Running a Contest to Increase Blog Traffic

I’m posting this under the SEO category as I’d like share this little link-bait experiment I’m doing for the Travel Blog & the Urban Blog. For just over a year now, these two blogs have not really taken off in terms of traffic and repeat visitors. I have heard of people telling me they regularly visit these two blogs and even more people wanting to contribute for them. However, I’m still pressed on pushing both blogs to better traffic numbers.

I did a little experiment on link baiting for the two and what better way to get other bloggers & regular readers to actively participate is by having a contest and giving away prizes. So the quest for more visitors started with the free tickets to the 2nd World Pyro Olympics.

I now have partial stats results of the contest on both blogs and the graphs showed great response:

The travel blog used to average 500 pageviews from around 200+ unique visitors. The last week, it saw 900+ pageviews from 400+ unique visitors. That’s almost 200% increase in traffic.

The urban blog used to average 200+ pageviews from 100+ unique visitors a day. That week, that number jumped to an average of 500+ pageviews from 200+ uniques, more than double IMO.

But those inflations will eventually slid back after the contest right, you might ask? We’ll the second and the more long term benefits involves the SEO part — getting more links from bloggers and eventually ranking much higher in the SERPs for the term world pyro olympics and all its permutations. We’ll learn more how this pans out weeks after the event.

Cost of running the contest: Php3,600USD 61INR 5,201EUR 58CNY 447 (tickets) Php1,120USD 19INR 1,618EUR 18CNY 139 (LBC)