15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic

The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

1. Write Well and Write Often

Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.

Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati.

2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.

It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine.

3. Use and Update Your Blogroll

By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers.

4. Harness the Power of Comments

Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.

Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more.

5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed

Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.

6. Use Links and Trackbacks

Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.

You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links!

7. Tag Your Posts

It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati.

8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog.

9. Remember Search Engine Optimization

When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.

10. Don't Forget Images

Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

11. Consider Guest Blogging

Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger's blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog. Both methods are likely to increase traffic as your blog will be exposed to the other blogger's audience. Many of the other blogger's readers will visit your blog to see what you have to say.

12. Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups

Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals. Add a link to your blog in your signature line or profile, so each time you post on a forum or participate in another online network, you're indirectly promoting your blog. Chances are many people will click on that link to learn more about you.

13. Promote Outside Your Blog

Promoting your blog shouldn't stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog's URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It's important to get your name and your blog's URL noticed offline, too.

14. Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards

There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.

15. Don't Be Shy

The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don't be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don't sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed. Let the blogosphere know you've arrived and have something to say!

Creating a three column (or a wide, two column) canvas - Blogger template design series====Credits to bloggerbuster

When I begin to design a new Blogger template, the first thing I take into consideration is the overall layout. Creating the perfect layout is crucial to the design process, and should be the first step in designing a custom Blogger template.

The most popular layout styles for Blogger blogs are:

• Three columns, with sidebars to the left and right
• Three columns with two sidebars to the right
• A wide two column template, with a wider posts area and a wide sidebar to the right

So in this installment of the Blogger Template Design series, I will offer basic instructions for how each of these layouts can be constructed. Then in the next installment, I will focus on tweaking these layouts in order to make the canvas complete.

For the purpose of this series, I have created a demonstration blog which you can view here. This demonstration blog will be used to demonstrate customizations throughout the series, and will include links back to each chapter of the series for your reference.

Things you should consider when deciding on your blog layout

Visual appeal is not the only thing you should consider when deciding which layout you will adopt for your template. The three different styles I highlighted above can all serve different functional purposes; depending on you wish to display in your sidebars, one or other may be better suited to your needs:

• Three column templates with sidebars to the left and right are best suited to blogs which don't use many Javascripts or images in the sidebars.
  
  This is because Javascripts and images call upon different servers and slow down page loading time. If you have many scripts or images loading in the left sidebar, this can delay the loading of your posts, which is off-putting for new visitors to your blog (especially those who access the Internet through dial-up!)
• Three column templates with both sidebars aligned to the right are a good choice for blogs which feature a lot of different content in the sidebars.
  
  This style helps neaten the content of sidebars, prevents lengthy loading delays of the blog entries (the primary content) and stops the sidebars from becoming too long in relation the main content on post pages.
• Two column templates with a wide posts section and wide sidebar are most suitable for those who feature ads in the sidebar, or who need much content to be "above the fold" of the page.
  
  Wider sidebars allow for wider ads, or rows of the popular 125x125 square ad boxes which can feature higher up the page. Also, it is easier to display wider images, or text blocks. A wider posts section will also allow more content to be featured above the fold, and can prevent home pages from becoming too lengthy.

With this in mind, let's take a look at the different methods available for creating a template canvas.

The best way to create a customized template...

Is to base this on an existing template!

Blogger templates contain a vast variety of tags and code, which is very difficult to reconstruct by hand. By basing your customized template on an existing template which already has tags and code in place, you will make the job much easier for yourself, and will save hours (if not days) of time troubleshooting a hand coded template.

The recent poll I offered concluded that the most familiar template to Blogger Buster readers is the Minima template, so for the purpose of this series, I will base all tutorials on modifications of this template. By the time this series is complete, the resulting "demonstration" template will not resemble Minima at all!

Before we begin!

I would strongly recommend that you use a test blog to create your customized template rather than interfere with your main blog. For more information about test blogs, take a look at this post, or read through my guide to essential tools for customizing Blogger templates.

If you choose not to use a test blog, you must back up your existing template before making any changes to it!

From this point forwards, I will assume that you are either using a test blog to create your new template, or that you have fully backed up your existing template.

Making a wider template

Over the years, the default Blogger templates have not changed much. Aside from the stretch designs (which are designed to accommodate the entire width of the browser window), most are rather narrow when compared to the size of most readers' browser screens.

So the first thing we will do to the Minima template is make it wider. The resulting width will then be large enough to include either two sidebars (instead of only one), or alternatively a wider posts column and a thicker sidebar.

The optimum width of a blog template

Most modern blog templates, whether hosted on Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad platforms, are between 800 and 950 pixels wide. This seems to be the optimum size range for blog templates, as this width can accommodate two sidebars or an expanded entries column.

I would recommend that you make your template no wider than 950 pixels. Even though this width may not fully span the width of your own browser window, you can be fairly certain that it will not run off the screen of smaller browsers.

In these tutorials, I will show you how to create a blog layout which is 950 pixels wide, though you can certainly make this a different value if you prefer.

Alter the outer-wrapper

The overall width of the Minima template is determined by the "outer-wrapper" div. This is styled within the section of the template as follows:

#outer-wrapper {
width: 660px;
margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}

To change the width of the template to 950 pixels, we simply need to change the line highlighted in red to this:

width: 950px;

After this change, my demonstration blog now looks like this:

As you can see, there is now a wide gap between the posts column and the sidebar. We can fill this gap by using one of these methods:

1. Creating a second sidebar
2. Widening the main posts column and the sidebar

Depending on your choice of blog layout, you will need to use one of the following methods for your custom template.

Creating a three column template (with a second sidebar)

Although I have previously written a post about this method, I have decided to revamp my method here to add some extra functionality to the finished template.

In this tutorial, we will create the following dimensions in the layout:

• Two sidebars, measuring 250px in width
• The main posts column will be 450 px wide

This ensures regularity of each element, and will make it easier to add margins and passing at a later stage.

Change the width of the sidebar

It is easier to change the width of the existing sidebar before we add another one. To do this, open your template (no need to expand the widget templates) and find this section of code in the section:

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 220px;
float: $endSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Change the line highlighted in red to this:

width: 250px

Your sidebar will now be slightly wider.

Adding the style for the second sidebar

Before we can call the secind sidebar in the blog template, we will need to add the styling for this sidebar, and make it unique.

Find and copy this whole section from your template (this is the section we modified in the previous step):

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 250px;
float: $endSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Once you have copied this to your clipboard, paste this section of code immedietly beneath the original set of code. Then change this line in your newly pasted code:

#sidebar-wrapper {

To say this instead:

#new-sidebar-wrapper {

This is the identity of the div which contains the sidebar wrappers. Each div element which has an ID must be unique and should only be called once within the page. By adding the "new" part to the title of the style for the div, we can ensure the new sidebar will display properly.

If you want your second sidebar to fleat to the right of the main posts column, you can leave the styling as it is.

However, if you prefer the sidebar to appear to the left of the main posts column, you will need to change the following line:

float: $endSide;

To this instead:

float: $startSide;

This will ensure that your new sidebar will float to the left.

Calling the second sidebar in your blog template

To call the secind sidebar, we need to add a section of code to the actual template section. The location for this code changes depending on whether you wish the second sidebar to be aligned to the left or the right of the main posts column.

There are two possible locations for this second sidebar. Assuming you have not added any extra widgets to your Minima template, you will be able to find the following section of code in your Blogger template (do not expand the widget templates):

I have included some comments here to show where to paste the following code, depending on your choice of alignment. When you have decided where you would like your second sidebar to appear, copy and paste the following section of code in the appropriate place:

You should save your new template at this point.

There is currently no content in this second sidebar, so if you preview your blog, nothing will be displayed in it's place. But if you go to Template>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboars, you will see a new "Add page element" section. Here you can add a new widget and take a look at your blog to see how it will be displayed.

In my demonstration blog, I added the new sidebar to appear to the right of the main column which now appears like this:

Change the width of the main posts column

The final customization to this three column layout is changing the width of the main posts column slighly to make better use of the space available.

This is another simple edit. Simply find this section in the <>

#main-wrapper {
width: 410px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Change the line highlighted in red to the following:

width: 450px;

Then save your template.

The finished result should look something like this:

You will notice that there is no space between the sidebars or main posts column. To make space appear between each sections, we will need to use margins and/or padding in the style section, which I will demonstrate in the next chapter of the Blogger Template Design series.

Creating a wide, two column template

Creating a wider template with added space for the main posts column and sidebar is a much simpler process.

In this example, we will make the width of the posts column to 650px, and the width of the sidebar to 300px. You can change these values if you prefer, so long as the total of these two sections is 950px.

Assuming you have already changed the width of the "outer-wrapper" to 950px, you will now only need to make two small edits to the style section of your template.

Change the width of the main posts column

The width of the main posts column is defined in the following section of code:

#main-wrapper {
width: 410px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Simply change the line highlighted in red to this:

width: 650px;

Change the width of the sidebar

The width of the sidebar id defined in the following section of code:

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 220px;
float: $endSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Again, you only need to edit the line in red to say the following instead:

width: 300px;

Finally, save your template and take a look at your newly widened blog. If you have used the same values as I did, your new template should appear like this:

As with the three column layout, you will notice there is no space between the sidebars and the main posts column. We will work on optimizing this canvas in the next installment of the Blogger Template Design series.

Final words

For your convenience, I have made each of the template layouts described above available for download as an XML template. To download any of these files, right click on the link and choose "Save As..."

• Three column canvas, sidebars to the left and right
• Three column canvas, both sidebars to the right
• Wide, two column canvas

Progress of the demonstration blog

For the demonstration blog which will accompany this series, I have chosen the three column design where the two sidebars are aligned to the right. You can view the progress of the Blogger Template Design Series blog using this link.

Coming soon

In the next installment of this series, I will explain how you can further modify this basic canvas to suit your requirements. This will include modifications to the margins, padding and the header section, plus a few other elements of the blog's style.

Please consider subscribing to the feed for updates to the Blogger Template Design series, plus Blogger related news and articles as they are posted.

Effect of custom domain conversion on traffic and PageRank

As you know, Blogger has introduced custom domain whereby you can register your own domain name and use it for your blog instead of the sub-domain of blogspot.com. Some may be deterred from using custom domain because it involves a change of URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and PageRank of the blog reduced to being not ranked, both which may reduce the traffic to the blog.

Last year I finally decided to make the leap and convert one of my less traffic blog, http://dummies-guide-to-google-blogger.blogspot.com/ to custom domain, namely http://www.blogger-book.com/.

Regarding PageRank, it did get downgraded from a PageRank of 4 to being not ranked at all. However, the PageRank of Blogger book has now increased to PageRank 1 and is expected to increase as time goes by. The best of all is, it appear that PageRank is not that crucial to getting hits (traffic) as the conversion to custom domain, despite the PageRank downgrad, did not decrease. In fact, from an average of 3020 unique visitors per month from the month of January to October (before conversion), the number of unique visitors have increased to 3976, an increase of 32% (see screen shot below):

However, before I convert, I saved all the permalink prior to conversion to custom domain to test whether the old permalink will be redirected to the new custom domain permalink. I am happy to report that all the old permalink is being effortlessly redirected to the new custom domain permalink (individual post URL).





Update: A blogger has complained that after conversion, traffic went down to almost zero. It turned out that the blogger registered the domain direct from Godaddy. In my case, I registered using Google Apps via SETTINGS > PUBLISHING, paid for the registration and did the conversion to custom domain all within Blogger, never directly through Godaddy. Looks like most of those bloggers experiencing problems with custom domain did it via Godaddy.

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