Grab For The Blog Traffic

SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin has twenty-one suggestions on ways to improve blog traffic, ranging from the choice of blogging software to building the brand.

"I got 99 problems, but the blog traffic ain't one of them."
-- a little remix of Jay-Z's '99 Problems'

Fishkin does not have many problems with blog traffic either. The respected SEO expert speaks at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and we're sure he is well-known within our readership.

His latest blog post discussed the ways bloggers can grab a better shot at drawing more traffic. Fishkin's strategies apply as much to the business-oriented blogger as they do the individuals.

"Rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here," Fishkin said of his blog entry.

He advises people to always host a blog on a domain they control. "A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot," Fishkin said.

The best option here would be to make the blog a sub-section of the primary domain.

Tagging content makes it available to the growing realm of social media. Relevant tags on blog posts will be found by those who search for that tagged content on Technorati. Fishkin said tagging can help bring in a big traffic bump from social news sites like Digg and Reddit, and the StumbleUpon sharing community.

There are a couple of things Fishkin advised bloggers not to do right away, like enabling comments or dropping advertising on a new blog. Both can be enabled later.

"Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity," he said.

As for ads, Fishkin thinks they "have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link" to a site.

The rest of Fishkin's hints should be very helpful to anyone who wants to be a better blogger.

While a massive volume of traffic can't be guaranteed, following his suggestions will make for a more rewarding blog for its visitors and its writer.