Use Blogs to Increase Website Traffic

It's often said that using a blog is a great way to increase website traffic, and there's a reason it's often said - it's true! However, it's also possible to use other people's blogs to get more traffic, and here are three ways...

The first way is to leave comments on other blogs.

Not all blogs allow people to leave comments, but plenty do as it creates an interactivity which retains the interest of the blog's readers.

This is great for you, because if the blog is in the same niche as your target market, that makes the readers *your* target market too!

Leave a comment which provides good value, or maybe warrants a discussion, and readers will want to follow the link back to your site, especially if you use good anchor text, i.e. the words which form the actual link, rather than 'click here.'

A second way this comment function works, is that if you pick a blog which is not only in your target market, but is well ranked with Google, the Google robots will follow the link to your site, and the fact that the linking blog is relevant in the eyes of Google, means that they will consider your site more relevant too.

This is really powerful, because you are getting a double positive double whammy from the same effort.

Some people advise that if you go for another blog which has a high Page Rank with Google, it doesn't matter what the subject matter is, if you leave a comment and a link, the PR will link to your site as well.

I'm not so sure about that advice. Firstly it's not proven, and Google are likely to change the goalposts at anytime with their ranking decisions. They have done before and surely will do again. You may find find that if the other blog is unrelated in subject matter, it may *harm* your search engine results.

Secondly, you lose the element of readers being interested in your site, as it won't be relevant to them.

Since you get the double hit from blogs that *are* in your niche, I would stick to those.

A third way to use other people's blogs is to tap into the fact that the owner has built up the readership of the blog.

If you offer an affiliate programme, which you should anyway, then you can offer the owner a special deal just for readers of their blog.

The owner wins as they get a pile of commissions on the sales, and at a higher rate than your normal affiliate rate.

The reader wins because they are getting good information in their subject of interest.

You win, because you are diverting traffic to your site, which the other blog owner has done the work to develop and qualify.

So you can see, although having your own blog is well advised as a traffic generator, there are simple yet effective ways to increase website traffic from other people's blogs.