An easy and fun way to drive more traffic to your site

Have you ever observed that some bloggers just love to display badges on their site? These badges are “awarded” to bloggers who are inspirational, educational, appear on a list of top bloggers, well, you get the idea. To the left is one of my own recent badges for my Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer blog.

Now if you look at it carefully you will see that it was presented by Navigating Cancer, a site which lists cancer blogs, and here is another from X-Ray Tech – a list of top breast cancer blogs in 2010.

And this badge was designed by the creative Queen of Pots for last year’s Irish Blog Awards:

While it is always gratifying for the receiver to be awarded a badge and fun to display it on their blog, think of what is in it for the those who issue the awards. They get a permanent display of their name on your site and if someone clicks on the badge (as many do) a click-through to their site. (Of course this is just a click-through – they will still have to work at giving the viewer something to stay for).

But there’s more…

This also gives you an opportunity to foster relationships, share opportunities, and pay it forward.

So over to you now. Can you think of an award that you can send out to deserving bloggers? One that fits with your brand? All you need to do then is open up Photoshop and start designing your own badge for bloggers to display on their blogs – a permanent advertisement for you!