Disclaimer

The tips in this chapter come with a price.  While I can personally guarantee that following the tips presented here will increase your traffic tremendously, you might want to ask yourself if you can handle the repercussions that come along with them.

Sitting in the center of a war of words will almost surely lead to a lot of negative commentary directed at you. You’ll need to quickly develop a  thick skin to handle the storm that this type of writing can cause.   Sure you’ll get visitors, but you’ll very likely make a few enemies in the process and the Internet has a very long memory.

There’s Traffic In Controversy

Controversy will bring in visits in a hurry. whether it’s because you’ve posted your view on a controversial subject or because what you’re writing is making people stop and ask “What did she just say?”, being in the middle of a controversy is a sure fire traffic builder.

There are several ways to approach this type of blogging, one aggressive and one passive:

The Aggressive Method:

In the aggressive form, you would poke around other blogs in your niche and find a topic that is being actively discussed, and which many people are discussing passionately.

Write a post on that topic that disagrees with or pokes fun at the popular opinion.  Then you go post a comment on a popular blog telling them that you disagree or think they are overreacting and add a link to your own post so that you can back up your comments.

Note: Don’t tell the blog author that he or she is an idiot for posting their opinion.  This is slander and is not tolerated well in the blogging community.  People who run around posting only inflammatory comments are known as trolls and will quickly be banned from posting comments at all.

While this will definitely drive traffic, it will also most definitely get you labeled as a troublemaker unless your posts are written extremely well.  If you’re going to go down this path, make sure you’ve done your research.  Failing to do so will make you a laughingstock.

The Passive Method:

The passive form of this method is less likely to get you branded as a nut-job or troublemaker, but may take a little more time to get traffic coming in.

In the passive form, you still write a post on a controversial topic.  That post must still be well written and you will still link to it in comments on other blogs, but you must take care to make sure that you are simply stating that there is another side to the discussion.

Remember; Going the passive route means that you are not trying to anger anyone with your actions.  The goal here is to stimulate discussion, not start an argument. (although that will probably still happen if your post is written well enough and people are passionate about he subject.)

Whether you choose to be passive or active, you have to be careful never to cross the line and personally attack or slander another blogger. The topics you go after depend on your niche, but make sure they are topics that already have heated discussions going on around them. the goal is to get some of that passion directed at your blog, not to make everyone so angry that they avoid visiting.

The Power Of Pomposity

Another way to bring a lot of scrutiny your way is to make claims that fall just short of impossible.  There are several very notable bloggers in the blogosphere right now that started this way; some by claiming to be the smartest guy on the block, others making outrageous claims as to their intelligence.

Be warned if you choose to go this route.  You will quickly be required to either prove that your claims are the absolute truth, or make it well known that your claims of being “the most intelligent person on earth” are just a catchphrase that you use to make your readers smile.

In either case, make sure that your posts are well written, extremely informative and researched to death.  Sub-par posts will get you labeled as a comedian at best and a fool at worst.

Snark Sells Almost As Well As Sex

If you are really interested in driving traffic to your blog and are willing to suffer a barrage of hate mails and unflattering comments, this last method may be for you.  Pick a celebrity or well known figure in your niche and rip into them on your blog.

Be vicious.  Point out their flaws, rate their wardrobe, comment on their mannerisms.  Be spiteful and hateful.  Stop just short of having legal action taken against you; then sit back and wait for the hits to roll in.

This method works.  I have personally used it in periods of slower traffic on my cooking blog.  In these instances I picked a television food celebrity whom I personally find  particularly annoying and simply laid into her every move.

Did it bring in traffic?  You bet it did!  it also brought out a slew of this particular celebrity’s rather rabid fan base who summarily vilified me in every venue they could find.  Damage control was a bit of an issue, but I eventually survived the fallout.

In total, that series of posts netted me upwards of 20,000 page views and about 100 comments, some of which had to be deleted in their entirety.  I can tell you with complete authority that this tactic does indeed work, it can also be the source of a lot of negative commentary directed straight at you.  You’ve got to be thick-skinned to weather it.

What Is A Niche?

The buzzword of the blogging world is “niche”.  Every blogger is supposed to find his or her niche and then move on to hold a substantial amount of the readers in that niche.  But what exactly is a niche?

The simplest definition is as follows:

a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it; “he found his niche in the academic world”

As applied to internet marketing, Wikipedia defines Niche blogging as:

Niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. While it could be argued that all blogs are, in some form, a niche blog, the term as it applies to marketing refers to a particular kind of blog.

While Wikipedia is correct as far as a blog designed to make money is concerned, I find that the first definition is more accurate for most blogs. Making money is not the primary goal for most bloggers, but sticking within a niche is imperative if you want to attract regular readers.

To state it plainly, your blog should cover one topic and one topic only.  The topic itself may be broad and cover a range of subtopics but your writing should always stay centered on the subject matter that you began writing about in the first place. That’s your niche and you should always stay true to it.

If you really must write about more than one subject, it makes sense to write more than one blog.  That way all of the content on each blog will interest the people that decide to see the other posts you’ve written on that topic without being forced to filter out the other subjects that don’t interest them.

What’s My Niche?

A lot of people struggle with the concept of finding their niche, but the reality is that it’s probably staring you in the face right at this very moment. you already have everything it takes to jump right in to your niche, you just might not know it.

To find your niche you simply have to define your interests and experiences.  Whether you love to quilt or have been working in the food service industry for years, there are people out there that are interested in the same things that you are.  If you know it and you love it, then you’ve already got  your niche, you need look no farther than the things that interest you.

Find A Niche Within Your Niche

Although it is completely acceptable to create a blog that covers all aspects of a topic, you’ll find that if you narrow down your focus you’ll be more likely to drive more targeted traffic to your blog than you would if your writing is more generalized. writing in a sub niche will guarantee that the people reading your blog are looking for exactly the kind of information that you are writing, rather than trying to find that one gem of information in the proverbial haystack.

As an example, let’s say you have decided to blog about Internet marketing.  Internet marketing itself is a very broad topic, so you decide to narrow your focus to only affiliate marketing strategies.  You are now writing in a niche within a niche on a very focused topic, this will keep readers coming on a more regular basis and keep your writing on topic because the focus of the blog helps to keep you from drifting off-topic.

Becoming An Expert In Your Niche

Now that you’ve got your niche, you have to try to position yourself as an expert on your chosen topic.  How exactly do you accomplish this?

First of all, do your research!  Even if you know the subject matter, make sure to brush up on the specifics from time-to-time.  There’s nothing that will hurt your credibility more than posting incorrect information.  It will probably happen, but if it does, quickly correct it and post a retraction.  Let people know you’re honest.

Write with authority.  Never make it look like you “might” know what you are talking about.  Always write as if you’re absolutely positive in your ability to cover the topic. This is not to say that you should be arrogant.  you should always be sure to remember that the people reading your blog are just that, people. You definitely don’t want to be insulting.

Post often and stay on topic.  Visit forums and comment. Visit other blogs in your niche and leave relevant comments.  don’t ask to be validated, simply do what you do and make sure that other people know that you are doing it… Politely.

If possible, set up an opt-in newsletter and maybe even write a few short ebooks on your chosen topic.  You can either sell these or give them away, but in either case it goes a long way to show that you actually know what you’re doing.

Of course there are many top-notch bloggers who have neither an opt-in list or have ever written an ebook.  If you’d rather focus your time on content, feel free to do so!  Even if you initially get little traffic, keep writing.  It takes time to get readers, especially returning readers.  If you keep writing it will happen.

Trackbacks are an internal mechanism that blogging software uses to “ping” a blog that you have posted a link to.  This allows the owner of the blog that you mentioned know you’ve written something about what they have written.

Wikipedia defines a trackback as follows:

A trackback is an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (ping) from the originating site to the receiving site. The receptor often publishes a link back to the originator indicating its worthiness. Trackback requires both sites to be trackback-enabled in order to establish this communication. Trackback does not require the originating site to be physically linked to the receiving site.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a “TrackBack ping”; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

In more general terms, a trackback is an automated way to let a fellow blogger know that you liked (or hated) what he or she wrote enough to mention it on your blog and kid enough o tell your readers where to find the original posting. This is a valuable tool and should never be ignored.

How Do Trackbacks Help Me?

Aside from letting your fellow bloggers know you thought their posts were noteworthy, making sure your blogging software is sending out trackbacks can directly affect traffic.  Most blog themes automatically include a quick blurb in the comments section (or near it) when a trackback is left.  This blurb usually includes a link back to the post on your blog where you mentioned the other bloggers post.  This allows readers of the blog you mentioned see that you’ve had something to say as well, which can draw them to your post.

The other very real benefit of trackbacks is that the owner of the blog that was pinged may decide to take a few minutes and read  that post as well.  This can result in a comment from him or her and in some cases it can result in that blog author mentioning something you’ve written that he or she liked. This fosters both community in your niche and traffic to your blog, which in the end is what we all want.

What Happens When My Trackback Doesn’t Show On The Blog I Linked To?

Many times you’ll link to another blog post but you will never see a link in the comments or trackback section of the other blog. If so, don’t be discouraged from the practice, there are many reasons that the link might not be displayed.

Most modern blog platforms allow the owner to moderate comments and pings.  If the blog you linked to is very popular, the blog owner may not have had the chance to make a decision to approve or deny the trackback, or may simply not want trackbacks cluttering up their comments.

Some blog themes separate trackbacks from regular comments. Check to see if there is a section at the bottom of the post that shows trackbacks. It may have any title, but if you see a list of short quotes with links, you’ve found a trackback section and you can look to see if your trackback has been published.

Of course it’s always a very real possibility that the blog owner just hates displaying trackbacks at all. In this case they may have been removed from the theme altogether, or the blog owner may have his or her software set to automatically reject all trackback and pingback requests.  This is generally considered poor manners, but it is their blog and they have that right.

Regardless, keep citing other bloggers!  There is very little that makes a bloggers day a better place than knowing someone is talking about what he or she wrote.  It’s the personal highlight of my day and I’m sure that others feel the same way.

I wish I could tell you that from personal experience, but alas, I’m nowhere near those numbers yet.  Even though I’m not qualified to give you that information, I know of someone who is, his name is John Scalzi.

You may have heard of John.  He’s an incredibly talented and successful Science Fiction Writer and former journalist. He’s also the author of one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, a little thing called whatever.

John is very aware of what to do with 40k + readers, because he’s GOT those numbers, and he’s willing to share his experiences with the rest of us through a video stream of a panel he was on at last years Tools Of Change Conference.  The panel also includes such notables as Ron Hogan (Beatrice.com), Patrick Nielsen Hayden (TOR Books) and Tobias Buckle (Self Employed).

John and the rest of the panel do a wonderful job covering the basics of blogging and the importance of community.  I can’t encourage you strongly enough to take the time to watch this video.  While you’re at it, make sure that Whatever is one of the subscriptions in your RSS reader, you’ll be very glad you put it there.

I’m going to be shameless about this.  John Scalzi is one of my all-time heroes. He comes in second only to Robert Heinlein as an author, but as a blogger he’s at the top of the list.  I want you to watch because this man has something to teach you.  The other members of the panel also run very successful blogs.  They know what they’re talking about, and they’ve got the numbers to back it up.

Take the time. Watch the video. Learn.

Peace, I’m out.

When I started the frst experiment in incresing blog traffic in 30 days several things happened.  Some were expected (such as increased traffic!), some were not.  Unfortunately, the things that I did not expect invalidated the results of the experiment completely.

My food blog at cbsop was picked up by a food blog advertising network, which goes to show that hard work does pay off, but also results in markedly higher numbers that are difficult to reliably interpret.

Off the list.

The second was a Stumble by Andy Beard that gained this blog several hundred additional visits over the course of two days with a lot of residual traffic.  while both of these things are good, together they had me scratching my head and wondering just how I was supposed to wade through the numbers I was getting and present them in anything like an honest light.

The honest answer was… I couldn’t

So, now that all the ruckus has subsided, I’m going to take another stab at this beginning December 1st 2007.  I’ll give the experiment a new title and we’ll start fresh and see where the ride takes us.

I hope you enjoy, I know I will.

Part four in a series on driving more traffic to your blog in 30 days.

So, have you been playing along? If so, you should probably know what your routine for the day should have been. If not, I’ll recap.

1. Post a new entry to your blog (or blogs) and if possible, mention someone else’s blog in your post, making sure to send a trackback or pingback to them as well.
2. Go find 5 blogs that you’ve never commented on before and leave a relevant comment on the entry of your choice.

Why do I mention adding a new post before commenting elsewhere? So that any reader that comes to peek at your blog finds fresh new content waiting for them. It has today’s date on it, it’s in reference to something that’s current in the world, and if it was written well, it might just bring them back. Search engines will almost always deposit a reader somewhere deep down your entry archives. Many people will click over to your main blog page to see if there’s anything new, don’t disappoint them!

Finding other blogs to leave comments on may be a bit of a challenge, depending on the niche you write in, and regardless of what you may think, every blogger is a niche blogger. Even if you’re basically just a daily journal writer, your writing is targeted…mostly to other daily journal writers, but it’s targeted nonetheless.

If you’re going to comment on new blogs, you’ve got to find them. The best places that I’m aware of to do this are sites like BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. These services cost you nothing, but in the case of BlogCatalog, I receive at least 15 visits per day just to CbsoP, and it’s been responsible for driving most of this blog’s traffic up to this point. To gain the most advantage from these sites, you’ll need to register. In the case of BlogCatalog, spending some time in the discussions is a good idea as well. I’m honestly not as familiar with MyBlogLog, so I’ll discuss their benefits in detail later.

Once you’ve registered, go check out their blog directory. A quick look at the tag cloud will point you to blogs like your own, or at least to other bloggers with similar interests. From there, finding new blogs to comment on won’t be a problem. Finding a lack of them might!

It’s probably a good idea at this point to start keeping a liest of the “New” blogs you’ve commented on. If you’re like me, a good portion of the blogs you come across will end up in your RSS reader and you’ll probably comment there again. This is a good thing! Being active in other bloggers comment sections can only help you to gain friends, acquaintances and in the end, readers of your own. I’m not recommending that you spend your entire day dropping comments, but it never hurts if you’ve got something of value to contribute to the discussion and in the end, most blogs are forums for discussion and community. If you’re a part of it, you’ll get attention. Just make sure it’s positive attention unless you’re very good at damage control!

Now that you’ve got tools to find new blogs to comment at, take a look around both BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Send a few friend requests or add a few friends. Join some communities (or neighborhoods) leave a comment or two for the other bloggers. If you’re tracking your statistics like you should be, you’ll see some of those people stop by your blog. One or two of them might mention your work on their own blog, and you’ve just gained the most valuable thing another blogger can offer you, a share of their readership.

If everything is going well, you may have already noticed a few new faces stopping by your blog after just a few days worth of effort. Tomorrow we’ll get in to some of the finer points of keeping them thre once they’ve landed, and getting them to subscribe to your feeds. RSS is the bread and butter of the modern blog and really should not be underestimated.

Until tomorrow, I remain as always, your humble narrator and partner in crime.

There are probably a few of you out there who’ve been wondering what happened to the author of this series over the past two days.  Honestly, it ws something called a weekend, and a teething one year old…  It was my actual life, and those can interrupt even the most dedicated of us.  I deviated from the “plan” and this little experiment may suffer a bit for it, though honestly, I don’t expect anyone to work nonstop for 30 days straight.  Time off is good for the soul.  It recharges the batteries and clears the mind.  It’s necessary.

Had I thought of it, I would have set this blog to post new content over the weekend.  This is something that WordPress excels at.  (If you don’t know how to do that, just wait, I’ll be writing about it soon.)  The problem was, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be writing this weekend.  My plans were to run straight through.  The problem with plans is that they don’t always work out.

The point really is.  It doesn’t matter.  Even if you’ve started along with me on this and for some reason you end up missing a few days in the process, there’s no reason not to simply pick back up and soldier on from that point, which is exactly what I’m going to do.

The plan for the day, write one more post.  Be sure that that post cites information on at least one other blog that relates to each website, and make bloody sure that I send a trackback or a pingback to that site, to let them know I mentioned them.  With any luck the site author will hop over to see what I’ve said.

The second step is as described in the previous entry in this series.  I’m going to go find 5 blogs I’ve never commented on for each of my two blogs (yup, ten total) and leave a comment there.  I’m going to be sure that those comments are relevant, are appropriate to the blog I leave them at, and that I’ve added my site address to my comment information. (Not in the text of the comment, with the exceptions we’ve already noted.)

That’s it kiddies.  Day three is about getting started in a big way.  Day four gets even more fun.

Stay tuned!

Today’s installment is on the tactics we’ll use to gain more readers on the two blogs in this study. These will include, but are by no means limited to, the following actions:

• Posting relevantly and often. At least once a day and up to 3 posts per day, per blog.
• Leaving intelligent comments on related blogs
• Leveraging the power of Social Networking and Community sites like StumbleUpon, digg, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog
• Using the power of “People that know people” to get the word out.

There are other equally important things that we will not be doing, period:

• Leaving irrelevant or worthless comments (Trolling)
• Actively asking someone to visit our blogs in a comment (Comment spamming)
• Adding our blogs to link lists, exchanges or blogrolls that they are not already a part of. (As I’ve said in previous entries, CbsoP has been around for a while, so it’s been signed up for a few. No new ones will be added.)
• Paying anyone to review our blogs and “get the buzz out”

I don’t use the word tactics lightly. 30 days is an almost insignificant amount of time to show a significant traffic increase on an established blog, and a relatively short amount of time to attract repeat readers to a brand-spanky-new blog. To see a tangible difference in our baseline statistics, the moves we’re making must be thought out well, and executed with a very keen eye for not only details, but quality. We’re going to have to make a battle plan and stick to it with military determination, otherwise all of this will be nothing but a waste of time, and that’s not what we’re after here.

Let’s get a bit more in depth on the topics mentioned above. These are key points that are mentioned repeatedly in traffic building articles from all over the web, and they are very effective, especially over the long run. The point here however, is to leverage the same long term methods to achieve measurable short term results. To use them effectively, we have to understand why they work, and how to make them work for us a little more rapidly.

What To Do:

Post relevantly and often. At least once a day and up to 3 posts per day.

I’m sure a lot of you just looked at the monitor and mumbles something along the lines of:

Well, DUH!

The point of the above statement is that you must post regularly. Let me say that again, just so I’m sure we’re on the same page.

You… Must… Post… Regularly…

It really doesn’t matter how often regularly happens to be if you’re trying to build a readership over a long period of time. As long as you maintain a consistent schedule for posting your blog entries, your readers will come to expect your posts at their normal intervals and that schedule will work just dandy.

If we’re looking to drive larger amounts of traffic in a short period of time, there’s better be something new for not only your readers, but the search engine spiders to find. Each and every day.

The reason I’ve limited the maximum number of posts to three per blog per day is simple. While we want to give people something new to work with every day, we also don’t want to overload them or to have potential return readers come to the conclusion that we’re just tossing out anything we can come up with. The entries need to be intelligent, informative, spell checked and proofread. Putting up a ton of junk isn’t going to attract more readers, it’s going to scare them away. it’s much better to have one extremely well written post than to have 20 pieces of offal.

One more point… If you use WordPress or another blogging platform that allows you to automatically send trackbacks to any site that you link to in your post, turn this feature ON. It will let site owners know you’ve mentioned them, and they’re likely to come and see what was said.

Leave intelligent comments on related blogs

This is a proven method of getting people to come take a look at your blog, but there are things about it that most articles I’ve read overlook, and it’s not just a minor oversight, it’s one of the key things to remember if you want to move more traffic your way:

You can’t just comment repeatedly on the same sites over and over.

One truth in life is that most people are creatures of habit, and it’s likely you are no different. People tend to find a group of sites they like, and they return to those sites, because they’re comfortable doing so. While leaving comments on a certain number of blogs may attract a certain number of their readers to your blog, after a short amount of time, everyone who was going to follow your link will have done so, and your traffic will stagnate. You must take the initiative to break out of that comfort zone and go find new places to comment. As always, those comments must be relevant to the topic discussed in the post, or you’re wasting your time and the blog owners.

As a rule, I’m going to say that we should be looking to find at least five new blogs per day to leave comments on. (Break out that RSS reader!)

Leverage the power of Social Networking and Community sites like StumbleUpon, digg, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog

We’re going to use the discussion forums and any other features we can to alert people to updates and anything else that might be of interest to them. If you’re not a member of BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog, go sign up. Become active,a nd drop a link to your blogs from time to time. Again, we’re not going to generate a never ending stram of traffic from these communities, but chances are we’ll make some friends, and those friends will add a link from their blogs if they like what we’re up to. That’s a gift that keeps on giving!

StumbleUpon and digg allow us to put our blog in front of a very large number of potential visitors, so they should be used whenever possible. We’ll go over how to use these services later.

Use the power of “People that know people” to get the word out.

You’ve got friends, right? Chances are those friends have similar interests, or know people that do. Ask them to help you get the word out in places that you may not be as well connected. For every person that mentions your blogs, there are two or three that will hear of it through them.

What not To Do:

Leave irrelevant or worthless comments (Trolling)

I can’t stress enough the amount of damage that can be caused by leaving irrelevant comments. It is nothing but a waste of time for both us and the owner of the blog it was left on. At best everyone is just going to ignore the comment all together. At worst, it generates bad feelings from the owner of the blog where you left it, and we’re going for feel good, not angry.

Actively ask someone to visit our blogs in a comment (Comment spamming)

When you leave a comment on a blog, a link back to your blog is created automatically. Even if the link has the nofollow attribute set, it’s still there, and it’s still available for that blog’s readers to click on. Adding another link back to your blog “just because” is nothing more than spam, and will generally not be greeted with a positive attitude.

The only exception to this rule happens when we’ve got a link to relevant and related content on one of our blogs that we’re referencing in our comment. Only link back to a specific entry, never to the main page of a blog, except in the most unique cases. If you do, make sure there’s a good reason! It’s usually better to simply discuss what you’ve readat their blog on your own, and then leave a trackback.

Add our blogs to link lists, exchanges or blogrolls that they are not already a part of.
(As I’ve said in previous entries, CbsoP has been around for a while, so it’s been signed up for a few. I’m not removing it from those at this point, but no new ones will be added.)

Generally speaking, it isn’t a great idea tosign up for a lot of link lists or blogrolls, unless you blog in a very tight niche (like food blogging). Chances are the links are not being displayed in the places that are going to do you the most good. It’s better to focus on your content and on getting to know other bloggers that blog on the same topics you do. Their readers are already predisposed to like what you’re doing.

Pay anyone to review our blogs and “get the buzz out”

Though it may be a viable way to drive traffic to your blog, it can also be prohibitively expensive. It’s better to get the A-list to mention you because you’ve done something that’s gained their attention. (Which is another topic, and one that I’ll cover on a later date.) If you’ve got the money to spend, dropping some Money at pay Per Post or ReviewMe might be a great way to get a heck of a lot of visitors for a few days, but chances are none of them will be back after that, so you’ve just spent your hard earned duckets for nothing.

In Conclusion:

This list of do’s-and-don’ts is not definitive, and does not necessarily apply in every case. They are general rules gleaned from a lot of research and my own experiences. Most are generally accepted as good practice, and should be followed. Those deemed to be inconsiderate are to be avoided, even though we’re looking to drive traffic quickly. Following the etiquette of the blogging community is something we should do whenever possible, especially since if and when we do become the A-Listers, we’ll be the ones enforcing it.