A while back i changed my blog domain name from diffract.me to pedroassuncao.com. However, i was dumb enough not to redirect the traffic to the new name - in a transition period. The result? A drop from 100+ visits per day to less than 20.

I have to admit that it kind of bummed me out a little. Being a Buddhist-light i tried my best not to let it get to me and told myself that it would eventually recover just as long as i kept writing stuff that can help some people - combined with nicely chosen post titles and search engine keywords.

Turns out i was right: a couple of months later the visits are slowly recovering - as you can see from the screenshot of my analytics account.

That is all very neat but where is the "helping people" part, you might ask. Here it is: I thought i might share some of the techniques i currently employ to attract people to look at what i write. They are no different from what others have blogged about before, but it's always good to share this information around with prospective new bloggers:

Write about stuff that you think will help other people. This may mean writing about solutions to problems you yourself encountered, or just writing about interesting stuff you did/saw/ate/whatever that other humans will possibly find interesting :) Read a lot of news/blogs/stories about stuff that you have interest in. And *write insightful* comments on them. Most comments systems will allow you to enter your URL and/or twitter name and will show those in the comments you write. This is a great way to drive the curious people back to your site; For every helpful post you write, submit the link to the major news sites (think digg, reddit, hacker news, etc). This will make sure that search engines will have more interest in your site, since you will be linked back when they crawl those. It will also make some more people aware of what you are writing, which leads me to the following point... ...Write catchy post titles. And by catchy i don't mean cheesy or sensationalist. Create a habit of getting to the point in your titles while - at the same time - being original to entice curiosity. Writing titles is a form of art in itself, believe me; Link whenever you are referencing something that can be linked to. Again, search engines will use this information to your advantage in page rankings. And other bloggers will appreciate the traffic, so it's a win-win situation :)

That's it. Happy blogging, and feel free to drop me a line ;)