7 Steps to Free Traffic to Blog or Squidoo Lens- Part 2 of 2

For part 1 of 7 Steps to Free Traffic to Your Blog click here.

Well I did not think the first part of this article would be so lengthy so I decided to split it up so spare the readers.  Didn’t want to kill your poor eyes,  so sorry about that.  But hey, if you ever think I am too long winded, just leave me a comment and let me know.  I will try not to give you too long of a reply=).

So now let’s cover steps 5-7 on how to bring free traffic to your blog.

Step 5: Guest Writing for Other Bloggers and Leaving Comments.

Find a blogger in your same niche and offer some guests posts.  He/She will probably check out your site to see what kind of work you already do and they will often welcome this opportunity if they like what they see.

This helps build the community too.  By writing a guest post on someone else’s blog, not only are you helping them get some free extra content and a different perspective, but you will be able to provide a link in the signature of your article that will go back to your blog.  Even if it is a no-follow link, it will still bring in some traffic as well as build up your brand.

You are broadening your base of readers this way.

You can also leave comments on other blogs, but again, make them USEFUL comments!  And make them lively too.  You can just write “thanks, nice post.” but that hardly brings the conversation to life.

In your comments you will often be able to link back to your blog or Squidoo lens as well.  You will get more out of do-follow links, but don’t stray away from no-follow links too.

Hot Point:  One person may click your link on the comments page, love your website, and tell hundreds of other people about it with HIS blog!

Never underestimate the power of a helpful comment with a link.  One person might just bring in a wave of traffic to you in the long run.

You can also invite other people to be guest writers on your own blog.

Step 6:  Make a Habit out of Pinging

Pinging is simple.  A ping will let the blog world know that you have updated your blog and your blog will get cached faster and you might even get some traffic from places like Technorati.  Just visit a site like Pingoat.com (my personal favorite) and type in your url and title of your blog every time you make a new post.

Now if you have a wordpress blog, then you are automatically pinging your posts every time you publish them, and you don’t have to worry about this.  You may not even realize this but it is happening.  You can change the default to ping to other services besides Ping-o-matic, and I have written a post on how to add pinging services to your wordpress blog.

If you have a Squidoo lens, you can ping that too.  I also suggest pinging the RSS feed as well as the url of your lens though.  Simply right click the RSS button on your Squidoo page and copy the link location.  Paste this into the RSS pinging service of your pinging provider and you are set.

Step 7:  Make a Video or Series of Videos

I really enjoy making screen casts… useful screen casts.  It’s like teaching a classroom that has an unending potential.  YouTube gets an insane amount of traffic and you can get a piece of it.  You don’t have to even show your face if you don’t want to.  There is free software all over the place for making screen capture videos, and you can use that to talk about a topic on your blog while showing the watchers “how to…… whatever”.  The more informative the videos are .. the better.

I love using the power of video because people understand the concepts better and it spreads more rapidly… like the viral effect.  Also you can build up a list of subscribers on Youtube or other video venues and they will get updated every time you add a new video.

If you want to subscribe to my videos you can check me out on YouTube. User name: CashCoachNet.

In your description put a link to your blog or Squidoo lens or website.  You can also use a watermark on the video itself, but then they have to type it in, and that just seems like hard work to some.=)

Hope you enjoyed these tips for getting free traffic to your blog or Squidoo lens.

What other methods can you think of for getting free traffic? Let us know in a comment below.  I can think of many other ways, but I could not list them all in one sitting.