Driving traffic to your blog is essential for the short and long term profitability of your blog. In order to make money or reach a wide audience with your blog, people must be visiting it first. There are many ways that you can raise your blog’s traffic numbers and this article lists some of these strategies in detail.

Pay Per Click Advertising

One of the most common and easiest forms of raising the amount of traffic your blog sees is paying for advertising. Pay per click advertising works like this: first you sign up with an ad network like Chitka or Google Adwords. You then bid on certain keywords like “Sony TV” or “Samsung smartphone”. When people search using these keywords or visit a website with these words, pay per click advertisers will place a link to your blog somewhere in the website or in an advertising area around the blog.

When a potential blog reader clicks through the link you will pay a set amount for every unique user visit. You can determine the flow of traffic by how much you are willing to pay. If you have the funds for it, this is hands down the best way to drive traffic, albeit at a price. PPC advertising prices vary depending on the subject of your blog and the traffic you wish to purchase.

Social Media Presence

Another way to drive traffic to your blog is to set up social media accounts related to your blog niche. For example, if you have a blog that is related to BMW automobiles you can set up social media accounts regarding BMW’s and gain followers and viewers to these pages. You could build a Facebook page entitled “BMW Fans”, and occasionally post links to content on your site.

If you mix in links to your site with other valuable content from other providers you will build a loyal following and be able to get your blog some great exposure and traffic. There are a number of different types of social media accounts, some of the most popular are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is another great way to build traffic to your site. This system of advertising works differently than pay per click advertising. Basically when you purchase a banner ad instead of paying for every click or view that an advertiser brings in you pay for a set amount of space on a website for a set amount of time.

You could use Yahoo as an example. If you wanted to promote your blog you could buy a banner on the top of Yahoo.com for a month and interested readers would click through the banner driving you traffic. Banner Advertising works well but is much harder to track compared to pay per click advertising. Banner ads are also much harder to target since they do not usually use keywords.

These three strategies are all great ways to drive traffic, however there are many different ways to do so that are not mentioned here. Do not be afraid to experiment and try new things.

This article was composed by Ty Whitworth for the team at justcolleges.com.