Make your blog more popular
One of the most common questions we get asked is how to make a blog more popular. We have a diverse group of bloggers in the network. Some of you are very new, while some of you have forgotten more about blogging than I will ever know. So, these tips should be great info for some, and useless to others. And if you can offer any tips to new bloggers on how to make their site more popular, please leave a comment.
1. Get your RSS out there – For those of you who do not know, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, which is appropriate because it’s a very simple way to syndicate the content of your blog to other sites and aggregators. The most effective way I know of to syndicate your RSS is through Feedburner. This one submission should get you into a lot of directories across the Web.
2. Optimize your site for search – This is something I know a lot about. Search engine optimization tactics can make your site popular very fast. Ranking for the right term will sky rocket your traffic literally overnight. Blogs are inherently east to optimize. They have the main things Google looks for, plenty of fresh content, and usually some good links back from other websites. I’ll do a more expanded posting on SEO for blogs some point in the near future. But for now consider the following items. Follow step 1 and get your feed into a RSS syndication service. Ask other bloggers to link to your blog through their postings or on their blogroll. And title your postings with terms you would like to rank for. Follow those three simple rules, and keep your blog updated often, and search traffic should find your site. If you are on your own domain name, you may want to consider using Google Sitemaps to get your pages indexed even faster.
3. Make it easy for others to help you – Adding social tagging systems like Technorati will help people find your site through blog searches. And adding links for people to add your posting to Digg and their del.icio.us accounts will help your gain traction quickly.
4. Be social – Make sure to comment on other blogs, and add blogs to your blogroll that you like. This is half the fun in blogging anyway, and it will help build up your popularity with other bloggers.
It goes without saying that you should keep your blog updated often, I would say at least 3 times per week. And you want to write some good postings that other people will find interesting. Don’t just report what others are saying, have an opinion. It’s your blog, and that’s what will drive people to interact with you.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Great points. There’s no better place to be social than in discussion boards hanging out with people that share your interests.
Get to know people on the boards, and start following their blogs. When you build up a circle of friends online, and grow it, you will grow your readers.
Plus, you’ll learn better ways to blog and find lots of interesting topics.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:55 am
All excellent ideas, I would add be patient, don’t give up, building up a readership takes time. Feedburner was really easy to join, thanks!
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:16 am
Brilliant ideas! I’ve been trying to think what else I can add, as it seems to have all been covered…
Oh, ok, a simple thing but I usually do - to track and monitor my visitor stats. Most of the blog sites have a blogging counter. For some who don’t, install a counter on your blog so you know what’s happening. For example, a free counter can be found at www.SiteMeter.com.
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:02 am
All excellent ideas! Another tip that works well for my blog is to ask questions of your readers. Give information as a story, relate it back to your own experience and then ask a question at the end of your post of your readers, a leading question that invites people to give their opinions, share an idea, or comment in general. This will help the Pro Blogger in two ways, it feeds the brain pan of the writer, garnering new ideas to write and explore, and also involves the readers in an open dialogue that will keep them coming back for more.
I agree with Anji…feedburner was easy to join, and fun to explore, thanks for that!
Building up a readership is fun and easy, it does take time to build, but frequent posting and cross posting is a key to building a blog that creates and maintains a buzz about itself. Never give up, and keep writing!
November 3rd, 2006 at 9:09 am
feedburner is cool! i would suggest that everyone try it (you have too anyway according to the new blogitive rules i got on my email!)
November 5th, 2006 at 5:33 am
I agree with you about Feedburner. I know about it and have been using it even before I found Blogitive.
Cheers!
November 5th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Excellent points all! I would agree with the first commenter that said that discussion boards or forums would be one of the best places to get yourself and your blogs out there. Some forums allow you to put your blog url in your signature area so that each forum post will show a claim to your blog. That is a good place to start.
November 6th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Where can you find good discussion boards and forums?
November 8th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Use google analytics to track your blog stats:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
it gives you reports, graphs, and all kinds of neat stats about your website.
November 9th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Another tip - get an easy plugin like SimpleTags for your WP blog, and use it. When you make a post, click on your tags to see others who are posting about the same thing…and comment on their blog. Trading trackbacks is a good thing to do also!
November 13th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
I would like to suggest if you are running wordpress to get the plugin called PopStats. It is a standard plugin to the wordpress plugin directory and the info that it gives such as how many people are on your site at the moment - How many unique visit you had that day, what link they came in from, plus what search terms they used to find you as well as which browser they used. My friend BiggAnddy wrote about the best plug ins to have for your wordpress blog. It can can found here: http://www.biggandyy.com/2006/10/06/wordpress-mods-you-cant-live-without/
as he mentions the site that produced the plugin is in spanish but the pop stats page is in english. He mentions how to read the spanish page if needed. This is one of my highly recommened plugins to use.
Merlin of MerlinsTower.com
November 14th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Awesome ideas! Thanks so much!
November 15th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Hi, check out my blog and visit WordPress category for some nice WordPress Plugins and Themes listing.
November 28th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Thanks for such great information. I will follow these steps.
You can check my blog
December 12th, 2006 at 6:12 am
cooolll post this will me to make my blog more popular
February 1st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Knowing more about blogs has been been really helpful it has made me know how interact and atleast sending my writtings to the comp and let other people know our comments about how we feel about a few issues.
Thanks
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 am
Thank you for this information and useful.
March 12th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
nice suggestions! will appreciate if you can throw some more lights on SEO techniques.
thanks anyway!
March 13th, 2007 at 7:03 am
Thanks for the post. Now I just need to figure out where to leave comments.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Has anyone started a blog from scratch for the main purpose of joining blogitive for extra revenue? If so, how long did it take for your site to become popular enough that blogitive would consider your blog?
March 17th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Social networks specific to you blogign topic are a good way to get the ball rolling. I’ve had good luck with 9rules driving eyeballs to my site.
Thanks for all the tips!
March 28th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Hi guys,
Eric from FeedBurner here. First of all, thank so much for the plug.
Second, I just wanted to clarify what we do.
We actually don’t go out on the behalf of the publisher and list them in directiories across the web nor do we actively promote the feeds that use us.
We are simply a tool for publishers that allows them to get a complete view of their audience engagement (i.e. we provide feed stats, site stats, etc.) and we help publishers to make it easier for others to resyndicate their content and interact with it (i.e. add it to Digg, etc.).
Hope that helps to clear things up. If anyone has any questions about FeedBurner they can e-mail me any time. Take care and thanks again for the plug!
Cheers,
Eric Olson
Publisher Services - FeedBurner
312.756.0022 x2034
erico@feedburner.com