by Sabrina Sampson

Created on: November 05, 2009

For any blogger, increasing a blog's traffic is just as important as writing strong content. Acquiring more visitors leads to two main outcomes: 1) the blog enters into a network of others, becoming a viable and active part of the community and conversation that blogging offers, and 2) the blog's chances of earning money through ads increases. Gaining more visitors, and thus becoming a more visible part of an online community and becoming more likely to get paid, can be accomplished in many ways.

The most direct way to gain visitors and visitors who are more likely to become regular readers is to spend time and energy on the content of the blog. Though not a flashy solution, creating the best possible blog is the first and highest responsibility of the blogger. With such a crowded blogosphere (blog-tracking site Technorati counts more than 133 million blogs indexed), a reader will be sparing and specific with which blogs he or she reads.

The first way a blogger can improve his or her content is to decide what exactly the focus of the blog is. By determining what the blogger desires to get out of his or her blog, the blogger in effect decides what readership he or she is looking for.

Along with specifying the blog content, each blogger must find his or her voice. The voice is the original, subjective way the blogger is going to communicate his or her topics, and can be influenced with humor, cynicism, logical arguments, etc. Often, a voice is something that comes from extensive writing, which is another argument for blogging consistently.

The blog's graphical appearance should also not be disregarded. Sites like Blogspot or Wordpress offer simple templates for creating an aesthetically pleasing blog, but as one continues blogging long enough, one should seriously consider learning the basics of HTML or a related kind of website language for graphic and appearance editing.

Besides these maintenance issues, a blogger can increase visitors by following many of the tips covered in How To Index A Blog. These tips will increase one's blog's visibility on the web and often introduce it to a target readership. For example, by joining a topic-specific blogging community or by posting on blogs that are similar in interest to the blogger's, one can join in on a conversation that the blogger's personal site can contribute to.

Many other tips exist for bloggers who wish to increase their readership. Inviting guest bloggers, for example, can associate your blog with the guest blogger's readers. Also, a blogger might consider keeping comments off when he or she begins until the blogger receives a large enough base where few posts will go by with zero comments. Finally, it is important to add links to one's posts for indexing purposes, to inform readers of what they may not know, and to join into larger online conversations but it is just as important to avoid over-linking or linking to obvious sites, such as Wikipedia.

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