One of the keys to becoming a successful blogger or web master are good, targeted traffic. No matter how beautiful or ornate your blog or website is, if nobody is around to see it then it’s all for naught. Wait, isn’t there an analogy about a bear in the woods that would fit here?

Traffic comes from all over, but some of the best comes from search engine traffic. You know. You have a blog on baseball. Someone puts “baseball” into Google and, voila, here comes your traffic. Search engine traffic is free and usually quite targeted. There’s a problem, though. Millions upon millions of other websites all competing for that same traffic. Your “baseball” blog probably showed up at around page 49 of Google.

So how do we move up the ranks? How does your blog ascend to the top of the Google heap? The answer to that can be both quite complicated or quite simple, depending on what tact you take. It’s complicated because engines like Google use a series of complex algorithms in order to ascertain that order. This makes it hard for you to know exactly what needs to be done. Those algorithms don’t always make sense to us common folk.

So, with this in mind, you can see how vitally important it is to get other blogs to link to your blog. This is a surefire way to increase your rank and your traffic.

So how do you get others to link to your blog?

There are all kinds of different ways, actually. Some are obvious. Some, not so. Here are some of the ones we’ve found most effective.

Quality Content

This one is a no brainer. Write quality content, no matter your subject matter. Good content and good blogs go hand-in-hand. The best thing about this approach is if you play your cards right, you’ll produce the kind of content other bloggers want to link to as a service to their readers.

How many times have you read a blog and spotted a roundup of the author’s favorite blog posts of the week? This should be your goal, to appear on a few of these. After all, it only takes a few of these lists to convert return viewers of the linker’s blog to your blog. Think about it.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is sort of like when an up-and-coming rapper appears on a track by a more famous colleague. Being a guest blogger involves you writing an article for another blogger who places it on their blog. In return for giving them a free article, they include a link back to your blog. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of thing.

If you want to find blogs that accept guest posts, head on over to Google and search for your blog’s subject matter along with the words “guest blogger” or something similar. For instance, if your blog is about internet marketing and becoming a successful blogger, you might type in:

• internet marketing guest blogger
• internet marketing submit a blog post
• affiliate marketing guest blogger
• learn to blog guest blogger
• blogging guest blogger
• blogging submit a blog post

Also, keep in mind whoever you find will want to take a look at your blog first, to make sure you will write some quality content for them. Make sure you have a set of recent quality posts to show off. If not, write some before you send out an email. Generally, a good rule of thumb is be sure to have 8-10  strong posts on your blog.

And one more thing. Make sure your blog doesn’t look sketchy. If it at all resembles a spammer’s blog, nobody will want to link to you. If so, clean it up.

Make Friends

This kind of goes along with the last one. Blogs don’t exist in a vacuum. You need friends. This not only provides a network of people who you can regularly connect with, it’s also possible they will link to you. This could be either in a blog post or in their blogroll. Other benefits are that they are more likely to add your posts to social networking sites like Digg, Twitter and Facebook. The plusses go on and on.

A great way to make friends is to start commenting on other blog posts. Wait until you are knowledgeable about something and let loose. Stay away from overtly negative comments and vague terminology like “good job!” etc. Write the kinds of comments you’d appreciate reading on your own blog. That is key.

Also, this is difficult to achieve with the bigger, more popular blogs. They are the belle of the ball and everybody wants to be their friend. Focus your energies on bloggers who are in a similar position as yourself.

Just Ask

This is another no brainer. If you want a link, ask for it! The success rate isn’t high for this approach, but it does work sometimes. Think of yourself as the creepy guy in a singles bar. When one girl turns you down, move on to the next.

But how do you ask? First of all, simply send an email to the blogger in question. Tell them about your blog and say you would love to be added to their blogroll. Make sure to note they have been added to yours. Also, make sure to actually do that. They’ll check.

You could also email them a link to your latest blog post. This could save them the time of trolling the web for content. Be sure it’s a top quality post, however. They aren’t going to link to middle of the road nonsense. Unless, of course, that’s the point of their blog.

Blog of the Week

This is where it gets a bit sneaky. One great way to get some targeted links is to offer one up yourself. Do a “blog of the week” post in whatever subject you write about. Find a blog and write it up. Mention the great content, and the pleasing look. Whatever you want.  Then leave a comment in their blog directing them to your post. The blog-owner will usually be so pleased about the writeup that they’ll mention it on their blog, thus achieving a targeted link to your blog. Get it? It’s not entirely unscrupulous. It’s more like paying it forward! Yeah, that’s it!

And Finally…

Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but you really gotta take a long look at your blog and figure out if it provides values to it’s readers. If not, try to make it so it does. That is the golden rule for linkage. If you provide value, the links will come faster than you can keep track of. This is most assured.

Everyone knows that comment boxes are a sure fire to increase the traffic to your blog. People tend to develop a personal connection when they have a say on what goes on in a blog. Not to mention they get to communicate with other like-minded(and often not) individuals.  But how do you turn readers into commentators? It’s easier than you think, sometimes. Below is Webrulon’s handy, dandy guide to increasing the amount of comments on your blog.

First of all, there has been much written about this topic in other places. Let’s take a moment to honor those zen masters by relinking some of them:

• 10 techniques to get more comments on your blog
• 10 tips for attracting more comments
• How to increase comments on your blog
• Encourage your first time commenters
• Get your Blog lurkers to comment
• Getting people to comment on your new blog

Now here’s our take. Here is what we think you do to get those comment boxes a-rumblin’.

Encourage lurkers to get involved – Even with comment boxes, most people who visit your blog can be categorized as lurkers. They look, they listen but they don’t speak. Stem that tide by suggesting people say a bit about themselves. If a lurker emails you personally suggest they get involved in the community of the site. You’d be surprised how well some gentle prodding works.

Ask questions – End posts with a question. This way readers have something to think about and, more importantly, something to form an opinion on. Never underestimate the power of a good, or a childish, debate.

Become part of the dialog – If people do begin leaving comments, get involved. Comment back and make your presence known. People like when the webmaster interacts with the readers. It lets them you know you are a real person and robot somewhere. This, in turn, allows them to open up.

Notify users of new comments – If you use Wordpress, install the Subscribe to Comments plugin

which allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. This encourages them to come back and continue the thread, especially if there is some hefty blog drama going on.

Reward those who comment – Everyone loves a treat. There are several easy and fun ways to reward users who get involved. Wordpress offers a plugin(Below) that shows lists of the top users who comment. Also, link to pertinent comments once in a while and build future posts around them.

Make it easy – This might be a bit of a headache for you, but eliminate the need for captcha entering or registration in order to leave comments. The easier it is the more people will just throw their thoughts out there.

Wordpress help – Wordpress has a number of fantastic plugins designed with this task in mind. Check out the plugins that can help increase comments.

Now, to practice what I preach, what techniques have you guys used to get those feisty comment boxes to light up?

2010 is upon us. Get ready for another round of changes of both the monumental and incremental variety. Our friends as Last Exit have compiled a list of digital marketing trends for the new year. Some will seem obvious, others not so much.  Read on to discover how the new year will play out:

1. Facebook continues it ’s eventual replacement of personal e-mail – This is already happening, thanks to the massive pre-existing userbase of Facebook and a few key conveniences that sites like Gmail and Yahoo can’t offer. For one, you don’t have to remember any e-mail addresses. Just ring up your friends name and it’s message time. It even has a chat functionality built in. But don’t worry, Facebook still hasn’t made a dent into business e-mail. Maybe in 2011.

2.The Cloud Helps Open-Source Software Make Proper Money – Open-source software projects that were typically a tiny niche market are  now available to the masses. In this example, Beanstalk, a fully hosted, version-controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open-source project has created a subscription based service that – for a small fee – removes the hassle of setting up Subversions and maintaining those pesky servers.Cloud computing infrastructures is the only way to make this kind of business model profitable.  Companies like Beanstalk don’t have to upfront capital outlay for servers. With the right skills any open-source project can be commercialized this way. Bring it on.

3.Mobile commerce finally comes into it’s own -  Mobile commerce was something of a joke until the iPhone app store took the world by storm in the past year or so. This trend will continue as the new Google Nexus phone enters the fray and other companies finally play catch-up with Apple’s business models. Expect your all-in-one smart phones to be able to do all sorts of new things, for a fee, by this time next year.

4. Fewer registrations, less annoyances - How tired are we of remembering password after password after password? We are lazy, dammit! Well, companies are listening. This has already begun to happen. Notice once you sign into your Gmail account, you can pretty much do anything within the Google network. More companies will partner up to make this a reality amongst different websites. You should probably change your password from “hello” already, though. It’s 2010.

5. DIY culture comes into it’s own – Call it DIY culture, Web 2.1, or whatever you want. It’s here to stay. Sites like Cafe Press, Etsy, and even old stalwarts like eBay allow people to run their own businesses from the comforts of their own home. Etsy in particular has turned into a huge success story, allowing people to produce and sell their own art for whatever price they choose. And, of course, Etsy gets a cut. Not a bad deal for them.

6.Crowd Sourcing – Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of various outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special-interest groups to not only carry a message but also to lead and take part in activities on their behalf. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, expect to see huge growth in crowdsourcing models provoked and led, in large part, by digital social media strategies.

7.Flash overtakes the universe – Every year likes to predict the death of flash, simpler is better after all. That’s a load of podunk, though. Flash is not only here to stay, but it will be wrapping it’s sinewy tentacles into every aspect of the Internet experience this year.  Thanks in part to Adobe’s rich media tool. Also, several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash-built websites no longer serve up single, impenetrable pages. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization. Which is good for all of us.

Well that’s it for now. Let’s meet back here at the end of year and see how wrong we were. Isn’t that part of the fun?