Many bloggers write each day, some even taking the effort to optimize their blogs for the search engines. Sometimes it can be interesting to actually see where your traffic is coming from. I noticed over the last couple of days a real surge in traffic coming in to this blog. When I say surge, considering I am lucky to get 30 visitors a day, jumping to 130 per day is a real surge. So where did that traffic come from.

This really took some research. Using Google analytics I was able to track the source of this traffic to an online newspaper out of Chicago. My first thought was how and why? I mean, what sort of newspaper is going to include a link to my pages. I couldn’t see a link anywhere on their pages so once again I was stumped.

Back to Google analytics – this time to see which page they were landing on. The page that interested everyone was one written a while ago about Aldi and the value of their products. Okay, back to the newspaper. A quick search produced a couple of Aldi stories. Now here is where I did get the surprise. At the bottom of the news story was a link box courtesy of BlogBurst and whose link was on top – mine, or at least the link to my Aldi post.

I had heard several months ago about BlogBurst partnering with major online news services and placing links to relevant blog posts below news stories. So there is a moral here.

Sign up to BlobBurst, and while your at it, try also Bloggapedia, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Why do I suggest placing your blog on these blog directories? After Google and direct traffic, this is where the majority of my traffic comes from – these four sites. If you haven’t signed up to them, I suggest you do. Free traffic for what is ten minutes work to start with.

With BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog you will need to do more work as you gain ‘friends’. However, the other two simply take your RSS feed and distribute it, or the link, for you.

Footnote – it is rumoured that MyBlogLog may not survive for much longer – however, while it is in existence, make use of it.