Blogging is gaining widespread popularity. From Celebrity blogs to Academic journals, blogging has played an extensive part to promote content at a global perspective. Knowing the potentials of blogging and understanding how it plays an important role in gaining online exposure and better search engine rankings, can give any web marketer a significant foothold of the online market.

So you started a blog a few days ago, and now you want people to check it out. You basically want to have lots of fresh visitors and to improve your search engine rank. Building traffic to your blog is not really that hard. For starters, you need to be in a good blogging community, one that is categorically related to your site. Try checking out blogging networks like http://Mybloglog.com. Search on their Community section and pick out the best communities you want to join. Now traffic should start rolling in, but it’s still going to be very slow.

A good advantage of joining blogging communities is that you get to quickly browse through dozens of blogs of community members or visitors. You can add comments on their blogs and expect people to reply to your comments and even check out your site. Add those targeted visitors to the random visitors you get everyday, and you should have a good start-up traffic.

Browsing through several related blogs everyday should give you an idea on the newest trends, or what marketing strategies your competitors are implementing. You can monitor and improve on their strategies and apply different techniques to boost your traffic further. A high-traffic blog contains lots of informative articles, and then you should do the same or improve on that strategy by building on the user’s visual appeals with images or videos. But be careful about putting too much weight on pictures or animations, since most users prefer quality information which they can access quickly. A site that loads rather slowly may cause users to steer away, or seek more accessible resources.

By now your site is raking in dozens of users per day. That should be a good sign that your blogging community is thriving. Take advantage of the situation and start telling the other blogs in your community about your good visitor traffic. Chances are they would want to link or be associated with your site. Exchange links with related blogs and you should do well in the search engines. It will also improve your search engine rank as well as the reputation of your site. Users always give value to the site’s reputation, and to the number of authority blogs linking to it. If several high-profile blogs point or link to your site, then users would give better preference to your site than others in your niche.

A blogging community can be a very big help to those who are starting on their niche. Blog communities do not only provide your site with a good boost of traffic, they can also be a source of positive marketing strategies on how to better catch your visitor’s attention. Putting some effort to improve your relationship with other blogs in your community will greatly boost your popularity and reputation online. And this, coupled with quality content, can help users determine the importance of your site. With quality articles, and good link neighbors you can greatly improve your search engine rank.