17 Killer Techniques For Driving Massive Search Engine Traffic To Your Blog

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Driving massive amounts of search engine traffic to your blog can be a lot easier than you think, it really depends on some key factors like the niche you’ve chosen, your marketing and SEO techniques and even how dedicated a blogger you are, to name a few. There are billions of search queries per day across major search engines and you need to be taking advantage of this consistent and predictable source of traffic if you truly want to dominate your niche.

So here are 17 techniques to put in action and practice to help you rank higher in search engines and attract tons of relevant visitors to your blog.

1. Optimize Your Blog’s Loading Speed

Google has since started using loading time as a factor to rank a site’s authority in search engines. Google gives sites that perform better higher authority and ranking because these sites will provide a better experience for their searchers. Simple techniques such as reducing the sizes of your images, using a reliable web host and caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache can help to reduce your blog’s load time.

2. Article Marketing To Increase Backlinks

Not many bloggers consider using article directories like Ezinearticles.com or Hubpages.com but article marketing can be an excellent way to gain quality backlinks to your blog, gain popularity and increase search engine traffic since they are so frequently and readily indexed by search engines. This works excellently for getting new blogs indexed quickly.

3. Ensure Your Blog’s Code is W3C Compliant

This is extremely important and a poorly coded site can prevent search engine crawlers from effectively indexing your site. Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to check for any errors on your site. Having a few minor errors will not be detrimental for your blog. However, if there are many, you may want to go through those errors and make corrections or employ a developer to do so.

4. Avoid Black Hat SEO Techniques

Black hat SEO techniques are practices that mislead and degrade the relevance of search engine results like keyword stuffing, spamming, using link farms, text hiding and article spinning. These techniques will get your blog banned from google and other search engines. Which means zero search engine traffic for your site.

5. Web Directory Submissions

This is another under-rated technique and yet it can be very effective for increasing the trust level of your site, provided that you submit to trusted high quality directories. Submit your blog to directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory to name a few. Ensure that you submit your blog within relevant categories. These will help to increase pagerank and authority.

6. Choosing The Right Domain Name & Niche

Once you have decided upon the niche for your blog, try to ensure that your domain name has a couple related keywords in it while keeping the name short, sweet and easy to remember. Launching a website with iPad in the domain name while providing spectacular iPad related content will drive thousands of visitors to your blog who are searching for iPad info, especially if you register and market the domain in anticipation of the product launch. So choose a specific niche and take advantage.

7. Use Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

Google and Bing Webmaster tools pages allow you to submit your blog’s sitemap to the search crawler queue which will help your site get indexed faster and in a more in-depth and complete manner. These webmaster tools pages provide feedback on your site’s performance and offers advice on how to improve.

8. Consistently Create Original Useful Content

Ensure that your blog is a source of original link-worthy content that people will enjoy and share and is not just a copy of posts on other sites. Google does in fact pay attention to how far reaching and how much your content is being shared and this is an indicator of the authority of your blog. Never copy content from other sites, this may not get you banned immediately but will destroy your site’s authority.

9. Take Advantage of Trending Topics

Its an awesome technique if you can build a blog around popular events like World Cup, the launching of the iPad or any other trending topics. Millions of people are searching based on these hot topics and if you can get the stories, news and reviews out quickly, google will rank you highly for these topics and bring traffic your way. These are awesome opportunities for selling related merchandise and monetizing targeted traffic through advertising.

Use the Google Trends tool to find out what people are searching for and a history of trending search topics.

10. Frequently Update Your Blog

Google especially places high priority on fresh new content. As a blogger, you will notice that on the first two days that you publish new articles, you should see a rise in search engine traffic for those particular post keywords, then it will eventually get lower and taper off. This is because google picks up your content as being new and sends some traffic your way. Continuous and frequent blog posting will give your site the upper advantage in search results and google will index your site more frequently than the average.

11. Guest Posting To Increase Backlinks & Trust

Guest posting on quality, trustworthy blogs will get your site indexed quickly, increase backlinks and improve the authority of your blog. This is very effective for new blogs.

12. Write New Product Reviews

Writing timely product and book reviews can send tons of traffic your way from searchers who want to find more information on products before making their purchase. Also, if you can gain the attention of the product owners or authors they will readily share your reviews if they are in-depth and useful for the buyer which means more traffic for you.

13. Twitter As A Search Engine

Twitter is fast becoming a search engine on its own and using appropriate hash tags can gain you extra traffic when sharing your articles this way. For example, when I post new jobs to my job board, I commonly use the hash tags #jobs and #jobsearch with the tweets since many users search for jobs on twitter using these keywords. So start taking advantage of that and use tags that match your site and content when sharing.

14. Effective SEO Techniques

Ensure that you know a little SEO so that you can easily and consistently optimize your blog for search engine traffic. Techniques such as using Alt tags for images, using appropriate link text, good keyword density within posts, usage of heading tags, internal link building and having simple navigation structures can allow searchers to easily find your blog’s content and attract more relevant quality visitors.

15. Social Bookmarking is a Must!

Social bookmarking sites are among the most frequently indexed sites on the web and creating links in sites like Delicious.com, Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com and so on can get your articles out on the wide web quickly and higher in search results.

16. Maintain A You Tube Channel

Google owns YouTube and displays search results that match videos in the YouTube database. Create channels for your blogs and have supporting videos for the content that you produce on your site. If you publish technical tutorials on your blog upload supporting videos to YouTube. When uploading your videos, ensure that the titles and descriptions contain the most relevant keywords that will attract the best targeted traffic.

17. Use Paid Press Releases

Publishing a paid press release through a site like PRWeb.com can significantly get your articles out on the web and go viral. You’ll even get Google advertising credit, get inclusion in Yahoo, Google and Associated Press releases that are viewed by millions of people. Its very important that your content is unique and captures the attention of readers.

Conclusion & Discussion

Following the tips above will get you started on an excellent path to start dominating your niche and attract relevant interested visitors to your blog through search engines.

Are there any techniques not mentioned above that have helped you to gain massive amounts of traffic? Please share in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

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64 Responses

  1. Mukundan Srinivasan

    06/13/2010, 05:07 am

    All the 17 are rocking blogger tips. The third tip on W3C complaint is new to me and I have started to fix that in my blog. A great post that every upcoming blogger should read.

    Reply
  2. Free Classifieds Blog

    06/13/2010, 12:19 pm

    I don’t think W3C compliant is absolutely necessary. Search engines don’t give any value to W3C compliant. Better yet, make sure your site is perfectly formatted in all the browsers and also mobile browser compliant. Submitting to RSS directories and prominently displaying RSS subscription link also helps, including an email capture form. But I hate those floating email capture forms that are becoming popular in Internet make money blogs. it is annoying.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/13/2010, 01:15 pm

      Thanks for commenting :)

      You’ve made some valid points. I’m not really saying that search engines use W3C as a measure but rather having a properly coded site will help crawlers to access all areas of the site efficiently. The W3C validation tool can be used as a guide to achieve the best coding standards.

      Reply
  3. Nasrul Hanis

    06/13/2010, 02:27 pm

    Agree with your points especially on article marketing and guest posting. More content discuss about your blog, your blog will become easier to be found through search engine traffic.

    Talking about guest posting, it not only driving massive traffic to your blog but also build your reputation through relationship between you, the webmasters and the readers :)

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 08:42 am

      Thanks for commenting Nasrul.

      Guest posting is definitely an awesome technique but gaining the massive amounts of traffic depends on how popular the host site really is.

      Reply
  4. Natalia

    06/13/2010, 03:05 pm

    Hey Sam,
    Great points as usual. Thanks for that W3C link… I’m bootstrapping and doing a lot of things myself so I really appreciate those tips that non-web-techy people like myself won’t have a clue about :)

    Reply
  5. Erika Napoletano

    06/13/2010, 04:44 pm

    Just a small note, Hubspot.com is not an article marketing directory. They’re a premier provider of inbound marketing software :) Probably a typo – did you mean ArticleHub.com?

    You can also use the Scribe WordPress plugin to analyze each post for SEO criteria prior to publishing. It’s great tool and I use it personally as well as on many client blogs.

    Reply
  6. Murlu

    06/13/2010, 09:12 pm

    Great work Robyn-Dale – all of these are really, really powerful techniques; the real pillars of driving traffic.

    Video is still such an underused tool to drive traffic to a website. If you think about it, you already have all the items to create video. Take your posts and make a powerpoint, record it with a voice over, post it to Youtube – make sure you place a link for people to find you :)

    You’ll be surprised but since Youtube is now one of the most used methods to search the web, the potential for traffic is immense.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 08:52 am

      Thanks for commenting Murlu :)

      You’ve made a really good point about making videos. Its very easy to do and Youtube should be leveraged to gain more traffic since it is so popular.

      Great Point Murlu :)

      Reply
  7. Christian

    06/14/2010, 12:15 am

    Wow! Superb list! Actually I don’t know if I should agree with the no.11 “Guest Posting”, because I read an article in Digital Inspiration when he interviewed people from Google and he asked if Guest Posting is good, and Google said that it’s still better to just focus on your blog than submitting your posts to other blogs.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 08:56 am

      Thanks for reading Christian.

      I think the key question about guest posting really ties with what a blogger wants to achieve. For me, guest posting increases backlinks, improves my popularity and overall authority and gain extra traffic from an established audience. As bloggers, we need to really extend ourselves out there and increase our reach. Focusing on our blog alone won’t always give maximum results.

      So I try to put myself out there.

      Reply
  8. Goran @ Making Money

    06/14/2010, 01:12 am

    Wow! An all – in – one guide to drive search engine traffic.

    By the way, I wander if I do error corrections in my theme codes just to validate my site to W3C, does the theme won’t by affected?

    I also tried to test your blog at W3C and it also have some errors. And I also do to problogger.net but it was the same.

    Do you think that there was a site that don’t have a code errors because even google also have some errors on it.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 09:02 am

      Thanks for commenting Goran.

      The only site I have seen so far that doesn’t have errors is w3.org. You won’t get rid of all errors but it is very important that there are not any critical errors that can affect how well a search engine crawls your site. There are some sites that are completely ignored because of the vast amount of errors.

      Rest assured, having minor errors will not severely affect the standing of your blog. Although the less errors, the better it is for you. Some of the errors are caused by additional plugins that we install to wordpress, however, If you are a dedicated developer, it is possible to get rid of all errors

      Reply
  9. Kimi

    06/14/2010, 02:35 am

    Just wonderful post of yours as usual :)
    I agree with some points, and i am at the moment crazy about fastening my site’s load, and always try to make it faster so that my visitors don’t leave.
    Thumbs up for the post.

    Reply
  12. Shiva@Web Magazine

    06/14/2010, 03:18 am

    Wow bro, You have included some tips that I have never used even though I knew them. I think you are right about the speed optimizing part, it is much needed at the present moment since nowadays Speed is an important factor for getting ranking in the SERPs.

    Reply
  13. Dev | Technshare

    06/14/2010, 07:11 am

    Hey Robyn,

    All these are awesome tips sam. Nice article. Good Trends is really great idea.
    Btw. Congrats for your first interview.
    Thanks for sharing this great Post.

    ~Dev

    Reply
  14. Tia@Complete Guide to Blogging

    06/14/2010, 11:46 am

    I agree with all of those except Guest Posting. I have not seen it drive a lot of traffic, even though the posts were well-received and highly tweeted and commented (my post on Kikolani was very well-received). I think Guest Posting is great but I wouldn’t put it up as highly with the other search engine traffic techniques.

    I’m sure it depends on where you are posting and the nature of it and all of that.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 09:15 am

      Hey Tia, thanks for sharing that.

      The thing I have realized about guest posting is that it really depends on where you do it and the audience for the particular blog. Some blogs have very interactive and dedicated readers while others just read and leave without really following through.

      Strategic guest blogging, however, can increase pagerank and search engine popularity if it is done consistently and on high ranking blogs. I have seen bloggers increase pagerank simply through guest blogging. So I think it really depends on the approach.

      Reply
  16. kathcom

    06/15/2010, 11:02 am

    Thanks for this info and the links to relevant sites. I have a small humor blog and sometimes get down on myself because I don’t really have a niche and am not an “expert” on anything. But with your help in this article, I can get more traffic to my blog while I figure out what a sarcastic fool like me has to offer to the Web.

    Reply
  17. Brandon

    06/15/2010, 11:37 am

    I tried the W3C validation tool and it came up with over 500 errors. Although, I looked at the errors and it didn’t really make sense to me.

    Nevertheless, great post. I think the ‘Frequently Update Your Blog’ tip is the most important one, but updating your blog too much can also take away from the importance of your blog posts.

    Reply
    • element321

      06/15/2010, 05:50 pm

      Brandon,

      Do you use a lot of plugins? If you do, a lot of your plugins may have the errors. Generally in a fresh install of a theme, generally you would not have any errors, but once you start adding and removing plugins, thats when your code will no longer be valid. If you understand PHP and HTML, then you can go in correct those errors, if not then I wouldn’t worry to much about them.

      Reply
    • Sam

      06/15/2010, 06:26 pm

      I’ll have to agree with James on that one. The plugins you have installed may be causing such a huge number of errors. Ensure that you are using plugins that are absolutely necessary and delete unused ones.

      As for blogging frequency, its always good to give readers a chance to read new entries. Although this depends on how popular your blog is. Some readers anticipate a new entry daily, so you need to know your audience.

      Reply
  18. element321

    06/15/2010, 05:45 pm

    I have to agree, I try am implement all of your tips on my site. The code validation is the only issue I have. I agree that it needs to be done and should be. But, if you use a lot of plugins for WordPress, I found there are a lot developers that create plugins and leave them full errors and never bother to validate them. So I spend a lot of time fixing those errors or using the code to create my own fixes.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/15/2010, 06:23 pm

      Thanks for commenting James, that’s such a great point! :)

      We can do what it takes to ensure that our theme’s code is 100% compliant but there is the issue of plugins and other addons that may include poor code although they may work. I commend you for going through your plugins to ensure that everything is in working order. I’m not quite sure when I’d get the time to do that. :)

      Reply
      • element321

        06/15/2010, 06:28 pm

        Thanks,

        I have only been able to fix a few of them and really do not have much time to fix them either. When I get the time I work on them. I am pretty sure I won’t be able to fix them all but, I hope to remove most of the ones I don’t need and do my best to fix the ones I need to use.

        Reply
  19. Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate

    06/16/2010, 03:41 pm

    Very good points Sam. Good reminders also on going back and doing the fundamentals. Not sure I agree about the directories suggestion. Even on high PR directories, and even ones that are reputable, the page your link sits on is often times not even indexed by Google.

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 09:27 am

      Hey Colleen,

      Thanks for commenting.

      I do agree that directories can be a bit tricky where pagerank and visibility is concerned. However, I find that directories that partner with google and other search engines, for example, dmoz.org are actively indexed. So I tend to try to find those.

      Reply
  21. Anna Haller

    06/19/2010, 10:10 am

    Wow these are some great techniques and will implement the ones that I haven’t done soon.

    I was not aware of #1 and Goolge actually taking into account the loading speed which is good to know. For #3 you mentioned having a few minor errors is ok. How many would you say a few is?

    Thanks for this post Sam, very useful!

    Anna

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/21/2010, 09:31 am

      Thanks for taking the time to comment Anna :)

      The severity of errors is what we should really pay attention to. Having 100 minor errors is not as bad as having 50 critical errors. So it all depends on what is going wrong since a few lines of code, especially malicious code, can be the death of your blog and cause your blog to be black listed.

      Reply
      • Joe Boyle

        06/22/2010, 07:51 pm

        First and foremost, don’t worry over 5-10 errors. Google isn’t going to just freak out and say “I HATE YOUR SITE CUS IT GAVE ME 5 ERRORS!”. But, even still, you want to have as few as possible for your readers’ sake.

        Reply
  22. Wynne

    06/20/2010, 02:55 pm

    Excellent tips on optimizing your blog and website content. I try to use all of these same points wherever possible on my own blog.

    Reply
  24. Joe Boyle

    06/21/2010, 06:32 pm

    I always use the WordPress plug-in “SEO Slugs” which rewrites your titles into SEO friendly URLS. It’s great because all you have to do is provide a title. Then, Search Engines can do their thing and rank your pages higher (Search Engines favor friendly links).

    Great post!

    Reply
    • Sam

      06/24/2010, 08:23 pm

      That’s excellent Joe! :D

      Very good move. Search engine friendly links are always good, especially when its automated :)

      Reply
  25. Jason Hein

    06/22/2010, 09:58 am

    This is really something very helpful. I will definitely bookmark this. Thanks for sharing this post. If you get the chance, feel free to visit my site.

    Reply
  26. twitter adder

    06/25/2010, 09:21 pm

    I found this post very interesting. Though, most of the techniques are not new, but truly work If one could put them to use. Looking forward to another great post. thanks

    Reply
  27. EvNix

    07/02/2010, 03:29 am

    Nice article it provided a informative text to boost my traffic
    since i am a beginner this article helped me
    thanks!
    regards,
    EvNix

    Reply
  28. air conditioning

    07/09/2010, 04:31 am

    I’ve had success driving traffic using torrent sites. I will create a free ebook and submit it to the torrent sites. Within the ebook are links that direct people to pages on my sites.

    Reply
  29. used tires

    07/23/2010, 09:31 pm

    Great List Sam and awesome to see it receive so many retweets, one doubt that has always been in my mind, and perhaps you can help solve, or anyone else that leaves comments here on this post for that matter. It’s in regards to the W3 Total Cache. Why is it an advantage to use the plugin? I mean… Yes I understand that it is suppose to make your website faster, which is a good thing, but what I don’t understand is, how it is faster than WordPress’s default cache? I thought wordpress was supposed to already be efficient ;-)

    Till then,

    Jean

    Reply
  30. ron

    07/24/2010, 05:08 pm

    Yea black hat programs are very tricky its even said that they make thousands of sites everyday that are harmful to other sites …. beware .

    Reply
  32. Manoj Kumar Rout

    08/26/2010, 03:26 am

    Hi SAM,
    I read your blog very carefully, nice blog. Step by Step guide. I like to read.
    I need your sugetion for my blog so that I will rectify the same in future.

    Reply