Build relationships
Creating working relationships across your industry can only help you. Even if you don’t guest blog, reach out to other site owners that focus on the same topic. Some ways you can build relationships include link exchanges, offering a free service or product try-out or just commenting on content.
Blog directories
You’ve heard of Technorati – which is one such blog directory. However there are 193,000,000 search results for "blog directory" on Google. Some popular ones include Blog Catalog, Blog Hub and Blog Hints. These sites may not deliver a ton of traffic, but it only takes one front page inclusion to drive more traffic than you know what to do with.
Promote your favorite articles
If you’re particularly proud of an article you’ve written, say it’s been popular and you saw a spike in social bookmarking the day you created it. You can promote individual articles in a module position above the fold. For example, some templates have a "showcase" "headline" or "featured" module position. These are usually up-front and center. The logic is, if users tend to like this content, they’ll come back. But if this article is buried among your other posts, first time visitors may not see it. Kind of a "put your best foot forward" philosophy.
[Editor’s Note: Make lots of use of the deceptively powerful modules like Latest News and Most Read content]
Timing is everything
They say a new blog is created every second. Unless you’re one of the big dogs, you are competing for traffic with millions of other sites. You can increase your odds of being noticed by paying attention to timing. This article by Eric Kintz explains why it is not best to post every day, and why quality posts are more important than frequent posts.
[Editor’s Note: Also, keep up to date with trends. Twitter is a great tool for seeing what trending topics there are in your topical universe.]
Social Media
Applications like StumbleUpon, Twitter, Technorati, Digg and Delicious drive tons of traffic to tons of sites every day. Don’t miss out by not integrating with these services. Several extensions are available that play nice with Joomla! (check them out here)
About the author: Cyrus Patten is the editor of TheBestofJoomla.com, a blog about the best extensions, template and Joomla-powered websites.