Increase traffic to your blogYou didn’t create a blog just so it could sit there and do nothing for you. You want to see people visiting the blog, commenting and spending time reading what you have to say. Not to mention that you want them to buy whatever product it is you’re selling (or to check out the products you’re advertising).

No matter your reasons for having a blog, here are five great ways to make sure that more people will come by to read it and spend time on it:
Write Great Content and Plenty of It
It’s remarkable how many people think that blogging is an easy, sure fire way to make buckets of cash on the Internet. They plop down a blog at Blogger or WordPress, slap on a few ads and maybe write a post or two. Then they wait for the riches to come pouring in.
The reality however is that if you want to increase blog traffic, you have to give that traffic a real reason to drop by. That means you provide high quality posts on your blog, with truly useful information that real people want to know about and you provide plenty of it.
If it seems like too much trouble or you can’t be bothered, either hire a professional freelancer to write and manage your blog for you or forget about having a blog. Putting one up and then failing to update or putting up crappy posts that have no value is a sure way to fail as a blogger.
Submit Your Blog to RSS Directories
There are hundreds of RSS directories all over the Internet. They aggregate content from blogs and make it available to their readers. By adding your blog to these directories, you accomplish two important goals. First of all, you have exposure to more potential readers. Second of all, you get deep backlinks to your blog, which is vital for SEO.
Be a Guest Blogger
Given that there are millions of blogs on the Internet, getting noticed can be a problem. If you want to grab some new readers, one of the best ways to do it is to be a guest blogger on a more popular blog than your own and including a link back to your own blog in your bio.
Write Catchy Titles
This is another oft forgotten tactic. On the one hand, you need to write titles with SEO in mind. On the other hand, the title also has to be catchy and grab a reader’s attention.
Here’s an example from my financial blog: I recently wrote about medical loans doctor’s offices and hospitals are now offering to patients. I considered two titles, “Doctors Now Prescribing Medical Loans to Patients” and “Need a Medical Loan? Ask Your Doctor.”
I wanted to get the keyword phrase “need a medical loan” into the title since that’s likely to be something people are searching for. So, my article ended up with the second title. However, in both cases, the title is catchy and grabs the reader’s attention, making them want to read more. You can see the end result here in case you’re interested.
Be Unique
Finally, if you want to increase traffic to your blog, you need to be unique and have your own voice. If your blog sounds just like the 500 other ones that cover your niche, then you’ll never get people to consider you an authoritative source.
Offer a unique perspective and try to cover stories that others aren’t covering. Ultimately, that will bring more traffic to your blog than anything else, because you have something to offer that others don’t.