You write in your  blog, whether it be for personal observations, or opinions or links to other's blogs, articles and more. In order to write you once needed a publisher, right?  We all wish we could be Carrie from Sex and The City, getting paid to write are day to day life. We are able to with our own blog.  We can  write about anything and  find an audience.  Finding the audience is our next subject.  A Blog can be informative, comedy, business, you name it, we can write anything.  It is your blog, do as you may!  I love seeing comments from readers telling the author's of the blog that they did not like their post and that they would stop reading their blog if they continued what annoyed the reader.  Your blog, your life :-)  You can find my blogs at

April Decheine 2006 at a Glance 

You are able to reach your readers on a more personal level, you are able to network with people like you and build relationships whether they are business or professional.  If you missed the blog section on my freebies page, look to the left for additional links.

 There is currently a blog created every second! Unfortunately, most of them will never receive much traffic. “Write it and they will come” might work if you are the Dalai Llama, The Pope, or George Bush, but you’re not, are you? And even their blogs would need some publicity.

Here are a few tips to build blog traffic. There are many more techniques available, but this is a good solid start.

1) Write great content

This should go without saying, but you need to write interesting “stuff.” What is interesting varies depending on your target audience, and you should know your target audience; hopefully you are one of them.

But great content, although necessary, is not sufficient. You might be writing fascinating material for guppy breeders, but if they never see it, who cares? That’s why we have additional tips.

Blog

You probably have a Web site. If so, absolutely have a prominent link from your Web site to your blog! Why wouldn’t you? I don’t know, but many people don’t. I hate it when I know someone or some organization has a blog and they make me look hard for it. Most people will give up, if they even ever hear about the blog.

3) Mention your blog in your e-mail signature

Most of us use email a lot. An e-mail signature, a small section of text or HTML automatically appended to each email, is an ideal place to mention a blog.

You need to use common sense however. If your blog is on bizarre sexual practices, you probably don’t want to include it on your business email signature. Personal blogs, unless related to business and with the company’s blessing, don’t belong in a business email signature. Professional blogs however, absolutely do. Use common sense!

4) Have an easy to remember URL

My home blog’s URL is http://demop.com. One night over dinner with a client, he mentioned he often typed in TheTedRap.com by mistake. Later that evening, I spent about 10 minutes online and twenty dollars purchasing the domain TheTedRap.com and pointing it at http://demop.com/TheTedRap

Traffic increased immediately – apparently he wasn’t the only one making that mistake!

If you have a long and difficult blog URL, like www.quismoabccorp.jobs/codered/Americas/baldnessremediesbyjoe, strongly consider a either moving your blog or getting another domain and pointing it at your blog.

5) Good Blog Post Names

Search engines love blogs, and much blog traffic comes from search engines. Google alone feeds The Ted Rap several hundred people a week, and some of them become long-term readers. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for blogs is important, and an entire book could be written on the subject.

One of the most important search engine optimization tactics is to give each post a good descriptive name with key words and phrases in it. If a post is about Saturn and Mars, include the words “Saturn” and “Mars” in it! A cute title like “Big round things that revolve around the sun” won’t help the search engines send you new readers, and conversely won’t help people looking for content like yours find it.

6) Leave good comments

When someone leaves a good comment on my blog, I always go look at that person’s blog if they have one. I have found a number of blogs I regularly read this way. Conversely, often when I leave a good comment on someone else’s blog, I’ll notice a few visitors following that comment back to my blog. Some of them may become regular readers of my blog.

What is a good comment? Not a simple “I agree” or similar, but a comment that adds content and value. Don’t leave a comment unless you have something to add.

7) Link to other worthy blogs (or use trackbacks)

Just as when someone leaves a comment, if someone links to my blog, I notice and go see who is linking. I typically notice someone is linking through Technorati.com or one of the other search engines.

If your blogging software supports trackbacks, they have the same effect as linking.

Most blogs will never have hundreds of thousands of readers, but these tips will help start a steady stream of visitors to your blog.