I now have a blog, and I am dutifully writing posts, meaningful post IMHO. But it is a brand new blog, and on a domain not yet in Google. I don't get traffic. For me, my blog is an opportunity to share with the world some things I've learned over the course of my career; to give something back to the world. And my world is .NET technology.

So how do I share the good news of the One True Way® with the world? More specifically, how do I get eyeballs to my content?

I've search Google, and I'll share what I find. Whether it works or not, I guess time will tell.

1. Relevance – You gotta have something meaningful, important or otherwise substantive or you won't get the eyeballs, and you definitely won't get the repeat visitors.

    

2. Search Engine Optimization – I end up at most blogs by chance, because someone has written about something I want to know, and I find them while searching Google. If you own your site, you can check out Google's Webmaster Tools. Here you can check your crawl status, submit your site for inclusion in their index, add a Google sitemap, view crawl errors and more. Make sure to get listed on the top search engines, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask.com, etc.

    

   1. A little side note about the new open-format sitemaps. No, not ASP.NET sitemaps. Check out more information about sitemaps at the official site. It's a great way to tell the engines about your basic site layout.

    

3. Comment on other blogs – I would imagine if you have a blog, then you must have heard about them somewhere and quite possibly read a few. Chances are someone else has read those blogs too. If you have a strong opinion about something someone has blogged, blog back at them. Use trackbacks to link you post to theirs, and you will most likely end up in their comments list, with a link back to your blog. When Google starts to see all these other blogs linking to you, it says "Hey, maybe this is more relevant." Note: Do not engage in comment spam. Don't write meaningless posts just to get traffic. This will backfire anyway; who wants to go to a blog full of meaningless posts?

    

4. Blogrolls – A blogroll is essentially a list of blogs that the particular blog owner reads. I have roughly 15-20 blogs I read through Outlook 2007, most of which are on my blogroll. Ask your friends, acquaintances, co-workers, etc. if you can be on their blogroll. You must be willing to reciprocate, but this is another way for people to find you, especially if the friend has a popular blog.

    

5. Check out the social sites: del.icio.us, technorati.com, digg.com, twitter.com, dotnetkicks.com, furl.net, etc. Add links for these and allow people to list your stuff for you.

    

6. If you're really desperate, you can spend a little money on Google AdWords, or similar advertising.

    

So whadya think? What's your experience?

For some more great tips, and satire, check out Seth Godin's top 50 list.