For whatever reason a person decides to have a blog, spending little or huge sum of money on tools and services which mostly do not work with the aim of generating traffic is never the best option.
It is commonly said that, one needs to use money to fetch money. I do agree with this adage but money can mean a lot. We all will agree that time is money, therefore, spending your previous time working on your blog is enough money spent to be able to fetch you some good returns.
If you have been in the blogging world for some time now or even if you just started, one thing you have read over and over again or will always read is that the success of your blog largely depends on your traffic. Traffic is therefore the core upon which the wellbeing of your blog rest.
There are so many businesses out there which might have approached you or will approach you with proposals to generate traffic for you in return for money. To be frank, most of these traffic schemes are scams and never help in the long run.
Even if you have some cash to throw away, do not spend any money on such traffic generating schemes unless you have tried out the free easy ways to generate traffic for your blog outlined below. Why pay when you can perfectly do it yourself at ease?
1. Produce Quality Blog Content
You do not need to be Einstein to know that cheap stuffs do not sell online especially when there are millions of competitors out there. Why should someone stay or visit your blog if your contents are all pirated and valueless? You must provide readers with what they are searching for, things they love and want to know.
Without genuine quality contents, your search engine ranking will drop or will always remain zero. No matter how hard you try to push your blog, even your own friends will not visit or stay on your blog.
Who wants to buy counterfeit goods? No one so why expect someone to read your counterfeit posts? Remember, time is money so why should someone spend his money (time), buying (reading) your crap?
Be well informed about issues within your blogging niche by researching, reading and writing quality posts. Sooner than you may think, your blog will emerge as an authority in your chosen niche.
2. Effective Use Of Social Networking Platforms
Have you ever thought about tapping into the millions of people using popular social networks like facebook , twitter and linkedIn?
By spending few hours a week on such platforms, you can effectively promote your blog, yourself and your brand on there. Give it ago if you have not done this yet.
Create a fan page for your blog on facebook and ask friends & readers to join. It will soon be extended to friends’ of your friends and friends of your readers.
On twitter, follow friends and people blogging within your niche. It is not a bad practice to ask these people to follow you back. With your quality posts being tweeted by you, you will surely receive good number of retweets from your followers and followers of your followers.
3. Engage In Guest Posting
It is difficult to be writing for your blog and also have time to freely write as a “Guest” for other blogs with the intent to gain traffic from the blogs you write for. However, it really works if you are able to write at least once a month as a Guest on any blog within your niche with substantial number of readers.
Your posts will pull in huge traffic for your blog as your blog name and link would be provided in or below your articles. Also, links from such already established blogs will help your ranking, helping you establish your brand and identity as well as putting you in the know.
If you have not tried guest posting yet, then you are greatly losing out, give it a go!
4. Comment On Other Blogs Within Your Niche
I love to read posts of other blogs ahead of me. I also comment and share my thoughts, knowledge & experience on posts which I find interesting.
Some blogs allow you to leave your link in your comment as long as you have made a genuine comment and not spamming. Others that do not allow links in comments still offer the option to put your blog’s url as you fill in your name to comment.
If readers of the blogs you visit and comment love your contributions, they will surely check out your blog to see what more you have to say or what they can learn from you. Try this and see, it really works.
5. Word Of Mouth
Word of mouth is another effective way to generate traffic for a blog though many bloggers do not pay much attention to this. If you belong to a club, a university or church, tell your mates about your blog and ask them to check it out.
If they find your posts interesting and worthy of telling others, they will tell their friends and families and within a short period of time, your blog will be on the lips of many people.
In fact, most of the blogs I am currently addicted to were suggested by friends. People turn to trust what friends suggest to them than what a search engine like Google would suggest.
Get working now and you will see a significant improvement in your blog’s traffic.
Very valid points. I need to do more guest posts this year. I also comment on all blogs despite what their niche is because you might be able to attract someone who’s interested in your niche.
Yea, Guest posting works but really difficult to get it going alongside your own blog. Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see more of you