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Want to increase your daily traffic? How about convincing Google to visit your site more often? There are plenty of ways you can do both, but one of the quickest, simplest, and most cost-effective step you can take is to start your own Blog.

I am not saying maintaining a Blog is a no-brainer, it takes thought and hard-work just like anything else, but the pay-offs are enormous.

Blogs have quickly become one of the most widely used marketing tools on the internet today for one simple reason... They Work! They give the search engines exactly what they are looking for and, if done well, help you built your very own following. It just doesn't get any better than that.

So start a Blog, install it on your own server, relax, and write. There are great tools freely available on the internet that can supply you with an endless stream of great information to write about, so don't worry about running out of things to say. While this article is not focused on those tools, if you need some direction we would be happy to help, just send us an email at podcastempire@gmail.com.

No, this article is focused on Promoting your Blog Properly to ensure The MOST TRAFFIC POSSIBLE! And so, on with the show:

1. This one is huge, that's why it is number 1! If you don't do this, then you might as well not bother with any of the other steps either because you have already shot yourself inthe foot.

Here is the big secret... Every time you write a new blog entry, PING IT!!! Blog & Ping, Blog & Ping, Blog & Ping... That is how it works, every Ping can be directly translated into hits on your web pages, so BLOG & PING!!! Pinging is simply notifying all the various major Blog Directories on the Internet that you have a new post; every time you Ping, those directories will come and take a look at what you had to say...

So how and where do you Ping? There are a few paid services and only a couple of decent free ones available. We use the Ping Service at http://www.PingTheEmpire.com and have had nothing but success in rowing our various Blogs! You can even bookmark the results page after your first visit and you never have to type anything in again! Just visit the bookmarked page and http://www.PingTheEmpire.com will do the rest.

2. Read other peoples Blogs, leave meaningful comments, and leave behind your own Blog URL and name! Make sure you spend a few minutes to write something meaningful to the topic, or else you comment will likely get deleted.

3. Submit your Blog URL Directly to the Search Engines. You can submit your URL directly to most major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN all offer submit pages), but we recommend a tool that will submit your URL to MANY engines in one go.

There are a couple of free solutions available, but if you are serious about increasing your traffic, you should definately look into a paid service. This doesn't mean you have to pay alot... there are paid services like Submit Fire which are very economical (less than $10 per month) and give you tracking tools too!

4. Create an XML sitemap and make sure you list all of your sites webpages, including those of your Blog. Then submit your sitemap to Google at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login.

Yahoo now also looks for a sitemap of you URL's, but they want a simple text file, just URL's and nothing else.

5. Post often and (did we mention Ping? Oh Yeah, we did back in step 1... There is a reason Pinging is listed first!?) use trackbacks if your Blog software provides the functionality.

6. Posting at the right time of day may provide more traffic; Experiment with this a little. Certainly your traffic will depend on the topic you Blog on and the group of people you are Blogging too, but the time of day you Blog is also critical. We have found that a Blog just before lunch (East Coast hours!) and another around 4 or 5 will drastically increase our daily traffic. Even if you write your Blog while you are up watching Letterman, save it and don't post it (or make it live to the public) right away.

Those are the big 6!! There are more certainly and some of them very good, but that is all the space we have in this article!

If you have any questions, comments, or would like some free helpful information, look through our site http://www.podcastempire.com or send us an email at podcastempire@gmail.com.

Oh Yeah... And did I mention Pinging your new Blog entries at http://www.pingtheempire.com?