The number one step to building blog traffic

Matt Tuley on June 4th, 2008

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Are you ready to learn the number one step to building blog traffic?

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There are, literally (and I really do mean “literally”), millions of blogs out there. And sometimes it seems that about half them are blogs about writing blogs, building traffic and, especially, turning that traffic into money. They are all filled with great, and largely the same, advice for doing this. (Just Google “build blog traffic” for a start.)

But, oddly, it seems most of them miss the Number One step you need to take to build traffic.

This is especially important if you run a blog as a marketing tool to build business, which is the case for most of my clients. In that case, maintaining the blog costs real money money because an employee, or hired freelancer, is being paid to do it. If this critical step is not being taken, that’s just a waste of money.

Can you guess what the number one step to building blog traffic is?

I have to confess: I haven’t been taking this step myself.

I’ve enjoyed some success with this blog, but I can imagine how much more successful I’d have been if I’d been more diligent about doing this.

In fact,not only has the blog grown like it could, but I’ve seen site visits and RSS subscriptions actually drop. Time to take the step!

The number one step to building blog traffic

Ready? Here it is:

Post.

Expecting more?

What? That’s it? Yep.

I know “Post” seems painfully obvious, but bloggers–especially those blogging with a concerted effort to build traffic–can get so bogged down in the advice (provide relevant content, include an interesting graphic, make proper use of H1 and H2 formatting, and on and on…) that we don’t take the step to actually post anything.

Even I haven’t posted anything since Memorial Day but a Casual Friday post (and that was a day late). And I’ve seen a hit in traffic as a result.

If you want to build readership, you need to provide something to read. Your posts are not always going to be completely relevant, or Digg-worthy, or search engine optimized. But you’ve got to get something up there.

And you know what? It’s like anything else: The more you do it, the better you’ll get and the easier it will be.

So what are you waiting for?

Go post something!

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