If you are trying to monetize your blog, the best way to make money fast is to increase traffic. When you have more page views and more viewers, you can establish your blog and then focus on higher-paying advertisers.
Here are five ways to build a following for your blog without spending any money.
Guest Posts
Although you may invest some time and effort into writing a guest post, this is an invaluable tool to increasing traffic for two reasons. First, you can add backlinks to your blog which can draw brand new visitors to your website. If they like what they see, they’ll come back. Second, by writing informative articles for another blog, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field. Just find a blog that provides information about a similar topic, and contact the blog author with a specific query.
SEO is all about Balance
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to draw new followers to your blog. When your blog is deemed relevant by search engines, you will show up on one of the first pages of the search results. The goal is to show up on the first page, since most followers won’t click through to the next page. If you pack too many keywords into your blog, readers will notice the redundancy. On the other hand, if you don’t focus your blog content, you will never show up in online searches. Focus on optimizing just the article titles and first sentences with keywords. Try to balance Search Engine Optimization tactics with well-articulated web content, and your followers will appreciate reading high-quality information that’s not peppered with SEO.
Enable Comments
Be sure to enable comments on your blog; this is an important way to make your web content interactive. When you add a particularly interesting or controversial article, your readers may have questions or something to add to the debate. Let them join in on the discussion with comments that will keep them coming back. This is also important for building a blog community, because readers will feel like they are part of something. As the blog administrator, don’t forget to comment on new comments yourself. Also, the more difficult it is to comment, the less people will go through the effort. Make it easy to log in without subscribing to your blog, and you will see more people contributing to the conversation.
Social Media
Social media may be the easiest way to build a following for your blog. Twitter and Facebook are free and virtually effortless tools to attract more readers. Be sure to update often; a dead Twitter or Facebook account shows readers that you don’t update information in your blog either. Use social media as a way to brand your blog; create a Twitter account that notifies readers when you add a new article or feature, and start a Facebook Fan Page that will highlight your readership. Let your readers do the work for you. With Twitter, people can easily retweet your tweets, which builds a bigger following. With Facebook, people can invite others to become a “fan,” which also reaches out to a bigger audience than you would have been able to do alone.
Newsletters
You may think that sending out weekly newsletters via email is a lot of work for little reward, but the opposite is true. If you are already adding web content to your blog on a weekly basis, why not highlight the main points in your newsletter? Then provide links to your blog so that readers can read more, and you will earn more page views. Reward loyal readers who allow you into their inbox every week with free tips and other information that they won’t find on the website. This will build your “blog brand” and ensure that your followers will return to your website.
If you want to make money blogging, follow these five tips to help you build a blog community, reach a wider audience, and increase traffic. All of these marketing strategies are completely free.
0 comments:
Post a Comment