5 Things You Can Do To Double Your Blog Traffic in 2013

There are a good number of blogging tips blogs online today, but only a handful of them get noticed or generate a significant amount of blog traffic and readership. Not every blog goes on to become another “Basic Blog Tips” or “ProBlogger”.

Even though many bloggers find they can earn a fair amount of money, for most of us we can’t make as much as the big A-list bloggers. Moreover to create a big authority blog, you need to do a lot of hard work. When I say a lot of work, I mean writing quality content, driving a great deal of blog traffic, building high quality links and making connections with other bloggers in your niche.

The most important task among these – is generating and endless stream of quality, targeted traffic to your blog.

In this post I am going to share 5 simple strategies that you can use to double your blog traffic in 2013.

As most of you already know about the newest Google+ feature – Communities. By posting informative articles to the communities, you can double your website traffic.

If you really want to get a lot of brand and traffic exposure, you need to post your content inside the appropriate Google+ Community. And don’t just share links from your own site, but also comment on and share other people’s content.

By engaging in the right Google+ community, you would be able to make the connections with other members and thus get traffic to your blog.

Here is a screenshot of my stats from Google Analytics. You can see that I got a nice spike in my blog traffic rankings when I finally started using the Google communities+.

Screenshot of traffic spike from Google+

Head over to Google+ and enter your keywords in the search box, then refine your search by clicking “Communities”. Check out a few of the top results until you find the ones that are active and engaging. I think it’s worth a try.

Link outreach is hard, you send 100+ emails and end up getting just a few links.

No not always the case, last month I sent an email to 10 blogging friends who are well-known in my niche for sharing successful blogging tips, and almost everyone replied. I even ended up getting two guest posts – SEO for WordPress – What Every Blogger Should Know and 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins to Help Prevent Content Theft from Matthew Barby and Adam Connell, respectively.

Few things to consider:

Write more long form content. You need to have quality content (at least 800+ words) before you even do link outreach.Engage with those on social media sites. Before sending an email pitch, you should connect with those people before hand.

Ever since I started focusing on writing quality content, my traffic has been doubled. Though, those types of blog posts take a lot of time but the benefits are endless. Over time I have learned that this is one of the best tips for good blogging.

Be it a guest post or content on your site, focus on Quality. In the past few years, the search algorithm has been improved a lot. Now, if a competitor has tens of thousands of links and you merely have a few hundred, you can still outrank them if your quality is better. When your content is valuable, you begin to earn the trust of your readers and the search engines. The readers will come back for more and the search engines will continue to send you more blog traffic.

If your site growth is organic and has original content, than it’s just a matter of time before you start getting 1000+ visitors every day.

Wouldn’t you love if you get 100+ retweets as soon as you hit the publish button? Yes, there’s a site that lets you get more retweets simply by joining or forming a tribe in your niche.

This is one of those sites which you could use to increase the social signals & get more traffic.

These days, search engines are using social signals to measure the site quality & authority. By joining sites like Triberr, you could easily boost your rankings.

If you’re already using Triberr, than you should definitely try out Viral Content Buzz & JustRetweet.

By social blogging sites, I mean the niche bookmarking sites. This is the easiest way to increase your blog traffic. It takes few minutes everyday, all you have to do is submit your content and engage with the community.

This is where you need to have a presence -

Inbound: The most engaging community for Inbound MarketersBlokube: Established and invite only community for bloggers and internet marketersBlogEngage: The most active community!

BONUS VIDEO: Discover how to create blog traffic and get a handy checklist in the video The Blog Promotion Manifesto

Know of any more social bookmarking or community site which I didn’t included? Please let us know in the comments below.

These sites can bring very targeted & quality traffic to your blog. If you have a great post shared and it makes it to a home page, you will have your blog flooded with traffic.

Tagged as: Blog promotion, blog traffic, blogging tips

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Social Security, Healthcare Spending To Double Over The Next Decade: CBO

* Spending on Social Security, healthcare due to double in decade

* CBO warns of sharp rise in debt unless Congress acts

* Gradual changes would minimize economic impact

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - U.S. spending on Social Security and healthcare will double to $3.2 trillion a year over the next decade, threatening a sharp rise in national debt unless Congress acts to avoid the danger, congressional researchers warned on Tuesday.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office did not put forth a plan to resolve the long-term imbalance between revenues and spending on retirement and healthcare benefits. But it said that action taken now would help minimize the economic impact of whatever course lawmakers can agree on.

"Unless the laws governing these programs are changed - or the increased spending is accompanied by corresponding reductions in other spending, sufficiently higher tax revenues, or a combination of the two - debt will rise sharply relative to (the U.S. economy) after 2023," the CBO warned.

The report, CBO's latest on the U.S. budget and economic outlook, comes as President Barack Obama and Congress prepare for a showdown over the federal deficit in coming months.

"Deciding now what policy changes to make to resolve that long-term imbalance would allow for gradual implementation, which would give households, businesses and state and local governments time to plan and adjust their behavior," CBO said.

The agency estimated last June that Social Security and federal health programs would account for more than one-quarter of U.S. gross domestic product by 2037 unless laws were changed.

Federal spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid stood at $1.6 trillion in 2012, with healthcare spending alone at $885 billion.

CBO predicts that annual outlays for those programs alone will top $3 trillion by 2023, with Obama's healthcare reform law adding another $134 billion in costs to provide coverage for 26 million people through new state-based healthcare exchanges.

Expanded health coverage under the reform law would cost $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years, slightly higher than its forecast in August, and reach 38 million people in 2022 through the exchanges and an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor beginning Jan. 1, 2014, the CBO said.

Meanwhile, 7 million fewer people were forecast to have employer-sponsored health insurance in 2022 due to Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The estimate is up from August, when CBO predicted a drop of 4 million people with employer plans.

The agency said the change was due largely to the lower marginal tax rates Congress passed on Jan. 1, which would reduce tax benefits associated with insurance provided by employers.

Medicare, the federal healthcare program for 50 million elderly and disabled Americans, is expected to remain at around 3 percent of GDP until 2019 before climbing to 3.5 percent of the economy by 2023, for a total of $1.1 trillion in spending.

Medicaid is forecast to grow to 2.2 percent of GDP by 2023 when it is projected to total $572 billion in federal spending and 84 million beneficiaries.

Social Security outlays, estimated to account for almost one quarter of the government's spending next year, are projected to remain near 5 percent of GDP in most years through 2018 and then climb to reach 5.5 percent of GDP in 2023.

Despite forecasts for rising spending for Medicare and Medicaid, both are expected to grow more slowly per capita over the coming decade than they were just six months ago.

The change was due partly to expectations for lower enrollment and a larger number of young, healthier beneficiaries in the Medicaid coverage pool.

It also reflected a slowdown in spending growth for Medicare's Part A hospital, Part B physician and Part D prescription drug benefits, as younger retirees from the baby boom generation have entered the pool of beneficiaries.

Also on HuffPost:

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