Getting More Views and Traffic
Contents
- Tell people in your social networks about your new post.
- Make your content visible to search engines
- Pay for traffic to your site
- Bug your real-life friends
- Use appropriate tags
- Read and comment on other blogs
- Link to other blogs
- Let people know about your entries
- Blog often
- Relax, it takes time
- Size doesn't matter
Related
Want more traffic? Here are some tips for attracting more visitors to your site:
Tell people in your social networks about your new post.
You can do this using WordPress.com’s Publicize feature, which will automatically tell your Twitter followers and Facebook friends as soon as you publish a new post. You can find more ideas in our Social Tools support pages.
Make your content visible to search engines
If you want your post to be indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing, you should set your blog privacy settings to make your blog visible to all search engines. The internet is full of theories as to how you can raise your post’s visibility in search rankings: none will contest that good quality original content with a few well-chosen tags is the best way to get started.
Pay for traffic to your site
Web applications like StumbleUpon can bring visitors to your posts with rates starting at $.10 per visit. If you’ve just published a great post and you really want some feedback from visitors, this can be a good way to get the ball rolling.
Companies that are looking for broader distribution of their posts, including getting their content in front of journalists, may want to try services from companies such as PR Newswire.
Bug your real-life friends
Encourage friends and family to read your blog: send them reminder emails when you update and talk to them about it when you meet in person. Better still, encourage them to sign up for updates using the Follow Blog Widget. Often having a really small audience of people you care about is better than having a million visitors and not knowing any of them.
Use appropriate tags
Attach appropriate categories and tags to your entries and people may find your blog through those. Our link recommendation feature can help you find good tags (it also recommends photos and articles you can use in your blog post). Be careful not to use too many tags though — between 5 and 10 tags (or categories or both) is a good number. The more tags you use, the less likely your post will be featured in the WordPress.com tag listings.
Read and comment on other blogs
Check out Freshly Pressed or our Global Tags to find the people that care about the same stuff that you do. Then subscribe to their blog and get to know them a bit. When you see an article that interests you, click through to their site and leave a comment with your thoughts.
Link to other blogs
Just like you love getting links, so do other folks. (Remember, blogging is all about people.) When you link to another blogger or blog entry they’ll often find your blog through their stats, Technorati, or a pingback and come to see what you had to say. If you’re interesting, they may even subscribe to you and leave comments just as we suggested you do above.
Let people know about your entries
If you have a blog entry that you wrote with someone in mind, feel free to drop them a short email with a link to it.
WARNING: This only works if used very sparingly, maybe once a month per blogger. Remember, you don’t want to annoy anyone or seem like spam.
Blog often
Blogs that have more frequent and regular posting schedules tend to develop an audience quicker. If you need inspiration, check out the Daily Post or view today’s Freshly Pressed posts to check out some of the best of WordPress.com and learn how you can be featured on the homepage.
Relax, it takes time
Even if you do all of the above religiously, you probably won’t develop a huge following overnight. Like anything worth doing, building a sizable audience takes time. Many of the bloggers you admire have probably been at it for at least a year. Stick with it, and don’t get discouraged by a slow start — everyone starts slow.
Size doesn’t matter
Finally, remember that it’s not the size of your audience, it’s how much you care about them and they care about you.
For more information on boosting your traffic check out the Get Famous section of Learn WordPress.
Last modified: May 17, 2012
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