(The guys from 'Programmers' referred me here...)
How do you promote your programming blog?
I recently started http://blackforestcoder.blogspot.com/ to record my progress working with new technologies and ideas. The main aim being to provide a list of pitfalls and solutions and also to get feedback from readers.
Since I set it up 10 days ago I have only had about 2-3 hits even though Google is supposed to be indexing it. How might I boost the hit rate?
The best way to promote your blog is not so much promoting the blog itself, but the information contained within it. By this I mean, if you write an article about how to solve a common programming problem, then do a search for people who are having that problem. Then provide them with a link to your solution.
People are interested in the solutions to their problems, and programming blogs get interesting when the blogger continues to post solutions to problems they are facing. I follow css-tricks.com for this very reason. It gives solutions to problems I face as a web developer.
Also, by searching out problems on forums (or web sites such as this) and providing your relevant links, your google ranking is going to go up since you have other web sites leading to yours.
Beware however! Try not to spam your links around. Make sure you are linking to relevant information that is helpful to those who are seeking a solution to a problem.
One good tip is start using Twitter and other social medias. Also, be active on other forums with links to the blog in your signature.
Participate in other programming blogs, help add value to their sites by commenting insightfully and intelligently. Of course include links to your blog in posting (this is perfectly possible without seeming spammy, as other posters have touched on)
Hopefully either they will reciprocate or your comments will help attract users with your style of writing or quality or responses (its also good writing practise)
Paid:
At the beginning, google AdWords might be a good choice, you will have to actively optimize and update all your campaigns. Try to be very specific so you don't compete with the big guns.
Specifically I would recommend Google's display network on specific programming related sites in which your potencial readers might be.
You should use this option carefully though if your not familiar with it.
Free (but time consuming and should be done anyway if AdWords is there):
Write fresh original content and promote it will all available GOOD SEO techniques.
Make sure, specially at the beginning to make full use of the social networks, ask your friends and co-workers (specially if you work as a programmer) to promote your blog.
Good luck!
If a programmer did a couple of projects a year and showed everything (i.e. a 30-min presentation on the purpose, structure, and logic of of the project, and then recorded video of all of the programming, which had some verbal explanation, etc.,) and did so in a decent resolution and compression, I'd bookmark his page. In fact, a lot of people would. When you make a blog about programming, and you write on an advanced level, the noobs don't understand it, and the experts don't care to read it because they most likely already know it... or because they have their own stuff to do and can't be bothered. People want to visit programming blogs to learn something, not to read how many acronyms someone can fit in a sentence when describing a problem that nobody knows anything about, on a project that nobody understands.
Of course, this would require the use of YouTube to host that amount of video, but that's just more free advertising.
Bottom line is that getting people to visit your site once or twice might take advertising, but getting them to visit it dozens or hundreds of times requires that you have something to offer them.
