Thousands of people are now blogging and some are making some good money through it. Even though search engines give blogs high ranking if they are updated often. But that feature alone is not going to work on its own, you need something that will make your blog different and turn it into a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, traffic generating machine. If you are using a wordpress blog then you can install a variety of plugins to make it gain traffic through web 2.0 and SEO techniques.
Firstly one of the most recommended plugins available on wordpress, the all in one SEO pack, this will help you improve your blog search engine ranking. This pack is designed so you don t have to work for traffic, so just write posts and keep the blog updated and this will help your site appear in the search engines for your chosen keywords.
Another one that I use is the traffic getting plugin, this is one that needs to be downloaded from the person who created its site and it gives you a whole array of recommended plugins that you should install. Its creates a small icon at the bottom of your admin area, that you then click on and it gives you the option of applying any tweaks that should be made. Its scores your blog a rating out of 100 percent on how well it should perform in the search engines. However with the free version it won t ever get your blog up to 100 percent. The upgraded version is available still though and will allow your blog to go beyond the free versios potential.
Sociable is another good one to have on your site with social bookmarking and Web 2.0 being such big topics at the moment. This will add links to a selection of social networking sites to your blog so readers who like the post can quickly share it with others on social networking sites. This plugin is designed again to get you more traffic from different sources, as apposed to simply relying on search engines. You can configure this plugin so that it appears under every post on your main page, making it more obvious to people visiting your site.
Another plugin I added but does require some HTML knowledge is a called Make Me Social that automatically sends new posts to some of the top social networking sites, with the idea of providing your some quick traffic. I ve not really had chance to figure out whether its a good plugin or not, but if it does what it says then it is a power traffic generating method. It only covers a small number of social networking sites but it is still an unique and exciting idea for a plugin.
The Stat Counter plugin is an informative plugin thats worth looking at installing, this will show you which keywords people are using the search engines to find your site. This will require you to signup free with statcounter.