Increase Your Website and Blog traffic

Photo by: Sean MacEntee (via Flickr)

Perhaps on of the most disheartening issues when launching a blog or website is obtaining traffic. Creating your website or blog is only one of the first steps. Ensuring you have a healthy number of visitors can take some time to achieve. It is important if you are to continue with your site that you remain realistic. With more websites and blogs than people now in existence there is a significant amount of competition.No matter what genre or niche you choose gaining traffic is probably going to be one of your biggest initial challenges.
Thankfully there are a number of strategies which can be used to gain more traffic to your site. Obviously the quality and content within your site is a big factor in developing a brand and gaining a following.

Facebook
You would struggle to come into contact with someone who has not got a Facebook profile and you are less likely to meet someone who has not heard of Facebook. This is why it is such an effective platform for promoting your website or blog. With both free and paid avenues available to develop a brand and increase social awareness about your website or blog.  

To find out more ways of how Facebook could help you increase traffic to your site click here.

Social Plugins
Whatever platform you use for blogging or your website you will more than likely be able to add social plugins to your site. Social plugins can be an excellent way for users to share your content through Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and lots of other platforms. This can build links to your website and is kind of like a virtual word of mouth. If you use WordPress and would like to know more about social plugins click here.

Social Bookmarking
There are a significant number of social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Google+, StumbleUpon and lots more. It is free to join these sites and start sharing links. So there is nothing to lose by joining up. Before you become an active member of any of these sites it is advisable to read there terms and conditions and guidance to ensure you adhere to and get the most out of these sites.

Paid Ads
There are now a number of very efficient platforms where you can advertise at price per click. This means you only pay when someone clicks through to your website. Google AdWords and Facebook both offer these services. What makes them very effective is you can target the audience you want to promote to. In addition you can set daily budgets and pause ad campaigns if they are not performing as you would like. StumbleUpon also offers a paid advertising service - StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. This is different again as there is no need for a user to click through to your website. Instead they will 'Stumble' to it. Meaning this also a very effective way to advertise. Again you can set daily budgets and pause a campaign at any time.

There are of course many more ways to promote your website and blog. If you like more detail I suggest you check out my article Ways to Increase Traffic to my Website or Blog. There is more detail and tips within this post.

Please note all images were acquired via Flickr under the Creative Commons License. If you would like to reuse or distribute any of the images please ensure you adhere to this license. Click here for more information about the terms of this license.