If there’s one thing a blog cannot live without it’s traffic. Whether you’re blogging for pleasure, to speak out, for financial gain or any other reason, there is no point if nobody pays your website a visit.
Wading your way through the sea of traffic generation tactics leads only to one place, information overload. The real secret to traffic generation is to concentrate all of your efforts on two to three methods until you’ve mastered them. After which you have a few choices.
• Outsource it either in whole or in part
• Streamline the process and continue using the tactic
• Move onto a different tactic if it doesn’t perform
Two of my favourite methods for free traffic generation are Guest Posting and Blogging Alliances. With just these two traffic tactics you can generate thousands of unique visitors per month.
Blogging Alliances
Blogging alliances involve starting relationships with other bloggers in your niche. The idea behind them is to help each other out by promoting each others products, blog posts, lists etc. The combined power of multiple blogs will help everybody within the alliance to grow their blog faster.
To get the ball rolling you should always make the first move. Here are a few things you should do to get the attention of the blogger you’d like to make an alliance with and you should do this without expecting any type of reciprocation.
Comment on their blog
Write a guest post
Promote their product
Link to their blog
Mention them in your social media outlet
Once you’ve done this a few times the blogger will most likely recognize you when you contact them. Keeping in mind the relationship comes first, don’t ask them to do something for you the first time you contact them.
Offer to help them, ask them if they’d like to post on your blog to drive traffic to their site. Offer to send a link their blog out to your list or social following without any expectations in return. Once you’ve established a good relationship you can suggest making a blogging alliance.
After you’ve made a few alliances you’ll have an entire network of contacts who will send post regularly to your blog.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is another excellent traffic generation tactic. The idea behind this tactic is to leverage other peoples traffic. Bloggers are crying out for content and many accept guest posts from other people to place on their blogs.
It’s a win/win situation, the blog owner doesn’t have to write anything and the guest poster gets a link on a high traffic website that will drive traffic back to their own website.
To start with you’ll need to locate the website you wish to make a guest post on. There are a couple of ways in which this can be accomplished. Unfortunately there aren’t many guest post directories so you can go and find a list of them.
The only good place I know of that does have a list is http://myblogguest.com . If you don’t find a suitable website there the best thing to do is a search on Google, go here http://profitsecretsunleashed.com/blog/183/using-google-search-to-locate-websites-accepting-guest-posts/ for instructions on the best way to go about this.
Once you’ve got a good list of potential places to submit your guest post to it’s time to vet them. Don’t just post to any website, here are a few things to look for before submitting you guest post.
Good social media presence on the blog
Outgoing text links are clearly identifiable
Has a Google page rank of 4 or higher
Makes regular posts and has posted in the last few days
Has an optin box for email subscription
The reason for this is the primary reason behind doing a guest post is to drive traffic to your own website. If the website has all of the mentioned above items then the website owner can contact his large following informing them of your guest post which should, depending on the site send you a reasonable amount of traffic.
In return you can send your readers to read the guest post and drive traffic their way, this will help strengthen your relation further.
When writing the guest post always check the terms and conditions for submitting your guest post and always, ALWAYS abide by them. Ensure that the content you write is of the highest quality, don’t write the standard article directory fodder or your guest post will not get accepted.
The bloggers you are dealing with want the best quality post so they can keep their readership. If you write a poor quality post it won’t get tread and the website owner will lose some of its credibility if it’s published.
After you’ve written your guest post you need to submit it using the instructions given to you on their website. If it says it needs to be proof read, make sure it is or you risk not having your guest post accepted.
In summary
Traffic generation is one of the hardest things to do when running a blog. Don’t get caught in information overload, pick two or three methods to focus on and give them your full attention.Two of my best traffic tactics are Guest blogging and blogging alliances, I’d recommend you start with these two. If you like these blog traffic strategies and want to know more there’s plently more on my blog, click the previous link now to go see.
About the Author:
This article has been written by Darren Hodgson
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