Keep your blog traffic coming

Many commercial blogs are created for a single purpose: to make money from easy-income sources like AdSense and other advertising networks.

This is fine, but these sources (unless you’ve lucked into some high-traffic keywords) don’t bring in enough money to enable you to advertise your blog. And organic traffic is fickle: you never know when another site will outrank you in the search engines, leaving you with just a trickle of traffic.

This means you’ve got to think of ways to keep your blog traffic coming.

You could:

* Guest-blog on another blog in a niche that’s related to yours. For example, if your blog covers plastic surgery, you could guest-blog on a blog which covers health and beauty. Both blogs would benefit;

* Write articles to promote your blog and get links. Article marketing is still going strong, although its value as a pure traffic source has been eroded over the past year;

* Advertise on other blogs by doing deals – you could offer another blog a small ad on your blog, and the other blog posts an ad for you;

* Do some highly targeted Pay Per Click advertising. Don’t try to cover every keyword in your niche. Just cover five relevant keyword phrases or keywords. Ensure that the keywords are completely relevant – that this, these keywords must appear on your blog. You’ll get fewer clicks, so your ad spend will be low, but the clicks you do get will be valuable.

Before you embark on your PPC campaign, create a free report or other enticement to get subscribers to your mailing list – and of course, if you haven’t created a list, do that right away;

* Write press releases for your blog. A press release isn’t an article, it’s news about your niche and your blog. If you’re not sure how to write on, get someone to do it for you. A well-written press release gives you credibility in your niche;

* Comment on others’ blogs in your niche. Make your comments valuable – don’t just “great blog”, because your comment will be deleted. Your comment should add something new to the conversation.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, pro blogging, blog traffic, PPC, guest-blog, press releases