LooseSuits

I was all excited about learning some promotion tips from others, but it looks as though no one has any. I can't believe that is true.

Depends on your content too I guess. I mean, I've been blogging for 3 years and I get about 100-200 uniques a day. Not particularly impressive, then again it is a personal blog and to do that much too is pretty much a feat. Not that random drop ins actually matter. It's the return visitors I want the most.

For one, I don't pimp my blog. My blog isn't listed in any directory. I do read several blogs, and I often comment but I don't expect any traffic from linking my site. I think there's a time and place for everything. I'm not blogging to become the next Internet star.

@ JustinKistner: I can see where a site like yours would view promotion as quite necessary. However, and this is just my personal opinion, submitting your own posts to social bookmarking sites seems a little silly and narcissistic.

Agreed. Using ma.gnolia is a little different though.

I don't keep a public blog to then try and hide it. I think promoting my blog is no different than a musician putting up fliers for a gig. And, the point of this post is to encourage people to share promotion ideas, perhaps we could have the side conversation about whether or not pimping one's own blog is narcissitic on this Note and keep this thread focused on promotion tips.

Point well taken ;).

Tony wrote a great article on how to promote your blog. It has 41 hot tips on how to build traffic.

That was a nice article :)

Good article for someone just starting.

I'll keep you updated on how your steps went for me.

I've had pretty good results using article marketing. I try to structure most of my posts in article format to begin with to allow them to be easily ported over. Once I've created a lengthy article that isn't self-promoting or too personal, but contains some real useable content I'll submit to a few article submission/direction sites like:

• EzineArticles.com
• Google Base
• GoArticles
• ArticleDashboard

The backlinks are nice and targeted and each article gets a surprising number of visits and click throughs to my blog/site.

What worked for me was writing about a niche, a subject I happen to be particularly passionate about. Commenting on other blogs also helped as a few people checked out my site. After that, if the content is good enough, people will tend to link to it and then pageviews grew from there. Commenting on topics of interest and participating in blog carnivals probably helped more than anything else.

Well, be careful what you submit your site to. Not all traffic is valuable traffic; in fact, some can be harmful. Linking farms (and, to me, there's little difference between some basically-dead "directory" and a linking farm) can harm your Google ranking. Also keep in mind that some social networking sites aren't too keen on members who just submit their own site's links. It kind of goes against the purpose of the tools.

I think your priority should first and foremost be your spots in Google. After two solid years of promoting my website as it is now, Google continues to be my number one referrer. This is partly because when you search my name--Lelia--I'm the first or second site that is listed of 1.34 million. Some articles have done well, too. If you can boost your positions in Google, you won't be sorry.

Offer quality content, and traffic will come to you. Sure, I promote my website, but I don't have to work too hard, because people are coming for the content I'm creating, anyway. If it's good content, people will come from the most random of places.

I just checked out your website. Here are my first impressions.

- (I think I'm answering your post here with this.) While it's got a clean design, it has the same K2 clean design that every other blog has. If you don't wish to invest in a personal site design, then go searching for a free WordPress theme (there are countless out there). I really can't stand seeing the K2 theme on most sites unless they have astounding content. It's not that I have anything against K2--great theme, great work--it's that it's "out of the box" design and just [sometimes] reeks of a nonchalant site owner. With a little searching, you can find a great and original free design and even touch it up a bit with your own style if you want.

- Switch to summaries on your main page; keep full content in your feeds. People coming to the main page of your site don't want to scroll forever, and they can tell from headlines and a short bit of entry text--and excerpt--whether they want to read on. I think having full content on your main page is a bit much, especially when one of your sidebar items, "Latest Entries," is basically a complete repeat of everything on your main page. If you're set on keeping the full entries, choose something different from your sidebar, like "Random Entries" or "Popular Entries." This will give you more traffic, as it provides people with more options. You should really browse your website from a user's point of view.

- What sort of different content are you creating? I notice most of your content is tech-related. Nothing wrong with that, but you are entering a part of the web that is already far too cluttered. If you want to get more traffic, your site is going to have to really stand out in that area. How are you going to do that? Offer information that no one else knows? Have a unique style of writing?

The last thing is what's important to you. You can have an amazing ranking in Technorati and elsewhere, and yet have terrible one-time-visiting users who rarely, if ever, comment or email you. Traffic can be important, especially from a business perspective, but user experience and the types of users you have are more important, or so I think.

Hope this helps.