I am admittedly not an expert on massive website traffic, but I’ve been playing around with the analytics of both this site and Sexy Feminist today, and I can tell you a few things I’ve learned about getting people to read your dazzling blog posts:
1. Offer practical advice. (Meta alert! I’m doing that right now.) Really, people love this. Our “Feminist Holiday Gifts” post went gangbusters in early December with absolutely zero promotional help from us — it was our list from last year. People just started Googling to find gifts for their favorite feminists, and they found us.
2. Write about sex. Or at least use sexy words in your headlines. We will never, ever live down our “Easy Ways to be Kinky” post; lots of people search every single day for terms like “how to be kinky.” Luckily, we’re fine with that.
3. Post stuff people love to geek out about. A topic doesn’t even need a lot of fans; it just needs passionate ones. My archive of posts about where the Mouseketeers are now never stops drawing traffic.
4. Write for other sites and link back to your own. I totally scored with my fortunate guest-blogging stint at USA Today‘s Pop Candy, but anywhere will do.
5. Get personal. People really respond when you open up and reveal something about yourself. My decision to reprint my piece from the Altared anthology here, about canceling my wedding, paid dividends.
Any other ideas? Let me know!