How to increase traffic to your blog or website - more traffic, more money

1. Write more content. If you want to increase site traffic, you’ve got to write content. People will not visit your site if you don’t write a decent amount of good quality content, and new visitors definitely won’t come back. So keep writing great posts!
2. Have a good design and layout. If your site or blog’s design is messy, sloppy, hard to navigate, a rainbow of colors that don’t match or are hard on the eye, or full of errors, you will instantly go down the drain.
3. Get your own domain. I promise that if you have your domain, you will get more traffic. You will linked to more and people will more easily remember your URL. Try to get your own domain and have it from the start.
4. Start using StumbleUpon. I have had a HUGE success with StumbleUpon. When the right article from your blog meets StumbleUpon, expect a lot of people to rate your post a thumbs up, and then even more people “stumbling upon” your blog.
5. Guest blog. Offer to write a post on someone else’s site. Even better, have the post already written up and then let the blogger know you have a post ready to guest blog on their site, if it’s okay with them. When you write your guest blog post, find a post on your own blog that’s related and link to in your guest blog post. A link for you on their blog, and more ability to increase site traffic.
6. Begin tagging your images. When you have an image in your post, it should always be tagged properly. Make sure the width and height are clearly defined. But most importantly, fill out the alt and title tags with the image’s keywords.
7. Respond to your comments and email. People love a blog whose owner is interactive and thoughtful, an owner who gets back quickly with response to their comments and emails. If you can do this, except more loyal readers who will love you. :) Then expect more increased site traffic and more linkage.
8. Use MyBlogLog. Make sure you have an eye-catching avatar. Then join all the MyBlogLog communities you can (daily limit of 15). In no time your avatar will be all over all the MyBlogLog blog and community pages, and you’ll see more and more visitors coming to you.
9. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time with crazy “money earners” such as those that pay you to click, pay you to read, pay you to surf, pay you to search, or anything like that. Those aren’t worth anything. Instead, spend your time writing quality content and the increase in site traffic will follow.
10. Pay attention to your stats. Pay attention to your stats and Google Analytics. See what keywords are getting you the most traffic and what posts your readers like and don’t like. Use this knowledge to keep writing more popular posts filled with great keywords.
11. Link to other posts. When you link to posts on other blogs, that creates a trackback, or pingback. When you link to another blogger’s post, if they have trackbacks turned on, you will receive a link back as well in the comments section of the post of which you linked.
12. In your posts, ask your readers questions. Readers like to feel important and a lot of them like to talk. The next time you write a post, ask them a question or their opinion on something. You’ll receive a lot more comments and many of the visitors will be more likely to come back.
13. Make a lens on Squidoo. On Squidoo, you can make your own lenses, aka, pages, on their site. Make a lens that is relative to your blog or site’s topic, and then be sure to link to your blog on the lens! Did I mention you can also make money on Squidoo? Click here to read more.
14. Comment on other blogs. When you comment on other blog’s 99.9% of the time there is a box you can write in your own site’s address. Then from there, when people view your comment, they can click through to your blog or website! Comment on as many different blog’s as you can. Maybe even set aside a day of the week for commenting. The more comments you leave, the more you are noticed, and the more traffic you get.
15. Write list posts. Everybody loves list posts. This post is a list post. Examples are “Top 10 Blog Themes”, “25 Uses for Vinegar”, and “5 Helpful Website Tools”. List posts are usually linked to a lot more and get a lot more traffic than normal posts.
16. Submit your blog to search engines. Most people get the majority of their traffic from search engines. When people search for your keyword and find your site or blog, there’s more traffic! Click here to submit your blog to be indexed in Google if it hasn’t been already, and remember to keep writing fresh content for the engines to chew on!
17. Establish relationships with fellow bloggers. Develop relationships with all kinds of bloggers, especially those also in your niche. Comment on their blogs, have conversations, link to them, make friendships. And before you know it, they’ll be linking to you too and maybe sending some traffic your way.
18. Use traffic exchanges. I’m not quite sure if you can be penalized for using traffic exchanges, but they can bring you loyal readers if your blog is good enough, besides the continuous traffic. See my post on the BlogMad traffic exchange.
19. Link to your other posts as often as you can. Link internally to posts on your own blog. This helps your rankings and also helps your site traffic increase. If people who come to your your blog have nothing else to see, they will leave. When you link to your other articles, they will most likely choose to go read those as well before leaving, and will stay on your blog longer.
20. Sign up on Yahoo! Answers. On Yahoo! Answers you are able to answer other people’s questions, help them, and give answers. There is a box where you can write the source of where you got your answer. Answer questions in your field and link to your blog posts as the source!
21. Sign your blog up on blog top lists. A blog top list is a chart of all the blogs that are in it. The list is numbered and your blog can go higher on the list when it has more traffic, more votes, more incoming visitors, etc. They’re very simple and easy to join. Plus, they can rake in the traffic! Click here to see some top lists you can join and learn more.
22. Submit to site directories. Some directories list hundreds of sites, some list thousands. The backlinks are great, but the traffic from the directories will be less than a trickle, most likely nothing. However, submit with your site’s name using your keywords, and then you could be ranked more highly on Google for those keywords, which means more traffic!
23. Don’t use link trains. This does not directly related to traffic but it’s still good advice. I made the mistake of joining in on the ViraLink and ViralTags, and you should never do that! Besides, your readers will appreciate it and they’ll stick around longer. ;)
24. Reread, edit, and go over your posts. No one wants to link to a post that is poor quality. Even if the post is a brilliant idea, if it’s full of spelling and grammatical errors, it won’t be linked to. And no links means no traffic.
25. Submit your posts to blog carnivals. Go to the Blog Carnival website and submit as many of your articles to as many carnivals related to your niche as you can. When the carnival edition you submitted to is posted, not only will you have linkbacks, but you’ll have more visits to your blog. If you don’t understand what a blog carnival is, read about it here.
26. Hold your own blog carnival. I think blog carnivals are very fun to hold. People submit their articles to your carnival. When you publish your carnival, almost all of those people go to the carnival edition to view their link there. And you carnival can also be featured on the Blog Carnival website homepage.
27. Link exchange with other people in your field. Whether the link exchange is on a sidebar on every page of the site, on one page of the site, or in a post on the site, it’s up to you. But link exchanging with others who have related blogs can be a big help. And when their sites grow, an even bigger help!
28. Use Feedburner for people to subscribe to your blog. When people subscribe to you via RSS or get your blog updates in email, they’ll see your posts whenever you make a new one. This is vital for keeping people in touch with your blog and getting them to come back.
29. Use Youtube. Make an account on Youtube, and then on your profile you can list your website address. List your site or blog’s link there. Then start making videos and when people view your profile, some of them might click through to your website!
30. Ask the bigger blogs for a link.I can’t stress enough that you’ve got to do this right or not at all. You need to be polite and not beg. Start building your conversation with the A-lister and developing the relationship before you ask for anything. Make sure you give to them, link to them in your posts. Before you do anything, read Kumiko’s post on this. I know if I got such a polite email as this instead of a begging spammer, I would have to say yes. And if you do get your link, not only will this help your page rank, but you should get a very decent amount of traffic.
31. Use Technorati tags. Getting into more categories in Technorati will get you a lot more exposure, which means more traffic. If you don’t know what Technorati tags are, read Court’s post.
32. Write a post about a celebrity. No matter what your niche is, you can find some way to relate your topic to a celebrity. For example, 6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You About Blogging. People search for celebrities all the time and love the dirt on them. Quadruple your traffic when you right a post about a celebrity right after a big event in the celebrity’s life. For example, the shaving of their head, the birth of their child, their marriage, or their death, to name a few.
33. Encourage others to Digg your articles. Digg is a site that lets people vote on articles, on whether people like them or not. Your blogger friends will most likely Digg your work for you if you politely ask, or even better, add a Digg button at the bottom of all your posts. Make sure your best articles get Dugg and started in the right direction, and if the post is good enough, it can generate thousands of visitors a day.
34. Get a plugin for the social bookmarking sites. At the bottom of this post you will see a line of buttons that lets people submit and vote my articles to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and others included). I’m using the AntiSocial plugin. If you have this plugin implemented you are WAY more likely to be submitted to social bookmarking sites, which in turn means a lot more traffic.
35. Link to the A-listers. This ties in a little with asking the A-listers for a link, or sort of pushing them in the direction of giving you one, but this is much for subtle and much more nice. The more you link to the A-listers and probloggers in your niche, the more they will probably notice you. Then they might link to one of your posts as well, which could send huge amounts of traffic your way!
36. Write a pillar post. This is not only a list post, but a pillar post as well. This post is a long, authoritative, instructional post (and has also quickly grown to be this blog’s most popular article). Pillar posts should take a long time, hours, to write. You should link to your pillar posts often in your blog, and make sure they get top exposure. Pillar posts will get linked to and receive decent amounts of traffic.
37. When a major holiday rolls around, write about it. When Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or another big holiday comes, make a post about it a month beforehand. Give yourself time to be indexed and linked to. When the holiday comes, it will be searched for a lot and your site could be found!
38. Use smart URLs on Wordpress. If you’re using Wordpress and are using their messy URLs, you’d better get this plugin to switch to the URLs that include the date and post name in the link. Using that plugin will not make you lose your search engine stats or anything, it is a redirect.
39. Make your readers feel at home. If you are rude, never give back, don’t answer your comments or emails, don’t help other bloggers, or are always uptight and don’t make your readers feel at home, chances are they might stop visiting your blog. When you make your readers feel at home, you get more traffic.
40. Be a human, not a robot. If in all your posts you sound extremely business-like, never mention yourself, only talk about the same thing all the time, or are 100% perfect, it could actually send people away. I’m not telling you to be sloppy, talk about yourself all the time, stray from your topic, or make a lot of mistakes. But let your readers know you’re like them too and that you have some things in common. Don’t make your site be boring.
41. Take the ads off your site. To increase your traffic remove your ads. When you have no way of making money on your website, you seem a lot more serious and devoted. Most likely you will get more traffic and loyal readers. And then maybe in the future, you can ad the ads again to start making some money!
42. Start your own blog directory. This is something I tried once but failed at miserably. However, I’m sure if I tried again I could do it right, and you could too! When you make your directory at first, make all the links completely free and just have a link submit form where the submissions are emailed to you. You can do a weekly/daily roundup of all the links sent to you, or you can assign the links to their proper categories. When your site gets even bigger, you can ask for a reciprocal link. Then have a “featured site” table, and link to your main website in it. I’m not sure how this would work for everyone but it’s worth a shot.
43. Post about A-listers in your field. For me this would be people like Darren Rowse and John Chow. You can write about them as a person or a blogger or you can write about how they’re running and doing things. You can post your thoughts on something they’ve said or extend on one of their posts and then leave a comment saying you’ve done so.
44. Interview other bloggers. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never got around to. Interviews of other bloggers usually generate a few links, including a link from the blogger you interviewed. And links mean traffic!
45. Write link love posts. I try to write link love posts every couple of weeks where it is just one big post linking to articles in the blogosphere or on the web that I like, mostly ones related to my niche. Not only does this get you trackbacks, but it also gives you the higher chance of getting linked to in return, which then means traffic.
46. Have a contest or giveaway! This is a great idea. Hold a contest or a giveaway for a very awesome prize, and people will flock to your site in hopes of winning it. If you give away something really cool, the news will spread like wildfire. Beforehand though, make sure your blog is already receiving a fairly decent amount of traffic with some loyal readers.
47. Pretend to sell your blog. This is something you can do to get traffic but I do NOT recommend it. This idea has sprung up lately but in my opinion it’s not a good one. You can pay forty dollars to list your blog in a marketplace, and get a huge spike of traffic from potential buyers. Then, you take down the offer and keep your blog. NONE of that traffic will ever come back. It’s not targeted and it is a waste of money. But if you want to get traffic this way, go for it.
48. Be a comedian. Make people laugh. For a lot of you out there, this shouldn’t be hard. When you make people laugh they will feel a connection to your site or blog and want to tell others and come back.
49. Help bloggers that need you. If a beginner, newbie blogger leaves you a comment or email that is at least polite, don’t brush them off because of their lack of experience. Help them! You never know, they could become big one day and remember your kindness and assistance.
50. Have polls on your blog. If you’re using Wordpress, get the Wordpress polls plugin. People like voting in polls and like seeing what the outcome of a poll was. Polls are popular, and popular means traffic.
51. Start more blogs. Think you can handle it? They can be free blogs, or they can have their own domain. Whatever you want. Work on traffic for all of your blogs, and then have all your blogs link to each other (especially the smaller blogs linking to your main one). Then whoever reads one of your blogs can also be introduced to the other ones.
52. Create or hack a Wordpress plugin. Okay, this one might be for the smart computer geeks out there, because I couldn’t do it. But if you can, then expect to get lots of links and traffic from all over the place from all the people that use your plugin.
53. Create a blog theme (Wordpress, Blogspot, whatever). Same goes as for creating a plugin. I could probably do this one more easily than I could make a plugin, though. If you think you can, give it a shot! The traffic will pour in, as will the links.
54. Make graphics that are useful to others. If you make some free graphics people can use on their website or blog, you’ll get more traffic from this as well, and it’s not nearly as hard. If you’re a professional at making graphics, even try charging a little bit to get money on top of it!
55. Make graphics for social networking sites as well. People who use Myspace, Facebook, and all those types of sites love using graphics. Colorful banners. Animated, blinking images. If you can make awesome things like that, then they’ll use it. It’s worth a shot for some traffic and links.
56. Make a Myspace and get a lot of friends. Make a Myspace and work on getting a lot of friends. This doesn’t mean adding the bands or celebrities that automatically accept you. This means the real people. Just go around adding people. Go to “Browse” and add people. Once you have hundreds of friends, link to your site or blog in bulletins and on your profile and everywhere you can. It could draw in some traffic if you do it correctly.
57. Answer questions you get through comments or email in a post. If someone comments or emails you with a question, and you could give them a very long, drawn out answer, write a post instead. You won’t be wasting your time and then to answer that person, just give them a link to the post you’ve written!
58. Work on search engine optimization. The better you rank and do in the search engines, the more visitors they will send you. Do your research and homework on search engine optimization and get started right away!
59. Start an awards series. Spend some time making a little trophy or banner for an award. Make sure your award has a theme and a name, for example, “The Kind Blogger Award”. Then link to five kind bloggers. In the rules, get each of them to link and pass the award to five more bloggers that they think are kind. Many will link back to you as the creator of this award series and you will receive traffic for it.
60. Buy ads using Google Adwords. Something I haven’t done but might prove very helpful if you’ve got the money. Sign up for Google Adwords and buy advertising. People will click on ads and get to your site. Some could become loyal readers but many will not. A good way of getting traffic.
61. Order reviews through ReviewMe. If you order reviews on other blogs using ReviewMe or even PayPerPost, you can create a buzz on your site or blog. Reviews are probably the best form of advertising and the best way to get more loyal visitors.
62. Use ReviewBack to get reviewed for free. Most likely your free reviews will be on small blogs, and you also have to return the favor, but you could still get some nice traffic from it. Something to consider. Check out ReviewBack.
63. Write a press release. Click here to read how and what to do.
64. Get on the most favorited list on Technorati. The Technorati top 100 favorited list can be viewed here. It will be very hard to get on to and require a few hundred favorites (a few thousand if you want to be at the top of the list). But you will surely get a lot of traffic if you make it on this list.
65. Join forums and message boards. Join forums and message boards related to niche. If it is permitted, link to your site or blog when/where you can. Other people on the forum are very likely to check out your site.
66. Add your link to your forum signature. Another idea, but also only if this one is permitted. Add your site or blog’s link to your forum signature and get active in the community. The link will show up under all of your posts. You can get a nice little amount of traffic if the forum has a lot of members.
67. Write catchy post titles with keywords. First of all, posts with catchy titles receive more traffic than those with bland, unoriginal titles. Secondly, add some keywords to your catchy titles! You will get ranked better in the search engines. Also, when people link to your post with its keywords, you’ll get ranked even better, with even more traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc.
68. Use images in your posts. This is something I need to work on more. Use images in your posts. When a post is full of just text, it can get boring. However, (and this depends on your niche), I would recommend using only one image. You don’t want to get too cluttered.
69. Write a review. If you write a really good honest review of a new product or brand, it could get a lot of attention from people who are interested in purchasing the product.
70. On high traffic days, write more great quality posts. Let’s say you’ve just written a linkbait (on purpose or by accident) that hit the front page of Digg or did awesome StumbleUpon. That same day and the next couple of days, post more great content. Let the people who’ve came across your site know they should stick around because of your quality content. Keep the traffic going!
71. Post about important events in your niche. If something important is going to happen in your niche, post about it a couple months, one month, or a few weeks before it happens. Give yourself time to be linked to and indexed by the search engines for that post. When the event rolls around, you will get a lot of traffic if you played your cards right!
72. Share one of your secrets. Whether it be a huge secret about your success or a personal secret about your life, nobody can resist.
73. Do something unique. Build a brand and do something original that no one else has done. You will receive a lot of links and traffic for it and the name will stick around for a long time, if not forever. Come up with a new concept that no one else has done before.
74. Keep improving your blog. People will keep coming back to a blog or site that is constantly worked on and improved. Set aside daily time to plow down and tweak your blog. Also try to write that daily content.
75. Be yourself. The internet is a great place to be anonymous, but if you are, no one will feel a connection to you and want to keep visiting your blog. Just be yourself, don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, and people will love you for it. I promise.