Trying to Learn How to Generate Blog Traffic

I agree. Blogs of a more political or philosophical vien would do best on SM rather than traditional means of getting traffic. You gotta use hashtags and get people to talk about it. Try using Hootsuite to general engagement and buzz.

 

Thank you; I've been reading up on it, but now I know what it's called exactly helps.

 

Agreed if you are looking for authentic readers then it is ideal to not interpret outreach as "advertising". Many forums will ban you right away for inserting links directly into your first posts and social media groups are weary of direct self promotion. It is ideal to really show that you are an expert in your field and are therefore not fearful of sharing information freely which will draw people to you.

 

If you don't know what is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I strongly advise you start doing your research, because it's probably the most important thing to take into account when you're planning to drive traffic.

 

Thank you; I seem to be researching SEO, so that's all to the good, especially since I now know what the term means. I sound so naive, don't I?

Oh, and LeadMaster, about forums, I really work at providing content; that's part of why I find this process grueling.

 

Get a real domain name first, sorry, but get a .com or something. Find some forums related to the content of your site. You probably already know of a few. Become a regular there and post useful information. Look for other blogs that are similar/related to yours. Keep the content flowing to your site and focus on the forums and working with other sites and you will see an increase in traffic, but over time. It won't happen over night, but it will happen.

 

i would like to say something to you,the traffic comes by time, u can use hitleap i will help you if you PM me

good luck

 

First things first: get off free Wordpress. Yuck, yuck, yuck. You'd be so much better off on your own domain, really. And not only because you could earn from it.

Other than that, I have been sitting here chuckling at all the smug people with their big words and strategies. I know exactly what you mean and how you feel - been there, done that - and all that bollocks these people are throwing around doesn't help at all. It's like listening to politicians: it sounds great, but they're not actually answering the question or saying anything useful...

(That's humour, by the way - there are some good responses.)

Caveats: (1) I'm talking about real, interested followers, not masses of dumb zombie people who don't give a crap about what you're writing. If you just want a bigger number of hits, join a traffic exchange, buy followers, pay for bottom-zone CPM ads and so on. Personally, I'd rather have 30 real followers than 3,000 bots visiting, even though the stats look less impressive. (2) I don't give a crap about all the measures, ratings, reach, clout and other buzzword BS: I care about reaching an audience that is interested and involved.

So here are my very basic thoughts.

First, screw SEO. Sod it. I had a look at your site and you don't need it: you're writing quality content that's interesting and fun to read... but which isn't the sort of thing many people are going to search for. At least not in vast quantities. And if they do search, they'll end up on the big social commentary sites, not a free WP blog. Go self-hosted, install the AIOSEO plugin and forget it.

(OK, so if you're REALLY aiming to be number one, you'll need SEO, but seriously... you're not selling mobile phones, so WTF are you gonna use for site-wide keywords, anyway?)

Your primary audience is going to be people who are interested in the same subjects as you and want to talk about it, which means they're going to be social media people, forum people and other bloggers. WOM (Word Of Mouth) is going to be your first and best advertising.

What does this mean? It means you need to target communities.

Forums is easy: you find places where people talk about politics and social issues and you join in. Chat. Discuss. Opinionate (yeah, I know it's not a word). And put your blog URL in your signature. If you've written something about the subject under discussion, link to it. Obviously, don't spam.

Other bloggers is also relatively easy: you can find people on WP.com, in places like Technorati (which is a huge pile of crap, in my opinion, but hey...) and BlogCatalog, or just by searching. Read a few. Find some you agree with and some you think are retarded. Then comment on their posts. Establish a bit of a relationship through the comments, by visiting frequently and offering your opinion - not EVERY post, but frequently. Make sure your blog URL is included somewhere. Much like forums, really.

That, by the way, is why people like Tumblr - because it's a massive community where it's easy to find related blogs and follow them. They will follow back. But in the end, it's just surface BS: they're hardly ever REAL followers. They just want another person on their follows list so they can say how popular they are.

Social media is a bit more complex. The thing is that each bit is different. Twitter, for example, is somewhere you just post little thoughts. A comment on something that's happening, an opinion, an idea. Whatever. You do this enough and people will start to follow you - especially if you comment on something and include a hashtag (#obamacare or something, for example). Be yourself. Comment, reply, chat. And every now and then, drop in a post URL, especially when you post something new. That's it for Twitter. (BTW, same goes as for Tumblr: there's a significant difference between real followers and people who just want you in their "audience" - quantity does not mean quality.)

FB is similar, but mostly you just post your updates (which is automated in WP) and occasionally share stuff that people might like. Like Twitter, people eventually follow. You may actually do better by joining an existing community/group that allows people to post their URLs, rather than trying to build your own following from scratch.

The bookmarking sites (Reddit, Digg, etc.) are tougher. Without a crowd of followers to bump your posts, you're unlikely to do well, but basically you just post every URL of every post you make. Put it in the right category and hope people give it likes (or diggs or whatever). There are communities that promote each other on those sites and, believe me, if you ever get near the front page the traffic is scary. I once had a post that made it for an hour or two and got 10k unique hits in a day.

Other than that, there are tons of little tricks for traffic, but I don't know how many will be appropriate for your subject matter. I always point people here: traffic tips.

To sum up: IMHO, unless you're selling something it's going to be more about you, your personality and an ongoing conversation than it is about demographics, keywords and other techie stuff. All you have to do is keep talking (post x tweets, x FB updates, 1 bookmark and x forum posts per day) and people will drop in, enjoy the site and become commenters.

Oh, yes: always try to end your posts with a question, or leave something out, so that people want to have their say. I almost always forget to suggest that.

Good luck and feel free to ask if you need anything clarifying.

 

Quoting a contributor here.....
.........
3. Post on Linkedin, Twitter (use tweetadder to follow all the followers of somebody who's big in your niche, they will start following back), and google+
4. Post on 5-10 forums, put the link in your signature......."

I agree with him.
You may ask why.
I will tell.
The quality of people and leads on LinkedIn is super high! That's why LinkedIn charges an insane amount of money for their PPC clicks to advertise to them! People are paying like $10 a click to advertise on LinkedIn. It's crazy!
But there are Amazing Secrets on how to get massive targeted leads for any offer, not minding the niche.
Someone on fiverr leaks his secret. If it works, its the bomb.
He claims that you can literally build an ultra-targeted list of over 1000 people in less than a week. Whenever you want, for free.
The ability to easily build large and targeted lists with an incredibly small amount of work.
Even without a website.
Hope this maybe of help.

 

Try the beginners course on SEO over at SourceWave dot com if you want an authority source for SEO. Alex does a great job at laying out what you need to know about ranking websites in Google. Hope this will help you out.

 

You can go to google and type: "Lifting weight fórums", "gain weight fórums" "lifting weight blogs", " pop culture fórums or blogs" stuff like that. Search for fórums and blogs, play with google and look for them. Then sign up and post in the fórums but post really good answer that can help people and you add your site in the signature. Then you can open a Facebook account and twitter too.

Hope this helps =)

 

Started a new thread, here: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/looking-for-for-help-linking-my-namecheap-domain-to-my-wordpress-com-blog.2701268/ about getting my host site, and domain, to jive.

 

I don't recommend you join Tumblr. I recommend you get a self hosted hosted WP blog and your own domain so people start taking your site seriously.

 

have my own domain, http://thevanitymirror.com/ here, but I am trying to link it to my Wordpress account, but have yet to experience success. What do I do?

 

Belay what I just said. My newest blog is indeed up, and can be found here: http://thevanitymirror.com/ can it be monetized, or will more need be done with it?

 

See other thread.

 

Also try to interact with others blogs.

 

Are you still using the free Wordpress platform or did you move to your own self hosted WP blog?

If you're using WPO free blogging platform then you can't monetize your site as it's against their terms. You need a self hosted site if you want to make money out of this.

 

build high quality backlinks for your websites. Do guest posting.

 

There's a lot of great answers already.... I'll add that instead of trying to do
all of them at once, focus on a couple methods that you enjoy doing and
become an expert at using those methods. Then you can always start
adding the other methods to bring even more traffic later.

It takes time and patience to bring in traffic in the beginning unless your
using paid traffic methods. But stay away from sites that promise to get
183,374 visitors to you site in 24 hours. Those type sites will only hurt
your rankings and oftentimes no one actually visits your site.