Five Stupidly Easy Ways To Increase Blog Traffic

You’ve got a blog and you’re putting a good amount of effort into it. You’re writing away, posting articles and doing what you can to get some readership.

The problem is that nobody is reading your blog. It seems no matter what you do you’re not gaining any traffic. And you know you’re writing good stuff.

What do you do?

Follow the five stupidly easy steps below and watch the traffic roll in.

Before continuing, bear in mind that yes, this does require effort on your part. The steps listed below are all ridiculously simple but you will have to set aside at least 30 minutes per day to make this stuff work.

With that said, here are the steps.

1. “Theme” your blog

No, I’m not referring to WordPress themes for what your blog looks like. Rather I’m talking about the subject matter of your blog. It should revolve around a centralized topic.

For example, if your blog is about computers, what type of computers? Are you talking about PCs, Macs, mobile PCs, laptops…? Get a theme and stick to it.

2. Write at least once daily.

There are times when it’s going to be tough to come up with material every day for your blog – but you have to stay the course and push out content often.

Tip: There will be days when you think of several good articles to post. Write them all up at once, then utilize your “future post” option in your blog to span that out over several days instead of just posting them all on the same day.

3. “Series” articles work.

This is one of the “secrets” of PCMech. We do write posts at times that span out in parts of a series over several days.

What you’re doing when writing up articles like this is setting up “cliffhangers”. You wrote a part 1.. so what happens in part 2? People will come back to find out.

4. Comment on LOW-traffic blogs

This is the exact opposite of what most newbie bloggers think they’re supposed to do. The thought process is “I want to be seen, so I will comment on a high-traffic blog and link my site in my comment.”

Wrong.

Very few people will click thru.

What you want to do is specifically target low-traffic blogs because the authors there are much more likely to click on thru and read your stuff – and possibly subscribe via RSS afterwards. These authors will read what you wrote, say “Wow! Someone commented!” and find out who you are by means of your own blog.

To find low-traffic blogs, use blogsearch.google.com and specifically search for words and phrases that match the theme (a-ha!) of your blog.

A few other tips:

• Only comment on blogs that have been written to in the last 48 hours.
• Only comment on blogs that allow you to post your URL in one of the allowed fields for that sort of thing.
• Never state “go to my site” or list your URL in the comment-body field itself because you’re spamming at that point.
• Always start your first comment with “I”, denoting that yes you are a real person, such as “I think that..” or “I like what you said…” or something similar.
• Never write negative comments. Ever. You’re trying to promote traffic here. Stay on the Light Side of The Force.

5. Try to stay local.

Taking on the entire internet at once is a fool’s errand because it simply can’t be done. If possible, comment on blogs that are in the same area as you.

You can find blogs like this relatively easily on social networks.

For example, if I were looking for blogs about where I live (Tampa Florida), I go to blog.myspace.com and search for tampa. After that I try to find a blog that matches (even if only a little) the theme of my blog and post a comment. I would make sure my MySpace page has a link back to my blog. Some will click thru, find my site and click thru again to go there.

Remember, this takes effort

Assuming your theme, articles and series (optional) are in check, the hardest part afterwards is finding other blogs to comment on. But as you know from the steps above it’s not that hard at all.

There are millions of blogs on the internet with new one sprouting up all the time. Utilize blog searches, find the ones that match what you write about and comment away. You’ll probably find at least 5 different blogs daily you can post comments to.

All of this takes roughly about 30 minutes every day to do. If you stay on track, this does work. It has nothing to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or any sort of “tricks” to get search engines to “notice” you better. Rather it’s all about the human factor.

The internet is people-powered. Use that humanity and you’ll do just fine.