10 Blogging Tips That Will Flood Your Site With Traffic

How many times have you stumbled across a blog that is completely dead? You know the kind! These blogs come in all shapes and sizes.

More often than not it will happen to be a blog that tries to teach you how to make money blogging. Unfortunately, most of these guys, and girls, never make a dime so they simple give up, leaving the internet littered with trash. Why is that though?

It is not that difficult to make at least some money on the internet. While you may not be able to quit your day job right now, blogging for money can, and does, work for some people. Before you decide to quit (which is a guaranteed method for failure), try these simple, yet highly effective, blogging tips.

1. Personal Blogging - Blog about something that you have an interest in. You should know enough about the main topics that creating a four to five hundred word post, three to four times a week should be no problem. Even if you know nothing about your niche, you should at least be interested enough in it so that you can go out and obtain the knowledge you need to sound reasonably intelligent.

There is great money in the Forex markets. I have seen blogs that absolutely kill. If I were to try blogging about that, it would be the world's most boring blog. I have absolutely no desire to learn anything about the subject, no matter how profitable it may be.

2. Use Wordpress - Not only is Wordpress the best blogging software available, it is also the easy to use. I know using sites such as Blogger, or Squidoo, are free but you really should start developing your own real estate, instead of building up someone else's web value.

Understanding FTP platforms, SEO, themes, plugins, etc is not difficult if you take a few days and simple do some research. Owning your own domain name says to the world that you are serious and that they should pay attention. If you need help, simply ask.

3. Create articles out of your posts - An extremely easy way to increase blog traffic is to create articles out of each of your blog posts. I have begun doing this lately and it works like a charm. Typically, I use this technique by creating a post and then publishing it. Once it is 'live', I immediately go over to Goarticles, or any of my favorite article directories, and publish it again. I like to create an entirely new opening paragraph, and alter the keywords a bit, but this is not necessary to be successful.

The goal of turning your blog post into additional articles is to build one way links to your blog. The more links you have, the better Google likes you.

4. Bookmark Your Posts and Articles - Social bookmarking is here to stay whether you like it or not. While I tend to shy on the conservative side, many people experience tremendous success via bookmarking.

If you are in a hurry, using sites such as OnlyWire can really speed up the process. Let me provide you with a word of caution, however. If you produce rubbish, you will not see any positive impact by bookmarking your posts. Make each post interesting, provide quality content and it will increase blog traffic.

5. Think about Your Content - Once upon a time, you could simply post about anything and never even think about your post's on-page SEO. If you do that now, you simply will not have any readers. While it is extremely important to write for your human readers, you must also construct your articles to please the various search engine bots.

To not go overboard worrying about this but take a few seconds and plan out your article. Think about what keywords you are writing for and then include them in your post's title, the first paragraph and then again perhaps once or twice throughout the post. I typically shoot for a three to five percent keyword density. Although I never go back and check this ratio, I do keep it in the back of my mind.

6. Think about Your Reader - Just because you are the one creating the post this does not mean that you are superior to your readers. In fact, I would contend that your readers may know more about your subject than you do. Respect them, respond to their comments (both negative and positive ones) and form bonds with your readers. I have become personal friends with many of the authors I read simply because I was nice to them and they were nice to me.

It is amazing how much you can learn, and motivating these friends can be, if you give them a chance.

7. Recommend, but Don't Sell - It is okay to recommend things that have worked for you in the past, but never try and sell your readers anything. If you are always thinking like an affiliate marker, it is extremely obvious. Use flashing ads and banners sparingly so that your blog is nice and clean.

Using the sidebars for advertising is fine, but try not to have each one flashy and sparkling since it may detract from an otherwise brilliant post.

8. Plan in Advance - Create a posting schedule and stick to it. There is nothing worse than going to visit your favorite personal blog only to have the same content be displayed for two weeks solid.

If you have other commitments that may keep you from posting either create the post in advance and change the time stamp or line up a few guest bloggers. Personally, having guest bloggers works like a charm when you want to increase blog traffic.

9. Be Yourself - Do not try and be someone other than who you are. It is your personality that brings readers back to your site, not your content. Your unique spin on an otherwise average topic is what people are looking for. If you are loud and flamboyant, be that way on your blog. People love it when you act like yourself.

10. Add an About Page - Who are you and why should I read your little blog? This is a question that gets asked more often than you can imagine. It happens even more frequently when someone lands on your blog looking for an answer to something. The first thing many readers think is how can I trust this dude's writing? Does he even know what he is talking about.

Adding an About page will help relieve some of the readers initial fears.

While blogging for money can be very lucrative for some people, most people are better suited for personal blogging. Regardless of why you blog, following these ten tips will help increase traffic to your blog and may help prevent your blog from becoming a dead blog!

If you liked this article, please take a few seconds to leave me a comment and/or rating. Additionally, if you want to learn more about building passive income, please visit my blog at http://chasingthebull.info.