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Blog Tips [Important] - Part3
Almost every blogger aims to grow their blog and reach a larger audience. Unfortunately, most new bloggers don’t know much about promoting a blog when they are just getting started. The good news is you will learn pretty quickly if you are consistently involved and working at promoting your blog. Here are ten things that I have learned to be true from my experience.
1. Building Significant Search Engine Traffic Will Take Time
New blogs generally take several months, at least, before they gain enough trust from search engines to produce any type of significant flow of traffic. If you are planning to focus on search engines as your primary source of traffic, you would be well advised to also focus on some other sources of traffic, especially in the early months.
Building a blog that is search engine-friendly is critical if you want to maximize search traffic, so take care of that from the start and focus on creating great content that others will talk about and link to.
2. Not All Traffic Is Equal
No two sources of traffic are quite the same. I get a good percentage of the traffic at my blog through social media, and I can attest to the fact that social media traffic is generally less responsive and less likely to stick around than visitors from most other sources. Focusing on stats without looking at the true results can cause a bit of an illusion. Sure, visitors are great, but are they leaving after being on the blog for 30 seconds and never returning?
Search engine traffic is highly sought after because these visitors are actively looking for what you have to offer. But other types of traffic have strong points too. Visitors who are referred from another blog will generally be more responsive since they have been recommended by someone they trust. Every source of traffic has pros and cons, so try to take these things into consideration when you are promoting your blog and analyzing the results.
3. Consistent Posting Is Key
Most bloggers need to keep publishing new posts in order to keep traffic at a certain level. Some bloggers are able to generate large amounts of search engine traffic to older posts to the point that traffic will be fairly sustained without new posts, but this is pretty rare. New posts keep subscribers coming back, they keep social media votes coming, and they keep adding new pages to search engine indexes.
Posting consistently doesn’t mean that you have to post every day, it simply means that you need to publish content on a regular basis, whatever that may be. Almost every blog that successfully draws traffic is publishing new posts with some consistency.
4. Consistent Traffic Is Almost Impossible
Although posting needs to be consistent to keep traffic levels up, that doesn’t mean that it will keep traffic levels consistent. Every blog has ups and downs and two days are rarely the same. This is a natural occurrence and it should be embraced or else it can become very frustrating. Make sure that you enjoy the times when traffic is high, and keep on plugging away to get through the slower times. Blogging would almost be boring is traffic levels didn’t fluctuate like they do.
5. Repeat Visitors Should Be the Goal
Yes, it’s great to see an impressive number of unique visitors arriving at your blog, but how many of them will be back? Repeat visitors are the lifeblood of blogs. Subscribers, of course, are most likely to keep coming back, so focusing on subscribers is typically a good thing.
Repeat visitors will not only help to improve your overall traffic flow and stats, more importantly they will be your most responsive visitors in terms of comments, social media votes, sales, and just about anything else. As they keep coming back and reading your blog, you will be earning more of their trust and your network will grow.
6. Links Help In Several Ways
Building inbound links is a priority for most bloggers, and for good reason. They drive click-through traffic from other blogs, they increase your exposure around the blogosphere, and they help to boost your search engine rankings. Link building is often prioritized because of search engine rankings, but the other factors should not be overlooked. If you blog in a competitive niche, recognition and exposure will be critical in convincing visitors that they should pay attention to you. Getting a few links from respected blogs can help with search engine traffic, but the added credibility that you get can be just as important, especially for newer bloggers.
7. Balance Is Important
Diversity in traffic will help you to avoid losing a huge percentage of your visitors if something unforeseen happens. Search engine rankings are not permanent, especially with Google being so ready and willing to penalize blogs who they feel have violated their guidelines. If you rely too heavily on search engine traffic you could find yourself losing a big portion of your traffic at any given time.
Also, social media traffic is extremely inconsistent, so just because you have been getting decent traffic doesn’t mean it will continue. The best approach is to spread things out and focus on growing traffic from several sources rather than just one. That way you will always be safe and you won’t depend on a particular source for your livelihood.
8. Smaller Sources of Traffic Shouldn’t Necessarily Be Ignored
Not all sources of traffic will send thousands of visitors, but that doesn’t mean that they are not valuable. For example, participating in forums is likely to drive some traffic to your blog, but not tons. However, those visitors can be very valuable because they have met you or learned from you through the forum and they’ll be more likely to subscribe and become a loyal reader.
Likewise, leaving comments on other blogs will bring some traffic, but it is rare that any one comment will bring a lot of visitors. Still, this traffic is valuable because many times they have clicked through due to something that you said catching their attention.
Don’t simply assume that traffic is measured only in terms of numbers. Smaller sources of traffic have been instrumental in building many successful blogs.
9. Networking Is Critical
All successful bloggers are surrounded by a strong network of other successful bloggers. This is something that I didn’t really think much about before I started blogging, but I quickly came to realize the importance of networking.
A strong network will provide you with friends and colleagues that can be a help when you need some advice, they can provide links to your blog, they can give you social media votes, they can be an inspiration and encouragement to you, and they can even wind up being your partners in future projects. Being a strong networker is all about being willing to help others and being proactive in meeting others.
10. Blog Traffic Can Be Bought for Relatively Little Money
If you are interested in getting some extra promotion or growing your blog quickly, there are a number of affordable advertising options that will drive real traffic to your blog. Pay Per Click ads can be very effective and inexpensive (depending on what words and phrases you bid on). StumbleUpon advertising is another option. You can purchase their traffic for just $0.05 per visitor. Even banner advertisements on other blogs can be relatively cheap. Running an ad for a month or more will give you exposure to a new audience and if you were to calculate a cost-per-click it is usually pretty low.
Blog Tips [Important] - Part2
1. Write Quality Content
You may think this has nothing to do with growing your traffic, but the impact can be substantial. Visitors come to your site to find and read information. If they like what they see, either they are going to subscribe to your RSS feed or enter their email address in the subscription form.
What they expect is more of the same quality of content from you. They have high expectations. It is your job to deliver that to them.
2. Blog Regularly
Another important activity related to blog writing is to blog regularly. Once people are engaged with your blog, you must keep them interested by publishing more content.
If you fail to do this, before long, they will lose interest. Some readers are going to leave anyway, but if the growth of new subscribers is faster than the unsubscription rate, you will see an increase in traffic and readers.
3. Don’t Forget to Ping (and Tag Appropriately)
Pinging is still an effective way to promote your blog. You need to do this to notify blog services when you update your blog.
By strategically using the right tag, you can get your blog post found by other bloggers. Tag pages are going to rank for long tail keywords, so that is something worth doing.
You never know who will discover your site, how influential they are and how they can affect your blog.
If you link to another blog, you may also send trackback or pingback to the blog so the linked bloggers know about your post. What is trackback? How do you use it?
4. Make Your Blog Search-Engine Friendly
As you blog, you want to make your page optimized for both human visitors and search engines. Many bloggers say that a blog is search engine magnet, but you have to make it work to rank for your keywords. How a blog links pages and notifies blog services about new updates make it easily found by search engines, but to rank you need more than those.
Interested in this topic? Read more about blog SEO here.
Nowadays, you can write naturally and the search engines will notice. You have to know which keywords to target though, and produce content that suits the reader’s expectation.
Getting the content out is one thing, promoting it to get link juice is another different beast.
Search engines need time to work and you will not get instant results, but you must build the content with search engine in mind from the start so you are building the momentum as soon as possible.
5. Promote Your RSS Feed
Although RSS is becoming popular, it is still not as common as email. Your blog will create RSS feed in real time (or automatically in every blog update), but not everyone will understand what it is for, especially if your blog is targeting less tech-savvy audiences.
Educating them about the use of RSS is necessary, if not compulsory. It will be worth the effort though, because it is a tool for which you can hook up the readers and give them more information.
For bloggers who are making money by selling ad space, eyeballs are everything. If you can get them back to your site through one of the communication mechanisms, more power to you.
Marketers who sell products or services could use it as a follow up tool. If you can offer RSS feed and email at the same time, you need to consider both.
6. Encourage Comments, Trackbacks and Pingbacks
A blog is a communication and interaction tool. You can use it to gain feedback from the readers or have them discuss the topic you start in the blog. Some bloggers claim that comments don’t attract more traffic but it certainly establish an involvement with the blog because they feel closer each time by participating in the discussion.
Comments are compulsory for certain situatione but not necessary for others. For bloggers who want feedback from the readers, allowing comments can help, but it requires quite a lot of work once the blog becomes popular, mainly because of comment spam. You may also want to answer reader’s question or they may not come back to comment next time.
Trackbacks and pingbacks are useful if you are extending the conversation outside the original blog. When people link to you, the link to their blog post will appear on your blog post. This kind of interaction can develop into further relationship with fellow bloggers.
Once you build relationship with other bloggers, you can show them your content and get across the message much easier than if you try to get their attention without building rapport first.
7. Comment on Other Blogs
This is exactly the opposite from the sixth point above. While tracking news and information from the blogosphere, you will find interesting posts from friends and new bloggers that you want to get links from.
By commenting on their blog, you can establish relationship with them. Networking is one of the most important activities for bloggers.
I know, some people hate interacting with others, offline or online. The thing is, you can promote your content and blog faster if you know other bloggers who are also influencers. They can send you a lot of traffic that would take weeks or months to build.
8. Being a Guest Blogger
Find blogs who accept guest blogger and offer contribution regularly. While you blog exclusively for the blog and give content to their existing audience, you secretly pimp out your own blog.
This isn’t necessarily bad though.
For the time and content that you’ve given to the owner of the blogger, they usually allow you to steal their traffic. You can promote your own post and get inbound links to your blog.
Every new blogger can make use of a few more links from related blog or site.
9. Participate in Discussion Boards
Discussion boards are great place to tap into your target audience. They are where people hang out. Approaching such a forum strategically, you can drive traffic back to your blog quite easily.
Many people blatantly promote their site and this is exactly the opposite way to do it. You want to contribute and build your name first. After you establish your expert status there, whatever you put in the signature in the forum, people will visit because they know you provide solid advices and content related to the topic of the forum.
Other experts often also hang out in the same forums. This can lead to joint venture and other opportunities that you may not realize right now. If they own a blog, you can also cross promote each other.
10. Social Bookmarking and Networking
Social media are the new buzz word. People are sharing their own bookmarks of interesting web sites with others. When people vote for the usefulness or value of a piece of content, other people can make use of the votes. You can often discover new blogs and web sites from social bookmarks. Using these sites can also give you link juice and promotion.
Social networking sites, just like forums, are places where people with the same interest hang out. Just that in social networking, the main focus is in the user profiles while in forums, discussions are the main highlight. You can meet like-minded people there and spread your message out, including your new blog post.
If your content is good, you should be able to get interested people who will visit your site and hopefully become long-time subscribers. Again, influencers will notice and promote your blog too.
11. Email Marketing
A few years ago, email was claimed to be dead as blogs became mainstream. It never happens though.
If you want to be successful in any online business, you need to focus on a handful of marketing strategies. Become really good at it. Email marketing, in my opinion, should be in every blogger’s toolbox. It is an extension of blog. Some people prefer RSS feed while others insist on email. You either have email subscription or you will lose a part of your visitors.
Email is about leveraging what you already have. It is used to follow up and get in touch with your subscribers. Marketers use it as a nurturing tool. Smart bloggers build relationships via email communication and get very good results with it.
Studies showed again and again that email tops other marketing strategies in terms of usage and result. It even wins over search by a huge margin.
Tips: If you want to know who is opening and looking at your email,transactional emails can help.
Conclusion
There are more ways to promote your blog. It is a matter of creativity and diligence. Every time you interact and meet people, it is a chance for blog promotion. You may not want to be too direct with your promotion though because that may sound desperate and needy. Smart bloggers know when to pimp their blog and when to be helpful and resourceful.
Some methods or blog promotion is not as effective as others. A few traffic sources will send you mostly one-off visitors. The average visitors from the blog promotion strategies above are very sticky and responsive.
Disasters happen. Learn what they are and how to tackle them when (NOT if) they happen from this article, 15 blog traffic and revenue disasters.
If you are getting stuck having tried different strategies above, perhaps try a different approach. Often the lack of blog promotion blunders means progress. It is like unloading 100-pound rock from your shoulder. Read this15 blogging mistakes article.
Blogging Tips [Important] - Part1
If you are interesting in learning more about better blogging, check out these six helpful tips.
Use a Casual Tone
The most interesting blogs are not written using formal grammar rules. Frankly, the formal tone can be a little boring and web surfers don’t want to read through a bunch of “hoity-toity” text. If you want your blog to be popular and a success overall, consider writing in a more casual tone. Think of the writing as being a conversation you are having with a friend. Write exactly the way you would talk, not the way you are supposed to talk. Using slang and other words that may not be considered “proper” is a great way for your blog to reach a wide variety of viewers. Using humor and other personality characteristics in your writing will make people want to keep coming back to read your newest entries.
Don’t Overdo It
Keeping your blog short will help you retain any interested viewers. People don’t want to spend massive amounts of time reading text on the web. If they wanted to read a novel, they would do just that. Try to stick to your point and keep it nice and short. A blog that is more than 500 or 700 words is just too much. If you need to carry on with the topic, consider creating another post that finishes your point. Although this is basically creating one long blog, the break in the text will be welcoming and readers will be less likely to get bored.
Never Advertise Improperly
Too often people use blogs as a space to advertise their services or their products. This can be a cheap way to get your work out there. It is noted however that blog readers can get annoyed quickly at advertisements on blogs. If you must advertise on your blog, consider doing so in a more subtle manner. Write a short post about your product and put a link to your website. Don’t take up your entire blog space with the advertisement. Although it may seem like a great idea, you will essentially be scaring people away from your blog altogether.
Check Your Spelling
Although the tone of your blog should be kept casual, you should still edit your work. There is a way to be casual, without being sloppy. You should always check your spelling before you submit your post. If your posts are sloppy and full of misspelled words, people will think that you are not educated and probably won’t take anything you say seriously. Some blogging software comes will a spell check features, while some doesn’t. If your blogging software does not come with any spell check feature, simply create your post in a word processing software and use the spell check there. Then cut and paste your edited work into the blogging software text area. This will allow you to post without spelling errors, which is highly recommended.
Be Versatile
If you want to reach the largest amount of people, you do not need to advertise endlessly. You simply must be versatile with your post topics. Those blogs that cover only one type of thing may be popular with one specific targeted group of people. That is fine, if it is what you want. If you want to reach everyone however, you need to post on everything. Consider posting on current affairs, music, books, and other hot issues. This will draw people in. When you post about popular things in the news, it will draw people to your site when they do a search on the web.
Post Often
People who become fans of your blog will likely be looking for a new post every few days. Some will only look once a week. If you want to keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Posting often is something that takes very little time, because your entries should stay short and sweet. It is a way however to keep things new and exciting for your biggest fans. They will be waiting for your new posts and will continue logging on as long as you provide them with new information.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
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