Archive for the ‘Traffic and Blogs’ Category
Flash websites how it impacts SEO for blogs and traffic in general
A lot of people when they build websites love the idea of using flash. Flash splash pages as introductions or for navigation. Flash along the sidebar to give the users an interactive way to read information. Flash is a great way to make a site fun for users. Yet… it has major issues when it comes to SEO and flash AND usability in general.
Let’s start by saying not everyone is going to have macromedia installed or the plugin needed to support flash. So what does this mean? You lost that traffic. I know from personal experience that if I need to download something I leave the site. There are a million other sites out there with very similar to your content I am willing to bet. Why would I spend another second on your site when I can just go elsewhere?
Secondly, flash needs time to load. It is not fast like basic html or blogging software. Flash usually has a loading period and if you are dealing with traffic that has a slow connection to start with you have just scared away even more users. Flash is great for a certain uses but not for a general content site. Your content should be what you want people to be in love with, not your use of flash. Always remember what the goal of your blog is.
When it comes to SEO fixes and flash you can forget about it. As tip number three with flash and blogs, spiders have trouble with flash software. Here is a great article by SEOmoz talking about the situation. Basically the content in flash is not as easy to read as text on the screen within html or blogging software. You can’t apply SEO fixes like anchor text or title tags to flash pages. You lose out basically of all other SEO fixes when you apply flash as a page. When you apply it as part of a page you lose whatever value the html equivalent would have given you.
Bottom line is why roll the dice with flash on a blog when it can impact your SEO work, hurt your search engine rankings and drive readers away from your blog.
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Get blog traffic series: Make the most of your RSS feeds
SEO fixes can help you get blog traffic by ranking your site in the top of search engine results but once a reader finds your blog, it is up to you to keep them. Return traffic and repeat visitors are the key to a successful blog. Look at the top blogs out there and you will find in their comments that many of the same names post each day. What this means is that to get blog traffic you need to get new readers AND keep the ones who have already found you.So how do you get blog traffic by keeping the reader who has found you? The answer is to make the most of your RSS feeds. Here is a short and long term solution to get blog traffic with RSS Feeds.
Short term solution is to be sure to you are offering both the email and feed version of your RSS feed. Not only do you need to be sure you are offering both email and feed version, the user should not have to work to find where to sign up. Your RSS feed should be very clear and obvious if you want to get blog traffic by having them sign up for it. RSS feeds are the best way to ensure once someone has found you that they will keep up with your writing. Feedburner is the best option as it is reliable and easy to manage subscriptions.
Long term solution to get blog traffic with your RSS feed is to ensure you have submitted your blog to RSS directories. There are many aggregate sites out there and repositories that track all of the blogs and their feeds. Submit your feed to all of them and eventually other sites will pick up your feeds. More readers of your feed will translate to you getting blog traffic. Here is a good list of RSS directories you should submit your feed to.
Get Blog Traffic Series: Increase blog traffic by writing good content
If you want to get blog traffic you need to have content. More importantly, you need to write good quality content for your blogs if you want to see an increase to your blog traffic.What defines good blog content? How does it relate to an increase in blog traffic? Well, good content requires two things smart use of the right keywords and has to add value to your readers. If you can make a balance between these two items in all of your blog posts you will see an increase to blog traffic as search engines will rank your posts higher and more importantly readers will come back after they found you to read new articles in the future.
Here are the solutions for the day to increase blog traffic:
Short term solution to increase blog traffic is write quality content. This will be said over and over again but content is king. Quality content will get blog traffic faster then simply writing keyword clogged articles. Sure you need to work your keywords into your article but do it as subtle as possible. Your articles should be giving value to your reader and if it does you will see an increase to blog traffic as the reader will return each day in the future. If you do not add value to your content all of the SEO fixes in the world will not matter.
Long term solution for SEO fixes to increase blog traffic is to write articles considering how people search for the information. Don’t waste your title of the blog post with a generic statement. Form a title that you would image someone searching on such as how to get blog traffic or ways to increase blog traffic. You want to form your keywords in search engine friendly phrases – this is also called long tail keywords. Look at your keywords you are about to write posts for and try to add long tail keywords to them to make them fit exactly what someone will search for.
How to get blog traffic by exploiting free blog traffic avenues
As discussed this week is how to get blog traffic week here which will focus on providing a short term solution and a long term SEO fix for providing ways to get blog traffic. Many people chose to pay money for traffic by signing up for google adwords program which allows you to select keywords which would advertise your site if used and then set a monetary budget for what you will pay if someone clicks on a link for those keywords. This is effective for some marketing campaigns when you are looking to get blog traffic but really, nothing beats getting free blog traffic.
Free blog traffic involves you being active as a marketer. You can not be lazy, you can not sit around waiting for people to find your site and get blog traffic. You need to get out there and socialize, be active. Here are two techniques you can use to get free blog traffic for the short term and long term SEO fix route.
Short term solution to get free blog traffic is to join a blog carnival. Blog carnivals are free to join and requires a few minutes of your time. What happens is that you view other people’s blogs and earn credits. Those credits translate to other people viewing your blog. If your content is good this will convert to comments and more readers. A few blog carnivals you can consider to get free blog traffic is Blog Explosion, Blog Carnival and Blog Soldiers.
Long term solution to get free blog traffic is to write press releases for your blog. There are many free press release avenues available to you. Press releases can do two things for you. They get you free backlinks to your blog and they can be picked up by RSS aggregators which will help build free blog traffic to your site. Here are a few free press release places to sign up at: Free Press Release, PRLog and 1888 Press Release.
This week will be how to get blog traffic series
When you create a blog you want to get blog traffic to come and read your wonderful and witty words. How do you get this to happen? Well, there are many steps you can take to get blog traffic some are short term solutions which result in you working hard to get blog traffic but if you stop, so does the traffic. The other is a longer term solutions to promote your site to get blog traffic by taking SEO fixes.
This week I am going to post about a short term solution and a long term solution you can implement to help get blog traffic. It is a good idea to mix both techniques and not focus too much on any one thing. You do not want to be working on getting traffic for the same blog forever. This is where long term strategies come into play. As soon as you have rolled out the right long term plan to get blog traffic then you can move on to the next blog or next project or next whatever it is you want to spend your time on.
Today’s short term solution to get blog traffic: Update your signature to be a link to your blog. I know this is not ground breaking but time and again I see people who have blogs that do not refer to them in their email signature or forum signatures. Also, be sure to use the right anchor text in your email signatures and forum signatures.
Today’s long term solution to get blog traffic: Be sure you are using the post name in your URL as part of your permalink settings. Look at the URL of your blog posts. Does it have p=123 or some other number in there instead of the title of your blog post? This is a bad move. The URL being built with the title is a great and simple SEO fix for your blog that can help result in an increase in search engine traffic.
Consider your reader when you layout your blog
When I go to visit a blog or any website for that matter, certain things pop out that annoy the heck out of me. The first thing is a pop up window. I hate pop up windows this includes advertisements or surveys. They are cheap and annoying. For me, if I visit a site with a popup I move on right away. You lost this reader forever.
What is the lesson here? Understand your own likes and dislikes about blog layouts and apply them to your own. Do you see certain things on blogs and think it looks cheap or out of place. Do you have the same thing on your own blog? When you read blogs do certain colors bug your eyes or fonts find hard to read? Are you using these colors?
You are your best judge for what works and does not work for a blog. Always consider the reader experience when you are building your blog. I have found too many bloggers who get money hungry and try cheap tricks to get people to click on advertisements to make money. This is not a long term strategy. You may get that click but the reader will never come back to your site. You want repeat traffic. You want word of mouth to spread about your blog. This means a good reader experience.
When you are making your rounds to various blogs today keep in mind your first impression of their sidebars, content, blog theme layout and overall design then look at your own. Make changes as needed to make your blog more of a user friendly experience.
