Even if you have a blog, still you need people to visit it right. It is more challenging than you think to make thousands flock everyday to read your blog especially with the millions of blogs online. To make things even harder, blogs don't have simple URLs or web addresses like websites. The blog URL usually is the name of the website hosting your blog then the name of your blog which turns up to be a very long URL.

Nevertheless, if there is a well there is a way! There are many effective techniques to use to promote your blog successfully. Some of these techniques are so simple that you will say to yourself why I didn't think of that.

Here proven free ways of promoting your blog:-

1- Connecting with other blogs: - Blogs are a big community now. Even Google the biggest search engine has made a whole category by itself for searching for information in blogs. What I'm trying to say is you should connect with other blogs in the community to promote yours. You can visit other highly popular blogs and participate in discussions and make comments. Remember, every time you participate, leave your marks behind! Meaning a link to your own blog! Think of it as a piggy back approach. Also, other blog owners will be glad to put a link to your blog if you do the same.

2- Your email signature: - Let me ask you this, how many emails you send a day? Or a better question will be how many in a week? I can safely say, at least 10 emails a week. There is this small section at the bottom of every email that you send and called the signature. Of course you know it! Your name, address, phone and other contacts are there right. Add your blog address too! That's a free continuous advertising tool that you can benefit from. There is another nasty way that I don't like to use a lot! When I'm not checking my e-mail, I set up my vacation auto responder and place my personal message there plus an invitation to visit my blog! Spam the spammers!!

3- Web 2.0 anyone?: - That's another name for the social networking mega trend that is spreading on the internet like wildfire! Face book, My space, Squidoo, Dig, linkedin, Fubar, deliciousio, Buzznet and hundreds more. These social networking sites are just stacked full of people who want to see what others got! Every time you make an entry in your blog, share it with minimum 5 social websites! Just open accounts in 5 to 10 social networking sites and post in parallel with you blog. Don't forget to link to your blog!

4- Using blog directories:- Think of it this way, in this age, the internet is full of millions and millions of websites, blogs, social sites, forums, e-zines, article directories and the list goes on. Because of this, thousands of directories have been set up to lead people to these blogs, social sites, forums, e-zines, article directories etc. Yes you got it! Blog directories. Include your blog in blog directories, but wait there are so many. Pick the directories that rank high in Alexa ranking. Download Alexa toolbar to help you determine which ones rank higher than others.

5- Use newsletters to promote your blog: - You can actually do this in 2 ways. The first one is that many newsletters are looking for good and unique content. If you have good and unique content in your blog, a lot of these newsletters will gladly use your blog entries as content for their periodical mailings. Of course, they will reference the content back to your blog. The other way is to own a mailing list yourself and use your blog's content as the newsletter's content mentioning the blog with every mailing of course!

6- Using forums and online groups: - Forums and online groups are the closest relatives of blogs. You can easily connect with other people in forums and groups and invite them to your blog to view your thoughts and insights and they will gladly come.

One final important note, the better the quality of the content you have in your blog, the better your chances of getting people to like your blog and keep coming back. No matter how long you work hard to promote your blog, if you don't have good content that people will come back for, you will fail! Even search engines, which love blogs by nature, will not index your blog if it has low quality content.