Creating a blog is easy. Building steady traffic to a blog is a bit harder. Here are some simple, cost-effective tips for increasing your readership and ensuring your online content doesn’t go to waste.

1. Write Meaningful Content: Make sure your content is relevant and time worthy for your readers. Nothing will kill your blog like lazy or regurgitated writing.
2. Know Your Audience: Immerse yourself in your target audience’s online community. Learn their jargon, interests, questions and concerns. Then shape your content around them.
3. Give to Get: Reciprocity is alive and well in the blogosphere – join the conversation. If you want meaningful comments, leave meaningful comments. Link to other blogs, build relationships with your peers and show you’re someone worth associating with.
4. Use Keywords in Post Titles: Include the words most associated with, and used by your target audience, in your blog titles. Search engines place significant weight on titles. So do readers. Make sure you’re including terms your audience will search for, even if it means sacrificing a bit of creativity. Wit won’t always get results.
5. Use an Overview: Begin your post with a keyword rich overview, then focus your copy around that overview. By narrowing your focus and emphasizing keywords, its more likely you’ll reach your target audience.
6. Share: Just because you wrote it, does not mean they will come. You’ve got to bring your message to your audience. Share your posts through various social media platforms and include the necessary “share” buttons to your posts. Your readers can be a useful asset for driving traffic and building awareness.
7. Use Your Own Domain: Using your own domain name provides credibility. Many readers are suspicious of blogs generated through mass blog domains i.e. wordpress and blogspot. Using your own domain also means complete control over the software and setup of your blog. As your blog grows, you’ll find that flexibility is vital as it allows you to expand the scope of your blog.

Building a successful blog takes consistent effort over time but mastering these basics will help get you the results you’re looking for… and you won’t have to pay a dime.