What are the best ways to drive traffic to a blog?

The question on most blogger's mind after starting out for a while "What are the best ways to drive traffic to a blog?". Traffic is the life line of a blog, without traffic there are no readers, without readers there is no point keep the blog. To get traffic is not enough, you need to get targeted traffic for your niche. Getting targeted traffic to your blog requires proper planning, measuring and execution. It should not be a "try this, its not working, try that, hope it works".

I remember reading somewhere that "What gets measure gets improved" or something like that. What I am trying to say is that in-order to increase your traffic, you need a way to know that it is increasing. You can't count the number of visitors by sitting in front of your computer screen and count hits. You need to install a counter or a script that tabulate the visitors information. If you are hosting your own blog, your hosting account might have a traffic statics of your visitors, but I will want to put in a few more tools to compare the results. I used a combination of counters and scripts. The most notable is Google analytics. This is a free tool from Google, it is a very comprehensive tool. You can track visitor by day, the keyword used to locate your blog, traffic referrals and much more. The other tool is Crazy Egg. I didn't really find these useful when I try it then I discovered that it has special feature called "heatmap". What is does is that it tracks what the user are clicking on your page and show it on a overlay of your blog, so you can see that exact location of the hits. This is extreme useful for those who are running PayPerClick ads. Crazy Egg is not a free tool, the basic package starts from $9. However there's a free version that allows you to measure up to 5000 visitors for 5 sites. The last tool I use is a counter from Bravenet. I been using Bravenet to host a lot of my website during Uni days. The counter have a lot similar function but less to Google analytics. I prefer bravenet counter over sitemeter because sitemeter does not display the counter on the web site. I like to see results instantly. Another piece of tool is Feedcounter from feedburner if your are burning your feed using feedburner. Although not directly related to traffic measurement, it can tell you how many subscriber you have per day, watching your feed count grow is a telltale sign that you are trapping your traffic.

Once we have the measurement in place, its time to get down to the strategies.

1. SEOGet your blog listed in the search engines for specific keywords that relate to your niche is the fastest and free way to generate traffic. The term normally used for these strategy is "organic search engine traffic". In order get listed, you need to identified the keywords to used. A great tool to help you research what people are searching online, on Google, msn, yahoo, etc is WordTraker. Wordtracker offers a 2 hours free trial, however, you limited to the smallest search engine. In order to get Google results you can opt to purchase a one day license which is less than $10. Find the highest KEI keyword. You should look at keywords with KEI of 10 and above, this indicates that market are not saturated. Examples of good keywords are Learn, tips, tutorial, instruction, buy, training. Try to narrow down the demographic of your niche. Dog is a wide nice, small dog is better target but something like healthy food for small dog will probably get you more targeted traffics. Once you locate your keywords, Use keywords to form up part of your header text and titles, if you have already done so. Your content should contain the keywords right at the beginning of the page and in the title. Do not overuse keywords, keep this to 10% of the entire content. Use keywords in tags and tag your post with these keywords.

2. Publishing Your RSS Feed
Rss feed is the next most important thing next to your blog. An rss feed is simply an XML formated document of your blog. Most Blog comes with a default rss feed. However these feed are not display on the blog itself, you need to enable or use a script and image to display it. Most reader preferable to read a number of blog at once using rss readers like google reader, yahoo, netvibes, blogline etc. Feed Readers offer a number of advantage for blog readers, they are informed when a blog is update so they do not have constantly go back to the blog. To cater for all this feed reader you can choose to go to each of the readers to get the code to be place on your blog. An easier way to do this is via Feedburner. Get an account on Feedburner, and follow the simple instruction to set up your feeds. If you have already burn your feed with feedburner, you be able to set up pingautomatic. pingautomatic is a service to update different search engines that your blog has updated. Once you have published your content, feedburner pings your blog to a wide variety of rss readers. Place your rss feed button at a prominent location, and add a feed count.

3. Submitting Articles To Directories
One of the most effective method of generating traffic used by Top Internet Marketers, can work for your blog too. Write 10-20 articles, 300-600 word related to your blog, you can simply recycle some of your blog post. Include your keywords add a short bio of yourself with a link back to your blog. Here's some good article directories to get you started:

1. www.eZineArticles.com
2. www.ultimatearticledirectory.com
3. www.submityourarticle.com

4. PPC (Pay Per Click)
One of the most effective traffic strategies used by top bloggers who makes more than $10,000 a month. PPC services include Google Adwords, AdBrite and BidVertiser. All 3 services are similar you pay to display your ads with your targeted keywords on their ad network. Well its not something new, most beginners fall in the trap of overspending on their advertisement. There 3 ways to use Google Adwords. Bidding for keywords on Google search page, Content network and site-targeted ads. When creating a campaign, its good to set a maximum daily budget so that you will not be shock by the amount payable at the end of the month. Create a campaign for Google search and Content network separately. Bid low for content network and set a lower budget. Content network generate more clicks but conversion rate is lower. I bid 0.02 cents for content network and 0.5 cents for Google search. Write a separate ad for each keyword. Site-targeted ads can be used on other popular blogs. The cost starts at 0.5 cents. Extremely powerful if used properly. One the foremost expert on the topic is Perry Marshall, I suggest you study a lot more on adwords before you start on this. I started adwords without having any clue what I was doing. I have spent a few hundred dollars on adwords without generating much results. I learn the hard way so be smart invest in a little cost like Perry Marshall's AdWords Course. Where to sent your traffic? Your blog main page is obvious but then you need to generate some sort of income from your investment. Regardless of where your traffic are from, you need to direct them to specific area of your blog. Instead of pointing to your main index, you
should experiment by sending your traffic to some of your better post. I sent my traffic to my Money Maker page which is a page on how I make money from blogging. When someone signs up the services form my referral, I make some money. You be surprise with the ROI. The recent not to sent the traffic directly to your home page is that sometime you go off topic on a post, a visitors is most likely to leave once they do get the information they are after.

5. Free Traffic Exchanges
Most of you are familiar with Free Traffic Exchanges sites. What is Traffic Exchanges ? A Traffic Exchanges site allow website owners display their websites for viewing from other members in exchange for viewing their sites. Most of these sites offer a free services and paid services. The differences is that paid services get more exposures. Here's a list of free traffic exchanges site:

1. trafficswarm
2. trafficroundup
3. trafficpods
4. topsurfer
5. hitpulse

TrafficSwarm has been one my favorite and most effective traffic source. It is a bit different than others because it allows you to look at a group of classified ads first before clicking on the ones you want to see. To get started, simply register as a new member, and look over their introductory tools. When you sign up and activate you will get 100 free credits. You can set up your an ad and promote your blog immediately. To set up your add, on the bottom of the page and you'll find Manage Your Site Promotions. This is where you add your own website URLs for others to see. You can select which category where your ads will appear. To accumulate more credits you need to surf other sites, each sites pays 1-5 credits randomly. You can also earn a 100 free credits when you refer new members. If you want to earn more credits simply upgrade to Pro member at $30 per month.

One of things to take note when using a free traffic exchange program. If you have monetize your site with
Adsense, Google treats clicks from traffic exchanges sites as click fraud. Google's program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. Remember to disable Adsense from your blog if your are going use traffic exchange sites.

6. Link Exchange
This should be part of SEO but I felt that its a wide topic by itself. Backlinks increase Google PageRank PR. I found this new tool from smartpagerank that is really good for checking your backlinks. This tool not only shows the backlinks, it shows the PR strength too. The sites you are looking at to exchange links should have a PR higher than yours, have lots of original contents, and have a large audiences contributions. It might seen difficult to exchange links with a larger, more successful site but if you are serious about your own site (operating your site with a goal) you will be able to get attention from them for your future growth. Link exchange should be treated with equal important for a website, as gathering content, traffic and design. Avoid link farm, exchange directories, or automated software. Leaving comments on blogs that follows their comment links is another way to generate backlinks. You do not want to leave senseless comment or start spamming, leaving same comment like "please visit my site...blahblahblah" on every other blog. Participate in related forums. Create a link to your blog in your forum signature file. When you post in the forum, your link appears, it generate a few click for you. You can buy links from blogs that have higher PRs using Text Link Ads. Text Link Ads offers $100 to first timers but you need to credit $25 inorder to receive a $100 free credit. Buying a PR6 link get your site index by Google quicker.

7. Social Networking Sites
Friendster, Hi5, MySpace and facebook can used to promote your sites. With these sites there is already a reader base. You can used your social skills to make some new friends and hopefully they become your loyal readers. There another group of Social Networking Sites that meant for blogs like MyBloglog and BlogCatalog. If look on the right sidebar, you notice 2 widget one each from the MyBloglog and BlogCatalog. Any members from MyBloglog or BlogCatalog can join your blog community if they like your blog or you. As your network grow, your blog gets more exposure and attracts more readers. In order to be successful on mybloglog, you need a decent photo of yourself, not an object or cartoon, no studio photo as well. A good user name, no weird, funny or sleazy ones. Next, you start checking out other members and their blog. Most of them will start visiting your blog and community. There's nothing more exciting than getting new faces on the widget everyday.

8. Develop Good Relationships With Your Readers And Other Blogs
Getting on a good relationship with other bloggers from your niche can help you get some traffic. You will want to collect a list of bloggers that you want to work with and start introducing yourself to them. When you create a new post that you think they might be interested in email them and your post might get me mention on their blog. Replying to comments of your readers is a great way to build up a lasting relationship. You can choose to reply to their comments in your comment space, write a post on the comment, comment on their blog or reply in an email.

9. Web 2.0 Sites
Technorati, Squidoo, Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. These are some sites that you can work with to generate traffic. Out of all this web 2.0, I like to recommend you focus on Squidoo. In July all Squidoo lenses started to disappear from the Google Search Rankings due a large amount of spamming. However Squidoo have been putting a lot of effort in stopping spam. A lot of Squidoo traffic generators have left or not focusing on Squidoo anymore, which means once Squidoo returns those who have been working on their Squidoo lens are the ones who will benefit from it. Check out my squidoo page, I have build my it to PR2 status.

10. Getting Traffic Offline
Beside traffic strategy online,We can generate traffic from offline sources. We can contribue articles to newspapers and magazines. Getting interview on papers, magazine, tv, or radio. Virally, spread it among friends and families. Network , at seminars, function, any chances you have to meet people. You need a card that have your name, email, phone number and most importantly your website url. Noticeboards, they are everywhere bustops, trainstation, schools, supermarkets. Some magazines and papers circlulated at a smaller scale, offers free classified sections. Print pamphlets from your own printers and hand them out at high human traffic areas. Use your car as a walking advertisement. Put up visible ads on your side doors, boot and rear windows.

Beside this few ideas, you can be creative and come up with unique ways of prompting your blog.