1. Ping weblogs.com and other search engines. When you ping a blog, you are telling the search engine that you have updated your blog content and that your listing should be refreshed. Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes. Pinging your blogs to the search engines is the fastest way to get the search engine robots to visit your blog. Also, many people browse these sites to find something new.
2. Submit your blog address to blog search sites and directories. You can submit your blog's url to websites such as Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex. For a complete list of websites where you can submit your url, go to http://www.guidetorss.com/ 3. Set your blog to display RSS feeds and submit your blog's RSS feed to the major RSS feed directories online. A good place to start is http://www.guidetorss.com/ which provides a list of the top RSS directories. 4. Put your blog URL in your email signature. If you're a regular at any online discussion forum, you can also add your url to your signature line at the bottom of each message you post. 5. Install a blogroll. A blogroll is a collection of links to other weblogs. Services such as Technorati spider your links to tell who's linking to you and who you're linking to. If you show up on someone's Technorati link list for their site they're likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure. Blog owners can also visit your site to check it out if you show up on their referral logs. 6. Be an active commenter. Try to leave comments on the blogs that you regularly visit. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. 7. If you plan to have anything printed up, put your blog's web address on it. You can print your blog URL on business cards, stickers, leaflets, etc.
8. Take advantage of blog software features that help to promote your Blog. For example, if you're using Blogger, you can do this by turning on: "Email This Post", "Post Pages" "Site feed" and the Blogger Navbar. These features will help attract new visitors to your blog.
9. Exchange Links with other Bloggers or blog owners. This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your blog for free. It involves contacting other blog owners for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate blogs that are related to yours and contact the webmaster to swap links.
10. Write articles or free reports for other webmasters to publish and put your blog url in the byline. The 'byline' is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. If you write good content, your articles will be published by other webmasters and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your blog.
About the author: Copyright © 2005. Chileshe Mwape writes for The US Banks Website: http://www.us-banks.org/. Find informative articles and news stories about banking and finance. This article may be reprinted as long as all the above links are active and clickable.