How To Get Blog Traffic
Jenna Jameson has nothing to do with this post (see 4)
Everyone loves traffic. Well, everyone who isn’t fighting the war against drugs. Or sitting in a car in twelve miles of motorway tailback under a sweltering sun. Especially if the big fat guy in the huge, gas-guzzling SUV just in front can’t resist pumping the accelerator and belching great, black clouds of carcinogenic smoke right into your ventilators. And he’s probably playing Country & Western music at high volume, too. Either that or singing along to Robbie Williams.
Anyway, everyone loves blog traffic. Hundreds of visitors, with fingers at the ready to click on your ads and send dozens of half-cent payments to your AdSense account. Thousands of web-wandering weirdos whose only desire is to fund your next purchase of a Mars bar by donating, subscribing and telling all their friends how wonderful you are.
But how to get that traffic? Here’s some ideas:
1. Keyword frenzy for the marketers
Use popular marketing phrases like SEO, PTC, PPC, freelancing, AdSense, market penetration, eBook self-publishing, traffic exchange, resonating, process-oriented and SMART metrics. If you use them enough, you’ll get millions of visits from spam-bots and deranged Internet marketers who want to sell you everything from web site traffic to non-existent Britney Spears porn videos.
2. Post about Twitter for the social media freaks
Write humour about Twitter – the more caustic and abusive, the better. Post screenshots of people tweeting stupid things or write about How Not To Use Twitter. Combine both those ideas. Be rude about Stephen Fry. Pick holes in Arnold Schwarzennegger’s feed. Or just regurgitate someone else’s How To Use Twitter posts, but put random jokes in it so that Google doesn’t spot the copyright infringement.
3. Post about pay rates for the freelancers
As Anne just found out (and Deb before her), posting about freelancing rates of pay is almost guaranteed to bring a massive amount of traffic your way. All you need is one of the big names to comment and mention you to their readers. Then just sit back and enjoy the stats. If you’re really lucky, your visitors will even get into virtual fisticuffs in your comments stream, which will not only boost the hits (excuse the pun), but also provide a few good laughs at their expense!
4. Use pictures for the droolers
The best pictures are ones that are totally unrelated to the post. If you can find a way to mention Jessica Simpson, Jenna Jameson, Brad Pitt or even Ron Jeremy, you can post a pic. Then all you need to do is fill up the image’s keyword tags with nonsensical and inaccurate things like “sexy Brad Pitt photo nude butt topless” or “Jenna Jameson sexy nude breasts porn photo picture”. All those Internet deviants who use Google¹ will come running to your blog to see the dodgy pictures. Sorted.
Brad Pitt has nothing to do with this post (see 4)
5. Mention Megan Fox for the pubescent males
She may have the personality of a cardboard box and the intelligence of three kilos of stewed turnips², but she’s immensely popular. According to various web sites, a mention of phrases such as “Megan Fox’s vagina” or “Megan Fox nude scene” will bring droves of slavering teenage clickers your way. Despite this, Jessica Biel still outranks Ms. Fox for web searches. So I suppose you could use “Jessica Biel and Megan Fox lesbian scene” as a kind of catch-all search term.
6. Talk about Seth Godin for the bloggers
A bit of God(in)-worshipping goes a long way. The man’s a search term in his own right, so make sure you talk about him all the time. Nice stuff would be better, but you can’t just point to his posts because everyone does that – you need to write about how he inspired a particular thing or how he changed your life. Make it sickly sweet and full of honey in the forlorn hope of getting a pingback from him. And then, if you don’t get it, be really rude and abusive about him instead. Demand retribution and call him out. Tell him you’ll be waiting for him after school and that your dad’s bigger than his dad. Just remember to mention his name a lot so Google picks it up.
7. Capture the making money online crowd
Make sure you post entries with phrases like “make money online” in them. You know, stuff like “Making money online is a good way to earn extra income. You can make extra money by online earning and building your downline. Earn money online!” There, that’ll bring in at least a hundred hits from the same desperate spam-merchants who rushed over because of all the keywords in Number 1, above. One born every minute.
8. Get the geeks
Can’t use the interwebs without a computer and, of course, all computer people are geeks³. So you need to make sure you mention things they’ll search for, too! How about World of Warcraft for the gaming geeks (get a mention of “Gold Guide” and “Making money in WoW” in there, too, for the noobs), Princess Leia’s metal bikini for the Star Wars geeks, Jean-Luc Picard and Six of Nine (plus sexy picture of Jeri Ryan’s chest to comply with Number 4) or that Vulcan woman for the Trekkies, the bloke from Twilight, Harry Potter and, of course, Hermione (optionally with pornographic subtext).
9. Be seasonal – ask Santa!
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, but I’m sure he’ll bring you visitors regardless. Maybe you could throw him a couple of replacement Elves in exchange. Blood Elves, the sexy ones from World of Warcraft (see, even a Santa paragraph can have a geekword or three in it).
10. Talk about how to get blog traffic
If all else fails, you can just come up with a post of, say, ten ways to increase traffic to a blog. The question gets asked almost as often as people argue about freelancing rates of pay. That’ll bring in some clicks. You could even include a link to an article that’s really about increasing traffic – like this one.
What’s your favourite traffic trick? Do tell.
¹ Incidentally, it’s just as hard to find a topless photo of Mr Pitt as it is to find one of Ms Jameson that isn’t topless.
² No, I don’t know if that’s true, though I do recall someone who worked with her reporting that she was no Einstein.
³ One of those prejudices that’s unjustified, though I can’t deny that it fits me. Princess Leia gets my click every time.
Oh Spike you are such a naughty man. I should strip you naked and spank your tender bottom. Does naughty talk in your comments help bring visitors? If it does, you can thank me later, if it doesn’t, I apologise, it was all a joke.
Funny stuff, with lots of interspersed wisdom! As per usual.
You think I planned this? Or that? Traffic is still a mystery to me…
Thanks for the link.
Carolyn: I suspect that mentions of spanking would indeed bring visitors. Probably wearing adult-sized nappies or dressed in a lot of latex. (How did you know my posterior is tender?)
Anne: Hehe… no, I don’t think it was planned at all. Much like Deb or myself when we both wrote about the subject, it’s an eternal argument and brings a startling number of very worked-up people to a post. Always makes for great reading!
I always read about how to get a good traffic to your site, and they always say that you have to have an updated content to your site.. but what if my site has only one content.. because it is not a blogging site. so it is not changing it’s content.. how about that?
Ian: Thanks for dropping in. That’s a more difficult question – with only one page and no new content, the best ways are definitely the ones with a more “marketing” approach – link exchanging, posting pages that refer to the same subject and point the reader to your main site, getting bloggers or other site owners to write about the subject and point to you as an authority or even paying for Google word ads.