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Every opinionated blogger looks forward to the day when they can launch their new blog. But starting from scratch to build it may be discouraging. At the beginning, the only reader you are likely to have is yourself.

Here are 10 easy tips for increasing your blog’s traffic:

1. Create Some Good Pillar Content

An important first step in writing a blog is to choose which subject you’re going to blog about. Measure whether you can sustain writing your blog consistently or not by making a list of at least 50 “pillar” article titles. Just start with the titles at first.

1. Write 5-10 Pillar Articles — If you come up with a minimum of five “pillar” articles written to start off with, you’ll have a good foundation for starting (or kick-starting) a successful blog.
2. Avoid Reporting News –  A “pillar” is something basic and timeless, concerning your subject. Hot news flashes are time sensitive and don’t make good pillars. For more on why it’s better to be an expert rather than a reporter, read my post on Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting.
3. Don’t Tell, Show — Explanatory or informational pillars are the best, like a “how to” session. So make your pillar’s title something like “How to Start and Manage Your Own Book Club”… rather than, “This Month’s Picks from Oprah’s Book Club”.

Another example of a good pillar article is to write an article as a list, similar to the blog post you’re reading right now. The human brain loves to compartmentalize information quickly. Reading a list is a lot easier for the brain to process than reading fifty paragraphs of text.

Reasons why lists are good for pillar content:

1. Lists organize your info — making it look neat.
2. Lists are easy for other people to link to — it’s a quick and dirty solution for a common problem.
3. Lists are easier to read — and most online readers are lazy. People are more likely to stop and read a list because they know they can digest the content quickly.

So think of your pillar topics as lists, such as “3 Ways You Can Maximize Your Workout Routine”, or “5 Easy Tips For Getting Better Gas Mileage”.  Basically, make sure your content is scannable to the human eye.

The more interesting, pertinent and useful you can make a pillar article, the better. It will be the base on which all your blogging rests. A few good pillars on your blog will give readers an idea of what you’re all about and interest them enough to keep them coming back for more. Keep the pillar article at around five hundred words, fairly short and very informative for the best results.

2. Name Your Blog Well

Blog names are very important to a successful blog. It may not be easy to find just the right name, but there are a few things to remember when naming your blog.

1. Make it short and sweet — not necessarily sweet, but concise may be a better word… Long blog names are hard to remember, especially if they don’t have much to do with the subject matter in the blog.
2. Make it easy to remember — it should be something easy to remember so that when your readers tell others about your blog, nobody forgets the name.
3. Use a .com if possible — using a .com is very important for the sake of getting new readers (which, after all is the reason for blogging to begin with). The .com is easy to remember and in common usage to most people.

Making the name fit the subject is good, finding a way to incorporate key words in the name is even better!

3. Publish Content Consistently

Consistency is very important in writing a successful blog. Not every article has to be a shining star or a pillar, but there should be at least one every day and the pillars will appear almost magically among them as you continue.

1. Write Often — Giving your readers something different to read every day is one of the best ways to insure that they’ll come back for more. Keeping up on your subject is important to daily posting, it’s good to make sure that you have something new and interesting to say in every article on your blog. Remember, you’re writing for an audience and it’s your job to keep them interested.
2. Create A Good Content Base — Once your audience is established, and to draw more readers, daily additions are important for your blog. Keeping it fresh and constant for the first several months or a year will allow your readers to be forgiving if you slow down a bit from time to time. As long as what you do blog about keeps their interest and is updated with fresh material with every new article.

In the early days of your blog, it’s perfectly acceptable to write more than one article per day, as long as you have something of relevance to say.

4. Give Before You Receive (Comments)

Give before you recieve. Another good way to bring in new readers is to do a little traveling to the blogs of others. If your comments are clear and focused, as well as interesting or thought provoking, the readers of the other blogs will flock to yours to see if you have more to say that they want to read.

1. Like Attracts Like — It works best to comment on blogs that are along the same topic lines as your own so that their readers will be curious about what you have to say and visit your blog.
2. Reciprocation works both ways — When you comment, most blog sites allow for the commenters information to be shown so that it will be easy for the readers to find your blog.

Being a prolific blogger and commenter will increase your traffic as well as building your reputation. The more blogs you visit and comment on, the more readers you’ll have for yourself. It doesn’t take long and it is well worth the effort.

5. Give Before You Receive (Links)

Trackbacks are a necessity in building your blog readership. A trackback is simply a backlink that’s automatically created as a comment on the blog post that you linked to in your own post. Providing a link so that your readers can see what the other blogger has to say is good, getting a trackback (backlink) from that blogger is even better. Trackbacks basically automate reciprocal linking between bloggers.

• Example: Neil Patel’s blog, QuickSprout.com, has a really cool post called “51 Creative Business Cards That Will Make You Look Twice”. Since I linked to Neil’s post in the previous sentence, a trackback link pointing back to my blog will appear just above the comments section (Neil has a lot of trackbacks and comments) as soon as this post is published.

The links serve two specific purposes:

1. The sharing information, and
2. Building your readership.

Other bloggers will reciprocate by linking to your blog so you get their readers as well as your own. The effect of trackbacking is that you share your ideas and efforts with as many people as possible and make your own blog better known at the same time.

6. Encourage Commenting on Your Posts

Reinforcing your blog by encouraging and responding to comments is another essential in making your blog readers happy and growing in number. When you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you start a conversation and keep it going by responding to the comments of others.

The same principle works with your own blog. When someone leaves a comment for you, reply and start a discussion, debate or conversation with your readers. The comments may not always be friendly, but if you respond and work to change the mind of the commenter, it makes interesting reading for your blog followers and builds your reputation as a blogger.

7. Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals are another excellent way to get your blog into a wider market. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from other blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to compile a list of articles on a specific topic for a particular week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host’s post, so people that have articles featured in the blog carnival enjoy a spike in new subscribers.

You can participate in blog carnivals by creating pillar content (posts on your blog) then submit to a carnival host… or three!

1. Google “blog carnival list“ — see what carnivals are currently accepting entries.
2. Google “[keyword] blog carnival” — find specific subjects to enter your posts to.

This not only brings a spike in traffic to the blogs in the carnival, it also adds readers who will last beyond the carnival. It also inspires other bloggers to check out your blog since your work and their work was entered in the blog carnival. There’s a lot to be said for good will here; again, the more you participate, the more reciprocal activity you will get on your own blog. If you like someone else’s article, write them a comment!

8. Submit Your Blog

You should check out blogtopsites.com and submit your blog for consideration. It doesn’t take long to do. Go to blogtopsites.com and find your category, then enter your best or latest pillar. Or both.

• http://blogtopsites.com/

The readership increase won’t be immediate, but it will be steady. Having a few new readers per day doesn’t sound like much, but it grows with time and builds your audience and reputation both. In the blogging world, readership is the key to success and the more readers you can expose to your blog, the better. A visit to blogtopsites.com is just one of the many ways to bring in new readers and therefore new fans.

Another great blog directory that has a great Facebook application is Networked Blogs.

• http://networkedblogs.com/

You can set up an RSS Feed to automatically update a “blog” tab in your Facebook profile, so every time you publish a post it’s taken care of. Your Facebook “blog” page will show the new post within minutes!

9. Submit Your Articles

If you want a steady increase in readers, you can have it by going to EzineArticles.com and submitting some of your pillars.

• http://ezinearticles.com/

This enables other bloggers to read your material, share it and link to your blog from their own. Again, the building of readers isn’t immediate, but over time and the increases last as long as you continue to write timely and interesting articles that others want to share.

Doing this every week or so gives your blog more exposure to a wider audience and carries even further in the cyber world as others use your blog in their own.

10. Write More Pillar Articles

By far, the most important factor in any successful blog are the pillar articles. No matter what else you do will be as important, even if you’re following all the previous suggestions.

Content Is King!

Without really good pillar articles, your blog will never gain the readership that you need. Advertising by commenting, linking and submitting are only as effective as the pillar articles that your blog displays. Getting readers is one thing, keeping them is another matter. If your pillar articles aren’t strong, timely and interesting, the readers won’t keep coming back for more.

After a year, with one pillar article per week, you’ll have a 52-pillar base that really works!

Tags: article writing, blog commenting, Blogging, creating scannable content, how to blog, pillar content, what are trackbacks