I often get asked by people how they can create traffic to their blogs, get people to comment and really build their website. So I have decided to respond to these questions by writing a post about it!

The key to building traffic, getting people to comment and therefore seeing the results in your blog’s potential is to NETWORK! Networking is the key to all businesses because if you can’t get people to come to your business or in this case, blog, then it will become stagnant.

I am fairly new to blogging myself, starting my first blog Jenn’s Travel Closeup
last summer. But since the winter this year I made it the number one priority in my life. Now I don’t expect that everyone has the desire or time to do this, but even so I do have a few tips to really get the BLOG ROLLING!

1) Join a Blogroll.
There are tons of them out there based on different genres. When I started The Leftover Queen that was one of the first things I did. I looked for a blogroll for foodies so I could join. But since I could not find one, I decided to create one – The Foodie Blogroll! So far, in about 2 months it is almost 200 members strong and growing by the day. Since most of you reading this are foodies, if you have not already joined, do it today by clicking here

2) Post on other people’s blogs!
If you like someone’s blog, tell them. They will most likely return the favor. Even if they don’t right away, keep posting comments on their blog. Other people see those comments as well and will come to your site based on your thoughtful comments. Make friends and contacts with people whose blogs you enjoy!

3) In that vein, make your blog look good. Emulate those blogs you love! Post beautiful pictures and people will come back for more.

4) Stay professional!
If you lend a professional air to your blog, people will respect you as an expert and will know that your website holds valuable information for them and they will come back and tell their friends to visit your blog as well!

5) Post on forums in your genre.
Since most of you are foodies, that means find forums that are about food and go and post. There are several online communities for foodies, one being right here on Leftover Queen we have over 60 members in just 3 weeks. So if you have not joined yet, join today! There are several other food communities to check out as well like Food Candy, Epicurious , Slow Food Forum and about.com’s Gourmet Food Forum to mention but a few. Do a google search find more and POST POST POST! These forums always allow you to customize your own signature. Make sure you do so and add a link back to your blog!

6) Go visit Helium.com and Ezinearticles.com
Become a member, write articles, visit the forums and get more visits!

7) On that front make sure you add a link to your blog on all your emails – personal, business or otherwise, as much as you can get away with. The more people you put in contact with your blog, the more visitors you will get to your blog!

Start a mailing list.
Whenever you get to a milestone on your blog or have a contest or whatever, email a message about it to everyone in your personal email address book and encourage them to forward your email to everyone they know!

9) Sign up your blog on every blog index you can.
If you are female, sign up for a free profile on Blogher.com and post on their forums as well! Others are : blogtopsites.com, blogtoplist.com, topblogarea.com just to name a few.
Do your research and find more! The more the merrier!

10) Go study SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
By putting key words in your titles and again in your posts, search engines will be able to find you when people do topic relevant searches. When search engines do their indexing you will come up in a lot more google, yahoo, msn searches, bringing more visitors to your blog through searches.

I hope this has helped! Go forth and get more visits! Best of luck to you all!