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Ask HN: Advice for building blog traffic

3 points by rawsyntax ↗ HN
I've been blogging at http://rawsyntax.com/ for a couple months now. I've been submitting my articles here, reddit.com/r/programming, and dzone.com, and also tweeting them from my twitter.

The blog is also hosted on tumblr, I've been following people, others have reblogged my posts. As far as I can tell, the content on my site is relatively SEO friendly (at least the basic stuff).

My question is what else can I do to increase traffic? What other aggregators should I submit my articles to?

5 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 17.6 ms ] thread
olegious
I would suggest guest blogging on some blogs that you follow.
ig1
Write compelling content. Marketing can only get you so far.
[deleted]
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toumhi
Agreed. But you have to know what compelling content is for that niche. Basically ask yourself the question "why would anyone follow my blog when there are 1000's of blogs for programmers?".

A few random comments:

- In general, I find your posts are too short and not in-depth enough (although that might be personal preference). There are too many titles, paragraphs are very small. When I scan it, my brain goes "um, it's not worth to read something of 2 lines long."

- the blog post title size is the same as the section title size, making it harder to scan the article.

- adding images/video would increase engagement

- write lists "10 reasons you should choose Git".

- SEO friendliness: http://rawsyntax.com/post/6384354589/why-i-love-git should be http://rawsyntax.com/why-i-love-git - if you're looking for Search engine traffic, write about what people are looking for: "git tutorial", "best git gui" etc. It might pay off to do some keyword research to find what people are looking for.

- follow relevant people (e.g people who blog about git) and retweets them, when you have something of quality send them a PM about it

But, getting traffic for your blog is hard. There are just so many good blogs out there. Find your voice, and do the work :-)

arn
What's your end goal? Are you trying to build this up to be a business in itself? Or just trying to make a name for yourself?

I think one key to building an audience in blogging is regular content. Last post appears to be Jun 10th. That's a really long stretch. More content also helps with bringing in traffic via search engines.

Of course, posting compelling content. Stuff that is shared with others.

And this may be my personal bias but I am having a really hard time with the theme. I find it very hard to read. The headings seem to be the same style as the story titles. The text is rather hard to focus on, etc. I honestly can't get through an article.