There are many ways to increase traffic to your blog. But some of course are more effective than others. Today we’ll look at the five most effective ways.

1. Link Exchanges: Link exchanging is exactly how it sounds. Exchanging of links with another website. Now there is a great caution in doing this. While search engines are not “smart” they are particular about which links to count as valid link or just another link to trick them.

That is why I always tell people that you want to exchange links with related sites rather than the first site that is available. If you have a political blog you would not want to do a link exchange with a car blog or vise versa. A backlink is much better (since it is a one way link) but two way links (such as link exchanges) only work when the websites are related.

There are many websites one can join to find people who are interested in link exchanges but the two most popular ones on the Internet are www.sitepoint.com/forum and http://forums.digitalpoint.com).

2. Backlinks: Basically speaking a backlink is a link from another website to yours. The more of these links you have is the more your popularity will increase with the search engines.

Developing a good backlink campaign is essential for this to work as three or four backlinks will not cut it. I would suggest make a target of at least 1,000 backlinks in three months.

This will require dedication but it is a surefire way to build the SEO of your website will inevitably lead to more organic traffic.

3. Networking: The whole idea of blogging was started around the idea of people exchanging vital information. Unfortunately this idea has almost been lost in the blogging world. But it still stands true. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your blog is to develop a network of bloggers.

Try and find bloggers whose content is related to yours and offer to start a network with them. Basically those in this blog network would share ideas, offer trackbacks to interesting things on each other’s blog etc.

This will not only help to increase the traffic but when a Google or Live.com bot comes along they will take notice of the links in the network and use this as a reason to increase your SE rankings.

4. Social Networking: Social networking has picked up where blogs left off. While a lot of the features in social networks are exciting most of the concepts have been in the blogging world for years. So it is very essential to build a good presence on social networks.

I would say start off with social bookmarking sites first and then move on. One of the best sites to gain considerable traffic from is a website like www.stumbleupon.com. While the service has been exploited in the recent months (especially with mindless stumbling) it’s still a very good way to find related sites and thus drive traffic to your blog.

5. Ad Campaigns: This one will call for more money than time. But its payoff is great. While its unrealistic to think about getting ads on sites such as MSN, Facebook, MySpace, MSNBC etc finding smaller sites that are getting lots of traffic will greatly help.

I would suggest joining a couple webmaster forums and checking out some of the listings of those who are selling ad spots. But pay close attention to how many unique visitors they get a day, the CTR (rate at which most visitors click on an advertisement), total page views a day etc.

Generally expect to pay between $80-140/month for a good ad spot on a website that is receiving decent/excellent traffic.

Many other ways exist but these are some of the most tried and proven techniques to increase traffic. One last word of advice, the field of blogging is a trial and error processes. Looking for success in a couple days or weeks is not going to cut it. But developing a good plan and sticking with it is the best solution.

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