I've had a blog for a little over a year now (January 2007) but I never really got a lot of hits. In a year, I've only had about 30,000 unique visitors (besides myself) and I can't really seem to get out there with my blog. It revolves around video games - PlayStation 3, Wii, XBOX 360... how can I market it without spending too much money (if it all)? I've submitted to several different directories and whatnot but nothing seems to bring genuine, interested readers.
Post in Forums Post in Blogs for traffic Blog carivals Email other blogs you posts Post on do follow blogs for links Target the long tail Visit my website. It is devoted to make money blogging onemansgoal is the site, there is a link below Happy hunting
I have used 2 resources that are great for this. I purchased SureFire Success System by Luke W. Parker, which I review on my blog. I was blown away by this course and its continuing support. Another phenomenal resource that is free is "Authority Black Book" available from authorityblackbook.com Are you using a Wordpress Blog? Most of the tips in ABB are geared to a Wordpress platform. Good luck. Darrell Taylor
Join a big group of blogs and comment on other blogs that are related to your blog. Look for blogs that have a lot of traffic and comments.
There's a blog finder software that's offered for free. It searches for blogs that are related to your niche. Take a look at it reallinkfinder [dot] com. You can look for blogs with dofollow and nofollow, and generate quality backlinks. Make some meaningful posts to blogs that relate to yours and get involved in the conversation. There's a good chance that some traffic will flow your way, and as well, it should help to increase your page rank over time.
Hey man, I have a ton of experience in blog marketing, but I am on my way out the door right now. Send me a PM and I'd love to chat with you. matt
JohnChow.com got several hundred thousand hits a month for awhile there before it slid down hill a bit. He did it by word of mouth, submitting stuff to DIGG and other social sites, advertising (ESPECIALLY ADVERTISING), and having a cool-looking blog where he told how much he makes, and how he did it. That last one by itself brought in many more hits via word of mouth. It added up throughout the months he was actually out there pushing his blog. I would imagine that Shoemoney did the same thing. ... I don't know. But his blog is MUCH better anyway.
Market it the same way you'd market any website I imagine. Research high traffic keywords, write posts about those keywords, and get back-links matching the keywords. Places like Digg can be great if you write a controversial topic that is timely yet "fresh" On-page SEO issues like duplicate content in "tag & category" sections might contribute to low rankings or users ending up in the wrong place, so try to make sure page rank is only flowing to one copy of each original article. I got a significant bump by installing the "all in one wordpress seo" plugin (or something like that), writing unique content for categories pages, that kind of stuff. Check out this student loan category on my college money blog. First, the category itself has original content on the page. Secondly, the articles use excerpts. Finally, the excerpts are also original content that isn't repeated on the full article page. This way, I can build pagerank using targeted category keywords, and that page rank still gets passed on to the original article without seeing it as the duplicate. Occasionally, people will get sent to the category instead of the article they're searching for, but I try to look at my daily visitor behavior and see if people end up on pages that aren't the best fit for their search engine string. If its the case, then I know the individual article needs more backlinks and I'll focus on that for a bit - with articles, Squidoo pages, or forums or whatever.