How to Grow your Photoblog Traffic

I’m going to let go of some secrets here.This article relates mainly to photoblogs – I’m sure some of you know some of these secrets but many don’t. My traffic at my photoblog went skyrocketing from 100 to over 500 visitors a day.Here are the main things I did :

1.Photoblogs.org : A lot of traffic comes from there – right now I am number one (the ‘hottest’ photoblog as they have titled it) so I get alot of traffic – but how did I get to number one?I’m sure everyone visits a photoblog – go to one – tell them -’Hello, I bookmarked you on photoblogs.org – can you bookmark me?’ – so you keep getting bookmarks (they all bookmark you back most probably) .Suddenly you get onto the list after about 4 bookmarks over two days.On day one I accumulated so many bookmarks so fast that I rose from number 56 to number 11 and the next day into number 10 and today number 1.Also, tag your blog when you bookmark yourself – include a lot of any relevant tags – because people search for tags and I do get photoblogs.org traffic from people searching for tags.

2.Directories : You have to pick some good directories for them to work – one I particularly adore is http://www.mawoosh.com which does get me in traffic. Also, don’t collect too many reciprocal links on your blog – I only have one which was compulsory and added Mawoosh.com as a thank you for the traffic.

3. Search Engines : Although a photoblog is mostly pictures, search engines play a large part – at one time, suddenly all of the engines indexed my archives (finally) and depeding on how many people will search for the title of your photo or it’s description – you could get a lot of hits.

4. Creative Titles : Ok this sounds weird but it works. Use creative titles for your photos – the titles get searched by others by chance, especially on MSN, and you get a hit. I named a post ‘Hocus Focus’ somebody actually searched for it and MSN gave me the visitor.

5.BlogMad.com : The best of all traffic exchanges – works well for photoblogs – because BlogMad users look at picture and don’t read too much – you might get some regular readers from there.

6. Be Shameless: Keep your MSN nickname your blog address – include in e-mails – instead of saying Hi to people say your web address. The possibilities are endless.

7. Links : Link to photoblogs – especially to those that link back but be nice and link to some blogs you really like who cannot link back (like photographers hosted at shutterchance.com).

8. Post good shots: Avoid posting experiments unless you are sure over 40% of your visitors will like it because your page has to give a good first impression.

9. Post big photos: I just increased the size of photos on my page,’Large’ on the Blogger upload page just will not do – make it bigger – it allows people to enjoy the shot better – and gains you more regular visitors.It also enhances user experience.

10. Lastly, enjoy it. : You have to enjoy it, if you don’t just quit – that’s it. You also have to be willing to take suggestions and criticism even if it’s horrible. Reply to every single comment, even the bad ones.

I hope this helps someone with their photoblog – I just wrote this because I only saw an article on Wikipedia about this and I thought I could write a better one.

Best of Luck! | Written by Azhar from http://www.thedailysunrise.com

Written by Azhar Chougle.Although only 15 years old, Azhar is an amateur photographer and started a successful photoblog at http://www.thedailysunrise.com.