If you build it, will they come?

You know how to create a blog, you post to it regularly, and it would be excellent if the quality of the content was enough to bring readers in droves. Unfortunately this generally isn’t the case, so here are some tips and ideas to help you get more traffic to your blog:

• Post regularly, at least 3-5 times a week if you can, but make sure each post is relevant and of high value to your target audience. Search engines like web sites that are updated regularly.
• If people have subscribed to your blog via RSS, they will be more likely to visit if you publish regular posts to remind them about you. Make your RSS feed button very visible on your site.
• Offer an email version of your RSS feed. Offering an email version of your RSS feed can as much as double your subscribers.
• Optimize your blog for search engines. It is recommended you have your own domain name and use a software package such as WordPress® that is designed for blog hosting. Ensure that you use Permalinks to make search engine friendly URLs for your posts. Choose the right keywords for your blog posts – popular keywords can have a lot of competition, so try to find niche keywords or phrases.
• Enable comments on your blog (WordPress has some tools that can be added to filter out SPAM comments) and respond to as many comments as possible – people prefer to read blogs where the author interact with commenters.
• Put your blog URL in your signature on e-mail messages and in forum posts. Become an active, and useful, member of forums where your target audience interacts. Be sure to post your blog URL in your signature line.
• Submit your blog to blog search sites and directories like Technorati where people are specifically searching for blogs
• Link to other blogs that compliment yours, or cover a similar topic area. The blog owner will see traffic coming from your blog and will likely link back to you.
• Comment on other blogs and include your blog URL in your comment. Be sure your comments are valuable to the other blogs, and not just spamming for links.
• If you haven’t already, add the ability to bookmark your posts onto social networking sites such as Digg and Del.icio.us . You can find a pre-made button for this at AddThis .
• Use trackbacks to link to high linking blogs or authority web sites. Many blogs have trackbacks enabled that can provide a link back to your post in their comments.
• If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent people in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.

Most of all make sure you use a reliable blog hosting platform. Nothing will turn potential readers away faster than a blog page that is slow to load, or even worse, unavailable.