When I religiously look at my sitemeter everyday (please,oh please, validate my sorry little life...), I notice at least 10-20 hits a day from search engines. I don't pretend to understand all of the finer points of blogging, but I have figured out something about this part of if.

Getting hits from links will only last so long if you can't get new readers, or if you cant attract people that aren't just surfing Blog Explosion to get credits to spend on traffic for their own sites(I'm not downing BE-you are a chump if you blog and don't use it!). But building search engine traffic is important to attract more than just other bloggers.

Here is a partial list of some ideas for building search engine traffic-comment if you know some other ideas.

1. Submit your URL to Google. Click here.

2. There are other sites on the web that will submit your site to multiple sites, and even freeware. I would not pay to do it though, the spiders will find you soon enough if you are posting regularly, which leads to...

3. Try to post at least a couple times a week. This is like the compound interest of a mutual fund, it will increase your prescence on the web much quicker than you realize. Besides that, the search engines will combine results from different posts, so the more words you have on the blog, the more chance you have of people finding you. Unless you are one of those people who starts a sorry blog just so they can post a bunch of half-ass posts that are just hyperlinks to sell stuff, that's just sad. Blogs are not a multi-level marketing vehicle, I don't care what the infomercial told you. Content sells, not gimmicks. Sorry, I'll step off the soapbox now...

4. When you do post regularly, be sure to join and ping Technorati when you do post. Technorati also has one of the best utilities for keeping track of who is linking to you, in some ways I like it better than using Google alone.

5. Link to other sites, and try to get them to link to you.Click here to read how links are important to determining your place in the "food chain" of page ranking.

6. Try to make your blog have a focus that will cause certain subjects to be discussed more often than others. For example Bailey's Broadcast is about struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD). That will help more readers find that site if they are looking for information about dealing with that disorder. Of course, my site has to do with call centers, so people looking for information about call centers turn up here often. With pride, I would like to point out that I am the first site that comes up when you enter Call Center Bullshit. Thank you, thank you very much. I don't think this would make my Mom very proud though, let's not tell her...

7.Try to walk that fine line between posting about things that are uniquely part of the "message" of your blog, versus mentioning things that are part of the popular media landscape at the time.

A great example of this is a post I did about David Spade's Capital One commercials. I swear, after that post, I get at least 4 hits a day from Google because of that post. Somehow, I am the first site that comes up when you enter David Spade Capital One call center commercial.

The point I am trying to make is this: If you want people to read your blog, don't just spend all your time making it just look fancy, but write it in such a way that it will draw visitors. Content will ultimately be more important than form alone if the majority of your blog is writing.

Thanks for reading,

AC