So You Built It – Did They Come?

Written by Susan on March 17th, 2009

Little Known Methods To Get Visitors To Your Blog

Congratulations! Your fresh new blog is live on the Internet, and all the backbreaking, uphill labor of building your online business is behind you. Now it’s time to sit back, take it easy, and watch the money pile up in your PayPal account. Right?

Oh, so wrong. You’ve merely scaled the foothills – wrestled with Wordpress, boggled over business decisions, pondered over products, tackled tech issues, and labored toward launch day. And learned, to your dismay, that nobody cared at all. You’ve discovered that horrible truth that every Internet entrepreneur must face – the real mountain you must climb is learning How To Get Some Traffic.

Well, strap on your crampons. It’s time to get those eyeballs on your blog – all those people who are interested in your topic and need to know about your site. We’re going to talk about a couple of little known strategies to getting the word out and the visitors in.

There are, of course, paid methods and free methods to get visitors to your blog. If your total advertising budget wouldn’t cover the cost of a stamp, well, you’ll have to rely on free methods. (Don’t worry – you’re in good company!) Free methods means getting organic traffic from the search engines or other sources. There are some well-known ways of doing this, like article marketing and SEO. Today I’m going to discuss other ways of getting search engine traffic that are just as effective – but not often thought of – as the more conventional ways.

The first method is using Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Answers is a website for people who want to ask questions about anything and everything, and for other people to supply them with answers. You must have at least two Yahoo! accounts to use this method (in fact, the more the better). The first step is to log into Yahoo! Answers using one of your Yahoo! accounts. Enter a keyword phrase related to your niche into Yahoo! Answers in the form of a question. For example, if your blog is all about weight loss, one of your keyword phrases might be Lose Weight Naturally. So just type How Can I Lose Weight Naturally? into Yahoo! Answers.

Then exit from Yahoo! Answers and log in again, this time using your second Yahoo! account. Go back to the question you posted earlier and answer it. Of course, your answer should be informative and as accurate as possible. You can either get the answer from your own blog content or from another related website (remember: if you take the answer from another website, be sure to re-word your answer so that you’re not plagiarizing). Along with your answer there will be a field called Know your source? Here is where you’ll put in your blog URL.

Besides answering your own question, you could do a search within Yahoo! Answers for other similar questions asked by other people and submit your answer there also. What is happening is you are building quality backlinks to your blog with each answer you submit. It goes without saying that the more questions and answers you submit, the more backlinks you get to your blog. And everyone knows that backlinks push your blog ranking up the search engine.

In addition to getting visitors to your blog from search engines, you will also get visitors from those who read your answer on Yahoo! Answer. And they say people don’t like a know-it-all!

The second method is by using forums. Find a forum related to the niche topic you are blogging about. Choose forums that allow you to put links into your signature file. Edit your signature file to include a catchy caption and your blog URL. When you visit the forum, search for threads that are relevant to your blog niche topic. As far as possible, visit threads with only a few replies. People reading through the threads normally don’t bother reading more than the first page of replies. So if your reply is listed on the second or third page, the chances of people reading it is pretty slim.

Once you find such a thread, post your reply. Most forums have a check box to indicate you wish to show your signature file. Always make sure this check box is ticked. Another clever little idea is to start your own thread in the forum. This way, everyone who visits your thread is guaranteed to see your post and signature file.

Add these often overlooked tricks to your cache of traffic building weapons, and over time you will start seeing more visitors to your blog, thanks to your higher ranking on the search engines and the many visitors to Yahoo! Answers and relevant forums.