60+ Tips On How To Get More Blog Traffic

The all-elusive blog traffic – how do you get more of it?

Here’s a little help, some from Seth Godin, some from yours truly; but either way, these 60+ tips to increase your blog traffic are yours to use or forget about.

1. Use lists
2. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
4. Break news.
5. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Announce news.
9. Write short, pithy posts.
10. Start a debate.
11. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
12. Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
13. Write long, definitive posts.
14. Write about your kids.
15. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
16. Be sycophantic. Share link love and expect some back.
17. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
18. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
19. Coin a term or two.
20. Ask your readers questions.
21. Do email interviews with the well-known.
22. Answer your email.
23. Answer your blog comments.
24. Comment on other blogs.
25. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
26. Be anonymous.
27. Be interesting and mysterious.
28. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
29. Post your photos on flickr.
30. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
31. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
32. Include comments, so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
33. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
34. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
35. Point to useful but little-known resources.
36. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers–like gadgets and web 2.0.
37. Write about Google.
38. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
39. Don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses.
40. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
41. Run no ads.
42. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
43. Write about blogging.
44. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
45. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
46. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
47. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
48. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
49. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
50. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
51. Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
52. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
53. Be patient.
54. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
55. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
56. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
57. Write in English.
58. Better, write in Chinese.
59. Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
60. Don’t be boring.
61. Or be boring Ben Stein-style.
62. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

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