Jan 4 2008
neilpatel

5 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Traffic In 2008

By neilpatel 104 comments

With blogging, the most obvious things that we should all do are usually the ones we forget to. If you are looking to increase the popularity of your blog in 2008, here are some simple things you need to start doing:

Email Subscriptions – if you are using Feedburner, you are probably already using the email subscription service. What you may have not noticed is that when you use the Feedburner email subscription service, when someone gives their email to Feedburner to subscribe to your blog it doesn’t mean that they are a subscriber. They usually get a follow-up email from Feedburner verifying that they subscribed, but many people end up missing this email and never fully subscribe. So if you log into your Feedburner account and go under email subscriptions you will notice that some email address are not active. For those non-active email addresses, take them and re-subscribe them to your blog. This way they get another verification notice to subscribe to your blog and many of them will end up subscribing.

SEO – a lot of people claim that they are SEO experts or that their blog is already optimized for search engines. Yes, WordPress is not that bad out of the box, but there are still a lot of modifications you need to make to your WordPress blog if you want more search love. If you want to make sure your blog is SEO friendly, check out this video.

Participate on other blogs – if you are trying to make your blog popular, you are probably concentrating fully on your blog instead of other competing blogs. A great way to increase the popularity of your blog is to find all your competitor blogs and start participating on them. By placing valuable comments on them others will find you and most likely subscribe to your RSS feed because they are targeted visitors.

Share some love – don’t expect to be popular if you are not willing to link out. If you want others to link to you or start reading your blog then start linking to them. When you link to others they may end up linking back to you or they may end up finding your blog interesting and start reading it.

What’s your edge – if you want people to read your blog you need something that differentiates yourself from the competition. This could be your attitude, your content, or anything else like that. But if you don’t have something that differentiates yourself from the competition then it is going to be hard to grow your readership.

Although these tips are basic, hopefully they will come in value to you during 2008. Just think about them every once in a while and you will start seeing growth in your blog traffic.

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  1. FF0000
    Rhys said on January 4th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    I agree with the whole participation thing, but I think that the other thing that’s needed is respect. Time and again on my blog I get people e-mailing me after 3 or 4 posts asking me to promote their blog for free. They also leave comments with keyword rich titles, or put a signiture in their comment with 2 or 3 links in it. I feel that if you are to truly turn a blogger you like into a reader of your blog, you’ve got to not only provide an intelligent mind, but also be respectful and not take more than you deserve, certainly not to begin with.

    [Reply]

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    Hustle Strategy said on January 4th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    Good to see you are still working after getting the black card. I like a few of these tips. I am going to try and find a few blogs that are like mine to steal people from :) I mean share people with. While I do that, everyone else can DIGG and STUMBLEUPON my latest posts. :D

    [Reply]

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    Free From Broke said on January 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Sweet tips! I just went into my feedburner account to send emails to unconfirmed subscribers. Thanks.

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    Sly from Slyvisions.com said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    These simple tips are more than just simple. They’re basically the holy grail for getting traffic to a blog. Yes, there is more to it, but blogs can get successful just from these 5.

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    Mike Huang said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    Shoe, you should link to all the blogs in one post :) Now that would get some attention :)

    -Mike

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    Living on Adsense said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    I always enjoy reading the simple, “backbone” tips that are as was stated by Sly “the holy grail for getting traffic.”

    I find that most of us new bloggers see people like ShoeMoney and automatically try to emulate them, but we can’t because we need to learn the basics ( as delivered in this post).

    My new philosophy: Pants first THEN shoes!

    [Reply]

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    * Miss Universe said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Intriguing pictures and videos with a theme.

    It works wonders on social sites and visitors people loyal

    [Reply]

  8. FF0000
    SlightlyShadySEO said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    I AM edge :-D

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    jim said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    You gotta give love to get love, it’s like that everywhere.

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  10. FF0000
    jim said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    that’s so true, if the comments are so blatantly like that i just nix them

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    jim said on January 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    and then update frequently, because he has that much time :)

    [Reply]

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    RIchard said on January 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    Initially, I felt like you are giving away all of the secrets! But, you really only touched on some basic things to do. Awesome job! Now, the real players will dig to find the rest of the story.

    [Reply]

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    Mosley said on January 4th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    I agree with this. Since my blog is called MrBaconpants.com I post an image with bacon in it with every post. Even if the topic is not about bacon I still somehow incorporate it. Reads seem to enjoy it.

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    Diane Voisley said on January 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    I think blogs are a great way to introduce yourself and your business as well as networking with other network marketers. I often read and comment on blogs and I do that with my blog at http://mlmbreakthrough.com. It’s generally for Melaleuca distributors but we also discuss many marketing issues and try to keep up with the latest marketing trends. Diane

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    hellcola said on January 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    Those were great tips, I’ve been working on finding links, exchanging links and everything, I hope I’ll gather some visitors and readers from that

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    hellcola said on January 4th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    great secrets, I’m working on link building right now!

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    Ben Cook said on January 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    Neil, thanks for the re-subscription tip. On one blog I have about 35% of the people sitting there as unverified.

    [Reply]

  18. FF0000
    sukosaki said on January 4th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Yes, very good information here. Good job!

    [Reply]

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    Your World Gallery said on January 4th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Great tips dude sir.

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    Nicholas James said on January 4th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Good Points.

    I didn’t think of the feedburner subscription technique so thanks for that :)

    [Reply]

  21. FF0000
    Steve! said on January 4th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    Nice. I love tips. Especially in lists..

    [Reply]

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    Samir Franciscus said on January 4th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    This is a great post, im following your advice now by posting a comment on your blog!

    [Reply]

  23. FF0000
    Spiros said on January 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Nice tips!
    AMEX black card SuperStar…
    Thanks.

    [Reply]

  24. FF0000
    Sean said on January 4th, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    I might just have write these down or save them to notepad…a few of these I do anyway, but they are so simple its easy to forget.

    [Reply]

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    Gasmoney said on January 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    good advise and im sure it will help a lot of new bloggers.

    [Reply]

  26. FF0000
    acca said on January 4th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    “For those non-active email addresses, take them and re-subscribe them to your blog.” that’s great tip.

    [Reply]

  27. FF0000
    Fabien from Small Fish Big Money said on January 4th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    This is a really good post, simple but to the point,
    I think all of these are really valid ways of increasing
    readership.

    Fabien

    [Reply]

  28. FF0000
    賃貸 大阪 said on January 4th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    Great idea about the Feedburner subscriptions. Thanks.

    [Reply]

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    Alan Johnson said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    I agree, a lot of people spend a lot of time and energy chasing after a fantasy 100% fool-proof system and end up neglecting the basics: content and patience.

    [Reply]

  30. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Nice job with the article Neil (and congratulations for the AMEX card :) ), I couldn’t agree more: a lot of times, they key to achieving worthwhile results in the long run is having the common sense to uderstand that you need to master the basisc before taking things to another level.

    [Reply]

  31. FF0000
    ButterKnuckle said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

    Or you could use these unethical tactics
    http://www.wallstreetfighter.com/2008/01/8-unethical-ways-to-improve-traffic-to.html

    [Reply]

  32. FF0000
    Sam Carrara said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    I know you use FeedBurner for your main feed. Do you suggest using it for your comments feed?
    Thanks,
    Sam

    [Reply]

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    jay said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:35 pm

    I think it all begins and ends with being different. This is how I have built my blogs and it always showed excellent results.

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  34. FF0000
    Chris Jacobson said on January 4th, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    Good post for beginners I guess.

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    Ron @ The Wisdom Journal said on January 4th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Okay Shoe, I’ll take your advice and send you a little “link love.”
    http://www.thewisdomjournal.com/Blog/2008/01/05/weekend-roundup-2/

    [Reply]

  36. FF0000
    Nicole said on January 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Very good points!
    I never get why it’s so hard for people to show some link and comment LOve - oh well ;)

    [Reply]

  37. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 4th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    It is always important to bring something new with your project, to innovate or to at least improve on an existing concept, but there are a few basic aspects which should never be overlooked as well.

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  38. FF0000
    Robert said on January 4th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    Great post. I really believe in the principle that if you want to establish yourself in the social web, you must be willing to interact on other blogs and don’t just be fixated on yours. Thanks for the great post!

    [Reply]

  39. FF0000
    Robert said on January 4th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    I just submitted a comment! Did it go through?

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    Affiliate Confession said on January 4th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    If commentors get too bold I delete them or edit them. I had someone post an affiliate link in their name, that’s a little much now.

    [Reply]

  41. FF0000
    Diana said on January 4th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    This comment is not related to the post but I am very impressed on you making more than 100k in a month from Adsense alone. No wonder the picture was most views by visitors.

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  42. FF0000
    Diana said on January 4th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    This comment is not related to the post, but I am very impressed by you making more than 100k in a month from Google Adsense alone. No wonder your picture with the Adsense check is most viewed by visitors.

    [Reply]

  43. FF0000
    Marina @ Sufficient Thrust said on January 5th, 2008 at 12:27 am

    Great idea about checking on inactive Feedburner email subscribers. I’ve added that to my Weekly Review, along with reviewing Akismet spam for any genuine comments.

    [Reply]

  44. FF0000
    Brad Huntsman said on January 5th, 2008 at 12:34 am

    Imagine alot of comments in a post about commenting and linking back to a post. who’d a thunk.

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  45. FF0000
    Ronald Su said on January 5th, 2008 at 2:09 am

    They are 5 simple steps. But these steps may be too difficult for some people.

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  46. FF0000
    Neta's mom from "Children and Health" site said on January 5th, 2008 at 2:27 am

    Basic tips but deep meaning. It is always nice to start the year by looking back to the basic.

    [Reply]

  47. FF0000
    wtf said on January 5th, 2008 at 2:39 am

    Whats up with blogs.
    There is alot more niches out there then just talking about blogs.

    [Reply]

  48. FF0000
    Nick said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    thanks for the tips!

    [Reply]

  49. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    That’s exactly the point: they aren’t secrets, they are actually common sense approaches which end up being overlooked by people in their search what they think are “sure-win secrets”.

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  50. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    The picture in question has definitely helped this blog a lot as far as branding is concerned and a lot of people still associate Jeremy’s image with it, even though he is now earning a lot more than that on a daily basis through other projects.

    [Reply]

  51. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Indeed, the basics represent the foundation for your future marketing efforts. As with anything else, an online project built on a shaky foundation doesn’t stand a chace in the long run

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  52. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Most principles related to promoting blogs are relevant as far as other types of websites are concened as well. A blog is a platform, you can have blogs related to any niche.

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  53. FF0000
    Neil Patel said on January 5th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    You can… but I personally do not even offer a comment feed.

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  54. FF0000
    CatherineL said on January 5th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    Thanks for the great tips Neil. I must confess that I haven’t done a lot to drive traffic to my blog and it’s definitely on my must do list for this year.

    [Reply]

  55. FF0000
    Spy Optic said on January 5th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    nothing new here .

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  56. FF0000
    Carl - Thatblogsite.com said on January 5th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    I decided to show others about your post.

    Great advice.

    [Reply]

  57. FF0000
    Pierre Söderman said on January 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    I totally agree with you. Some times it´s tempting to leave a couple of links but then I think will not even read the post because you just se a couple of links in the comment. Do you remove those comments?

    [Reply]

  58. FF0000
    Chris said on January 6th, 2008 at 1:35 am

    I didn’t even know there’s a way to check your reader’s email addresses, thank you so much, and I discovered more than 40 of them with unverified status. You saved me, thanks!

    [Reply]

  59. FF0000
    Small Business Marketing said on January 6th, 2008 at 2:44 am

    Great post. I had never seen the video and it made a lot of sense.

    [Reply]

  60. FF0000
    Contest Beat said on January 6th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Have to agree - email subscriptions are so easy to get and provide great traffic.

    [Reply]

  61. FF0000
    Kristi @ Addicted2Decor said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    These are fantastic suggestions. I’ve always wondered what to do about the newsletter subscription issue. I don’t use feedburner…I use aweber, but I still have the same problem. About 7 right now that have not confirmed their subscription. I had never even thought about re-entering the info. Thanks! Now I’m on my way to watch that video on SEO.

    [Reply]

  62. FF0000
    Affiliate Confession said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    I don’t have a problem with people leaving links in the comments as long as they’re not a redirect or to an affiliate product. That’s crossing the line for me.

    [Reply]

  63. FF0000
    Technology Slice said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Some good, solid tips.

    [Reply]

  64. FF0000
    CCNA Discovery said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    Very helpful tips. I look forward to increasing my traffic A LOT in 2008. Thanks for the inspiration.

    [Reply]

  65. FF0000
    Peter said on January 7th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    Very helpful tips - let’s start to increase traffic.

    [Reply]

  66. FF0000
    BonoRiau said on January 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Very informative.

    [Reply]

  67. FF0000
    Marko Nikolic said on January 7th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

    My edge you ask? So having clients that make over $100K/month on their websites who resort to me for for ALL their online marketing ventures doesn’t qualify me!? Damn.. What if I cuss up a storm like Zed Shaw and tell everyone to f*&$# off? ;)

    [Reply]

  68. FF0000
    effected said on January 7th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    LOL!! I like this tactic the best :

    “Go into every comment section for the top 200 posts in Reddit and type “Your Mama” with link back to your site. Sure to draw attention and clicks. People can’t help but wonder what’s behind a linked “Your Mama” quote.”

    [Reply]

  69. FF0000
    YourGuideToInternetMarketing said on January 8th, 2008 at 2:27 am

    Those are some definite good tips at generating more traffic to ones blog. If we all follow these 5 simple steps everyones blog traffic should increase in 2008. More traffic equals more money. Good luck everyone for 2008.

    Sincerely,
    Jamie Boyle

    [Reply]

  70. FF0000
    Money School said on January 8th, 2008 at 3:29 am

    When you visit other blogs and make clever comments make a lot of clever comments on a lot of posts. To get to their top comments list.

    [Reply]

  71. FF0000
    Alan Johnson said on January 8th, 2008 at 7:18 am

    These tips can help you build a solid foundation but you should, as Jeremy has suggested as well, always have an edge.

    [Reply]

  72. FF0000
    Takeabreak said on January 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    It’s the tit for tat thing .. the key to good link building ..

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  73. FF0000
    Scott Weaver said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Haha.. outstanding. Don’t be shy about it. :)

    [Reply]

  74. FF0000
    David Chew said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Some people just like to spam and people usually don’t like it.

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  75. FF0000
    David Chew said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Good idea and a way to attract more visitor.

    [Reply]

  76. FF0000
    David Chew said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Interesting blog.

    [Reply]

  77. FF0000
    David Chew said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    If you want your blog to be more famous than you will need to have different and good content so that readers will enjoy visiting your blog.

    [Reply]

  78. FF0000
    David Chew said on January 11th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Thanks for the feedburner guides.

    [Reply]

  79. FF0000
    Joeychgo said on January 11th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    exactly! This is why Top commentators is important (and why I have it on http://www.joeychgo.com)

    [Reply]

  80. FF0000
    Simple Mindz said on January 12th, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    I got one of those, “I totally love your blog” posts once…with like 6 links at the bottom…Instead of deleting it - I figured I would tick the guy off more by deleting all but 2 of his links…
    (it’s a pain in the butt to write all those out…lol)

    [Reply]

  81. FF0000
    Real Lottery Winner said on January 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    I got the first one of whats to be many I’m sure of those spam comments. Good post neil, thanks for guesting over here big fan!

    [Reply]

  82. FF0000
    Utah SEO said on January 14th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    Neil, I agree that carving out a niche for yourself or “finding your edge” is a major part of blog traffic. Just look at Bill Slawski. Don’t know if you’ll be speaking or attending at SMX West but hope to catch ya around.

    [Reply]

  83. FF0000
    Jace said on January 20th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Excellent post man, thanks so much as usual!

    [Reply]

  84. FF0000
    ChristianPF said on January 25th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Good idea with the feedburner tip - I will have to check that out…

    [Reply]

  85. FF0000
    Top Webhost said on January 27th, 2008 at 4:01 am

    A blogger must his heart into what he is doing, otherwise his blog may appear like a barren land on this web planet. Devotion is the key word.

    [Reply]

  86. FF0000
    Free Xbox 360 Package said on January 29th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    cool, its nice to see you giving away some of your methods so freeley

    [Reply]

  87. FF0000
    RacerX said on February 3rd, 2008 at 3:20 am

    You’re right about that…He has probably recieved more business due to the check then the check value itself!

    [Reply]

  88. FF0000
    Linilla said on February 8th, 2008 at 12:30 am

    The last tactic is a gem: <>

    [Reply]

  89. FF0000
    gambit32 said on February 19th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    I used to spend a good deal of time clearing out spam comments, but Akismet has done a good job since I installed. Its killing abuot 60-90 a day now.

    [Reply]

  90. FF0000
    adri said on October 4th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    Yes that right but some time we only focus to traffic to our site and do not care about another blog

    [Reply]

  91. FF0000
    Xbox said on November 1st, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    Im learning more about this SEO every day and beginning to realize my mistakes firstly by entering a crowded niche. Well time to start again

    [Reply]

  92. FF0000
    Vic said on November 2nd, 2008 at 8:21 am

    Thanks for the information. Very much informatvie

    [Reply]

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