Managing Blogs and Increasing Traffic

What would you give for a smoothly running blog with a ton of visitors? A few may be lucky enough to have this already and a few might not be looking for this, but for most it is the holy grail of blogging. You’ve seen it happen to other blogs but it may not always be clear how to achieve it yourself. Fortunately, there are a lot of little things you can do to streamline the blogging process and boost your results. And all the little things added together can lead to dramatic improvements on your overall blog. So for the busy person with little spare time, what are 10 quick things you can do to improve your blog if you haven’t already? I’m glad you asked.

1. Make your next post either a “how to” or a list of tips. These have a better chance of someone linking to it or adding it to a social bookmarking site. There are lots of things you already know how to do, so pick one and share your knowledge.

2. Sign up for the blog directory sites. There are a ton of them out there and they have some decent link authority. Some ask for a link in return, but others ask for nothing at all. Check out Blog Catalog or Bloggernity for a place to start.

3. Add a search feature for your blog. Squarespace makes it easy and your readers will thank you.

4. Take a look through your sidebars and see what you can clean up. Blogrolls full of blogs you don’t read anymore and other sidebar additions may be detracting from your message.

5. Ping sites about your latest post to get an extra boost. Squarespace has an internal ping distributon mechanism that can be used to ping the biggest blogging site trackers. For those who might want to ping smaller servies, a program like PingShot can help you out.

6. Take a few minutes to create a blog editorial calendar. Figuring out what to write about now will save you time later. Copy Blogger has some good title ideas if you’re stuck.

7. Add a picture. It won’t take long to add an image and it will make your post more noticeable. There are lots of sites out there with free clip art and if you’re looking for free stock photos, visit this Graphics n’ Graphic Design post.

8. Add one more call to action. It may be clear to you what you would like your blog reader to do, but it may not always be so obvious to them. A little reiteration can go a long way.

9. Put your blog URL in your preset email signature. That way you continue to spread the word automatically and it also is seen by anyone your emails are forwarded to.

10. Sign up for Technorati, claim your blog, and make sure you tag it to the appropriate topics. This is one way that you can have control on how searchers are finding your content and Technorati is a top blog search engine.

Comments

[Jeff Barson]

I thought that squarespace pings almost everyone automatically once those preferences are set in a journal setup? I'm surprised to see pingshot referenced.

[Adrian Keys]

"Make your next post either a “how to” or a list of tips. These have a better chance of someone linking to it or adding it to a social bookmarking site. There are lots of things you already know how to do, so pick one and share your knowledge".

I see a lot of duplicated content and wonder if users aren't getting wary....

Great post though...

[chris]

awesome post, thanx

[Pixel-Pixie]

Thanks for these valuable tips, Jessica. I do some of them already, but will be sure to follow your advice on the ones I've missed.

[blogtantra.com]

I really appreciated these 10 ideas. Thanks.

I will be working on some.

Thanks again.
www.blogtantra.com

[dB]

massive thanks for these useful informations :)

[Hank Edson]

Ping shot won't allow me to use its service because, if I understand correctly, my squarespace site won't "validate" because my RSS Feed code uses xhtml and has a couple other problems. Ping shot actually shows the lines in the code that it doesn't like in highlighted yellow. Have you tried to sign up for it with a squarespace page?

[Lori]

Why don't writers of these posts read their comments & respond? I'd also like to understand why PingShot is necessary, if it doesn't even work with Squarespace.

[Team Squarespace]

Lori & Jeff,

We're of course watching the comments -- I simply missed Jeff's initial question.

I've revised point #5 about pingshot -- it's definitely not required, as Squarespace has an internal ping distribution system. You could potentially use it if there are smaller sites you'd like to have pinged as well. We may build in the ability to hit smaller trackers automatically in a future edition, but this actually isn't widely requested right now.