10 Ways to Attract More Traffic to Your Blog

I have been blogging as a hobby for about four years and have two main blogs. One of them is a local interest blog featuring news, reviews and menus for local restaurants in my hometown of Newnan, Ga. It is called simply The Newnan Restaurant Guide. The other is a horror movie blog relating to my favorite genre of horror movies called 80s Horror Movies. One of the biggest challenges to bloggers is getting noticed and attracting visitors to your blog. These are a few tips I have learned over the years that actually work, some are more specifically effective if you have a local interest blog versus a general blog, but all will work for just about any category your blog may fall into.

1. Search engine submission. There are several services available on the Internet to help you with this step. Some are free and some you have to pay for. They will do all of the grunt work for you so that you only have to enter your site information, keywords, etc. one time. Some will also help you pick the best keywords, add Meta tags and give other suggestions for ways to increase your search visibility.

2. Traditional printed advertising.By this I mean business cards, bumper stickers, T-shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets and other such traditional advertising that is time tested to get your blog name out there. I have found this method to be particularly effective for blogs of local interest. I use Vistaprint, where you can get many of these items for free or almost free if you find the right coupons.

3. Comment and participate in discussions relevant to you blog's topic. Find a discussion or start one on Twitter or a topic related message board. Yahoo, Google and Facebook groups are also great places to jump in on a conversation and meet people.

4. Become known in the community. Make a name for yourself and create your own "brand" and people will pay a lot more attention to what you are saying that they would some random person they've never heard of. Make friends and get people's attention.

5. Use social media. This is an ever changing landscape and there are all kinds of social media sites out there jockeying for users. Right now, at the time of this article, I think the main two that you should concentrate on are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has several ways to help you promote your blog including the free groups or fan pages you can create as well as paid advertising via Facebook ads. Twitter takes a while to master and to gain a following but it can be a very powerful tool to promote your blog as well as to network with other bloggers and people involved in the subject you blog about. Be careful with both of these because there is a thin line between promoting and spamming and nobody likes a spammer. Just be sure to learn and follow all the community rules and don't abuse these services if you want to use them effectively.

6. Produce relevant content and produce it often. Content is King or so they say and this is probably the single most important method of getting and maintaining followers and site traffic. It's what keeps people coming back and gets them to share your blog with people they know. Without good content your blog can not succeed so don't get so busy with promotion you neglect your content.

7. Make friends with prominent figures in your field and fellow bloggers. It always helps to have connections, it's an old saying but it still holds true in the virtual world. Having connections with people of influence in the community or virtual community can make you privy to useful news and information, land you interviews, exclusive stories, add credibility and help in a limitless number of ways.

8. Get your own URL. I still use blogspot or blogger to create a lot of my blogs simply because they are so easy to use and have a lot of built in widgets and features but I also establish a dedicated URL even if it's only to redirect visitors to my blogger page. There are several reasons for this. One is it makes it a lot easier to tell someone your blog address or use it in printed media. The other reason is I think it helps people take you blog a little more serious and makes it look more professional. It doesn't really cost that much to do this, but you will have a yearly domain fee to pay. If you can find an available domain name that fits your subject I would highly recommend getting it as soon as possible before someone else takes it.

9. Have a contest. Having a scavenger hunt or trivia contest on your blog is a great way to attract new readers. Give away a small prize or do it just for the fun of it. Promote the contest on your social media sites.

10. Guest Bloggers. If you can find someone of a similar viewpoint on the subject you blog about, you can often convince them to write an article or share a story on your blog. This helps you in the content production department and I found also can boost traffic because they will share their article with all their friends.

11. Add a feed and get people to subscribe to it. Adding a feed to your blog means every time you produce a new post it will be emailed to all of your feed subscribers. This is a great way to keep people coming back and remind them to check out your blog.