Blogging has certainly increased in popularity over the last several years. With literally millions of bloggers attempting to capitalize on their blogging efforts, it is easy to have your blog dumped into the slush pile A.K.A the Google Sandbox. Your blogging income is dependent on the amount of traffic your blog receives on a daily basis. To increase your blog traffic, apply these simple tips to your marketing efforts.

Optimize

In order to reap the rewards of search engine optimization, both art and science must be applied. Science: performing the proper keyword research and achieving the ideal keyword density. Art: composing a piece of optimized writing that will provide valuable information while still remaining cohesive and concise. Search engine optimization may sound simple enough, but when attempted incorrectly it can greatly hinder growth and profit. Don't think you have to do everything yourself. There are thousands of qualified web writers who base their careers solely on providing quality optimized content to bloggers and webmasters.

Quality Content

While increasing traffic is an important goal, it is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to build a loyal readership that will visit your site on a regular basis and recommend your blog to friends and coworkers. You build this loyal readership by providing informative and well written content. A fatal blogging mistake that has been consistent amongst newbies is creating blogs on profitable topics, even if they are unfamiliar with the subject. This is detrimental to a blog's success because quality content can not be produced if no knowledge is present. Create blogs on subjects that you are familiar with, it will be much easier to produce quality content and build a loyal readership.

Guest Posts

Inviting an established blogger to make a (bylined) post on your blog is beneficial to both parties. Blogger A gains free traffic by receiving exposure to your readership; Blogger B (you) gain exposure because blogger A will advertise his guest post to his readership. In simplest terms, guest posting is a one time exchange of readerships, which will hopefully lead to a converted fan base for both parties. It doesn't require much time or effort, just another established blogger that is willing to exchange readerships as a one time deal.