There are two main ingredients for attracting attention to what you are writing on your home business blog and they are: good content and blog marketing.  Focus on them and you will build key foundation elements for blogging success.

Search engines like Google reward sites that publish valuable content on a consistent basis. Blogs, by their nature, do this (assuming motivated bloggers are running them) and so rise high in search engine rankings – Yaro

First thing first: Focus On Your Blog Contents

Write good content

You’ve probably heard this over and over again “Content is King” haven’t you? But what exactly is good content. I like to think that it is when I write a post that leaves my readers satisfied, enjoyed it and were able to enhance their online business opportunities in one way or another.

Write Pillar Posts

I know that the expert bloggers we have come to know like Yaro, Darren Rowse write many such pillar posts and they highly recommend us doing so if we want to emulate their successes. But what makes a pillar post?  Essentially it’s a blog post that focuses on specific objectives like getting more backlinks, new readers just to name a few. Well success breeds more success and these bloggers can now tell you they are seeing much more traffic from the search engines due to the massive backlinks generated. For most of us, we may not become the next Yaro and we really don’t know other contributing factors leading to such successes, but I have to agree that writing some pillar posts often is a good thing for your blog. Most “How To” Articles and my 5-part link building strategy blog series are considered pillar posts.

How To Market Your Blog

Now that you have got good contents on your home business blog, it really is useless if no one sees it. You now got to promote it for all to see. The following are some of the tactics that every blogger should use:

• Blog Commenting: Certainly one of the easiest to do. All you have to do is visit all your favorite blogs and leave your quality comments and bam! you’re done. Well not quite I’m afraid. It probably takes a lot more effort and time to get this done if you’re really serious about your objective which is to get you massive quality targeted traffic. The correct approach is to use comments as a communication channel. Here’s when you spend more time on each comment you make and add significant value to the conversation. Another reason why you should be doing this is to build strong relationships with these bloggers, preferably with high profile blogs of similar niche.

• Give A Free Report: This seems to be a much popular tactic among many bloggers I’ve seen. You may not necessarily achieve the desired results, but should you manage to get it right a lot of people may just link to your blog to recommend your report, driving a crazy amount of traffic and new readers. That’s when the acid test comes in to see if your blog is good enough to get repeat visitors or is it going to be ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’. A few bloggers who practice this is Caroline Middlebrook and her Blogger’s Bible and John Cow’s Make Money Blogging just to name a couple.

• Forum Marketing: It’s one of the best methods of driving real targeted traffic to your blog. If you’ve missed the post I wrote on 7 Interesting Facts That You Must Know About Forum Marketing, here it is again.

• Trackback Marketing: Here is one area I’ve tried sometime ago but due to pure laziness have not been consistent at it. Trackbacks are placed at the comment area after each post and it’s a good tactic to search for a popular post and be one of the first to trackback. Here is a post I came across showing the correct way to do trackback.

• Customize your Blog Design: Branding your blog goes a long way to make your blog unique and a big step towards your blog marketing efforts. However cost is a stumbling block and many bloggers including yours truly often settle for second best which is buy a premium blog. I got mine from Woo Themes and it’s money well spent.

• Build your online network: Start building a strong online business network of friends, bloggers, partners throughout the blogosphere. Be a Top Commentator in all of these priority blogs and maintain good communication channels with them, including offline if possible. Join social networking sites like MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote your blog.

Take Small Steps First

The reality is that it’s going to take you some time before you become the next Darren Rowse or John Chow so you should start to take baby steps first before thinking of making your giant leaps. If you constantly and consistently promote your blog, at some point in time, something big should happen. Perhaps a big site, a popular magazine will link to you or you may be invited to be interviewed by a top journalist. But a point to remember is this: Things don’t always happen on their own, you’ve got to make it happen.

Content + Marketing = Traffic

If you consistently write good content posts on your blog and promote it aggressively with blog marketing to reach out to new readers and subscribers, traffic will come.  Don’t lose interest or your passion about your blog and what you believe in. It’s just a matter of time before your blog takes shape, start to make money blogging and your traffic starts to build using these tactics. Yes, even if it’s a stream now it will eventually become a river.

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site

Did you miss any of these?:

• Here’s How To Bring More Traffic To Your Blog
• The Secret To Catchy Headlines Using Good Keywords
• Write List Post To Attract Readers And Make Money Online
• 10 Tips To Increase Page Views On Your Blog
• Link Love No.19-Blog Traffic, Monetization, Guest Post, SEO