The Effective Marketer

Thanks to Christopher S. Penn and his newsletter I read this amazing post by SEOmoz on “21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic“. It not only validates some of my personal beliefs but also gave me additional tactics to apply to my own blog as well as companies I work with.

The tactics discussed in the article are:

1. Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share
2. Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers
3. Make Your Blog’s Content SEO-Friendly
4. Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections
5. Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results
6. Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)
7. Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts
8. Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others
9. Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon
10. Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)
11. Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site
12. Interact on Other Blogs’ Comments
13. Participate in Q+A Sites
14. Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)
15. Attend and Host Events
16. Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog
17. Survey Your Readers
18. Add Value to a Popular Conversation
19. Aggregate the Best of Your Niche
20. Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog
21. Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab ’em!)
22. (Bonus) Be Consistent and Don’t Give Up

While I was indeed doing most of what they suggest, there were a couple of good tactics I had either neglected completely or kept postponing (yeah, I procrastinate sometimes… ask my wife!).

Your Checklist for Increasing Blog Traffic

Take the list above, make it into a checklist format, print it and place it somewhere next to you (like, on the wall right in front of you!). Then, make a point of every week to review it and plan your tactic for the coming week. It’s a lot to do but if you break it down into weekly tactics, dedicating 1 hour or so for a handful of them, you will see great improvement in your blog traffic.

You know what? Let me help you out. Here’s the list in a PDF format ready for you to print and use. It includes a few extra blank lines for you to add your own tactics based on your company’s goals and specific industry opportunities.

Oh, and don’t be like me. Download it now and start doing it today! 🙂

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under Content Marketing, productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.