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One way of increasing traffic to your blog is by having a giveaway or some sort of contest. And if you hold a contest, you don’t even have to provide the prize yourself. You can get other people to sponsor prizes, which is one strategy used by logo designer, David Airey. In fact, I am one of the prize contributors. Depending on the goal of your contest, you can structure the rules differently.

In this case, David is spreading the love around by making entrants write blog posts with links not just to his blog but also including the links to the prize contributors. I noticed in the last few days that I’m getting quite a few links from numerous blogs as a result of this contest. Thanks, David!

Benefits of holding a contest include…

1. Building buzz, i.e. branding yourself

Everyone can use a little bit more branding, unless you’re already an A-list blogger. A blog contest is a good way to jump start a new blog and get it off the ground.

2. Increasing backlinks and site authority

The more blogs related to your topic linking back to you with one way links, the more authoritative your blog appears to the search engines. You can also specify the link text to be used in your contest rules. But this may seem unnatural if all of a sudden, you’re getting all these links within a short period of time with the exact same anchor text. It might appear spammy to some search engines.

3. Increasing readership and traffic

You can introduce your blog to new readers who might not otherwise know about it. They will most likely find you through the other blogs that are writing about you and linking to you. It’s a great way to “funnel” in traffic from other sites.

4. Increasing subscribers (email, RSS)

What I mean here is adding more people to your mailing list that you keep in touch with from time to time. This helps you by building a readership base that you can tap into whenever you want.

If you decide to hold your own contest, it’s good to network with other bloggers in your niche to publicize your contest. Also, the more unusual your contest is, the more buzz it will generate. Something like an outrageous prize or a large sum of money works well. After all, cold hard cash always gets people excited.

Technorati Tags: blog contest, building buzz, increasing traffic, link building

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