Want more traffic to your blog? Sad because no one ever leaves comments? Maybe these tips will help...

Blog Traffic: The single best way to drive traffic to your blog is to have links to other blogs in your posts. This is a difficult concept to grasp, as your natural inclination is to keep people on your blog once they get there. On the surface, it would seem that linking to another blog will cause people to LEAVE your blog.

But people that write and read blogs LOVE links. When you link to another blog, it "pings" that blog -- basically notifying the blog owner that someone has linked to them. Virtually every blogger will then go to your blog to see who linked to them. If you've got good stuff, you may have just picked up another reader, who at some point is likely to link to YOU from their blog. Then their readers will follow that link to your blog -- more readers for you! The more you link to other blogs, the more chances you have of someone linking to you. Links help drive traffic, and the search engines love links, so they rank your blogs higher in search reasults, which in turn drives even more traffic to you.

Another great way to drive traffic to your blog is to comment on blogs. Almost every blog that allows comments has a place for you to enter your name, and a website address. If you put your blog address in there, then anyone reading your comment can click on that link and visit your blog. I almost always go to the blogs of people that comment on my blog, and I've found some great blogs this way (and most bloggers do this) . Note, your comments will drive more traffic if your comment has some substance to it. Making a comment like, "Great post" isn't going to do much to drive traffic to you. If you can add something to the conversation, most likely anyone involved in the conversation will take a trip over to your blog.

"Blog Carnivals" can be a great way to get traffic, and pick up some regular readers. There is a weekly "Carnival of Real Estate" hosted by a different blogger each week. You submit a "best of the best" post to the Carnival, and if your post happens to get selected, you'll get a bunch of people checking out your blog. You also get links to your blog from the host, as well as the home site of the Carnival. There are *hundreds* of blog carnivals going on at any given time, many of which apply to real estate. See this site for more info. I submitted this post to a blog carnival on cats of all things. Picked up several new readers from that, plus another blogger saw it and entered it into a pet contest he was having -- picked up some readers from that too (and a gift card to boot).

Bottom line -- drive more traffic to your blog by linking to and commenting on other blogs. Submit to blog carnivals.

Getting comments: Probably the most common thing I hear from newer bloggers is, "No one ever comments on my blog". This is a tricky one. The *vast* majority of blog readers don't comment. Ever. For an example, just look right here on RELib.  You'll see posts with 200+ views that have 5 or 6 comments. That means 195 people read the post and didn't comment. Most blog readers are "lurkers". My blog gets about 300 unique visits a day, and on a good day I may get 10 comments (usually less). So it's a bit of a Catch-22 -- you have to have traffic to get comments. But there are a couple of things you can do to encourage comments...

First, try ending your post with a "request for comments". Something like, "I'd love to hear your opinion on this subject!" will encourage others to post. Asking "open ended" questions in a blog post also encourages others to comment. And as in driving traffic, your comments on other blogs can lead to people coming over to comment on your blog.

Controversial or highly opinionated blog posts tend to generate more comments than other types of posts. Think about it... if you write a blog post say on "Your town sales stats" there isn't really a whole lot to comment on. It is what it is (and it's NOT a bad thing to blog on, it just doesn't lend itself well to comments). But if you write a blog post on something that makes people think, or questions the status quo, or even something that tugs at heartstrings, you are more likely to get comments. Here are some examples of posts on my blog that generated quite a few comments: A Tribute to Harry Ramos (my most heavily commented post ever -- and it has ZERO to do with real estate), If blog visitors aren't being treated as leads, then blogging is really a waste, and Incredibly inept HOA action!. See the difference between these posts and say something like: Joe’s Farm Grill: Gilbert’s Latest Culinary Delight? The Joe's Farm Grill post isn't bad, in fact, it's a great post if I do say so myself. It helps readers, and it's got great keywords in it for the search engines. It just isn't the kind of post that will ever generate much comment.

It is *really* important to respond to comments that you do receive. Blogs will over time develop into a "neighborhood" with regular readers and a community feel, much like we have hear on RELiberation. If you respond to someone that comments on your blog, it will encourage them, AND OTHERS, to comment more.

Getting comments takes time. Sometimes significant time. Just don't get discouraged and keep in mind that most readers will never comment, no matter what you do.

More beauty of blogging: Consider this. If you are blogging on your Point2 blog, you are adding content to your main site with every blog post. Even if no one ever reads it, your blog posts are helping your main site in the search engines. That is a great thing in and of itself.  And sooner or later, people will read it, and some will comment.