Dean's World

How To Increase Blog Traffic

Michael Demmons

When people give advice on increasing blog traffic, usually they will tell you things like: "Write what you know" or "Send good posts to higher traffic blogs" or some such thing. Sure, that work on occasion, but I've found another way: Mention "Mario Vasquez."

I'm serious. In the past two days, all because I mentioned that he quit American Idol, I've had thousands upon thousands of new visitors to my blog. For a while, Gay Orbit was at the top of every single search engine listing for searches on that guy's name. It was in the top 5 of most.

Posted by Michael Demmons | Permalink | Technorati Trackbacks

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Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):

Yeah, but are they really the kind of people you want seeing and commenting on your blog? I want intelligent people to come to mine - not simply those who think Mario is hot.

Besides, I'm a big Cardinals fan - and the Smith kid who took his place is Ozzie Smith's son.

3.16.2005 9:18am

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Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

Heh. I didn't say it was DESIRABLE traffic!! :-)

3.16.2005 9:24am

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jlb (www):

How do you get search engines to NOT see your blog? The hits from that alone are putting my bandwidth through the roof! I say little enough as it is (it's a photoblog), so there's not much I can do to say less...
jan

3.16.2005 9:51am

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triticale (mail) (www):

The answer to jlb's question is something called a robot script - details could be found via, guess what, search engines.

For me "write what you know" precludes mentioning Mario Vazquez. In fact, as I was reading this post, the first name brought to mind a certain short, moustachioed plumber. I will forego watching American Idle, and instead read interesting blogs looking for things to write about. I got lucky this way yesterday. I put a trackback on a post yesterday which thereafter got Instalanched and earned myself a Nearstalanch. What was really cool was that the stats showed a high rate of "check out the rest", which wouldn't happen with pop culture search engine hits.

3.16.2005 10:28am

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Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

Nearstalanch!!

I like that word!

3.16.2005 10:50am

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red (www):

That's hysterical. I have another piece of advice:

Mention "Frances Bean Cobain". I did - almost 3 years ago - and the post is still visited on an almost daily basis by the masses looking for information on the poor daughter of the suicidal rock star.

3.16.2005 10:58am

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Ronald Coleman (mail) (www):

This post is really prescient because I was thinking today that if I changed the name of my blog from LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION to GAY LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION it would probably really ~~goose~~ ~~spike~~ increase my traffic.

3.16.2005 6:46pm

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Dean Esmay (www):

Just try "Mary Kate and Ashley Nude." Worked wonders for me.

3.17.2005 6:05pm

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Phelps (www):

One that I never see is one that worked for me -- get mentioned on the radio or TV. Since I started writing about the Russ Martin Show, someone sent a post to Russ, he had it read on the air and gave out the URL and BOOM -- 20K hits over two days, and a lot of them stayed, probably 30+ new regular readers. It was the biggest single jump in regular readers I've had.

Glom onto talk radio. It works. Talk hosts need material, blog talk makes them seem hip, and it gets you major traffic.

3.17.2005 10:52pm