Promoting your Site

Tossing a blog up and sitting back to wait for the readers to spill in is a surefire way to be sorely disappointed. Here are a few tips to invite traffic to your blog:

• Tag your entries and register your site with Technorati. Get your blog into Technorati and start tagging your entries. It sounds like a hassle but helping people find things is a key component to building readers.
• Promote your RSS feeds. Your RSS feed will tell readers where to find your site and keep their curiosity peaked. Hopefully, your RSS feed will prompt readers to visit your site to comment and participate.
• Provide fresh and alluring content. If you do not plan on posting daily, at least make the posts you do put up worthy of the visit. Traffic is about building repeat business. Make sure you keep your readers wanting more.
• Keep your site free of errors and clutter. It is important to keep your site running smoothly. That is not to say that the occasional snag will destroy all of your chances at building readership, but a perpetual code error or a broken feed can deter people from coming back. That is also true about extraneous content. You want people to be able to find your entries; try to keep the extra bling, like distracting scripts and blinkies, to a minimum. Keep it simple, clean, and unclutered. Deliver your content properly and build from there.
• Participate in the blogging community. Interacting with the community from which you hope to acquire readers is essential in getting the word out about yourself. Provide thoughtful commentary on other related blogs, and reply to the people who do visit yours. Just because they visit once does not mean they are permanent visitors. You will need to give them a reason to come back again.
• List yourself in relevant directories and webrings. Peppered around the web are directories and webrings for every topic you could possibly want to find. Consider listing your blog in a few to get the wayward web traveler to find you. You may visit Google to search for your blog topic. See what comes up and visit a few sites to see what strikes your fancy.
• Link to other blogs. Consider linking to other blogs that interest you. Not only will you build a list of sites you enjoy reading, but you could also aid in the interconnectivity of blogging. Blogs allow people to discover new sites at nearly every turn. The sites you link could reciprocate and lend their readership the chance to discover you.