A few years ago, a friend and I were each writing on our own blogs as religiously as we possibly could. And, everyday, when we checked out our Google Analytics, we were sorely disappointed in the hit counts. The comments we were received were equally disappointing- we would write each other comments pretty often, but unless I count my mysterious Chinese fan who would occasionally send me comments in either Mandarin or Cantonese (I don’t know the difference), neither one of us got very many other comments.

The reason was obvious- we weren’t taking the time to link to our articles. For whatever reason, we each thought that our small following of friends and acquaintances who would realistically check our blogs about once a month was enough to get us more hits. It wasn’t even close to enough.

There is one simple truth about blogging on the web that many writers find odious, beneath them, or unnecessary:

Unless you are already writing on a site with a high hit count, your posts are not going to get very many hits unless you work at it.

There are a few ways to get more hits that are not secret, do not take that much time, and will make a difference to your hit count:
 The first step is:  

Link to your articles.

• When you are reading an article on a topic of interest that you’ve already written about, put a link to your article in the comments section. To make sure the site doesn’t flag you for spamming, be sure to include an intelligent comment that relates your article to the article you are linking to.

• When you are researching an article, be sure to have an outgoing link to that article in your post. If your article adds a different perspective than the source article, write a comment to the writer thanking them and add a link to your site.

The next step to increase your hit count is:  

Get Blog-Roll links to  your site(s):

If you write for a particular site that you want to increase the number of hits on, find similar sites and contact the writer to ask for a link exchange in the blog roll. The blog roll is usually located on the right hand side of the page. Be sure to make it clear that you will offer a link to the other writer as well. I’ve had mixed success with asking people for link exchanges, but since it only takes a few minutes, I don’t feel like I wasted any of my time.