How to get people to come and read your blog?

[CARY18]

I am new at blogging. How do you get people to come and visit your blog?

[4mostip]

I am new at blogging. How do you get people to come and visit your blog?

1 Use a blog service that is indexed frequently by the search engines - "Blogger" by Google is good in this respect.

Set up your blog to auto notify new posts to social bookmarking sites (eg Technorati) .

Set up an RSS feed on your blog and submit your RSS feed URL to blog directories.

2 Write content that is genuinely entertaining, interesting or useful to other people - even those who do not know you. This is the tough bit - but in the long run it is the most important of all.

If you want to tell us how bored you are with your day job we will probably just yawn and ignore you.

If, on the other hand, you can tell us a really good joke; how to get a hot date; lose weight without dieting; get rid of our zits; solve Sudoko with our eyes closed; get promoted at work; make a million bucks on the internet with no skills/effort; or teach our cat to play piano in just 3 easy lessons ---- then we might perk up and pay attention.

3 Add a link to your blog in your signature when you post in Forums. However, you will get much better results from that by participating in forums that are indexed by the major Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN - forget the others because combined they don't amount to a row of beans). Many forums are NOT indexed. I have no idea if this forum is indexed or not - you'll have to ask the Admin.

4 Post comments on other peoples blogs and add a link to yours in your signature. If your comments are relevant and interesting, people will visit your blog and maybe even post replies to your posts.

Warning - If you just post rubbish comments for the sake of getting noticed or linked, you may be chased out of town by an angry mob equipped with tar and feathers. If you persisted in spamming other peoples blogs they could either just ban you or perhaps instead arrange a delivery of ready mix concrete to be tipped in your front yard as a surprise welcome home gift (joke).

5 Reformat your blog posts into articles of about 400 to 500 words long and submit them to Article Directories. Include a link to your block in your author details at the end of the article.

6 Ask yourself why you would want to go through all this effort.

If it is for a good cause, or to make money, get yourself a mentor to hold your hand. Otherwise you could waste untold hours learning the ropes. The internet is quite complicated and time consuming to get all the details just so - it can discouraging for newbies when they find that out. Whereas a mentor can get you through the tunnel to where you see the daylight.

Good Luck
PS There is a lens at Squidoo called "AllAboutTraffic" which you may find helpful.

[Osprey]

Excellent advice from the user above.

I would say that getting indexed by search engines and achieving a decent page rank is a good start and will help in the long run. To achieve this it helps to submit your site to search engines and then to directories also.