21 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog or Website

At the recent Niche Affiliate Marketing System event, I had the honor of sharing the stage with the amazing Willie Crawford, a legend in the Internet Marketing world. We did an informal presentation about how to drive more traffic to your sites.  While Willie was doing a presentation on list building, I made a quick list of 21 ways to drive traffic.

We used my list as a starting point and had a great discussion that went nearly 90 minutes (you can get the audio of this session and all the other awesome speakers for only $97). After the presentation, the audience asked for my list. Since it was scribbled on a couple of index cards I promised I would post the list and here it is...

21 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog and/or Website

1. Email - send an email to your list when you have a great blog post you want to share.
2. Include a subscription form on your blog - this is for people to subscribe to get blog updates so they return over and over when you publish new content.
3. Twitter - use a plug-in or an application like Twitterfeed.com to syndicate your new content to your twitter stream
4. Facebook - use the Notes application to pull your blog feed into your profile and/or Fan page
5. Video - Distribute your videos on all the video sharing platforms. Include a link back to your blog home page or specific blog posts that are relevant to the content in your video
6. Email courses - include a link to your blog in and invitations to subscribe in your autoresponders for ecourses.
7. Google profile - you MUST set up your profile on Google and include links to your blogs and web sites
8. Article marketing - include a link to your blog in your author resource box.
9. Pay attention to the headlines (blog post titles). Using numbers (see title of this blog post!) usually generates good traffic.
10. Media releases - post releases around the web and include a link to your blog or specific post.
11. Retweet button - include the retweet button from Tweetmeme so it's super simple for your reader to click and share.
12. Share buttons - there are many plug ins and addons to add buttons to share on twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Stumbleupon - find the style that suits you and add it to the footer of your blog posts
13. Guest posting - writing on other people's blogs can attract new traffic and readers to your blog.
14. Bookmarking - use sites like Stumbleupon, Digg and Delicious to share your content - when you have a particularly great post, ask your readers to stumble, digg, etc.
15. LinkedIn - make sure you blog posts are linked to your profile with the blog link application
16. Include a link in your email signature file. If you use web-based email, like Gmail, add Wisestamp so you can include your blog's RSS feed.
17. Comment on other blogs.
18. Submit your blog to directories.
19. Contests can generate a ton of new traffic (see example here)
20. Surveys and polls. People love to give their opinion. Use Polldaddy or SurveyMonkey to ask your readers what they want or their opinion.
21. Last and definitely not least...publish as frequently as possible. The more frequently you post, the more traffic you get because the search engines are indexing your content more frequently.

A lot of other tips and suggestions were discussed in the presentation. I'll be listening to the audio when it's available so I can cull the tips that were not on my list.

And, I would love to get your tips as well. Use the comments below to share your favorite, best tips for driving traffic to your blog or website.

Related:

Many of my Online Visibility Tips focus on how you attract people to your sites. Read. Watch. Implement.

Comments

[Angie (Losing It and Loving It)]

Awesome tips! I had such a great time at NAMS and learned a lot from you. Not on in the session but on the last day where we sat and chatted for quite some time. I appreciate all of your help!

Oh and I just did the Facebook notes app and can't wait to go through the rest of your list. Do you recommend a specific share plug in for social networks and stuff.

I can't think of any other tips at the moment, you covered a ton.

Thanks again for everything.

[Jason]

Wow very good post and very informative. Thanks for sharing.

[Dan Rockwell]

Denise,

Thanks for all this great stuff! I'm finding that leaving comments on important and popular blogs produces traffic. Maybe this comment will yield some click throughs.

I'm going out to follow your advice right now.

And maybe this comment will drive folks to my blog!! ;-)

Thanks,

Leadership Freak
Dan Rockwell

[Jason Gaya]

Dear Denise,

Thanks for some great tips on blogging.I am already using some of them and will surely start using the ones which I have not tried yet. Thanks once again for the enlightenment.

Jason Gaya

[Terrance]

That was a really good list Denise, I like using "tweetmeme" button for my blog post, it drives traffic daily.

[Kathleen Gage]

You and Willie were amazing. You gave rock solid tips and got right to the heart of how to get the most out of time invested in blogging.

Great job. I applied one tip that gave me an immediate results. I can only imagine what applying others on the list will do for me.

Great job.

Kathleen

[Denise Wakeman]

Angie, really enjoyed our chat at #NAMS too. There are sooo many plug ins for sharing content on social networks. You have to find one that complements your blog and how you want your readers to share your content. Here's link to 35 sharing plugins for wordpress:
http://pelfusion.com/tools/top-35-plugins-of-wordpress-to-share-your-blog-post/

Blog on!

[Denise Wakeman]

Thanks, Kathleen! There are so many ways to drive traffic. The key is to pick a few and work them consistently and constantly.

Blog on!

[Calvin]

Thanks for the post, Denise, these are some great tips. i recently found a similarly useful post here, http://blog.socialmaximizer.com/6-ways-to-make-your-blog-a-success/ Interesting stuff.

[Stephanie LH Calahan aka @StephCalahan]

Denise -
Thanks for sharing for those of us that could not make the event. Adding to the Twitter idea... I use twitterfeed and it works awesome. I have found that if I RT someone that RTs my blog posting it gets even more views. Social proof and all.
To your success!
Stephanie