Get more traffic with Google Alerts

There are tons of ways to get traffic to your blog, some of which require a lot of work. There are quite a few ways though that don’t require all that much on your part and I have one such method for you today. Yippee!

If you haven’t already, sign up to Google Alerts. It’s free, quick and easy.

Instead of “googling” your name, a lot of bloggers are just creating alerts and having them sent to email or RSS. I do this for my own name, plus each of my domains – just to stay on top of things. Or to stroke my own ego, whichever way you prefer to look at it.

However, you can use Google Alerts for many other things – like getting more blog traffic!

Here’s how:

Step 1 – Sign up for Google Alerts if you haven’t done so already.

Step 2 – Create a Google Alert for your main keywords.

Step 3 – When you receive your alerts, view the links and comment on as many of them as you can.

Here are steps 2 and 3 broken down:

Step 2 – You should already have done some keyword research (I use NicheBot) and will know what your main keywords are for your blog. Plug those into the box when you create an alert.

Make sure you choose “Blogs” in the “Type” drop-down menu. You can choose to have your alerts delivered to your email address or RSS. I like to use RSS to cut down on the amount of emails I already receive.

Now click “Create Alert”. Voila! Now just sit back and wait for your first alert.

Tip #1: If you notice some alerts popping up from the same domain and you don’t want those ones, simply create a new alert and add “-domain.com” to it.

For example, if you set up an alert for “quit smoking” and you don’t want alerts from the domain “www.ILoveSmoking.com”, you’d type in “quit smoking -site:ilovesmoking.com” in your search terms field.

Step 3 – When you receive your first alerts, view each blog and decide if it’s relevant enough to comment on. Think about if the readers of those blogs are suited to your own.

Leave useful and thoughtful comments. You want to establish yourself as an expert so you’ll need more than just “great post”. Also, don’t leave promotional links within your comment – just use the URL field for your blog address and leave it at that. Links within a comment usually look spammy and could prevent your comment from being approved.

Tip #2: Don’t forget that you don’t have to leave the main index page of your URL as a link. You can also deep link to individual posts on your blog, especially if they’re more relevant to the blog post you’re commenting on. Just make sure you’re always leaving the same name (like “Cassie @ MamasOnTheWeb) to help “brand” yourself.

If you find some blogs that direct quite a bit of traffic to your own through your comments, make sure you subscribe to their RSS feed and comment regularly.

Choosing high-traffic blogs will surely get you some traffic, but don’t neglect the smaller blogs. Their readership might not be as big, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get some quality traffic out of them. Every little bit counts.

It doesn’t have to take you long to get this done. You can set aside 15-30 minutes each day for commenting and get quite a few comments going if you’re efficient.

If you stay consistent you’ll notice a nice increase in your traffic.

RT @cassiegermsheid: "Get more traffic with Google Alerts"