A blog with less or no traffic is like a personal diary which no one other than you reads. With a zero traffic blog, you cannot expect to earn anything if earning from your blog is your primary aim. To get people coming to your blog, you need to be indexed in search engines and be at least a “someone” in the blogosphere. To be known in the internet, you can do so many things. You can write link bait articles, offer a guest post on a blog, and use adwords and so on. If you don’t have a monetization plan, I don’t recommend you to use adwords. Even if you have a monetization plan, don’t use adwords unless you know how to use it. Learn how to use adwords before using it.
I’m not going to explain how to use adwords in this post as this post is going to show you only the free ways, the best ones. The main reason why I recommend the below free ways is that few bloggers may not be good at writing link bait articles. Some bloggers cannot come up with a blog post that is good enough to be posted in another blog as a guest post. If you fall in this category, I recommend you to check the below ways as it will be getting you good visibility to your blog easily.
1. Submit Articles To Article Directories
You may have read so many articles which tell you to submit articles to article directories. This is because the method works and also it is free most of the times. There are so many article directories. Submitting your articles to every article directory is waste of time and is also not effective. It is better to submit your articles to the top article directories alone. I have had best results submitting my articles to EzineArticle, GoArticle, Article City and Buzzle. Few people advice to submit a single article to all the directories but I don’t recommend this. In my experience, I have learnt that your articles will not rank well in search engines if you do so.
2. Press Release
A press release can get your blog good traffic and visibility. There are both free and paid versions of press release. The free version will be enough if you can write a quality press release. The paid versions will get lot traffic and if you can afford it, I suggest you to give it a try after learning how to write a press release. Press release will get you good result only when you do it the right way. If you want to try press release, read this article on how to write a press release. You can get a list of free press release sites here.
3. Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are one another way to get people to your blog and become known in the internet. Whenever people see your blog address, they keep it in mind and return to it when they need to know something about which you write in your blog. I have seen people using twitter to get readers for their blog. The links in twitter get shortened and as a result your blog url will not be visible. I always like to use the blog’s name before I post the link. If I want to link to this article in twitter, I would update with something like this:
BloggingTips.Com – Free Ways To Get Traffic: link goes here
This would ensure that people will know the domain where the article is from and will return in future. To get more people to see your updates, you need to have more friends. You can get more twitter friends using the same ways I use. You can also use other social networking sites like facebook, myspace etc.
Have you tried these free traffic ways before? Have they given you any good result? Please share your views in the comments.
kellex | August 30th, 2008 at 11:24 pm #
I guess I’ve never fully understood the free article services. I’ve submitted things to them in the past, but wasn’t sure how it worked from there.
Have any results from work you’ve submitted to them?
Dragon Blogger | August 31st, 2008 at 12:02 am #
Excellent article, thanks for the tips I will try the directories mentioned, and I have never used twitter, can anyone find you on twitter, or only people in your network?
Ramkarthik (Post Author) | August 31st, 2008 at 5:03 am #
Kellex, the article writing thing works. You can use it to promote your blog or your product or even simply create a page for an affiliate product. Though some sites don’t allow you to link to other sites using affiliate links. You need to find the best, less competitive keywords and then write articles about it. Once you are done with that, create an attractive byline with a link to your blog or product.
P.S: If you want to know more about article marketing, do a search in google for “bum marketing”. You will find a site which has a free ebook written by a person called Travis Sago. It is a very useful ebook and I recommend it.
Dragon Blogger, I actually didn’t get your question properly. People whom you have as friends can only see your updates. You can search for people you know and add easily.
ASIAN Electronics Forum | August 31st, 2008 at 9:17 am #
Friendster and Multiply are good social networking sites to promote your blog. You start first with your friends and if they like your site they would recommend it to more friends.
cod5 | August 31st, 2008 at 11:07 am #
thanks great read, Also your site looks excellent, ive tried my hand at design but without luck.
Kat | August 31st, 2008 at 1:40 pm #
I am glad to have found your site. I am looking for ways to drive in more traffic as I am a newbie….
Thanks for the great tips.
Smm Guru | August 31st, 2008 at 9:23 pm #
Also keep in mind that something as simple as commenting can gain you long tail traffic to your blog.
Here are a list of blogs sortable by pagerank that can help you build traffic and link juice:
Do-Follow Blog List
avtorentacar | September 1st, 2008 at 3:10 pm #
Article submission is great way. You can also get traffic from submitted articles.
Trey Anderson | September 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 am #
Social networking sites are the key imho. I’ve noticed that on days that I do not fully promote or market my new posts via the 30-odd social sites I have bookmarked my traffic takes a serious dip.
There is such an oversaturation of social media currently that it is imperative that you consistently market yourself and your blog on as many as possible. Seems like common sense, but for some the time it takes to visit each is too much.
However, if you want traffic social networking sites are definitely a way to go.
Cesar | September 2nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm #
I never tried Article Directories and Press Release but many blogs recommend it. I think I should try them now.
Home Fish Aquarium | September 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm #
Great article every method you have listed is essential to getting traffic to a new blog. People should never under estimate the power of web 2.0 sites.