Traffic: The Single Most Important Thing To Do For Your Blog

You’ve set up your company blog and optimize every post to achieve high rankings in the search engines. Now what?

Don’t rest on your laurels. You need to market your blog. But how do you do that?

There are several ways you can market your blog and drive traffic to it. Here are a few that we recommend:

• Article marketing
• Social bookmarking
• Social networking
• Forum posting
• Pay per click advertising
• E-mail marketing
• Directory submissions
• Sending out link requests

Each of these methods of online marketing is effective in its own way. Article marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing online and is great for driving traffic if you do it on a consistent basis.

Chances are, if you have a blog with Blog Content Provider then we’ve talked to you about social bookmarking. If we haven’t then you should give us a call because this is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog.

Social networking is different from social bookmarking in one aspect – the emphasis is on building relationships with people with similar interests in order to bring them to your website so that they can see what you are doing. Social bookmarking focuses on the content; social networking focuses on the relationships.

Forum posting is also effective in driving traffic to your website. The idea is to simply join a conversation and be a contributor. When people see how valuable you are in giving contributions to the group they will trust you more and visit your website.

PPC click marketing, aka pay per click, is very effective, especially for the short term, but it’s the only method of marketing mentioned here that requires a fee beyond any service provider that you hire to act on your behalf.

E-mail marketing is still effective and even in this day many people use e-mail without being fully connected to the Internet. We always recommend marketing your blog through RSS feeds, but you should also have a way for people to receive notice of your blog through e-mail such as a blog promotion newsletter (be sure to ask about Blog Content Provider’s newsletter services).

Directory submissions and link requests are on the bottom end of the spectrum for blog marketing, but I wouldn’t leave them. You never know how people will find you so you should give them every opportunity to do so.

You can rely entirely on SEO for blog marketing, but why limit yourself. While most of your blog traffic will come from search engines, there is a lot more potential out there for getting traffic to your blog. Some bloggers report that Twitter, StumbleUpon, or another social media source is the biggest driver of traffic to their blogs. By focusing on marketing your blog, you can increase your traffic and your conversions. Don’t just leave it to chance.

For more information about blogging, talk to a blog consultant.