“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” – Woody Allen
Hello class – my name is Coach Smyth and I’m going to be your instructor today.
After asking what you’d all like to know more about, increasing traffic to our blogs seemed to generate the most interest, so we’ll talk about that. Keep in mind that I’ve only been seriously blogging since February, so most of what I’m going to tell you about are the tried-and-true methods of other bloggers who actually have lots and lots of traffic to their sites. I’ve done a ton of research on the subject since I began committing my lunatic ramblings to posterity blogging, and there are quite a few things that people agree on.
1. Blog. Well, of course I blog, you say, or I wouldn’t be here asking your how to get more visitors to my site. Yes, but how often do you blog? You have to write, and write on a regular basis, if you want visitors. If you don’t blog for weeks, the readers you do have will stop coming by. Anyone who might stumble upon your blog won’t come back if your latest post is six months old. They may not come back if your latest post is more than a couple of weeks old. As of this writing, I average about two hundred visits to my blog each day; the week my son was here visiting and I didn’t have time to blog, those numbers dropped a bit. It’s true.
2. Read other blogs. I do that too! you protest. Or, again, I wouldn’t be here. So, comment on them! If you don’t leave a comment, no one is going to know who you are. When I’m bored, I’ll visit all my favorite blogs and click on the names of all the comments they get, just to see who else is nuts smart enough to enjoy this as much as I do. I’ve found some really great blogs I just adore that way. Leaving comments is good.
3. Reply to comments left on your blog. This is the thing I seem to have the most problems with personally, and I admit it. I’m starting to really work on it because it occurred to me – there are literally millions of blogs out there and these people make an effort to come to my blog, read it and leave me a comment. Like most people, I get a thrill when someone comments on my blog – I should acknowledge them so they’ll come back. And maybe bring more minions to me their friends with them.
4. Become part of a blogging community. Chances are, if you’re here, reading MidLifeBloggers.com, you’re interested in issues pertaining to midlife – more specifically, midlife women. Look at the blogroll to the right (is it the right? By golly, it is!) – is the name of your blog there? Yes? Congratulations! You’ve cleared one more hurdle. Because while I am fairly new to the blogosphere, I am no neophyte to the world of Search Engine Optimization, and the more quality, inbound links to your blog, the higher you’re going to rank in search engines – and in the blogosphere that means Technorati. For those of you going “Technorati? Huh?” Technorati is THE blogging search engine; it crawls and catalogs over 60 million blogs and ranks them according to popularity – mostly by how many other blogs link to them. Technorati is to bloggers what Google is to a business site. When you find like-minded bloggers and become part of community, linking to and interacting with each other, it’s like an avalanche – you find other people, other people find you and before you know it you’ve expanded your horizons and, just maybe, pushed he limits of your comfortable little world to an extent you may have never imagined.
I could go on, and will in future posts as we delve more deeply into this subject – I haven’t touched such traffic-driving gimmicks such as carnivals and give-aways and memes. But before you get all excited about becoming the next blogging superstar, take a minute to think about why you blog.
Did you begin doing this to make money or become the most popular kid on the block? Or did you begin blogging because you felt you had something that needed to be said? Or did you just want to give voice to the thoughts rolling around in your head? Let’s face it – most of us began blogging because it is, simply put, fun. Rewarding. Therapeutic. Insert reason here. But no matter the reason, no matter how popular our blogs may become, for most of us blogging is a very personal experience. Try not to lose sight of that; do you really want to set aside the real rewards, the real reasons you blog, just for the sake of some blog statistics?
As always, I’ll leave this with an open invitation to ask whatever questions you like. If I don’t know the answer immediately, I’ll find out.
Jane Gassner
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