Build Traffic to Blog

In the previous article in this series, I reviewed what blog carnivals are and why all aspiring bloggers should be participating in them. In the event that you missed that post, let me recap briefly the advantages to participating in blog carnivals:

• They improve your authority
• You immediately gain regular, profitable readers of your partner blogs
• You get an immediate surge of traffic to blog articles
• You get a long term increase in search result rankings

What I’d like to review in this post is how you can get the most benefit out of your carnival participation. Let’s be real, carnivals take effort and time, so you might as well get the most benefit and good will from them as you can. Here’s how you can do just that:

1) Add your articles early. There will be a call for entries deadline, but in all likelihood the host already has some idea about how the article will be structured before the deadline, so you want your article submitted during this formative stage.

2) Make the host’s job easy: Learn how to create blog article titles that are catchy, and come up with two or three strong, compelling headlines that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good headings are difficult to craft, so craft them yourself. You’ll save the host the trouble and get more visitors from a better headline.

3) Follow the submission guidelines.

4) Get organized: Organize the information you submit. Include your e-mail address, name, blog name, article title, article summary, several sample headings, trackback URL, and permalink. Place this information in an e-mail above the full post itself, unless otherwise directed.

5) Advertise: Once submitted, make sure to advertise the carnival. What goes around comes around, and your aggregate efforts to attract traffic will payoff for all of you in the long run. That’s the concept behind these carnivals: all participants are sharing readers, giving each the opportunity to attract the others’ regular readers.

6) Make sure your blog can handle your visitors: Ready your blog for any traffic spikes that might occur, and optimize the page that the carnival readers will be viewing. You’ll want to target the offers or ads to your audience, provide a very visible subscription link, and follow-up with at least a week’s worth of powerful articles to capitalize on any repeat traffic you might have.

Blog carnivals are a great way to attract profitable, relevant, qualified, long-term readers. Use them correctly and you’ll reap the rewards. But you must be prepared to put your best foot forward. Pick up a good blogs how to if you have any doubts on how you can optimize your blog for this kind of traffic.

Good luck!

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