Top 10 Traffic Sources For a Blog
Posted by Ching Ya | Posted in Blog Traffic, Blogger Tips, Guest Posts | Posted on 24-04-2009
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This week it’s my pleasure to present you a guest post by Rajeev Edmonds, who also known as mintblogger. Rajeev has always been a mentor, a kind friend who has been very helpful in the beginning of my blogging journey. He owns a blog about Blogging Tips & Social Media. Today he shares with us the Top 10 Traffic Sources For a Blog. Enjoy! ~ Ching Ya
Traffic is life and blood of Internet. It is the driving force of any successful online business. There are dozens of channels through which traffic may arrive on your web site or blog. Some of these are conventional channels and some are unconventional and relatively new which were non-existent a decade back. Here are some popular traffic sources that contribute in building traffic on your blog.
Organic Traffic
Search engines are unarguably the biggest traffic source for almost every blog. Depending on the niche, age of the blog and size of the archive, your organic traffic share can range anywhere between 30% to 90%. As your tail gets long, the traffic from organic sources inflates dramatically. Gradually this traffic becomes consistent sending targeted visitors to your blog. If you want regular traffic from search engines, you must take care of the following things while generating content.
1. Consistency
2. Search engine friendly
3. Quality
4. No duplicate copies
5. Easily indexable
Social Media
After search engines, social media sites are the second most popular traffic pulling sources. On a good day your social media traffic can be as high as 2 to 4 times of your normal organic traffic. Here’s a social media traffic case study by Darren Rowse showing a Tsunami of 250,000 visits on Digital Photography School in a single day.
Feed Aggregators (Email + RSS)
Feed subscribers are a good source of repeating visitors. Generally, feed click-through rate depends on variable conditions. If you are providing full feed to subscribers, clicks will naturally be much low as compared to partial feeds. But again it’s a trade-off between more visits versus good subscriber retention rate.
Guest Blogging
That’s what I’m doing right now. Guest blog more often and see the growth in traffic as well as subscribers. If you have a new blog, it is the best way to get rapid exposure. Make the habit of submitting at least one guest post per week to a blog in similar niche. You will notice increase in your traffic in leaps and bounds.
Discussion Forums
Get involved with like-minded people in discussion forums and you are bound to receive more traffic via referrals and your entries. Here I must stress on the selection of forums where you are going to contribute. Although there are some very high traffic forums, but unfortunately they are full of spam. I’d highly recommend joining Authority Blogger Forum, which has a lively and helpful community and is almost free of any spam.
Article Marketing
I used article marketing as one of traffic pulling method when I launched mintblogger back in 2008. Big articles sites like Ezine Articles send very good traffic over long period of time. Couple of my articles on Ezine still sends good traffic after one year of their publication. Another advantage is backlinks every time you submit an article.
Comments
Regular commenting not only brings traffic but also build relationships. Be the first one to comment on a high traffic blog and see how many visitors you will receive. In case this post goes viral then it’s icing on the cake. Generally commentators have the tendency to check links of first few comments. The higher you are in the ladder, the more visits you are bound to receive. Make sure you leave a constructive comment to get the maximum benefit from it.
Blogrolls
Once your blog develops a decent readership, you will notice links to your blog popping up on blogrolls of different blogs. Sometimes bloggers include a link voluntarily and sometimes in exchange of a link. Whatever is the situation, they do help in diverting some traffic across participating blogs.
Advertising
And last but not the least is the advertising option. If you are desperate to get quick traffic and your pocket allows, you can opt for PPC advertising campaigns. Facebook offers very economical CPM based advertising options with a rate as low as $0.05 per impression. It allows you to create highly target campaign using the demographic data of Facebook users. You can also use Adwords to get good traffic in quick time.
Other Traffic Sources
1. Blog Carnivals
2. Direct Traffic
3. Bookmarks (Browser bookmarks)
4. Word of Mouth
5. Offline Promotion
2. Direct Traffic
3. Bookmarks (Browser bookmarks)
4. Word of Mouth
5. Offline Promotion
Image Credit: gem66
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Your post are very informative. I am learning much from your blog.
Your post has been very helpful, esp. to a newbie like me. MANY THANKS!
Hi Salute,
Always, thank you for dropping by. And I’m glad you like the featured blog post by mintblogger as much.
Welcome ChowJobs,
Thank you for dropping by. Hopefully you’ve picked up some nice tips to work on traffic-pulling for your site. Hope to see you again sometimes.
Cute pic by the way. ^^
I think organic traffic is some of the best traffic, though it’s always good to network with a few other bloggers and get a few “regular” readers too
Not being overly dependent on any one traffic source is important!
Certainly Chelle, in the long run organic traffic matters the most.
Exactly, that’s why we should never put all our eggs in one basket
Informal post, but I have to disagree with the comments regarding most all high trafficked forums are full of spam. I admin two communities that are spam free.
Great information indeed for those looking to increase traffic to their site. Especially forum posting – if you are a valuable community member on a forum, people will come to see your official website to learn more.
~ Kristi
What a great list for increasing blog traffic. I utilize my own blogs mostly for my own enjoyment but have been thinking of getting a little more serious about them soon and the tips on how to market them is greatly appreciated. I’ll be checking out Authority Blogger today.
Rose – Spam is certainly a big problem for most of the forums. I would like the get the links of the forums you are moderating.
Kikolani – Indeed, forum posting does help in building your profile and pulling some traffic, but as Rose mentioned, spam makes things worse.
lilymom – Authority Blogger is the best forum I’ve registered with. Glad you found the list useful.
Rajeev, my two community forums are http://bloggertalk.net and todays-woman.net
Wow, some nice points you have listed.
I am trying to get more organic traffic and also trying to get guest bloggers to post on my blog. I have been approached and I did not think about it then, but now I think it will definitely help out a lot.
Commenting on other sites helps a lot as you will then be discovered.
I also try and comment on blogs that have CommentLuv installed and are DoFollow. This helps a lot and you might consider adding it to your post.
@Rajeev thanks for the very informative post. I am a brand new blogger so these information is very vital to me. I will follow them and hopefully I gain some readers and visitors to my blog.
@Chingya: Good guest blog post. BTW, how do I invite a guest post to my blog? Will it cost me? Thanks.
Z
ZXT´s last blog ..8 Ways to Improve your Alexa Ranking
Zee,
For guest posting will require ‘zero’ cents. ^^ Only a link love directing to the author’s site with a small bio (if like). Paid posting is the one that involves payment.
Hope this helps.
This was great advice and I will put it to use. Thank You!
Dsheray´s last blog ..Rihanna Speaks out
Dsheray,
Thanks so much for stopping by. Do let us know which method(s) is/are most applicable for you. ^^
Hello, there Ching Ya, Great information about how to build traffic to a blog. I liked it since I am a newbie blogger and I am in need of methods to increase my traffic. Thanks for helping me up.
Also wanted to ask if you could be a guest blogger in my blog at Netchunks.com
I will provide you linkback
Anthrax´s last blog ..Do your Photo Editing Online
Anthrax,
Appreciate you visiting and I’m glad some of these tips helped. It’s a pleasure to guest post and I’ll contact you soon regarding this matter via email.
Thanks again. Do visit again sometimes.
So far organic traffic is the best. Yeah… Thanks to Google.
Jayce´s last blog ..How to hack Facebook account profile
Jayce,
I’m sure you had some good experience with Google search.
Here’s to a better year in 2010. Thank you for commenting.
That’s good stuff Rajeev.
I have just launched my 2nd blog which is my link above.
My 1st blog was a practise blog which is doing well but I tried blogging to see if I liked it which I do…then I releaized after much learning I think I can get leads if I develop a blog strictly for my business.
Now my point is if you are a new person or even a struggling person which we know most are then PROPER FORUM AND BLOG COMMENTING works well as Ching Ya has said before. It really is a great palace to start and it’s free except for your time.
I did not really buy into commenting on blogs and forums until I started to do 2-3 comments on 2-3 blogs or forums. daily..in my niche of course.
Within weeks I started getting connections asking about my main business. My mentor taught this as the 1st thing he ever did to get leads and he is right on.
Before Xmas I got some signups and commisions into my program and now I’m sold on the idea.
Now don’t spam but here is a little nugget for most folks.
Go spend a few days or week or weeks …whatever it takes..learn a technique about something you think will help newbies and those making no money (almost everybody online) then teach it in forums.
If you have a blog post the teaching on your blog 1st and then to forums.
Lastly organic traffic is awesome and I’m growing that also. This does not happen quick for most.
I belong to another professional blogging community which has and will help my rankings in a big way.
Nicholas Wind´s last blog ..“Magnetic Sponsoring Gives Birth To ANOTHER Millionaire…”
Nice post, I think traffic comes from RSS are constant are much usefull. But big amount of traffic still comes from Search Engine.
So blog must be SEO friendly so that our blog can grow.
Regards
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