KEYS TO BLOG / WEBSITE TRAFFIC

What produces traffic?
What is it about some websites that makes them popular destinations for a huge number of visitors? Why are some blogs checked out by tens of thousands of people every day while others struggle to find a single visitor? The issue of traffic can be complicated. There are a variety of factors at play, and every strategy can be dissected and the details debated ad infinitum.
However, there are two keys to traffic upon which everyone can agree: Content and Links.
Before briefly looking at each of these, we should establish some context for our evaluation. Traffic can come from a few different places. Direct links to your site may produce a stream of visitors if those links are in the right places. Search engines, however, offer the real key to high volume traffic numbers. Surfers rely on Google, Yahoo and MSN to help them find the sites that will provide them with the kind of information they are seeking. If your blog comes up early in those search engine results, you can expect a significant stream of traffic.
Content is essential to traffic flow.
You have to offer something that makes your site worth visiting. Content creates repeat visitors, increases their stay, encourages word-of-mouth type promotion and assists in improving a blog’s standing with the search engines.
Every link can conceivably serve a traffic producer. If someone finds a link to your blog on another site, they are only one mouse-click away from being part of your traffic. Search engines also assess the number and quality of links to your blog. They regard sites that are linked to frequently as authoritative and reward them with higher placement in search engine results.
So, if you want traffic to your blog, you need to do two things: Provide content and acquire links. This is designed to show you some great ways of doing both. The end result should be higher traffic numbers for your blog.

BLOG OVERVIEW
A blog is nothing more than a vessel into which we place content. Content refers to the materials presented in the blog. Content is so critical to the success of a blog, that we are going to address it first and look at it in isolation from all of the other traffic-producing strategies you can implement. Although there are blogs dedicated to podcasting, video casting and photography, this ebook will operate from the assumption that the bulk of your blog’s content will consist of text.
The subject matter of your writing can be critical to your blog’s traffic potential. The quality of your writing, the uniqueness of your perspective, the frequency with which you add content to the blog and the way the content is presented will also make a difference.