How to Increase traffic to your blog Part 1.

This is literally the Holy grail that all bloggers seek. Eyeballs.
All of us want to know the secret to  "how do you increase traffic to your blog".
Well, it seems like there are several trusted methods to pickup your numbers, and some sneaky tricks to attempt to fool the system.

We will discuss both, cos I am not a priest, and this is not a church.

The most obvious bit of advice is to just build it.

Build it and they will come.

Post brilliant insightful, useful articles that appeal to the masses, and in so doing the trawling search bots, and your site will be popular and you will have gold overlays on your smile.

The articles that you post should be informative, and the titles eye catching.

Content.
It seems like articles that sit lower than the threshold of 400 words or so are not given the attention they deserve. It's not fair and really silly but it is, what it is.

My highest ranking page with the most hits was a famous quote. Just three lines long.
The thing that made it interesting was the context in which I found it. And clearly something about that was attractive to so many others who flocked to that page. So while I don't agree with this, it appears to discriminate against the brilliant mixed medium blogs with beautiful art and pictures. Like the man said, "take it or leave it".

While we are discussing content, it might be useful to note that the first prize would be original works of literary art, but one could I suppose piece together a bunch of available stuff, with reference to the respective articles. 

Theme.
If you create a "how to" blog with a view to share your experience, and wisdom on some topic or other, you will certainly attract others who share your interest in that subject. It can be something as banal as "how to make a two minute boiled egg", or "how to get out of handcuffs, while fighting off Ninja Zombies, using nothing but your severed penis".

Personal.
Diary style ramblings might appear really interesting, to you. They may or may not offer any entertainment to the rest of us. Unless your views are, thought provoking,  evocative, funny, or really depraved we might not actually care what goes on in that dark place between your ears.
Keep your boring inner narrative to your self, and share with us the funny, hurt, and beautiful, with a view to help the rest of us go through our own meaningless days, without sticking a barrel or bottle into our mouths to end it all.

Remember who we your readers are.

If you forget your audience, you might end up talking above or below us. You might patronise us with explanations that insult our intelligence, or lose our interest by explaining the importance of the Klingon Dialect of "Xfgole" to the StarFleet. 
If you forget who you are pitching the spiel to you, you might appear pretentious, puerile, or even depraved.

Quote people and links that are already credible. The concept of Page rank is based on citing or reliable sources, to have some of that credibility rub off onto you.

Pictures.
I am told that pictures and pretty fluff will increase your exposure. This would clearly be true of a particular type of readership. So if you don't really care who the eyeballs belong to then, have at it. Let there be pink bunny's and all sorts of unicorns and kittens.

Be clear about why you need the traffic.

If you need to boost traffic to generate money to put food on the table, then I respect your mission and I salute you.

The bulk of bloggers who try to push up the eyeballs will, if they examine their motives find that they have dreams of fame and the respect of their peers.

This is the ultimate high and it's an illusive dream to chase after.

Fame and fortune make fickle bed fellows.

One day you are a runaway viral success, and the next you are left spinning in the dirt, wondering which way is up.

Finally, for those Bible thumping, or fanatical types who  hate  some thing or love nothing, people who have lots to say about life and death and taxes.

Get a job.

M Parak 2015.
I am embarrassed to say that I have had to heavily censor this page as it seemed to run foul of the adsense police. 

Wrote a second article on the topic and while it was a separate post, decided to include it in the first.


I stopped taking pictures on holidays when I realised that instead of enjoying the sights, and taking it all in, I was seeing the beauty through the lens of a camera.
Experiencing it all through a viewfinder. Which I came to appreciate was not much better that watching it all from home on my big screen TV.

So I put down the camera and looked around, for real and began to notice the little things. After decades of travelling I was finally actually there. All of me, tasting the food, taking in the smells and scents, and breathing the air.

The addiction of having a successful site, is very much like that.

While the blog represents a fantastic opportunity to speak your mind and speak out against the "man". It allows you to invite friends, and random strangers to wonder around the often dark recesses of your mind. It is cathartic and a real rush, and it adds sparkle to an otherwise dull existence. In its purest form, it is the modern day soap box that allows the specialists and degree-challenged to express themselves as equals.

Then if you are true to yourself, really guts and gore, honest, and ernest, people will begin to notice.

The ratings inevitably begin to pick up and suddenly, you are invincible, superman on his best day, with the wind in his back.

And you are seduced by the numbers.

The sexy statistics that tell you that tons of people in Ukraine, took the time to read your work. The only country that seems immune your ideas live in China. You immediately wave that off with the explanation that the "great Firewall" was the only reason that those billion people were not bowing like everyone else.

Then overnight it all about the ratings. The page visits become the only reason you blog and everything you write, is adapted, and tuned for maximum appeal to the search engines and the silly pre-teen masses who are the real voters out there.

So you include high value search tags, (like how to bring traffic to your blog) and a little cute and fluff to attract and keep the voting demographic.

The blood and guts, whiskey and cigar, rough and ready approach to life is replaced with botox and crap.

It would be poetic, if at this point the ratings took a dive. If the minute that you lost your integrity, it all went down the crapper.

But life is odd, in that people love the crap, they revel in your fall from grace.
The public loves to see someone crash and burn. Train wrecks, make for brilliant copy. The more depraved you become, the higher the ratings climb. You increase your contribution, from "once in a while" to "twice a day", and the work is so watered down that its almost tap water.

And the ratings continue to soar.

You are now getting more hits in a day than you did in a year, and all it does, is drive you to double the numbers, again.
Day after day.

Hell Yes, it is an addiction.

And while you bask in the spotlight, it is a hollow moment, because you know that the work is crap, and that you rolled over, for the man.

Your original body of work still exists, standing apart from the current glossy slick pieces, and they stand in judgment of you.