Archive for the ‘Traffic and Blogs’ Category
Two search engine optimization tips to live by
Everyone loves the idea of search engine optimization and everyone gives out tips like candy. You will read list and list of the best search engine optimization tips possible by some of the most popular bloggers in the business and you can read them over and over and try to follow every single tip you find but in the end you still could get no traffic. Why? Here are two search engine optimization tips you should always keep in mind when designing your blog and implementing SEO tips to improve your traffic.
If you try to do too much you will fail with your SEO. What works is picking a few SEO Tips you are comfortable with based on your time and dedication to the project you are working on and exploit the method as much as possible. If you want to get backlinks go and get dozens and dozens of them. Don’t get three backlinks and try something else. Master an SEO technique before you move on. Focus on a few different search engine optimization tips and implement them consistently in your blogging for a year then try something else.
Content is king. You will hear this over and over and over but the end of the day it is true. Content will get traffic and will get a readership built. If you focus too much on SEO tips you will not be focusing on providing good content. The biggest search engine optimization tip I can suggest is to NOT focus on SEO and focus on providing quality content.
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Google gives the little guy a list boost with getting traffic
Today I was doing some searching on google and found in the bottom sections for News results and Blog Posts near the related topics section on page 1. I did a little searching on how that gets populated and found that basically if you have a blog that is well indexed (read, not brand spanking new) your new blog posts will show up there if your keyword was within the search criteria.
This does not mean your post will remain on page one for a long time at all but it could result in a nice little spike within your readership each time you put out a new post. This goes back to consistency I suppose. The more you post, the more potential and time you will spend on page one of a search result which could translate to increase readership. The whole point of SEO is to get on page one so that once you are found, the quality of your content can retain a reader. This new little feature gives you an edge in getting some traffic.
For the news part, if you have a blog that is posted on by many authors you can qualify for the news section of google. You just need to post at a certain pace and have more than one author on your blog. If you qualify for that you can submit your blog here to try and get it listed so that your blog posts can picked up as a news source. If you get that, there is a whole other world out there for getting traffic as then you might be able to make the most of google news alerts but more on that later.
Next time you post, go to google and search on the keywords of your blog. See if it is working for you. If not read up on what you are doing wrong. This is a pretty cool feature you should try to take advantage of especially if you have a blog that is not high ranked but has been around for a while.
Consistency: One of the key factors on how to become a successful blogger
When you read over the top bloggers like ProBlogger or ShoeMoney what you see is a dedication to their blogs. Not random updates but daily updates. More impressively multiple updates within the day and not just garbage content to fill in the void but quality words that add value to their readership.
Now it is easy for them I think since well, they are in fact full time bloggers all they need to do in a work day is post on blogs that would be any of you being surprised I work all day at my job and get paid for it. The thing that is interesting is that they were able to pull off the activity level of blogging many times a day and creating new and interesting material even when they were not full time blogging. There lies the consistency and dedication most bloggers fall short in.
I think we all like the idea of blogging. There is a chance of income. A chance of being bale to quit a “normal” job and work all day by writing a few blog posts. This sounds nice but it just is not an easy task to accomplish especially now it is only getting harder. More people are throwing up more blogs. Search engines are getting smarter and changing how they rank pages. More social network sites popup that require each blogger to learn and get involved with to get traffic to their blog.
The bottom line I think to become a successful blogger one needs to provide quality content on a normal basis that adds value to their readership. I truly believe as long as the content starts with certain keywords in mind BUT written to add value not keyword density, the traffic will come. The key again, is overtime. After years and years of doing that.
Is there value in a blog traffic exchange?
There are many tools out there to help increase blog traffic such as blog explosion or blog soldiers. These tools work by creating a blog traffic exchange where you view a blog and in return you earn a credit. These credits are cashed in when someone else joins and views blogs. Each credit counts toward one blog traffic exchange.
In theory this is a great idea to get traffic to your blog but in reality I have found them of little value in my own experience. The reason I say this is that as a blogger I joined a few of them early on to get traffic and people reading my blog but I never really read other blogs I simply waited for the time to go by to earn credits. I am sure the other participants of the blog traffic exchange program was doing the same thing. So what in the end did this get me. It got me a one time increase in my blog traffic but since the reader didn’t really read anything on the blog in the long run it was useless.
Every now and again maybe a reader would come along and actually read the articles, maybe even leave a comment but on a whole I think blog traffic exchange programs add little value to long term success as a blogger. Perhaps when you are a new blogger it is good to get the exposure but don’t spend too much time on it. Spend your time getting backlinks to your blog or writing articles for article directories. These are much more valuable in the long run.
Get active in your marketing to get backlinks to your blog
Usually in my marketing for my blogs I go down the usual routes of commenting on dofollow blogs, submitting the URL to all search engines and RSS feeds, post on similar topical forums as well as submitting some articles to directories get backlinks when I create a new blog. I tried something different with my last blog and I think it might be working.
I created a squidoo and hubpages site for my blog topic and linked to it from there and in addition I added my RSS feed to the pages to help encourage readership. So far in looking at my statistics for that blog it looks like it might be working in that I see an increase in blog traffic all coming from those two places.
Give it a try for your own blog. At the very least you get backlinks to your blog but you also can earn passive income from your squidoo lens or hubpage. I have also noticed that those sites get really heavy weighted by search engines and my hubpage is now on page 1 for my keyword so hopefully that will be a good quality backlink for my blog.
I personally don’t get a lot of value out of reading sites like squidoo and hubpages, they seem like great avenues to get backlinks or make money but as I read through existing pages from other people I didn’t really get value from them. But hey, a backlink is a backlink and this one was free so no complaints from me.
Did you work to get backlinks today
I know it is easy to get last, trust me I feel the pain but one of the most important things to do as a blogger is to get backlinks each and every day. Every time you put a post out there set a goal to get 5 backlinks to that post. This will help keep your blog growing in readership and increase your pagerank in the long run.
So where to you get backlinks each day? It is really up to you they can come from reading similar blogs about your topic and commenting on them or posting in forums you belong to. Just think what is the point of writing a great blog post if no one ever reads it? Keep fired up with your blog and try to stay active in your blogging role. It is not enough to just hit publish and walk away thinking you did your job and in time that will result in earning income. You need to not only post on regular basis but work to build backlinks out on the web back to your blog.
If you can’t get 5 backlinks each time you post set a lower goal, even if you only get one backlink each time you post you will be so much further ahead. The key for success is consistency with blogging. Just be consistent and active in your blogging and within no time you will see results from your hard work. So did you work to get backlinks today on your blog?
Filed under Blogging, Traffic and Blogs
