Eight tips to build QUALITY traffic

Posted by Peter F on January 24 2007 in Business How-to Traffic. There are 26 comments. Add yours!

A search at google for “build blog traffic” returns 11,500,000 results. Clearly, there is a lot to be said on this topic. We bloggers just can’t get enough of it. We want more! More! But in many, many cases, traffic volume will do nothing to help your business. What you need is quality traffic.

What quality means depends on whether you’re blogging for direct revenue (advertising, sponsorship, online product sales) or indirect revenue (contracts, offline product sales). In the case of the latter, attracting a huge swath of the general population may do very little to boost your business. I’m going to focus on this group for the remainder of this article.

If you’re a realtor (or a lawyer, or a designer), receiving a surge of thousands of visitors can be fun, but it does very little to affect your bottom line. What’s important in your case is targeted traffic. You want to be talking to people who might actually be interested in your services. The following tips have helped my clients and me get tremendous response from our blogging efforts. Taken individually, none of these tips will have a massive effect on your traffic levels. But used together, you should see remarkable results in a short period of time.

Quality traffic tip #1: Leave comments
I can think of no better way to get your name out in front of key players in your industry than by leaving smart, relevant comments on existing blogs. Each comment you leave serves a couple of purposes: it creates a link back to your site (always a good thing), it illustrates that you have something of value to add, and can be the first step in building a relationship with the site owner.

Example #1: By leaving comments on problogger.net, I started to form a relationship with the site’s author. We moved from exchanging comments, to email, to IM, to beer (a good progression in my books!). That relationship has done wonders for my business in the form of referrals and testimonials from a very trusted source. It never would have come to be if I didn’t leave comments.

I can almost guarantee that every time you leave a comment, someone will visit your site. Building your audience one at a time may sound like an awful lot of work. But those readers who come via comments are very likely to be interested in what you and your blog are about. So you odds of converting that reader to a client (or whatever your conversion goal is) are good.

Note though, that you’ve got to have something to add. Just leaving a comment with your site name and address, or otherwise spamming comments is just plain dumb.

Quality traffic tip #2: Participate in forums
This is actually very similar to leaving comments. Just about every niche under the sun has a forum dedicated to it. The people who populate those forums tend to be amongst the most vocal and passionate members of their community. Engaging with them, on their terms, by contributing something of value is a great way to find influencers and thought leaders.

Be cautious here though. Do not just show up and say “Hey, check out my blog”. First, establish your credibility by participating in a number of discussions. Then, when it’s relevant to do so, mention your site.

Again, this can seem like a painstaking way to build traffic. It does take time and effort. But the results can be astounding if targeted traffic is what you need.

Quality traffic tip #3: Email other bloggers
When you’ve written something great, write to other bloggers in your niche and tell them about it. Do it politely, without expectations, and you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you pick up a bunch of new readers. The key here is “without expectations”. Don’t email the same person frequently, and don’t be obnoxious. Save this for when you’ve got something special. When you do, simply summarize your post, and write something like “I’ve just posted about blah, and thought you might be interested.”

It’s amazing how few new bloggers take advantage of email. When done correctly, you’re not imposing on the receiving blogger. Rather you’re helping point out resources he may not have otherwise been aware of.

Quality traffic tip #4: Submit your site to relevant blog directories
A google search for “blog directory” (with quotation marks) returns 9,360,000 results. At least a couple of those will have sections relevant to your industry or niche. Almost all directories allow you to submit your site for free. Do a bit of research, find the directories that are relevant to you, and spend a couple of minutes per week submitting your site. Super easy.

Quality traffic tip #5: Join a network
Using google again, “blog network” (with quotation marks) returns 1,190,000 results. There are blog networks for just about everyone. The benefit of joining a network is shared traffic. Network members interlink like crazy, and often refer work to each other. I’m a member of the 9rules network (one of the first, actually). Aside from the traffic boost, one of the greatest benefits of membership is the behind the scenes camaraderie that has sprung up on the private message board. There’s lots of “real life” networking going on here, with members helping each other and their businesses in a myriad of ways.

Quality traffic tip #6: Online advertising
Online advertising need not cost very much, yet it can be extremely effective. Find sites that are in or are related to your industry but that do not directly compete with you. Approach the site owners to see if you can purchase a small ad. Costs for this can be really low – as low as $20 per month. Because you can control the ad’s message, you can ensure that you’re getting targeted results for your investment.

Quality traffic tip #7: Offline advertising
Oh yeah, the offline world of advertising… I remember that… Are there any industry specific publications or newsletters you can advertise in? Depending on your niche, these can be very reasonably priced, and can offer extremely targeted results.

Quality traffic tip #8: Press release and/or email directly to reporters
Have something really relevant to say? Let the press know about it. Press releases appear to be dying a slow death, but they’re far from gone. Consult a PR pro when the time is right.

Alternatively, you can contact a reporter directly. Only do this when you’ve got something newsworthy – you don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf, after all. Most reporters rely on tips for their stories, so they’re usually quite receptive to anything that’s within their scope of reporting, and is of genuine value.

So that’s my overview of building quality blog traffic. So many of us (me included) get sucked into total numbers. When you’re not in the business of selling advertising, total visits are far less important than valuable visits. Do what you can to attract targeted traffic, and your business is sure to grow.

Was this post useful for you? If so, consider clicking this Digg This link so we can share this with more folks. Thanks!