Blog exhanges: Watering down the blogosphere?
March 29th, 2006 · Posted in Blogging, LinksI have to admit it, I still use some blog exchanges. Yes, I know it’s empty traffic, but since I’ve found a few blogs I really like using Blog Explosion, I can’t discount the fact that someone else won’t do the same. So I surf for credits every few days. Sue me.
But there are some interesting opinions out there about what these so-called “blog traffic generators” are really all about. Mohammed at Webtrafficideas doesn’t think they’re worth the time and effort. I would tend to agree, especially since it’s pretty difficult to determine if anyone that makes a hit on your site actually reads anything, let alone comes back.
I’ve used BlogExplosion, BlogSoldiers, Blogazoo, BlogCicker, and BlogMad for a few months now, and I can honestly say that while you do get a few more unique visitors before your credits run out, your pageviews, comments, and incoming links aren’t affected. So what this equates to is ‘empty traffic’. I suppose the allure is watching the hit counter increase at a steady rate, but what are you really setting yourself up for? You’re ensuring that you’ll have to keep participating with the traffic exchange sites just to keep the number of visitors you have at a consistent level.
And how much time does that leave you for actually writing intelligent and thought-provoking posts? Not much. After I learned most of this, the hard way, I started trying different strategies for increasing traffic to my blog. Here are a few tips I learned:
- Keyword Optimization
You don’t have to cram your posts full of keywords you want the search engines to notice, but using tags for the various social bookmarking sites, as well as blog aggregation sites like Technorati and Icerocket, does help. - Content, Content, Content
It’s been cliched to death, but the king of all traffic generation methods is having captivating content. If you focus your content toward a group of people that will find your specific content interesting, then you’re already most of the way there. - Posting to social bookmarking sites
This goes hand in hand with #1. Tagging your posts and submitting them to sites such as Del.icio.us, Reddit, Furl, Spurl, and Blink allow users of those sites to search for posts with certain tags or combinations of tags. The easier you make it for web surfers to find your posts based on its content, the more likely they are to actually be interested in what you write. Directions on how to do that via Wordpress.
I believe the main problem with traffic exchanges is that no one using them has any real reason to stay on a blog they found and keep reading. Actually the incentive is to click on the next blog as soon as your eligible for a ‘credit’. So unless you have something very flashy on your front page that will keep people engaged long enough to read more than one post, you really don’t stand a chance of earning any more readers.
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April 7th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Hi Xavier,
Thanks for mentioning my opinion in your blog. But my post is actually referring to non-blog traffic exchanges and not to blog traffic exchanges.
However, you may be right, the same condition may also apply to blog traffic exchanges. Commonsensically, if you’re given incentives to visit other people’s sites, then you’re doing it primarily for the incentives, right, and not because you’re interested in those sites.
Regards,
Zaki
April 7th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Zaki: You’re welcome, and thanks for the correction, but I think the condition you describe would still apply to blog-only traffic exchanges.
April 26th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Remove the spam comments please. And by the way you said there was a lack of comments, you seem to be getting plenty.
May 9th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Very good entry. I feel pretty much the same way and even wrote an entry about it in March
I likened the traffic generated to “empty calories” from junk food. I do like Blog Explosion better because I have found about a half dozen blogs that I have added to my blogroll.
One thing that I have found that works for me is making meaningful comments in blogs that I like. That seems to generate quality visits to my blog.
Thanks for posting.
May 9th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Good post, and thought provoking. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule that blog exchanges are “empty clicks”, especially since I just surfed in on BlogClicker.
:-)
May 9th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Oh, and consider installing the akismet plugin for Wordpress; you’ve got an awful lot of comment spam in this thread…
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
OK, Spam comments are almost eradicated…. Jeez, you get a little caught up with work for a month and a half and the spammers take over your blog!
June 5th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
[…] But I’m not going to elaborate any further because there’s already a post over at xavodim.com that not only looks at this problem, but actually provides more concrete advice on improving your traffic levels, e.g. keyword optimization, posting to social bookmarking sites, etc. […]
August 17th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Amen. I still use blog exchanges, but not nearly as much as I once did. I have a post about this very topic on my blog.
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