You have finally got your blog up and running and you are posting information there that is helping your readers. What you really want now is to get some visitors or traffic to your site.

What is the best way to achieve that? These are what I would suggest you do.

1. Sign up for a autoresponder account. I prefer Aweber for this. Go and create an opt-in box and offer your visitors a free gift that is applicable to you niche. This means if you are in the golf niche you can offer them a free report on how to improve their golf swing or something similar. They have to sign it to get the gift.

2. Share your blog with others through the social media sites and social networking sites.

This is a list of some you can use.

http://stumbleupon.com

http://digg.com

http://reddit.com

http://delicious.com

https://facebook.com

3. Read and post comment on other peoples blogs. Make sure that the comment is meaningful. Read the person’s blog before you add a comment. This will also give you a link to your blog as long as you include your URL in the correct box.

4. Make sure that you add your site address to your signature when you are sending out correspondence.

5. If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, it will automatically ping your posts, but you can also manually ping them yourself.

6. Manually submit your blog to Google, Yahoo and Bing.

7. Include your blog URL on your business card or a flyer you may produce.

8. Make sure you include an RSS feed on your site. This is very easy when you are using WordPress.

9. If you have other sites, you may want to set up a “Blog Roll” and have the sites linked.

10. Write content for your blog on a regular basis. Include external and internal links in your posts.

11. Write some articles and post them on these sites and link back. Unique content is best but always when using blogging platforms, check out there terms and conditions.

Squidoo.com

Hubpages

Blogger

Ezine Articles

If you follow these rules you will definitely start attracting traffic.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a useful tool that allows you to save and retain information on your website or websites that you may visit. RSS uses an XML code which continuously scans the content of certain sites searching for new fresh information and then sends this information to subscribers.

RSS feeds are usually added to blogs. You can also add them to a website if you want to broadcast and publish information. This new information that you will receive will contain a headline and text. The text can be an extract of the article or the first few sentences. To read the article, you need to click on the link.

To be able to accept RSS feeds, you need a feed reader and this is called an aggregator. Aggregators are available online. If you are using WordPress you can use the RSS feed they provide either the widget RSS or a plugin. You use the interface that best suits you. RSS can be viewed and read on your mobile phone or a PDA such as a palmtop computer.

If you find a website that you want to add or insert to the aggregator, there are two ways to do this. Almost all sites will offer an RSS feed display button or there may be a “XLM” button on the home page. Now if you click on that button, you can add the feed to your aggregator. There are some aggregators where you will be required to copy and paste the URL of the feed into the program.

Either way, as soon as this is done, the feed will be available and then the next update to that site will arrive automatically. IF you find that you do not want any more information, it is a simple process to delete or erase that feed from you aggregator.

Some people are now opting to send information through RSS feeds rather than emails. One reason for this is that the RSS feed is never caught in a spam filter.

RSS feeds are now widely used and accepted by people or understand and appreciate how fast these reports are delivered. You can elect to read all the information sent or only certain pieces of it.

Aggregators

“Aggregator refers to a web site or computer software that aggregates a specific type of information from multiple online sources:

• News aggregator, a computer software or website that aggregates news from other news sources
• Poll aggregator, a website that aggregates polling data for upcoming elections
• Review aggregator, a website that aggregates reviews of movies or other products or services
• Search aggregator, software that runs on a user’s computer and fetches, filters, and organizes a specific search from various search engines
• Social network aggregation, the collection of content from multiple social network services
• Video aggregator, a website that collects and organizes online video sources”

This is directly from Wikipedia. As you can see there are several aggregators available and within each category there are several types.

Each aggregator has special features that allow you to perform different actions like hiding entries that have been viewed or combining related feeds into a single view.

Having an RSS feed allows your viewers instant access to the information you are providing on your site. If they do not have the feed they have to keep viewing your site to see if you have provided any new content.

So if you want people to be able to see what you are doing on your site, make sure that you add a feed for your visitors and then all they have to do is add it to their aggregator.

Now we have our blog started and a few posts, we want to get traffic to our site as soon as possible. To get any traffic to your site you have to tell people that you have a site.

Here are a few suggestions that may help get you that precious traffic. These are in no particular order. I am not even saying you have to do every one but I have included them here to help you.

1. Register your domain with Google – http://google.com/addurl . You can also add your site to my.yahoo.com and Bing. Or you may want to install a site map. Install the plugin Google XML sitemap – there are two that I like but I prefer the multi site support. It is very easy to install.

2. Read and comment on other people’s blogs in your niche. Ensure that you do read them and you leave an applicable comment. This sets up links and Google loves links.

3. Use social media sites (like Twitter and Facebook) and some Social Bookmarking sites to get noticed. I have listed some social booking marking sites for you. You should be able to click on the link for it to open.

Del.icio.us
Tagza
Newsvine
Blinklist
Mister-Wong

Or you may wish to use a free service like Social Marker and submit a lot at once.

4. I would ensure you use a pinging service. Some people use more that one but it is your choice. Do this every time you post.

Pingomatic
Pingoat
Feedshark
PinGates
PingIn

5. Submit articles to various sites. I would suggest that you use unique content for each site. When you write these articles make sure you include a link to your site. The terms and conditions of these article directories can be different so it is advisable that you read them carefully.

Ezine Articles
Go Articles
Article Dashboard
Article Biz
Article Alley

6. Ensure when you are sending emails or any other correspondence that you add your site into your signature block.

7. Visit forums in your niche and when you can add your URL to your signature block. Some forums want you be on their forum for a certain amount of time, while others want you to have a minimum amount of posts or threads before you can add your signature block.

8. If you are having new business cards printed, make sure you include your website.

9. Ensure you add RSS( Really Simple Syndication) to your blog. By using RSS, you blogs can be read using RSS aggregators or news feeds.

10. It is essential that you get into the habit of posting on your blog. It would be good if you could do at least two posts each week.

11. You have to be able to measure how many visitors are coming to your site. If you have created an optin form on your blog you can monitor your traffic there. I personally prefer Google Analytics but people argue for and against it. I like it. Remember if you cannot measure your traffic, you won’t know how you are going.

So I hope some of these suggestions may help you. Let me know what works best for you.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald