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

[Mary-Lynn]

Hi Denise. Quick question about importing the rss feed of your blog through Notes on FB. I've been reluctant because people can just read the post there on FB, rather than going to my blog to read the post, hence why I just post the link in status update. What are your thoughts? BTW, I was going to comment under your note on FB, but decided to come to your blog instead. But it would have been easier to just post there.

[Denise Wakeman]

I love twitterfeed as well and you're recommendation to re-retweet is good. I've seen others doing that as well and occassionally do it myself for posts I want to get extra exposure. always drives new traffic.

Blog on!

[Denise Wakeman]

Great question, Mary-Lynn! In my opinion, where someone reads and comments on my blog doesn't matter that much. Some people do click through and that's good. Yet, when people comment directly on Facebook, there is greater chance for more visibility since the friends of the person who comments will see the activity and may click through as well, introducing my content to someone new.

[Mary-Lynn]

Thanks so much for your response, Denise. You make a valid point. I'll reconsider using Notes.

[whiteshark0121]

Driving traffic to website is really very important to make your site visible and to do this I suggest you do all the techniques listed in this post because we cannot succeed if we do just 1 or 2 strategies, I have an idea to add to this post because there are millions of people going online each day to play game. I used YourKidsClub games as it has wide variety of games that are related to my niche and can help generate more traffic.

[Thnkblogpublish]

Great list Denise, although it looks like you missed out one - participating in forums. :)

Not only does this associate you with your readers, or potential readers, it establishes you as a leader.

Although forum participation is time consuming, it's well worth the payoff in traffic and building readers.

[Denise Wakeman]

I think I missed a whole lot more than one! That's why I need smart people like you to fill in the blanks and add more great traffic generating ideas.

[Martin]

Thanks a lot for the tips. I particularly liked the tip about creating a google profile. Somehow I completely missed out on that amazing opportunity to gain more publicity. I think that marketing is perhaps the greatest challenge that every new blogger and entrepreneur has to tackle. Thanks a lot for all the tips!

[Karyn Greenstreet]

Brilliant list, Denise! I was writing as fast as I could at NAMS, but I missed some of these! :)

[Denise Wakeman]

Thanks, Karyn! I'm planning on listening to the audio from the presentation with Willie Crawford because he had some great gems that I wasn't able to write down at the time.

Blog on!