Every blogger wants more traffic. The more people visit your website and read your content, the better chance you have of getting the recognition you deserve from your work. Of course, when you start a new blog, it is going to take time for you to get ranked in the search engines and for people to find out about your website. My philosophy is, every little thing that you do is going to help you over the long run. That’s why new bloggers need to focus on building links and creating outposts for their blog. Now here is the tricky part. You are going to have only 24 hours a day, so you won’t have the time to be involved on too many sites. That’s why you should pick and choose your spot.

All bloggers need to be involved on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz. That goes without saying. But in order to further increase your traffic, you need to go beyond those 3 services. Here are 5 ways to get started:

Keep Building Those Hubpages

Hubpages is one of the most underrated web services around. I still get traffic from a hubpage I wrote a couple of years ago. Of course, you need to play the game and be involved in that community. Commenting on other people’s pages can help. You shouldn’t cut corners as people will call you out. Whatever you do, do not forget to link back to your blog.

Don’t Forget Squidoo

Squidoo is another one of those websites that can bring you lots of traffic or nothing at all. It really depends how much effort you put into your Squidoo lenses. The more comprehensive they are, and the more involved in that community, the better chance you have of gaining a decent amount of traffic from that site.

Get Involved on Posterous

Posterous does require you to dedicate a decent amount of time to keep your account up to date. But it’s a great community to be involved in if you are a social media pro or just a newbie blogger.

Build Your Presence on Tumblr

Tumblr was considered by some experts to be the “next Twitter.” While it may not be there at this point, it can still offer you another chance to connect with potential visitors and show them why they should check your main blog.

Take Advantage of Article Directories

Article Directories are not as powerful as they used to be, but they can still drive traffic to your website. You can build some backlinks to your blog and bring in a decent amount of traffic if your articles are shared or voted up on the site.

The above methods will not drive millions of people to your website. But they will help you increase your traffic gradually. Every little thing counts.

Having the talent and drive to develop killer content for your blog does not mean that you should not actively seek more traffic for your website. Just because you are great at developing content does not mean people are going to be able to find your posts on the web. As a blogger, it is truly discouraging to not see results from all the hard work you have put in to develop your content. That’s why blog traffic matters. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either not serious about blogging or is not being truthful. There are many advanced traffic strategies that you can use to take your blog to the next level and set it apart from other blogs in your niche. But you’d be surprised to know how many bloggers do not do the basic when it comes to driving traffic to their blogs.

In reality, you do not have to be a genius to be able to drive traffic to your blog. Not when you have great content that people want to read. You just have to treat the process seriously. With that in mind, here are 10 simple ways to take your blog to the next level and get more people to visit your website:

• Post Frequency: we are talking about quality posts here. Don’t assume that you can just report the news in 2 or 3 sentences and improve your blog traffic dramatically. At the same time, don’t underestimate this factor. The more content you put out, the better chance you have of hitting your targets and getting more people to visit your blog. Content is about quality but quantity plays a role as well.
• Search Engine Optimization: a no brainer. If you have not heard of SEO by now, then you are very behind the curve. Fear not, as the industry changes all the times, so you’ll have the time to catch up. Optimize your posts, target the right keywords, gather links for your blog, and you are on your way (that’s not all though!).
• Create a Twitter Account: if you are not on Twitter, you may want to stop reading this post and start your Twitter account right away. It’s that important. Especially if you have a niche blog. If you have multiple blogs, make sure you create a Twitter account for each. Do not spam!
• Facebook: you should not only ask your friends on Facebook to share your content with their networks, you should also add a Facebook button to your blog to make the process easy for your readers. Don’t forget to create a Facebook page for your blog as well.
• Pay attention to social bookmarking: StumbleUpon and Delicious are two great places to be involved in to push your blog posts and gain more traffic for your blog. You want to make sure you have the appropriate buttons available on your blog to give you visitors the chance to help spread the word.
• Participate in other communities: one of the easiest ways to get more people to visit your website is by networking with other bloggers and being involved in their communities. You don’t want to use other blogs to just promote yourself. You want to add some value as well. But if you are active in top communities in your niche, there is no reason you can’t get a decent stream of traffic to your blog.
• Forums: not only you should take the time to start a forum around your niche, you should also be actively involved in third-party boards in your niche. Don’t forget to add a link back to your blog in your signature.
• Keep Track of Trends: writing about topics that are trending on Twitter and other social networking websites could get your website some decent short-term recognition. It really depends on how you play your cards here. Let’s say you own a Mac blog. You are going to get some boost in traffic if you cover iPhone HD comprehensively on your blog.
• Upload and distribute your videos: in case you have not noticed, most top bloggers take the time to add video content to their blogs. ProBlogger is a good example in that regard. You should also take the time to distribute your videos to top video sharing websites to maximize this opportunity.
• Throw Giveaways: this is really a no brainer. How much traffic would you get to your blog if you start giving away a couple of iPads these days? I am not suggesting that you should throw money at your traffic troubles. But giveaways can help spread the word about your top posts. You want to make sure you ask your readers to join you on Twitter, Facebook, and other outposts before giving them the chance to win something. Your goal is not trying to be nice and generous. You want to see some results from your giveaways. So what if you don’t afford to give things away? Simple. Just contact top companies in your niche and let them know why they should throw a giveaway on your blog.

The above steps are only a fraction of things you can do to drive traffic to your blog, which is why there is a second part to this post. I personally focus on guerrilla marketing tactics to generate traffic for my blogs. I have not spent a dime on search engine advertising or paid traffic tactics for years. So stay tuned for the second part of this series as I intend to cover some of those not-so-obvious traffic-building tactics.

Social bookmarking sites are yet another source of links for bloggers and search engine optimizers. Web services such as Delicious and Mixx can bring you lots of targeted SEO traffic. As long as your listings become popular on delicious, there is no reason you can drive a ton of traffic to your website. Considering that delicious is now closely linked to Twitter, your traffic can multiply in a fairly short period of time. One of the best ways to build traffic through social bookmarking sites such as Digg is by participating in the community and making friends. There are a lot of people who will return you the favor if you help their content go viral. Besides, the more people you know on these sites, the better shot your content gets at going viral.

I recommend you adopt a multi-faceted strategy to take advantage of social bookmarking sites. Sites such as Delicious, Digg, and Mixx are worth being a part of and participating in. You can also add a few niche communities to reach out to others in your niche and get more people to visit your blog. You won’t have time to be a part of every little social bookmarking community, which is why you should use a service such as Social Maximizer to get the job done. There are plenty of social bookmarking submission sites that help you submit your site automatically, but since I haven’t tried them I can’t vouch for them.

Social Maximizer is the main service that I have used to outsource my social bookmarking submission process and focus on more important chores on a daily basis. Just like Directory Maximizer, Social Maximizer provides you with a self-service submission feature that lets you optimize your lists and target the sites you want to show up on. There are plenty of social bookmarking sites that do pass link juice to your blog, so if you acquire those links, you are going to get a lot of value from your investment. At the end of the day, you shouldn’t try to spam these sites. Your goal should be to get your highly useful content in front of more people. But if you are planning to get your blog indexed fast and drive a decent amount of organic traffic to your website, social bookmarking websites are worth targeting. Just remember, content is still king when it comes to taking advantage of the social media.

I have talked about in the past about the importance of paying attention to search engine optimization if you intend to get more traffic to your blog on a daily basis. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all are capable of driving lots of targeted traffic to your blog, but you will have to work for it if you intend to get tangible results from your search engine optimization efforts. One of the main strategies to climb up the search engine rankings is acquiring incoming links from other websites with your preferred anchor text (that is if you plan to rank for that piece of text). You can always ask other blogs to link to you. You can also participate in forums and get links through your signature. But one of the oldest strategies that still works is acquiring links from directories. It’s true that search engines are not paying as much attention as they used to as far as directories are concerned, but getting links from targeted directories can provide you with a decent push. Don’t forget that directories that have a decent amount of page views can drive you traffic by themselves, so going after directories is still worth the effort.

A lot of old school SEOs prefer going after directories manually. They pick and choose 20 or so directories, conduct deep analysis on each, and submit sites to them. But if you are not into signing up for these directories yourself and submit your listings by hand, you can always outsource the process. Services such as Directory Maximizer allow you to submit your blog to hundreds of directories over the period that you define. So you won’t get flagged for adding too many incoming links to your blog in a short period of time. You’ll be in control of your anchor text as well, so it’s a win win.

What I like about Directory Maximizer is that it allows you to customize your directory submission campaign and choose directories that have a specific PR. You can also choose the speed of submission which is a big plus as you don’t want to get flagged by search engines for submitting to too many directories. You can also define multiple titles for your listing and have the software switch among these titles on different directories. So let’s say if you have 10 titles and you submit to 100 directories, you will get 10 links per each anchor text from these directories.

Overall, Directory Maximizer is a tool that simplifies your life and lets you focus on more important things. You can also do all your submissions by hand, but that wouldn’t be the best way to spend your time as a blogger. Directories do matter and can provide you with a push if you approach them the right way. But there are plenty of other ways to build links to your blog, which is why you should stay tuned for the second part of this series.

So you need more traffic to your blog? That is the main challenge for all bloggers. Even the best pro bloggers out there sometimes struggle to get enough traffic to their sites. Your traffic level is not something you can be happy with. No matter how many millions of people are visiting your blog, it can’t hurt to have more traffic. People who have been around and tried a lot of traffic building services in their time will probably have an easier time driving traffic to a brand new blog. But if you haven’t been around this field for too long or just need more traffic, below are 8 places to share your blog posts and get more traffic.

8 Places To Share Your Blog Posts For Traffic

You don’t necessarily have to spend thousands of dollars to drive traffic to your blog. Not when you have access to the below social media sites:

1. Facebook: it’s amazing how many bloggers ignore how powerful Facebook has become. People on Facebook do read your blog posts, but you have got to share your posts with your friends and build up your network on Facebook.
2. Twitter: posting your content on Twitter is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog. You don’t want to spam on Twitter, but if you have valuable content to share, there is no reason you can’t a good amount of traffic in return.
3. Friendfeed: it’s true that Facebook has bought Friendfeed, and the future does look a bit shaky for this social networking site. At the same time, sharing your content here and engaging others is a great way to enhance your community.
4. Digg: making it big on Digg does take a bit of work these days. The more you participate on Digg and build your network, the better chance you have of gaining short-term and long-term traffic from Digg.
5. Delicious: my favorite social bookmarking site. It can drive you lots of traffic if you make it to the main page. For that to happen, you are going to need a decent post and the help of your community to push your posts on Delicious.
6. Sphinn: if you have a marketing blog (or a blog about blogging) and are into building “top lists” or other viral content, Sphinn can get you lots of targeted traffic.
7. Tumbler: a lot of people have talked about Tumblr as being the next Twitter. I don’t know about that, but it’s a great place to share your content with others and get yet another channel to push your content through.
8. Posterous: the next big thing in the social media field. It’s actually quite fun to play with when you get a hang of it. It’s another way to share your content and build up your community.

These sites do not require you to pay a penny and are quite effective in driving traffic to your website. You’ve got to work on your content and provide something of value on these sites. As long as you can do that, there is a lot of traffic to be gained from these sites.

Your take: which site do you rely on the most to share your blog posts with others?

Blogging is one of the funnest careers to have these days. After all, you are going to write great content, and they will be found by your audience. Your audience gets a lot of value out of your posts, and you make decent money from your sponsorships. Everybody wins, right? Wrong! In order to get any decent sponsorship deals these days, you need to find a way to drive lots of traffic to your website. And I am not talking about driving traffic from pay per click marketing. Pay per click marketing can easily make you go bankrupt if you don’t know what you are doing. That’s why you should focus more on free or almost free ways to promote your blog and drive traffic to your website.

BlogCatalog is a social blogger community that helps you get the word out about your blog and attract new visitors each and every day. I was at first a bit skeptical about it. I thought to myself, “yet another blog directory. Big deal!” But I was mistaken. You’d be surprised how much traffic you can drive to your blog by getting involved in the BlogCatalog community.

The first step is to claim your blog on BlogCatalog. You have to create an account and submit your blog to BlogCatalog to have it listed on the site.

You want to pay close attention to category and tags section. Use BlogCatalog’s front page to find out which tags are more popular and which one gives you the best chance to drive more traffic to your blog.

Another great way to get involved on BlogCatalog is by creating a widget for your blog. There are many to choose from. You can add a widget that shows you your recent viewers. You can add a group widget to bring the BlogCatalog community right to your blog.

Speaking of groups, there is no better way to drive traffic to your blog than getting involved and ask and return favors on BlogCatalog. That includes ranking other blogs and leaving comments on them.

Overall, BlogCatalog is a great community to be a part of. It’s made just for bloggers. If you’re hoping to get more traffic for your blog, why not ask others to help you out? That’s what being a part of this community is all about.

Everybody is talking about traffic. The more you have it, the more you want it. And when you don’t have it, you keep dreaming about it. Traffic is not everything, but it is a big deal. As a blogger, you want to get rewarded for your hard work. But your masterpiece isn’t going to get you the money and recognition you deserve unless folks actually read it.

Getting traffic from SEO, PPC, and social media can help you get sponsorships, CPM advertising, and all kinds of lucrative deals. And let’s not forget about new business opportunities and recognition.

Are you Ready For More Traffic?

Everybody wants traffic. But can you handle more traffic? I hear stories about folks who are trying hard to get on the front page of Digg or YouTube. Getting there is only one part of the game. Once you are on the front page of these sites, the floodgates will open, and you are probably going to get more traffic that your servers can handle.

Digg and YouTube breaking sites is nothing new. If you are on a shared hosting account, there is a good chance that your site will go down as soon as you make it on Digg. But even with private servers, you may find it tough to handle all your traffic. You should also think about what is it that you want to do with your traffic. You should have a plan to retain your new visitors. Otherwise, you are not getting the best you should out of your traffic.

Getting traffic to your blog is very important, but you should always ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Traffic doesn’t mean anything if you don’t turn it into a benefit for your business. Sometimes folks can’t handle their dreams coming true.

Can you handle all the traffic that you get?

One of the biggest challenges that each and every blogger faces during his/her career. Now some gifted bloggers are able to easily get around this issue right from the start. But many of us struggle and keep struggling to get decent traffic from search engines. Here is a simple formula I use to formulate strategy for my business:

Low Level Of Traffic (LLT) = Low Revenue = Low Profits = Going back to 9-5 Job

It is not really rocket science. If you fail to drive enough traffic to your website you can not expect to make a lot of money which means you will to look for a job. If you have a lot of money to burn, you can try PPC to drive lots of traffic to your site, but I personally do not believe PPC should be your option. Besides, pay per click is very expensive and can easily make your business go underwater if you are not careful with it.

There are ways that you can drive traffic to your website for free. When I say “free,” I mean no money will exchange hand. Keep in mind that nothing is for free as you should value your time for at least $50 an hour (and I am low-balling here). Here are the 5 tactics that I have used and still use to drive traffic to my various sites:

1. Article Marketing: article marketing has been around for a long time and is still a powerful method to start driving traffic to your site. Sites such as ezinearticles.com and article dashboard are very powerful in driving traffic to your blog. But for that to happen, you need to be able to have the patience and drive to write compelling magnetic articles. The opportunity is there to drive decent free traffic if you write 10 and submit 20-40 articles a week. Sounds like a daunting task at first, but you can hire people to do the job if you can afford them. You can also try to write 5 articles a day yourself, and that’s not really that hard. For me personally, it beats anything I had during my rat race.

2. Forum Marketing: forums are very powerful traffic vehicles. By participating (not spamming) in forums you can get decent traffic to your blog. Make sure you actually contribute to the discussions and do not forget to include your blog URL in your signature.

3. Pings: pinging services such as Technorati can bring a few more people to your blog on an everyday basis. I personally use pingoat.com to make the pinging process easier. You can also use Pingomatic!.

4. FaceBook Marketing: these days there is simply no excuse for not having a strategy for FaceBook. The least you can do is import your blog RSS feed into your FaceBook account (see below). If you are not too familiar with Facebook, do yourself a favor and buy this book.

5. LinkedIn Marketing: like FaceBook, LinkedIn is a great social community to drive traffic to your blog. But it is a much more serious community, and it’s all about business people networking online. So you have less room to maneuver in that regard. Having said that, you should try to participate in LinkedIn groups and networks regularly. You should also ask and answer questions to show your expertise in your niche. P.S. don’t forget to import your RSS (see below).

There are many other “free” ways that you can drive traffic to your site. PPC is not the only answer in this business. So it is essential for every blogger to stay on top of the latest developments in the web marketing world to learn new traffic secrets. So, what is your favorite “free” traffic method?