In this post, I’m going to, very briefly, look at some of the things which can be done to increase traffic on your blog, with the view to perhaps expand on these in a series of upcoming posts. All listed techniques are applicable on new, as well as established blogs. It is, by no means, an exhaustive list, so feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section!

Getting traffic on a blog, especially if it’s a new one, can be tricky. However people have mastered the art of getting thousands of visitors a month to great effect!

Increase Blog Traffic

1. Search Engine is King!

Currently, Google alone gets as many as 3 million searches a day! That is a staggering figure, and let’s not forget that search engines like Bing and Yahoo are used by thousands as well. It is therefore important to ensure your blog is search engine friendly. Being higher up on Google’s search results (or SERP) is imperative.

Using SEO tools and understanding the power of backlinking is also extremely important. Getting traffic from authority websites will make Google sit up and take npotice. The internet is littered with millions of tools which help you do this; do read some review before you choose which ones to use.

Also submit your content to search engines directly.

2. Use Social Networking and Social Mediums

It would be downright foolish to estimate the power of social mediums. Facebook has 850 million unique users, and 483 million daily active users on average in 2011! And those numbers are going up quickly. Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, Google Plus, Pinterest and the like are also boasting similar numbers. Also make sure to add plugins which allow people to ‘Like’, ‘RT’ or ‘+1’ your content. Every time there’s a new post up, send out an update to the people following you on your pages.

Also submit your content on other content sharing mediums like Reddit and StumbleUpon. Reddit, for instance gets billions of visitors monthly!

However it is important to come with a proper social networking strategy, instead of blindly flinging your content across all mediums. Time is money!

3. Target Audience

Look to target an audience who are more likely to share your content. Target people with a high social networking potential (SNP) – in simple terms, these are people with the ability to reach out to a large group of people. This could maximize the exposure of your content. Word of mouth is a powerful tool!

4. Make your blog attractive

A visually-friendly blog goes a long way in attracting new visitors. The combination of the theme, colors and font should be such that whenever someone visits your blog, he or she is compelled to stay and browse for a while. Also make use of pictures, images and videos.

5. The content is what makes or breaks your blog!

Another thing that will leave a last impression on any visitor – old or new – is quality content, that is updated daily. Make sure your posts are interesting to read, and not just some boring wall of text or commentary. Be a bit interesting, tell a story, use humor, use images but don’t overdo it! Just try adding value to your posts.

Also ensure that your website is not outdated, and this includes the frequency of your posts, as well as the content on your pages (such as your About Me or Contact Us pages). When someone visits your blog, he should be looking at one that is up-to-date, and has new and fresh content on it. Even if you think you cannot do one-post-a-day, update your blog at least once or twice a week. A large percentage of people would never revisit an outdated blog.

You could also try being controversial, since as they say, no publicity is bad publicity!

Also do keyword research before writing your posts, simply adding those keywords in your posts could have you rank for them very easily.

6. Look at the statistics!

Install Google Analytics, Google’s free tool which lets you look at detailed traffic statistics. Look at where you’re getting most of your traffic from. Concentrate your efforts on these sources, but tailor your strategy accordingly.

7. Network with bloggers and other people in your community

Link to posts on other blogs, and it might lead them to link back to you to. If someone’s already linked back to you, return the favor. Do guest posts on other blogs, and ask bloggers in your niche to do guest posts for you too. Build connections and network with them. Ask others if they can review your products, or feature your blog on their Facebook page or website.

8. Harness the power of comments!

Comment on the posts on other blogs. Always have something constructive and useful to say, but never spam! Add a link to your website where it asks you to. This could be an invaluable way of building backlinks to your content.

9. Subscriptions

Allow people to subscribe to your posts – either via email, RSS or through social networks.

10. Advertise your Blog!

Put the URL on your visiting card, our FB/Twitter/Social profiles, on your email signatures. Advertise your blog, spread the word, let everyone you know – friends, family acquaintances, colleagues – about your blog. Don’t shy away from being referred to as a ‘blogger’ in face, use that to refer to yourself and proudly!

Concluding Words

I kept it brief, but I’ll to expand upon each of the aforementioned points in upcoming posts. So stay tuned!

In the meanwhile, do share your thoughts with us in the comments section below. Feel free to add something to the post as well!

PS. In addition to my post above, this is a good read on the same topic as well!

You would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know or hasn’t heard about the global social networking phenomenon known as Facebook! In fact you would also be extremely hard pressed to find someone not  on Facebook!

Facebook’s numbers and statistics are mind blowing. 850 million active users, and closing in on that magical one billion figure pretty quickly. A 140 million monthly unique visitors from the US alone. Its earned a massive 3.7 billion USD revenue in 2011, and that’s only going up. It’s the hottest buzzword on the interwebz today, is now a household name, and anyone and everyone that you and I know are on Facebook!

Facebook and Businesses!

Organizations – large and small – are using Facebook to promote their businesses, products and services. And some with great effect. In fact, Facebook is now the primary choice of advertisement and online presence for quite a lot of business.

Therefore, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t use Facebook to promote your blog. However there’s certain ways to go by it, and some things which need to be considered first before you set about plugging your blog on Facebook. It can help you tap into a new, unexplored market, give you access to potential visitors and buyers, and generally drive a whole slew of traffic on your blog.

Let’s also not forget that Facebook is, by far, the biggest source of referral traffic out there, leaving everyone else in the dust!

How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Blog

1. The first and the most obvious is to create a Facebook fanpage for your blog. And get as many likes as possible. You can plug your blog by sharing it with your own friends on your wall, and asking some of your other friends (preferably those with a high Social Networking Potential or SNP – those who have a large circle of friends and are very active) to plug your page. Alternatively, you can import email contacts, such as your email subscribers, to like your page. Add a ‘like’ box to your blog as well.
2. Keep your audience engaged. Creating polls and starting discussion on your page. Make sure your page has your blog’s logo, and all information about it. Having a rather empty-looking page, even if you have no fans, wouldn’t be such a good idea. Above all, ensure that the page has the URL of your blog clearly mentioned in multiple locations – ‘about’ section, ‘summary’ section as well as in the display picture of your page.
3. Make sure you send periodic updates on your Facebook page. Keep it active. Make it a policy to send at least one update per day. Keep your fans engaged. Each time you write a new blog post, share the link on the Facebook page.
4. Facebook Ads is another great method of promoting your blog, but with a price. Ads can be cheap or expensive, depending on the plan and options you choose.
5. Network with other bloggers who have FB pages. Self-explanatory, ask fellow bloggers to plug your blog and page on their blog pages.
6. Network with FB page owners who have a large number of likes. Ask them if they can promote your page on their FB page’s walls.
7. Think outside the box. Find new, fun and innovative ways of connecting with your audience. Be creative! With FB, you have at your disposal an extremely powerful tool and hence a plethora of possibilities.
8. Don’t over-do it! Make sure you’re not spamming FB with incessant and irritating posts.

Apart from the simple thank you, acknowledgement or the like, it could also be a good idea to reward anyone who comments using alternative methods. Holding something like a competition would not only encourage people to contribute more, but could also potentially attract a whole bunch of new visitors (and commenters) to your blog. Word of mouth is a powerful tool! Holding a competition could therefore be a great way to drive traffic to your blog.

Important Questions

Before setting about with this, ask yourself this:

1. What sort of a competition or a contest would be best suited for the sort of website/blog you run?
2. How long will it run?
3. Who will be the participants?
4. What will be the prizes? Monetary or non-monetary? Is there money that can be spent, if you choose the former?
5. How will you publicize the contest?

Some Competition/Contest Ideas

There’s a whole slew of things you can do, it basically depends on what sort of a website you run. I’ll throw some ideas now, in no particular order:

1. Choose one random comment for a reward. This could be done daily or weekly, or on a per-post basis
2. Retweet to win. Choose a random winner from anyone who retweets your posts.
3. Choose a winner from people who ‘like’ your Facebook page. This could be a great way to promote your FB page AND your blog. Choose a random winner or make the nth (1000^th, 10,000^th) person to like your page the winner!
4. If you’re in sales, a contest similar to point 3 above can be done by giving away a prize to the 100^th or 500^th sale and so on.
5. Hold a competition, for instance have people submit pictures or share videos. It could be something like a Christmas competition, where people could post pictures of their Christmas trees. Or a Halloween costume competition. Sky’s the limit here.
6. Reward everyone (or a random person) who subscribes to your blog or newsletter. This is a great list-building method as well, and useful from an affiliate’s perspective.

Reward Ideas

A reward can be

1. A simple cash reward in dollars.
2. An eBook or a training module.
3. Tickets to an event – a concert or a football game
4. A giveaway – like an all-expense paid vacation for two
5. Free membership upgrade on your website
6. A service – like consultation or a coaching session.
7. Ad space on your blog.
8. A free premium theme or a domain name or even a hosting package.
9. Best Buy credit

The Runner-ups

Don’t simply ignore the people who ended in 2^nd or 3^rd place. Rewarding the runner-ups can go a long way in building goodwill, and probably encourage people to participate in any other contests you might hold in the future.

Sponsored Event

The contest can also be a sponsored thing. Look around to see if someone would like to sponsor your contest or giveaway. All it takes is a simple email to be sent out to a list of potential sponsors.

Publicity

Like any good marketer, make sure you have a publicity campaign in place for your contest. People need to know about it. Use other social mediums like Facebook and Twitter, ask your friends to plug the contest on their walls. Publicize the contest on other blogs. Promote it like you would promote your blog. Get the word out!

Final Thoughts

Holding contests is a popular and proven way of driving more visitors to your website, backlinking, and publicity over social mediums. Just make sure you set a budget for whatever you do, and keep in line with that!

This post also concludes the series of posts on getting more comments and visitors on your blog! Everything that has been said over the course of the previous few posts is easily do-able, inexpensive in terms of cost, investment and implementation, and in all probability won’t even require a lot of effort or time spent on your part. But it could potentially have a whole slew of people voicing their thoughts, opinions and having their say on your blog and posts. And your blog could go from being a little-known blog to a massively popular and active one!

We’ve spoke of many different ways in which you can increase comments on your blog, and keep people commenting and coming back to your blog.  Engagement is perhaps one of the most important, if not the most important!

Asking Questions

Many blogs do this in one way or the other. You can ask straightforward questions about, say, a topic at hand. Or be creative, like start a poll.

There are multiple ways of going about this, you could either design your post to be enquiring, or simply pose a question at the end. Polls are self-explanatory. There are many WP tools – free and paid-for – that let you create polls of many different types.

Using this way, start a debate or a discussion on your blog. Soon, some people who leave comments will become regulars, getting you a nice flow of continuous traffic.

At the end, make sure you ask people to leave a comment or two in the comments section.

Acknowledging Feedback

Ask yourself this: what are the chances of you going back to a blog or a comments section where your comment has been replied to, or acknowledged in one way or the other? The chances are high, most likely. It is always good to receive feedback, it gives you a sense of belonging and tells you that the 2 or 5 or 10 minutes you spent out of your life replying to a certain post meant something to the author, was appreciated and wasn’t simply ignored.

The same goes for your own blog too! Make sure you allocate some time to replying to comments and/or any other feedback left by people on your blog or posts. If there are too many comments, you can choose to allocate a few minutes twice or thrice a day to reply to them. If it’s more than you can handle, you can always outsource it to someone else to reply on your behalf.

Another alternate method of acknowledging feedback includes sending an automated email to anyone who posts on your blog. This is easily do-able with the help of any of the plethora of plugins available for WordPress out there, built for precisely for this purpose.

You could always spare a minute out of your time and try thanking everyone who comments in a single post rather than individually.

Try being an active part of the discussion or debate. Connect with people. It’s your blog, and it will do it a world of good.

Trust me when I say this; saying thanks and acknowledgement in any form whatsoever goes a long way!

‘Outside the Box’

Apart from the obvious, there are dozens of ways you can engage your readers. Social mediums, for one, are a good place to start. Add plugins through which people can share your content on Facebook or Twitter, or respond via these mediums. Allow people to leave guest comments, or log in through their Facebook, Twitter, G+ ID’s to leave comments. Not only does this make it easier to leave feedback, it also encourages people to respond to your posts on a wide range of social mediums, maximizing your blog’s exposure instantly!

Concluding Words

Have something to add, or something to say? I look forward to seeing your comment in the comments section below!

Thus far, we’ve looked at many ways of getting more comments on your blog. Stuff like how you can spread the word and increase your blog’s visibility, make your posts more interesting to read, and designing a blog in a way that automatically attracts readers and hence comments.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg really. There’s so much more that you can do, easily and for free! And while at the end, the list of things you end up with for increasing blog posts would be anything but exhaustive, it’s a good start, and you can always add to it, or make it better in your own way with the passage of time.

Make It Easier For People to Leave Feedback on Your Blog and Comment on Your Posts

Very important and something that’s usually ignored by everyone running a website or a blog. How many times have you come across a post that you liked and wanted to leave feedback on, only you couldn’t because there was no clear way of doing so. Usually its because of the following 2 reasons: (a) you have to jump through 50 different hoops, just to say something or (b) there is no clear-cut mechanism in place through which comments can be left.

While WordPress is certainly very comment-friendly, make sure you don’t have 50 plugins to filter spam from comments. It can be frustrating for someone who wants to leave a comment and cannot do so, just because your spam filter is blocking him out. People are busy, have places to be and in all probability cannot spend 30 minutes just to say thanks.

Make sure your WordPress is configured in a way that makes commenting easy and straightforward. For this purpose, go to the Discussion tab in your WordPress dashboard. From there, you can configure all sorts of options. Additionally, if you have any comment and/or anti-spam plugins installed, make sure you have a look at the options and have them all configured properly.

The Comments Section

As for the comments section itself, just ask for the essentials. Usually, boxes for a Name, Email, Website URL and a Twitter Handle do the job. Do not have people filling out useless information.

Also ensure that your comments section remains free of spam at all times. WordPress comes with a plugin called Akismet for this purpose. You can also purchase more powerful plugins, depending on your pocket and/or the spam you get, but like mentioned above, make sure the plugins don’t interfere with genuine comments.

Consolidate Your Thoughts

An interesting blogpost I read recommends you should consolidate your thoughts and put them into a single post, instead of spreading them out to different ones. Debatable, at best, and while I might not fully agree with this particular point-of-view, it might be worth looking at for some.

Leaving Visual Cues

WordPress makes it extremely easy to leave comments, since it has a box that says comments on the top and bottom of your posts (usually with most themes, but depends). Make sure your website does the same as well. Leave visual cues so that people can easily access the comments section and leave one.

A little off-topic, but apart from comments, add a ‘Contact Us’ page, and list out the ways in which people can contact you. FB, Twitter, email, add it all here. Add a form on the page, through which anyone can send you feedback and link this form with your inbox.

Approving Comments

Furthermore, if you approve comments yourself, make sure you do this as frequently as possible, or outsource it and have someone else do it for you. A quick comment-approval policy goes a long way, and a comment that remains in ‘awaiting moderation’ status generally leaves a bad impression, and that particular in all probability won’t be leaving another comment again. After certain user leave a couple of (quality) comments, promote their comments to auto-approved.

Concluding Words

Feel like adding to what’s been said? Leave your comments in the comments section below!

Having a blog interface that is

1. Clean
2. Uncluttered
3. Easy-to-navigate
4. Easy on the eyes
5. Attractive

is extremely essential. Aesthetics matter, big time!

However someone who’s been managing blogs for a while would know that it is anything but easy to be able to come up with a perfect blend of the abovementioned!

It is doable though. But at the end of the day, there are some do’s and don’ts you need to consider.

The Theme

First off, choose the correct theme is very important. If you’re on WordPress (I recommend you should blog on WP), choose a customized theme. There are quite literally, a plethora of amazing-looking customized themes available out there! You’ll probably have to part with a few of your greens for a good theme, but it all depends on your budget and pocket. Go for one which you think goes best with the type of the blog you do and is within budgets as well. Your homepage should be designed in a way that attracts anyone who visits it.

Furthermore, invest in a good banner as well, if need be. Design one yourself or have it designed. Ditto for a god background (if need be).

Your theme determines if your blog is attractive to keep visitors, has a reader-friendly interface, and doesn’t use colors or fonts that are too hard to read. Choosing the right combination of colors and fonts is important.

Easy on the Ads!

Stating the obvious here, but too many ads on your pages are likely to have visitors leave your blog as soon as the page loads up. Ads should only be placed in specific places, away from your content. And it should be ensured that they are related to the theme of your website. Look into other ways of putting ads on your website than the obvious ones (AdSense).

The Pages

A website or a blog needs to have separate pages for every separate thing. Refrain from putting all content on one page, and instead make multiple pages and divide your content across them all. Each individual page should be easily accessible through a top or a side-bar. Having a proper navigation in place is essential. Your visitors should not need to look for information that they require, it should be readily available and accessible from any page. If there’s too much information, classify it into a few broad categories and use drop-down or pop-up menus to keep it organized and clean.

The Visual Appeal

Like mentioned in the last post, your posts, your pages and your blog/website in general should be visually appealing. Use images and videos for this purpose, but once again, do not over-do it. Use embedded Youtube, mp3’s, GIF’s, anything. But in moderation.

Browser Compatibility

Your blog should be compatible with all browsers out there. The pages should open up in the exact same way across all browsers. A page should not look different in Firefox or Chrome. Before rolling out your website, do extensive testing in this regard. Test your pages using Chrome, FF, Explorer, Safari, Opera et all.

Attention to Detail

Many people choose to completely ignore this. Small details matter people! In fact, making sure you are someone who gives attention to even the minutest of details leaves a good impression on your clients and visitors alike!

Concluding Words

Read this excellent piece on how you can improve your blog aesthetics. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, do leave us a comment in the comments section!

In continuation to the last couple of posts, it is very important to ensure your blog posts are interesting to read, appealing and captivate the attention of the reader instead of being too ‘plain and boring’. This too will ensure you get more comments on your blog.

Think about any book that you recently read, or an article or even a Facebook comment that you just read. If it was interesting, chances are you might’ve left a comment. If it was a book, you’d be inclined to read up about it one a forum online, or leave a comment on its Facebook fanpage. The same goes for blogs. Make the post interesting and you might have more people comment on it.

But How?

There are quite a few ways to go about this.

1. Making your post less text-heavy

Make sure you make your posts less text-dependent. Stop relying on just your words and add pictures, videos or even audio to your posts. A picture, as the age-old adage goes, is worth a thousand words! Not only does multimedia add color to your posts, it makes them much more interesting as well. Remember, don’t overdo it though, there needs to be a balance between text and pictures. A visually-interesting blog can go a long way.

2. Add statistics, case studies, quotes, etc

Being less text-dependent doesn’t necessarily mean limiting yourself to adding pictures and Youtube clips. You could add graphs, charts, stats, quotes and the like as well, depending on the sort of blog you have.

3. Choose an interesting topic

Try and appeal to a large group of audience by choosing an interesting topic. Use simple language, but don’t be generic. Think whether this topic would be interesting to read only within your niche (interesting for just a few people) or maybe if you could tweak it somehow, you’d be able to appeal to more people. When choosing your topics, try standing out from the crowd. Which brings us to point no. 4…

4. Choose an interesting headline and first paragraph

When you start writing essays, one of the first things you learn is to come up with interesting topic names and keeping the first paragraph as fascinating as possible. It’s like reading a book: if the introduction is good, you’ll be captivated instantly and it then becomes hard for you to put the book down. Similarly, you can have the same effect on your blog post by keeping the introduction interesting. Chances are, if you’re successful here, the reader will stick around till the end.

5. Look at your competition

Regardless of if you’re running a niche blog or not, look at other similar blogs and see what they’re doing. Try and adapt their best practices yourself. If there’s something that you think you can take from their blogs and improve upon, go for it!

6. Be a bit controversial

Being controversial could stir up an interest in your posts. I’ve seen plenty of blogs employ this strategy on a regular basis. It could even be a good viral marketing source through word-of-mouth, as controversy usually attracts attention. There’s no harm in bringing controversy in your posts, as long as you know your limits. There is a fine line between being controversial, and being rude, insensitive, ignorant or downright provocative or inflammatory. Make sure you don’t cross that line. You want to promote debate and not upset your readers.

7. Be more humorous

Being witty, funny and amusing. Try to keep your tone light. Add more personality to your posts. But like in real-life, avoid overdoing it and be subtle.

8. Think outside the box

Give advice. Share stuff. Post DIYs. Break monotony by doing completely different posts every once in a while. Write your posts in the form of stories. Think of ways apart from the obvious ones which you can use to keep people engaged.

9. And above all..

Be human! And be yourself!

Final Words

This is far from being an exhaustive list and I’m sure you can come up with ideas of your own. Do share them with us in the comments section below!

If people don’t know you exist, or your content exists, if you’re writing and no one knows about it and no one’s reading it, all your efforts pretty much go down the drain right then and there.

Timing is also an important consideration. Your content needs to be relevant, and should get to your target audience in time. No one would be interested to know or hear about an event two or three weeks after it ends.

To ‘spread the word’ about your blog or whatever you might be offering, you would need to use the power of Search Engine Optimization or what is commonly known as SEO. Conquer Google, and you will be able to get your message across to a wide audience. Market your posts like you would market any product.

Social media is also a powerful (and free!) tools to get your word across. Everyone you know is on Facebook, and now almost as many people are on Twitter as well. Make a page, get everyone you know to ‘like’ it and spread the word. Keep your fan base engaged by sending out regular updates or tweets. You can even buy ads on Facebook for a cheap price. Or use one of the many tools used to get more likes on your Facebook page.

There are tons of services apart from these two that you can use. Check Stumbleupon, Digg, Bloggerbase and Reddit. Massively powerful tools to reach out to a large group of people.

Network with people blogging on similar topics. Ask for referrals from blogs that get a lot of traffic in the same niche, and ask them to recommend you. Ask if you can do a guest post on their blog and add a signature, with a link to your own blog, at the end. Simply writing comments is also a good way to get some traffic, provided you fill out the ‘website’ box with a link to your blog.

Lastly, do not underestimate the power of good old offline marketing. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, and other people in your social circle. Use text messaging, or go to other traditional forms of advertisement if there’s a budget big enough for it – billboards or sponsorships for instance.

If you have any suggestions or think you can add to the way that I’ve mentioned, please do write in the comments section below!

If widespread statistics are to be believed, an average blog has a visitor-to-comments ratio of around 1%. This means that roughly 1% people who visit your blog and read a post will actually comment on it – which translates to 1 comment every 100 visitors, or just 10 comments per 1000 visitors!

This is precisely why we come across blogs every day that boast healthy viewership or visitor numbers – often times in the hundreds or even thousands. However the blogs fail to back these up with a good number of comments, or people engaging in discussions. This renders your visitor numbers quite useless.

It’s particularly frustrating (and I say this from personal experience) when one has spent a lot of time and put in a lot of effort into carving and creating posts – which could involve hours of research work, a ton of time spent on writing and making sure everything is grammatically correct, adding images, etc – but there is no feedback whatsoever, maybe apart from the odd post or two saying ‘thanks’ or ‘good job’.

Just, for a moment, imagine if someone like Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates or Barack Obama were to deliver a speech, only to be met by a deafening silence at the end of it. No applause, no feedback, no response, and everyone in the audience remains totally silent.

That’s pretty much how it feels to have no response or comments on your posts.

A man, as they say, is a social animal. We are involved, in quite literally, hundreds of various forms of verbal and non-verbal forms of communication on a daily basis. We speak with someone (individual, group) and then we receive feedback. We talk, hear, talk some more and then hear some more as well. We discuss and interact. We use a combination of our voice and body-language to communicate with others in person. We use the power of written words on Facebook, texting and chat. My point here is that two-way communication is a very natural thing, and applies to blogs as well. When you write something online, you naturally expect feedback. The question is, how?

The following are a few tips which everyone should consider when writing blog posts with the intention of receiving feedback, comments and promoting a discussion. Please bear in mind that (a) the points mentioned below are in no particular order, and can be applied in any order, and (b) all these tips are a combination of what I’ve learnt about maximizing feedback on blogs over the years through reading various other blogs, reading books and my own personal experiences:

1. Spreading the word. The more number of people know what you’re saying on the internet, the merrier. You need to have your message put across to a large number of audiences.
2. Making sure your posts are interesting to read.
3. Making sure your website or blog has a clean and a reader-friendly interface. This involves a combination of having a good theme, font, color scheme and the like.
4. Making it easier for people to leave feedback on your blog and comment on your posts.
5. Directly asking questions from your viewers in your posts and then asking them to leave their comments in the comments section.
6. Leaving visual cues on your blog which encourage people to send you feedback. Maybe make a separate tab that says ‘write to us’ or ‘contact us’.
7. Being controversial with your posts (but making sure not to cross the line between controversy and indecency).
8. Acknowledge any comments left by people. Ensure that you reply to everyone who comments, even if it’s just a simple ‘thanks’. If you don’t have the time to personally reply to each comment, use an automated system for this, like send an email saying thanks.
9. Make sure the comments sections are clean and free of spam. Use tools such as Akismet or other plugins for this purpose.
10. Make the comments process more rewarding. For instance choosing one lucky person who comments and give him a prize – upgraded membership/a ten dollar rebate card/all-access pass to the website for a day… anything.
11. Take point 10 one step further, and hold competitions, giveaways or the like among the visitors. E.g. A Christmas-tree or a Halloween-costume competition.

Pretty self-explanatory, all of them, but I’ll be looking at each of the abovementioned points in more detail in subsequent posts.

Would love some feedback and to hear from you guys, so make sure you leave a comment or two in the comments section below!

Check out this short video to see how it all works.

If you are running WordPress, it is super simple to start using it.

1. Download and install the WordPress PubSubHubbub plugin
2. Activate it
3. You’re done! The plugin already comes with 2 hubs so it works right away

Now the next time you publish your next post, check how long it takes for Google to index your post by using the query site:http://yoursitename.com. You should find that it gets indexed really quickly.