8 Ways To Direct Local Traffic To Your Blog

No doubt one of the best ways to drive the spotlight to your business is through blogging. While Twitter is still king, blogging has a certain charm all its own. It’s a terrific way for your fans and followers to get to know you and you to get to know them. Thing is, what’s a blog without readers?

One of the biggest challenges of blogging is the challenge of directing traffic to the blog website. It’s easy to lose the motivation to blog when you know no one reads your blog other than yourself.

But if you’re blogging for business, it isn’t as easy as, “Okay I’m done with this. Maybe blogging isn’t really my thing.” You got a business to run. Instead of putting salt on the wound, why not use the time to consolidate if you’re doing it right? Here are 8 tips on how to drive local traffic to your blog.

1. Publish on a regular basis
The golden rule of blogging. In fact this works for attracting both foreign and local traffic to your blog. People like to see fresh updates, and very few folks like to read the same blog post twice. Writing on a regular basis gives readers a reason to come back to your blog and therefore increase traffic.

2. Choose a URL that works
Same as every other website – it all begins with a URL. Choose a URL that describes your blog or type of business, even the location where you operate. For instance,

Sample URL: http://www.professionalgrafixdesigns.com/calgary-design-services/

3. Search for local blogs
Next step is to find local blogs in your area and take a dip into their community. These days blogs are a dime a dozen. Contribute to their discussion by posting a comment on one of the more popular blog posts. Most of the time there should be a text box that asks for your website or email address. Provide them here, not within your comment itself.

Remember your purpose is to promote your own blog by sharing useful information or insights on their discussion. Blatant advertising is out of the question.

4. Participate in local forums or message boards
Forums and message boards are abundant these days. The quintessential social networking platform, many forums and message boards cater to, even specifically target, local traffic. So if there’s any place to promote your blog and increase local traffic, it’s here. Always remember to be helpful and respectful at all times, stick to the forum etiquette, and avoid self-serving comments. Also use your blog’s URL as your custom signature.

5. Link your blog to your email signature
This ensures every email you send out is also doing the job of promoting your blog website. So if you do a lot of email passing back and forth with local clients, you’ll be seeing a spike in your local traffic in no time.

6. Inform local clients via Twitter
If you’ve been keeping a business Twitter account for some time now, chances are most of your local clients already have you in their Following list. What’s left for you to do is update them whenever a new blog post is up. If possible, include the title of your blog post in the tweet message along with the link.

7. Inform local clients via Facebook and other social media
The same idea applies here. Assuming you’ve got a lot of personal friends on your Friends list, updating your Facebook status with a message similar to your tweet should direct even more local traffic to your blog website.

8. Post relevant topics
Perhaps one of the most effective ways to generate local attention is to blog about local stuff. Incorporate local news and events to your blog posts. With a little brainstorming, the success of a local restaurant shouldn’t be too hard to relate to its impressive marketing strategy and your company’s online marketing services. This is the stuff that most readers want to read and tell their friends about afterwards.

Directing local traffic to your blog is easy. At the same time, it should be free, as long as you’re aware which strings to pull and where the majority of your market niche hangs out. Or if you choose to follow other methods not listed here they should only come at a minimal cost.

How about you, what local traffic strategy do you use?