Joining Blog TopSites are one of the ways to bring traffic(Free!) to your blog. It takes just a bit of effort on your part to get going. Generally, you will need to register with the site and get your blog approved. Once approved you get your personalized code block that you need to add to your blog. This code will help visitors of your blog to vote for your blog. The more votes you get, the higher you climb on the list and are more likely to get more visitors.

Here's a small list of Blog Topsites where you can register your blog :

http://topsites.blogflux.com/
http://www.topbloglists.com/
http://www.blogelites.com/
http://blog505.com/
http://topblogsites.net/
http://www.topblog.ws/
http://www.blogista.net/
http://topsites.technoized.com/blog
http://blogsites.in/
http://www.stateyourblog.com/
http://www.blogranking.us/
http://www.blogsontop.com/
http://www.topblogarea.com/
http://www.blogrankings.com/
http://www.top100bloggers.com/

Once you have submitted your blog to the directories mentioned in this post( www.blogstuff.in/2008/01/submit-your-blog-to-blog-directories.html ).You can think of pinging the blog directories. While the blog directories will index your blog periodically, sometimes you would want them to index your blog soon after you publish your new content and you stay ahead of competing blogs. By manually sending "pings" you will notify the blog directories of fresh content. You can use any one of the following "pinging services":

http://pingomatic.com
http://pingoat.com
http://pinger.blogflux.com
http://www.kping.com
http://feedshark.brainbliss.com
http://blip.lco.net/SubmitForm.aspx
http://pingates.com
http://ping.in
http://autopinger.com
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
http://www.pingmyblog.com

Here is a list of blog directories and links where bloggers can submit their blogs and/or blog feed. Submitting your links to these directories will increase the overall presence of your blog, improve pagerank, bring more visitors to your blog.


http://www.weblogs.com/
http://feedburner.com/
http://my.yahoo.com/
http://www.blogrolling.com/
http://www.weblogalot.com/
http://topicexchange.com/
http://blo.gs/
http://syndic8.com/
http://pubsub.com/
http://www.blogstreet.com/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://www.technorati.com/
http://www.newsgator.com/
http://blogdigger.com/
http://www.moreover.com/
http://www.newsisfree.com/
http://weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/
http://blogpeople.net/
http://catapings.com/
http://holycowdude.com/
http://bulkfeeds.net/
http://effbot.org/
http://octora.com/
http://feedster.com/
http://coreblog.org/
http://focuslook.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/
http://www.rubhub.com/
http://www.blogshares.com/
http://www.geourl.org/

Technorati and Digg are a good place to submit your blog. People look for blog content at Technorati every day. Almost every site will ask for following information.

• Blog Title


• Blog URL


• Blog Description


• Blog Keywords


• Your name


• Your Email


• Blog Feed URL


• Blog Photo

Keep the above mentioned information ready while submitting to these sites.

http://www.blogging101.com/blog-search-engines.php
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Be an Active blogger.
The more you blog the more chances there are that your blog will attract visitors. Let people comment on your blogs and reply to them when asked, this way you are building a relationship with your visitors and also getting good feedback on your post. When some of your posts start getting more attention than other posts you should follow up the article with an extended post. That will give your blog more popularity.

Help the search engines help you
Always make good use of page titles, post titles. Use titles, which accurately describe your post and make a powerful impact on the readers mind. Be aware that in most cases the visitor will read the post title in a fraction of a second and decide if he/she wants to continue reading. You have to provide an interesting and hopefully short and descriptive title. Also make sure that you format your post title differently than the article itself, like making it bold or different color, size etc. Don’t use too many capital letters in your sentences. It gives an impression of being a spam log or in short “splog”.

Using Graphics and Images.
I have to admit that ever since I got a high-speed connection to the Internet, I almost used to forget that there are still so many users who are on dial-up connections and the blog shouldn’t choke on their connection. Try to use minimum graphics and external scripts on your blog, optimize your images before using it on your blog. You can find free online graphics optimizers.

Track user hits to your site / blog
Install a hit counter on your blog/site. There are many free ones you can choose, I personally recommend statcounter. By studying the stats you can actually gain useful knowledge about the blog visitors. It will help you find out what things you are doing right and what you aren’t.

Format your content for better readability
Lets face it, We all hate to read a post where ideas are crammed into one long paragraph. Long paragraphs make the posts very boring to read through and chances are that your visitors will not even read the whole paragraph. Make wise use of text formatting features on your blog post. Split different ideas within a post into different paragraphs and try to keep your posts short. Split the posts itself and let the visitors decide if they want to read more of your posts.

Be an active commenter
Read others blogs and write comments on their blogs. You should also leave a link to your blog and you could get some visitors from that blog / website. You can also join forums, discussion groups etc. but be careful to post your comments on relevant forum topics and do not spam the forums or mail of the visitors.

Remember always that there are only two golden rules of blog promotion
Rule 1: Promote your blog today as best as you can
Rule 2: Come back tomorrow and re-read both the rules again.