10 Blogging Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn't news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you've done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people's blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn't bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I've listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won't stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I've put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

For More Information About Blog Mastermind click here

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The Worst Chav Town In England

Abingdon – metaphorically like Oxford’s aggressive, ugly little brother that no one goes near, primarily for the fear that he will hurl abuse upon sight, steal your handbag, or even better, stab you. The reason no one does come here is because you are likely to have abuse hurled at you on sight, have you’re handbag stolen, or be stabbed.

Those who have seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy will remember the presence of two of the evil Sauron’s outposts, Isengard and The Black Gates in Mordor. Like so with Abingdon, there are two outposts from which chavs pour, seemingly in their thousands.

They are ‘Saxton Road’ and ‘The Peachcroft Estate’. Saxton Road in the south of the town and Peachcroft estate in the north – they rule the town with violence, aggression and general naughtiness. Interestingly, the chavs from these hives of filth are very different; I have spent the last few years observing them and can now reveal my results.


Saxton Road ’sakkies’

Saxton Road – inhabitants are termed ’sakkies’ (sack-ies) and have been here since the dawn of time, way before those in Peachcroft, and are respectively bigger, stronger and older than their northern counterparts. These pleasant people inhabit a long road of council houses with a pub situated midway down.

This establishment (the Saxton Arms – how original) has rarely been seen from the inside by the general public, as everyone is far too scared to go near it. When not stalking their home ground, the sakkies have been known to venture as far as Oxford, where they meet with their council house comrades from the Blackbird Leyes estate, who are, frankly, fucking terrifying.


Saxton Arms Enter At Your Peril

Otherwise they can be found in McDonalds or the town centre, where they smoke, eat food and hit anyone dressed predominantly in black or with baggy trousers on. Usually seen in smaller groups of 2-3, the presence of a machete or gun in the trousers usually making up for the smaller numbers.

I myself recently had an alarming run in with a group of these creatures. Myself and four friends had visited the Off license and had two carrier bags of alcohol…walking back to the park, we were taken completely by surprise by what appeared to be a stealth pincer movement attack conducted by two chavs on bikes.

The bags were stolen simultaneously; needless to say we were taken completely unawares. This breed has reached a certain level of intelligence I feel to pose a threat, whereby they plan co-ordinated attacks. Also interesting to see the use of the bike as more than a mobile spitting platform.


Local Chavs Getting Drunk As Always

N.B this breed has become scarcer of late, with a definite drop in numbers. I have been told this is because they are all in prison. Figures.

Peachcroft Estate – ‘Peachies’ This lot from the north of Abingdon are generally smaller, younger and move in large packs of anything from 4 upwards. However there are lots of them. I’ve suggested pest control, but the council is hesitant.

This area is a newer estate and as a result can seem less grotty as houses are mostly respectable detached buildings. However, their chav inhabitants are equally dangerous.

They never leave the surrounding area, as they have immediate access to a pub, Budgens, and a shitty basketball court , as well as the Childs playground which they all sit in, like a large group of primates hanging off branches.

100% seriously, the pub has banned anyone from wearing Burberry clothing on the premises. It’s a step, but it’s not enough. Incidentally, the startling appearance of their tracksuits suggests some kind of deal has been cut with Daz.


Nags Head Where Police Offten Visit

The exception to the above is when, every Friday, all those who aren’t a) OD’ing in a curb b) in the back of a police car make the epic journey across town to the Nags head, where they lager themselves into a frenzy then beat each others heads in.

As the Nags head is a nice pub, if you ignore the clientele, I often make my way down there. Exposure to this environment has lead to skin as thick as an elephant, and reflexes to rival a Jedi. The council has also refused the lease of council lightsabers for chav control purpose.

The only notable haunt of both species is Albert Park, a lovely open area where I grew up, running around, playing football, chatting with friends and being chased and beaten to a pulp. Past 6pm in the summer, this area is a no – go unless with a group of 20+.

It was here that I was given my charming nickname of ‘fucking prick’ by which I am now known to these people by. Coming from a 5 foot, ginger kid with a squeaky voice, proudly astride his mothers bike; the only thing that stopped an appropriate response from me was the presence of a guy who looked like Mr. T’s white brother and a guy I could have sworn I saw on crime watch recently.

In conclusion: Never come here. ever.

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Crocodile Eats Golfer

The first foursome of the day played together to the 5th hole where one impatient golfer went ahead of the group.

The remaining three finished their round and headed for the nineteenth hole to meet their less-patient friend.

However, he wasn't there...and was no where to be found. Since his car was still in the parking lot, the threesome waited two hours.

Thinking the impatient golfer might still be somewhere out on the course, they notified the clubhouse and the search was on. Of course, the impatient golfer was not located, but his clubs were found on the hole. Three days later, Ole Mose was spotted on the seventh hole and was an immediate suspect.

Ole Mose was an American crocodile that was an infrequent course visitor for over 20 years. Not too much concern was ever given to Ole Mose, as he had always made a hasty retreat whenever he saw anyone coming.

To make a long story even longer, after the course officials, SPCA, lawyers, citizens groups, the mayor, Palm Beach PD, and the American Crocodile Association of Southern Florida agreed, it was decided that, in order to put everyone's mind at ease, Ole Mose should be unzipped.

The impatient golfer was ole Mose last meal, bet they wished they game that old crocodile more concern now!.