.

In an example of what I mean - I manage an entertainment blog, where I provide commentaries on TV, Movies, Music, etc. I wrote an article on the new HBO hit Game of Thrones (a medieval fantasy with a rich lore and geography), and in my article I posted a map of what the world of Game of Thrones looks like. When the show took off, people wanted to find the map, and mine ended up being the best quality online, and therefore the top of the Google image page when you search anything related to 'Game of Thones map', etc.

[denysaputra]

Originally Posted by ehustler

I recently created a post about traffic building tips a few weeks ago. Some really great ways to increase traffic to your site are;

1. Article Marketing
2. Video Marketing
3. Pod casting
4. Forum Posting
5. Social Bookmarking
6. Torrent Marketing
7. Writing Press Releases and submitting them to PR sites such as PRlog and PRweb

Blog commenting isn't that effective for me when it comes to increasing my site's traffic.

Hi, it's great! thanks for sharing with him!

[parentpalace]

This is something I'm still working on. I've joined memes, hosted giveaways, and hope for the best.

[Melody]

JakeSmithOZ is right. There is no difference between building traffic for a new blog or an old blog.

Also be sure you have Google Analytics installed (or some similar program like Sitemeter.com). A hit counter is useless.

I can only tell you what has worked for me (well, this has been my strategy, how it's worked & how I'm doing is debatable) , which might be a little different than the above comments. My blog is now a PR 4 and pretty good daily traffic.

1. Focus most all your time on exceedingly great and unique content. Write as best you possible can. Love your own content.
2. Update your blog a minimum of 3 times per week.
3. Use twitter to promote your blog, finding others who love your same niche topic. Really engage others on twitter, and do not push links. You have to give to get.
4. Have a facebook fan page.
5. Engage and connect with others - respond to the comments you get, make friends.
6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 for years.

To build a quality blog, there are no short cuts. (Feel free to look at my blog too! )

[michella]

Blog Commenting

A great way to get targeted visitors to your blog that will be interested in your content and products, is by leaving comments on other similar blogs in your niche with a link back to your blog in you comment or ‘signature’.

Do a search on Google for other blogs in your niche that are relevant to your own blog and try to find blogs that have a lot of traffic, a lot of activity, and are seen as somewhat as an authority in your niche.

Try to engage constructively in the conversations and threads and offer useful advice. Try to help people the best you can, the more you positively contribute to forums and blogs, the more clicks you will get on your link back to your blog and the more traffic you will get.

Don’t ever try to spam blogs by leaving comments of little value like leaving one liners like ‘great post’. This will never work and no one will even click on your link.

Try to actively participate in the community and build up a bit of a reputation for helping people and you will see a huge jump in your traffic!

Submitting To Directories

There are hundreds of directories out there that let you submit your blog to them for free (there are also some paid ones). This will not only help increase your traffic by people looking through the directories and finding your blog, but it will also help you to get backlinks to your blog. A lot of blog directories have a high page rank and this in turn will help you to rank in the search engines.

Doing this manually is very time consuming and a bit tedious, so I recommend using a software tool such as Brad Cullen’s free Directory Submitter or Article Submission Helper which will automatically do it for you.

Submitting RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds allow readers of your blog to automatically receive any updates for your blog as they happen. The great thing is, Wordpress automatically creates an RSS Feed for your blog.

Submitting your RSS Feed to RSS Feed sites will help give you more high PR backlinks which will help with your SEO and rankings. Do a search for RSS Feed Feeder sites that you can submit your RSS Feed to.

Pinging Your Blog

Pinging your blog will notify the Search Engines of your blog’s content, since the search engines are always scanning the net trying to pick up any new content. By pinging your blog you will speed up the process of getting all the pages of your blog indexed.

There are also a lot of sites out there that publish any new content found on the web. By pinging your blog you will also notify these site’s of your new content.

Here are a couple of free pinging sites to ping your blog on:
Ping-o-matic
Ping that blog

Social Bookmarking

If you social bookmark your blog you will not only get more high PR backlinks, you will also get more traffic by people finding your on social bookmarking sites and visiting your site.

Make sure to bookmark every single post you make. There are dozens of social bookmarking and web 2.0 sites out there that you can submit your blog posts to. Doing this can be very time consuming though so I suggest using some kind of software to automatically social bookmark your posts for you.

Here are a couple of popular ones that are also free:
Only Wire
Social Poster
Social Marker
Wordpress Only Wire Auto Poster Plugin

Article Marketing

Article marketing is very popular and has always been a very effective way to not only get backlinks, but also traffics from interested readers. The key here is great quality content that leaves the reader wanting more.

It’s fairly easy to come up with new articles because you can just use material from the blogs posts you’ve written. Try to submit your articles to the top articles directories, but try not to double-up on content. Try to re-write your articles a bit to change it up and avoid duplicate content.

Here’s a few of the top article directories I recommend:

Ezine Articles
Articles Base
Suite101
Buzzle
Helium
Article Snatch
Go Articles
Article Alley
Article Dashboard

Video Marketing
Video marking can be one of the most effective and efficient ways to get traffic to your blog. Video blogging is incredibly popular right now and people prefer to watch video over anything else (e.g reading articles).

If you have a really good video that’s both informative and entertaining, you could get hundreds of thousands of views! With so many people viewing your videos, you can be sure to expect a large amount of people then clicking on your link to your blog. And that’s a ton of traffic!

These, days people prefer not to read long-winded sales letter, they would rather just watch a sales video. The same is true with your blog posts. If you take the content wrote for your blog posts and turn each blog post into a short video, you will be able to upload your videos to video sites in no time. Plus you can also embed them on your blog as well once you’ve uploaded them to YouTube.

Videos are also great for backlinks too, because video sites are so popular and they have a high PR.

You have 3 main options here for creating a video:

1) Use a flip cam and record yourself or someone else.

2) Record Powerpoint slides using Camtasia (or the free version ‘Camstudio’ ).

3) Using Animoto which can create videos for you in minutes for free. All you need is to upload your own photos or put your own text in, pick the music and layout, and Animoto will do the rest (it’s really easy).

There are quite a lot of popular video sites out there that you can submit your videos to for free. However if you don’t want to do this manually I would suggest using a software program such as TubeMogul which is free, or TrafficGeyser which is paid (but is really good).

Web 2.0 Sites

Another great way to not only get traffic, but also increase your blog’s rankings and backlinks is to create a network of web 2.0 sites.

This method involves creating a network of web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Tumblr.com etc and having them all link back to your main blog.

This can be very powerful and you’ll not only increase your blog’s rankings, you’ll also see your Web 2.0 pages appear in the search engine results too.

Another tip is to also social bookmark every web 2.0 page you make as this will help boost the ranking of your blog as well.

If you create plenty of web 2.0 sites, you could end up dominating the whole 1st page of Google for your keyword!

Social Media Sites

These kinds of sites are sites like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and YouTube. For this traffic generation method, first sign up to each site and create your own page (or in YouTube’s case, create your own channel).

Next try to join other relevant online groups that are in your niche and have similar interests. It’s important here that you don’t ever try to hard sell anyone or over promote. Try to show your personality and get people to like you and be interested in what you have to offer.

Try to be friendly and sociable and network with as many people as you can. Try to make as many friends as possible but don’t try to add just anyone, make sure they’re people who would be interested in what you have to offer.

Offer a lot of free gifts and advice.This can be a very effective and rewarding way to drive traffic and create a long-term fan base and a reputation in your niche.