I started my weight loss blog around 3 years ago and after a lot of studying and watching the experts I have grown it to a stage I’m satisfied of. One thing that surprises me, though, is that most of the traffic generation tips being shared online are completely ineffective. Not that they don’t work at all, but they’ve been so overused that you won’t get enough results from them to worth your effort. As a result I started studying to discover some very effective but underused traffic generation tactics. You’d have heard about some of these tactics before and you might not have heard about some of them, but they work and I have been able to use them to successfully grow my weight loss blog.
1. Use Images to Gain Exposure
When we talk about using images to help improve traffic to a blog most of us only think about using images inside blog posts and tagging it properly. The reality is that images can be used for a lot more than that and the results you can get if you can master the use of images can be stunning.
The cool thing about images is that they’re quite easy to find; there are countless things around us we can take images of, and how cool will it be to be able to use these images to grow your blog?
My process is quite simple, all I need to do is look for a very cool image that has potential for going viral, add it to image sharing sites like Flickr and ask people to use it however they want as long as they credit me for it by linking back to my blog. That alone can result in a few links per image and as a result a significant increase in rankings over time.
Lesson: Take quality images of nature around you and submit them to image sharing sites like Flickr with a requirement that anyone who uses it link back to your blog. Aside from getting a backlink from the image sharing site you will get a backlink whenever it is used on another website.
2. Leverage Document Sharing Sites
Another approach I use is document sharing. Most of us write short reports we give to our readers as gift every once in a while. What if these reports can send you additional hundreds of visitors and give you dozens of backlinks that can improve your rankings? That is exactly what I get!
In other words, I write short reports completely branded and designed to direct people to my blog and I submit them to the top document sharing sites online with hope of it going viral. Even if it doesn’t go viral it will still be syndicated to a few sites and help me gain a few backlinks.
Lesson: Write a 3 – 6 pages short report and submit it to a few document sharing sites. This will result in a few dozen backlinks for you and some quality traffic and you will be able to see its impact on the long run.
3. Use Guest Blogging for Link Building
I know most of you are surprised by the idea of including guest blogging on this list and are already wondering if guest blogging is really unique; the answer is yes and no.
We’re all familiar with the idea of guest blogging because of the fact that it is currently the most used traffic generation tactic online today. The problem is that most people who use guest blogging hardly use it with thoughts for the future; most people only guest blog to gain an influx of visitors to their blogs and they forget about it after a few days of writing the guest post.
My approach is different and focused on helping me benefit from my guest posts in years to come. In other words, a simple guest post I write today will be sending me traffic in years to come. How do I do it? It’s quite simple; every guest post I write is aimed towards helping me get ranked in the search engines instead of generating direct traffic. In other words, I mainly use guest blogging to build backlinks to my weight loss blogs; these backlinks end up improving my rankings for certain keywords in the search engines and these keywords send me traffic for years. For example, a page on my website already ranks for the keyword best weight loss programs but I still get traffic from it even for months without doing anything to drive traffic to it; as you’d have guessed, I was able to achieve that ranking through my guest blogging.
Lesson: Start writing a lot of guest posts on other blogs, not just for traffic but for backlinks and you’d be surprised at how much traffic you can get on the long run.
4. Ebook Distribution
This approach is similar to the one explained in step 2 above but it is unique on its own. The process includes writing a well designed ebook of at least 10 – 12 pages. The purpose of the ebook will be to establish your brand and position you as an expert. Now submit the ebook to top free ebook download sites. Also spread the word about the ebook on your various social media sites; the more people discover the ebook the more likely they are to share it with their friends and the more potential for success you have.
5. Expert Collaboration
The final tactic I use is collaborating with expert. This approach has two sides and I use both to my advantage. Whenever I feature an expert in any of my posts some of the clout associated with that expert transfers to me, the effect is even more profound if the expert ends up sharing the post with her audience.
Of course, this approach requires you to be smart. Experts are busy and unique people and before they take their time to be featured on your blog or share your post with their audience it means your approach must be smart. Think of something creative that the expert would have wanted to think of, feature the expert in it and expect results to start coming in.
John Smith is an expert blogger that reviews laithwaites wine promo code and also reviews WSJwine promo code.