Strategies to build blog traffic

There are a number of different strategies that have been suggested and used for building blog traffic. One that I had used in the past was to be a commenter on higher traffic blogs that allowed comments. Another was to cross link by various blogs and websites. One thing that really helps with Google is to be posting frequently. Of course, your posts need to be about topics that people want to read. A colleague of mine suggested that I use Google Trends to help find the current hot topics. Google Trends did not initially give the latest information, but the current incarnation is very helpful. You get real-time indications, with a ranking, of hot search terms. Of ocurse, another technique is to have images in your pages, either with img tags or with text links. Google Image Search started rewarding images with traffic in October 2006. A key point is to have relevant text to your images. You don't need alt tags, or to "hot link" in the usual sense, where someone else's images appear "inline" with img tags. Text links are sufficient. I like to add the 'target="_blank"' to the alt tag so that when the link is clicked, it opens a new window.