Steve Pavlina has written some great ways to build a high traffic blog. His strategy isn’t based on tricks or techniques that will go out of style, but providing genuine value and letting word of mouth do the rest.
I’ve excerpted his 10 best suggestions for building a high traffic web site:
1. Create valuable content.
He suggests imaginging yourself in from of an outdoor concert stage before an audience of a million people. What would you say to them? Remember that strong content is universally valued, and quality is more is more often important than quantity.
2. Create original content.
While it takes more effort to produce original content, your site becomes the “final destination.” Then, your visitors will often stick around for a while.
3. Create timeless content.
He suggests thinking about how your work might influence future generations in addition to my own. What advice can you pass onto your great grandchildren? We forget yesterday’s news, but we remember those things that have meaning to us.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
Don’t let the prevailing search engine strategies intefere with your desire to deliver genuine value and creating timeless content. Your traffic can grow because people tell other people about this site, either online or offline.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
Do you know your site’s purpose? Is your work driven by this purpose? If you do succeed by building a high-traffic web site and are in the privileged position of being able to influence millions of people, what will you say to them? Don’t forget to honor those readers with your best.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
Getting people to know you makes it easier for them to understand the context of what you write. His attitude is that it’s perfectly OK to fail or to be rejected publicly – trying to appear perfect is nothing but a house of cards that will eventually collapse.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
Being honest is more important to him than being popular. He doesn’t treat any subjects as taboo or sacred if they’re relevant to his site’s subject (personal growth). Truth creates trust, and trust builds traffic.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
The human-to-human connection between Steve and his readers matters to him. Real human beings helping real human beings is ultimately what traffic growth is all about (think links and referrals). If you align yourself with the intention of genuinely helping people because you care, you’ll soon find yourself with an abundance of traffic.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
Money is important, obviously you have bills to pay.
He sought to earn money for the purpose of increasing my freedom. By paying close attention to how he earns money and not just how much he earns, he keeps money in its proper place.
10. Focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.
One of the great benefits of focusing on helping others is that it gets fear out of the way. Without fear you become free to just be yourself. You’re able to take intelligent risks and remain detached from any specific outcome because the journey is more important to you than the specific stops along the way.
In sum …
Do your best to help your visitors out of genuine concern for their well-being, and they’ll help you build your traffic and even generate a nice income from it. It’s as simple as that.
You can read Steve’s full article here. He started his web site from scratch and build its traffic to over 700,000 visitors per month in about 15 months — without spending any money on marketing or promotion.