What is a blog if it hasn’t got a decent amount of traffic? It’s like a book on a shelf that no-one ever reads that is gathering dust. The writer is proud of their work, but there is no-one to share it with.

And that is why we all want to increase blog traffic, let alone if we are using any money making schemes then these work best with lots of traffic! So, how can we increase traffic?

Pretty Links
Often quoted, but in actual fact my highest traffic blogs go against this. But, in some search engines, by having the keywords in the page URL might just be an advantage.

Commenting
Leave sensible, useful comments on other blogs that add to the blogs and you might see more traffic. Tie this in with monitoring your traffic so that you know where people are coming from and you will know which blogs to continue commenting on.

Guest Posting
This can apply both ways. Request guest posts on other blogs so that their readers come to you and invite guest posts from other blogs in the hope that the authors will mention their post on their blog and some people will come across to your.

Tweet!
Twitter can give a lot of traffic, if used well. You can use plugins to automatically tweet every blog post and a link, so make sure that the blog post is inviting and can be found my many people. But make sure that you are also writing a few tweets each day that are interesting and keep followers entertained, reducing the ration of tweets with links to those without.

Write Often
Writing often means different things to different people, but by writing 3 or 4 times per week you are providing quality content that will tempt people back time and again.

Social Bookmark
Encourage your readers to make use of social bookmarking, allowing them to like, favourite, tweet and so on your posts. Do this by adding a suitable social bookmarking plugin to your blog, and mentioning it at the end of every post!