Q3: Building blog traffic I’ve enjoyed some of your posts which touched on blogging in recent months, and I wonder if you might have any advice for me to take my blog to another level. I recently started blogging or the first time about 2 months ago about a topic on which I’m very passionate. I also haven’t been able to find many other blogs at all on this specific topic, yet I know that many people are interested in this topic. So far my focus has been on creating content– I post 2-3 times a week with completely original posts of appropriate length. I have spent a decent amount of time turning a free blog template into something somewhat attractive. To date, my average article only gets about 10-20 views within a few weeks. I acknowledge that I have spent little effort promoting the blog– I do have a target audience in a closely related topic that is covered by MANY blogs, and I plan to try to tap into that once my website becomes easy enough for new visitors to share and follow. My main goals with this blog are to establish an expertise in order to lay the groundwork for a service-based research business, and also to force me to get my own research down on paper by writing about it. Do you have any advice for a novice blogger like me at this stage? Is there a “critical mass” of content when google searches might start bringing in more traffic? – Kevin If I were you, I’d attempt to write a few articles that were home runs in that they offer compelling information and a compelling viewpoint and really exemplify the best of what you think you have to offer. Make sure that those articles include some links back to your earlier articles. Then, you’ve got to promote those articles. Find forums and other places where people interested in your topic gather and then look for discussion threads related to what you wrote about. Offer up your article. I found that actually quoting key parts of my articles worked best – I’d actually copy and paste in some material that was really relevant to the topic at hand on that message board and then provide a link back to my own article. You can do this on messageboards, on Twitter, in Facebook groups… there are all kinds of places out there to do this as long as they’re places where people gather. You need to spend some significant time doing this. What this does is it gets some eyeballs on your articles from people actually interested in your specific topic while also helping Google (and Bing) to find your pages. If a more influential blogger finds your article, he/she may link to it. The thing to remember is that you can write the best articles in the world, but if no one knows about them, no one’s going to read them. You have to take some steps to help people find them, but at the same time, few people like blatant self-promotion. Look for the right situation to share your articles. In particular, look for situations where your article really addresses a topic that someone else has introduced.
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