There’s no debating that traffic is the lifeline of any blog. Without it, your blog would die. So how do you get traffic to your blog? Well, you could pay for it. (uh, no thanks) You can also generate it for free yourself, using any of the free methods listed below. Depending on the niche, or topic that your blog covers, some methods may work better than other, while some may not work at all. The important thing is to try them all and get the visitors to start rolling in. Let’s jump right into some popular traffic generating methods.

Ping The Other Blogging Services

This step is very important when trying to gain traffic. Using a service such as Pingomatic, you are able to send out a notification to other, larger blogging services that your blog is alive and well. The services will start to publish your blog posts on their sites, which will lead to traffic. You will want to “Ping” your blog every time you create a new post or page. There are other blog sites that you can ping that are not included in the pingomatic service (far too many to list here). A simple “ping blog” search on Google should yield more results.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is simply what the name implies. You write short articles (300-500 words) and submit them to article directories such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Article Base, & Many Others. When I say articles, you can simply rewrite your blog post (make it legible) and submit that as your article. You do not need to be a reporter, or professional writer to generate articles. When posting your article, you will be given a DOFOLLOW resource box at the end of the article, in which you will drop a link or two back to your website.

This resource box link serves two very important purposes. First, you are given a high page rank backlink to your blog which will make you rank higher in the search engines temporarily. Second, ALOT of people frequent these article directories and you will get traffic from people reading your article and following your link. So go out and write articles! NOW, what are you waiting for?

Social Networking

Social networking is quickly becoming a very popular and effective method of promoting your blog. When you hear the term “social networking” it does not mean putting together a local conference and shaking hands with potential eyeballs to your blog. It means utilizing the power and traffic of large websites that cater to social subjects. Digg.com for instance, let’s you submit blog posts as if they were breaking news stories. Stumble Upon, let’s you submit a link to your blog, as if you just “stumbled upon it” while surfing the internet. All for Free!

Let’s not forget about MySpace and Facebook! They get MILLIONS of visitors everyday! Why not create a new account on each site that is somewhat thought about and appealing to look at, and drop a few links back your blog while your at it? The links are NOFOLLOW, but they will get you direct traffic from profile views. The power of social networking is ridiculous right now, and you would be a fool not to cash in on it.

Blog and Forum Posting

This method is probably one of the easiest and quickest methods available to generate traffic. Basically what you will do here is done in 2 different parts. First, visit blogs that are related to your blogs’ niche or topic. Then, find blog posts that are interesting to you and comment on them, and leave a subtle link back to your blog.

WARNING: DO NOT SPAM THE POSTS! Blog owners hate this. You own a blog now, think about it! Make sure you leave relevant comments, and drop a link back to your blog. Some blog owners make their blogs NOFOLLOW, which wont give you search engine love, but should get you traffic from people reading their blog posts and comments.

The second part is forum posting. This one allows you get a little more crazy with the linking. (Notice I said A LITTLE?) With this one, you sign up to be a member of forums (that should be related to your niche). 99% of fourms will allow you a signature box in which you can leave a link or two to interesting posts on your blog (or the homepage). Then all you do is go out and participate in the forum discussions which will also display your signature, complete with your link back to your blog. Feel free to participate as much as you want, but be warned NO SPAMMING!

Post, Post, Post, Post

Natural search engine traffic is the best traffic there is. Make sure that you post frequently to your blog (every day if possible) because the search engines, especially Google, love fresh content. The more you post, the more pages you will get indexed by the search engines, which also means you will have a better chance of people finding your blog, which also means you will rank higher in the search engines, which also means……… You catch my drift?

These methods should be more than enough for now to get the word out that you have a blog, and are requesting that people come view it. Good luck with your blogging, and make sure you monetize the blog in some way to make a little money from all the people that will be visiting.