Increase Blog Traffic
July 11, 2008
„ A great site without traffic is like owning a beautiful huge store in the middle of nowhere! “
Yes, it’s MUCH about getting traffic to the web site. I am not saying it’s all about it, because you need quality content to offer as well. You see, website owner can deliver wonderful idea, amazing products, but without traffic, his business is death. So, let me say again….ITS MUCH ABOUT TRAFFIC!!! You can have fancy landing page, even forum for your website, or whatever, but without traffic, you are without a business. How to increase and get constant traffic to the blog?
If you’re just starting, you should know that blogging is a great way to increase traffic. When you are writing on a regular basis your blog will drive traffic automatically (ping and posts submission to RSS Directories). And besides that automation here are few good ways to promote your blog:
First, blog SEO
Vitally important is to optimize properly your blog for search engines. If you are new to this, I have made a weblog post how to avoid mistakes and avoid losing SEO page rank. Also I recommend putting related images to every post. You see, images are totally different type of promotion and traffic, because Google and other engines are using particular robots only for “alternative text” behind images. Discover here how properly to optimize images for your blog, and to increase traffic that way. Don’t forget to submit your blog to Google, Yahoo and MSN (although if your blog is totally new, maybe is better to wait month or two, until there is some content on the website). And above averting, if you’re using WordPress as a publishing platform or just starting with blogging watch my free WordPress SEO video tutorials (you will see which plugins are important for SEO optimization, correct permalink structure and similar matter with purpose to increase blog traffic).
Second, Article Submission
To article directories you can submit blog posts, but its better if you spin a little those articles or submit completely new. Why would you do that? Quite simple, in the submitted article, you will include a link to your web site. Submitted to many directories you are getting many backlinks and it will boost your search engine
ranking. Also it will provide direct traffic from people who visits those article directories.
Here are some major directories to submit your articles to:
Article marketing is a proven way to get traffic. It needs some time to provide results, but eventually, if done correctly and often, it will substantially increase traffic to the site.
Third, blog communities:
These sites are great way to connect with other bloggers and to use them in promotional marketing. Use tags to find your market.
Fourth, blogging traffic exchanges:
(You place widgets on your blog sidebar pointing to other blogs, and at the same time, the other bloggers are aiming to your blog).
These websites can drive traffic away from your blog, but at the same time will drive to it. Don’t worry, just concentrate on quality content. Find here some tips and techniques for making the content valuable. Also keep in mind that there is saying in internet marketing world regarding traffic “The more you send the more it returns to you”.
Anyway, these sites may not be an effective traffic generator for you. Test it. You won’t know unless you try it. If it doesn’t benefit you after a trial, you can always uninstall widgets.
Besides blogging exchanges, also common traffic exchanges, like Trafficswarm and Linkreferral, can increase traffic. They can be used for common website, but as well blog promotion.
Finally, Web 2.0 sites
There is a right and wrong way for web 2.0 promotion. I am creating the whole section about Social Network, Social News and Social Bookmarking web sites. It will be ready in a month or two. Mean time, here is one neat tool for video promotion – Tubemogul. If you are making videos for your weblog, Tubemogul will submit your video to around 15 different video sites.
This is end of the 6th step from How to create a successful blog. Happy blogging!
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Make Money Blogging
July 11, 2008
You want to get rich quick, to make tons of money quickly? Great! You are on the right place, because in that case I want to tell you: „Go try with Lotto“! You may heard that there are people on the internet making millions of bucks. You heard well, but please realize they haven’t done that overnight. Behind those successes are good ideas, hard work and perseverance. But it’s the life, you know the story of your favorite sportsman and what he had to sacrifice until the success has arrived. Are you ready for that? Don’t get me wrong, I just want to warn you that blogging and particularly building online business is time-consuming.
So if you are starting with blog monetization right now, just few notes. Don’t blog just to blog, pick the topic on something you’re passionate about. The topic you’re confident to build business around. The topic you want to blog it anyway, for enjoy, not money, and the cash will probably come. So, blog about the topic where you can provide a value and good information to readers. Find your passion, and see is there money in the market. If there is no money in the market, then know it in advance.
In any case…persist. Persist to CRAP, which means Criticism-Rejection-Assholes-Pressure. On this topic watch this movie and see the point of these words.
Monetization options
The most important in monetizing and online business building is to have a plan. In essence, consider this before you go further: What can I offer to thrill people? -> How I offer it? -> How I can make it profitable?
The best way to make money online is to have own products. Of course, there are also alternatives. If you are promoting affiliate programs, then it’s better to create an expert website around particular topic, made full with beneficial information, in front of your selected affiliate links (rather than splashing around all different types of affiliate programs. There are always new advertisement sharing and affiliate programs, so feel free to explore. Here is just a quick list of advertisement sharing programs to start you off:
1.Advertisement revenue sharing programs:
- Google Adsence – ad revenue sharing - old timer in this field,
- Chitika – reliable ad revenue sharing, on the market since 2003,
- Text-Link-Ads – besides the site they monetize your RSS feeds,
- Pay Per Play – new kid in the block, but innovative where you get paid for audio ads playing on your site.
2. Only for bloggers:
- get paid to blog about other companies. On the network you apply for the opportunity to blog about, while accepting the advertiser prize (usually you can get 5-10$ per post). This kind of posting is not seen as a value at Google, so you should know that it can harm your Search Engines Page Rank. However Page Rank is not the most important matter, and if you are choosing this monetization option, its quite ok.
This is end of the 5th step from How to create a successful blog. Happy blogging!
Perfect Articles Writing Trick!
July 11, 2008
You’ve probably heard it, the known phrase, ‘content is king’. Fine, if content is king then how the heck can we increase the quantity of content and actually produce constant documents for our web sites? I mean we’ve all been there, writing article after article in purpose for submitting and posting to our sites, blogs or article directories. And the more we write the less enthusiastic we start to become about creating a successful online business. We have to face it, writing needs time. On the other hand, as web site owners and publishers we need constant fresh content. So, how can we bypass the one thing that all internet marketers hate doing?
This is the 2nd step from web site and blog content tips, so lets see where is the content solution.
How important is constant web site content?
Well, here’s the true. At Alexa.com (web sites traffic information company) you can check top 500 global web sites, top 100 by country or browse through top traffic sites by category. Now, pay attention. What’s common for most of these top ranked web sites is a large number of pages. There are sites with hundred thousands even millions of pages. If you don’t see correlation between large content and traffic just continue reading.
Since setting up a blog is not a pain, let me show you how blogging can be useful in driving constant traffic to the site. If you already have own blog, then you probably know that with every new article you bring out, its actually opportunity for people all over the world to find your weblog content. A single page of content you write and publish provides many different ways for someone to find it. And if you are checking your web stats, then you already know that you are getting traffic from keywords that you didn’t try to optimize for. This is just happening naturally, i.e. people are finding long tail phrases that weren’t your primary goal for that article. Well, by having a lot of different pages it increases your chances to get ranked for all different phrases. Okay, you can see the correlation among large number of documents and traffic, and the blog is probably the best way to put that content online.
So, if you’re really serious about running an online business, and if you’re serious about generating a lot of traffic you absolutely need to provide constant content on a regular basis. And don’t be afraid if you’re not a good writer or simply you lack the time, because there is a solution. The solution is to hire someone to do the job for you. Even if you’re confident with writing you probably cannot provide needful number of documents by yourself. Quite simple, the solution is in using private label articles.
PLR articles are solution!
If you haven’t heard about PLR (private label rights) articles then it’s basically this – content that someone else has been writing for you, and you are able to take and use those documents as your own. Those articles you can submit to article directories, post on your web site, blog, put in an email series or any other method where you need content. From the moment you take documents they are your private and you can do whatever you want with them (rewrite, cut them or post it entirely).
So where is it? Where can you go to find a whole bunch of documents to use as your own? First let’s see what private label content isn’t. The option of taking content from the many article directories out there is possible, but it’s NOT PLR. There is one thing that limits this method and that is the fact that you cannot rewrite articles from article directories. You are required to add the author’s name that comes attached to the article you want to use. This means their link will also have to appear on your page. The other disadvantage is the fact, hundreds if not thousands of other marketers out there would be doing exact the same thing. Having the same page on your site as thousands of other people makes it incredibly hard to rank in the search engines.
So what’s the other option? The other option would be to pay for your PLR content, services which are providing you constant content for your web site. There are many services that offer content to their members. This usually means you’ll have to share the content with a limited number of people. However there are some things you need to look out for.
First, how many people will have access to the same content as you? If the service you are looking at requires you to share their content with a thousand other members, then what’s the point? In that case, you may go out and grab content from article directories.
Secondly, work out how much you’ll be paying per article. If a membership cost $100 and in that membership you’re going to have access to two hundred articles that would mean the cost per article is going to be $0.50. Therefore a membership that offered 400 articles would make the cost per article half of that.
Who is the best PLR Articles Provider?
You can do a Google search, and you can discover many cheaper PLR services, but they are also less generous in content delivery. We know that the more is better, but we have to pay attention that its not quantity so much as it is a quality. You need both, lot of documents, but it has to be good stuff. So my recommendation
is PLRpro. Why are they special? Here’s a basic overview of what a PLRPro membership contains:
- 440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche);
- SEO optimized articles;
- Full keyword research in each niche;
- Affiliate lists for each niche;
- Header Graphics for each niche;
- 5 Website Templates each month;
- Articles done in 8 languages;
- 50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled.
See for yourself PLRpro is solid company, the Worlds #1 PLR content provider, and they have very well reputation not just because of the quality they bring to the table in regards to PLR articles, but also because of the additional education and material that they provide for free.
Oh, one tip for the end…these PLR articles you do not want to use just for your website. They are your own content, so submit it to article directories, too. This way, people who find your article useful for their site, will have obligation to include your name as an author and your site link. This is constant traffic source, and it’s much better situation from opposite when you’re the one who is going to article directories to pick documents. As a writer you control the situation!
Content & Writing Techniques
July 11, 2008
“Content is king”. Though even better is if we emphasize that “QUALITY content is king”. The website’s and blog’s owner must provide helpful and valuable content, write interesting articles that will make repeat visitors and buzz about the website. This is the 4th step from How to create a successful blog.
A writing schedule brings professionalism
Before we jump into “4 web content steps”, I want to make it clear, if you are blogging as a hobby, it will stay hobby! This is vital. What professional publishers do that amateurs do not? Fact is, they have a publishing schedule. I will share my way. You can follow that guide, adjust it to yourself, or simply ignore it. However you should know the secret that actually distinguishes serious bloggers from those who are just playing around is established writing schedule.
Every Monday I am creating my 3 articles for coming week. And that day, I don’t do any other work until I finish that. Later that week I will publish them one by one. I can make additional daily posts to my weblog, but my 3 articles are always ready. I can write article from scratch or rewrite PLR document, it doesn’t matter. The point is, this is giving me space and freedom throughout the week. Does this make sense to you?
And this is leading us to question “How often to post?” It’s something that can be arguable. Actually, it depends of your weblog purpose, structure and topic. For example, if you are a blogger making income from Google Adsence, and similar types of advertisement, then you will prefer to write on a daily basis. On the other hand, if your weblog is additional to your site or other income type, then probably you do not need that writing pace. Remember, your goal is to provide a value on the first place. If you are just starting the blog, whatever the purpose is, you should try to post every day for first 3 to 4 months, or even twice a day. Because more likely is that person visiting your blog, will bookmark it only if there is enough content. And you can provide it only if you publish documents often. After 3, 4 months, I think, 3-4 posts a week is quite enough, but as I said, it depends on weblog purpose. In any case, bear in mind that every new post is bringing new visitors.
And by the way, most people do not read much these days. So, keep it simple, in most cases about 500 words (better 300-400) per weblog article with related image or video is adequate for blogging. Producing longer articles is always a risk the people will run away from it.
Despite what you may have heard, you do not have to be Ernest Hemingway to have a good blog. The point with blogging is that no one is asking from the author to write stories for the Nobel Prize. Blogging is casual way to stay connected with your readers, customers or friends. And it’s much easier if you use some tools to provide web site content. Let’s see how to get quality documents and which tools and techniques can be useful:
Step 1: Who else want catchy headlines and linkbait tips?
Step 2: How to establish a self writing voice?
Step 3: Perfect articles writing trick!
Step 4: Grab the tools! (coming soon)
Tag plugin
July 11, 2008
For every post you can determine keywords related to your article. At the bottom of each post those keywords will be displayed, and when visitor clicks on particular tag, blog will open a new page with all posts you have made with that keyword (tag). Visitor will be able to browse through posts and see related articles for that tag. It will also help in proper disposal of your articles on blog directories.
UTW WordPress plugin
This is the 7th video of WordPress SEO Video Tutorial.
This video will show you how to install and configure Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for WordPress weblog. This plugin will create tag pages for your weblog. That way you will get more in-depth pages and it will help Google spiders to index your blog better.
For some people this plugin is working fine, but there are a lot of complaints. If you encounter any error just deactivate the plugin in your WordPress admin.
Google Sitemap plugin
July 11, 2008
This is the 5th video of WordPress SEO Video Tutorial.
Google xml sitemaps will automatically notify search engines after every blog post. Not only Google, the plugin will notify Yahoo! MSN and Ask engines. Download Sitemaps plugin, and watch configuration.
This video will show you how properly to optimize this plugin for your WordPress blog.
After plugin set up, I suggest you sign up for Google webmaster tool and add your Sitemap.xml to Google.
WordPres Blog META Tags Optimization
July 11, 2008
Welcome to 4th WordPress SEO Video Tutorial. This video is showing you how to configure “All in one SEO” WordPress plugin, which installation you have seen in previous video. If you are using WordPress version latter than 2.5 you will find options for this plugin in your WordPress admin/ settings/ All in one SEO.
Keyword in Title tag
Its most important part of tag optimization. Your page title is the link that will appear in search results. Since it is what people click on in the search results and is the first thing people see about your site. Keyword in Title tag should be close to beginning. Title tag with 10 - 60 characters, and without special characters.
Keyword in Description META tag
This plugin enables you to put Meta description for every post so you can put keywords there. Description Meta tag is average important for search engines. However certainly it should be complement to the page title and bear in mind that your description will show up on Search Engine Results Page when someone is searching. Basically, you want to describe and optimize your posts for humans rather than spamming with too much keywords (overuse of keywords can lead to Google penalization). So do not do this:
blog | blogging | |SEO| WordPress plugin | Meta Optimization
You should write natural descriptive sentences for Meta. You want to be teasing enough to somebody click on it. Imagine yourself like you are writing an ad for your post.
Keyword in Keyword META tag
- Every word in this tag must appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevant specification.
- No single word should appear more than twice. Other way it may be considered spam. (I found this really hard to do).
Keyword meta tag optimization is not so important, Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but other engines do.
Here is the source where you can find more SEO optimization guidance of this kind.
Update: In the video you can see that both categories and archives are not set for noindex search engines, but due to duplicate content possibilities, I recommend you set it like on this screenshoot from my blog. This way Google will index categories, but will bypass archives and you will bypass penalties from Google for duplicate content. You can comfortably display your archive on your WordPress weblog, they will just be avoided by search engines (your categories pages will be ranked).
Install WordPress Blog Search Engines Optimized
July 11, 2008
There are a number of reasons why someone can decide to start a blog. On the first glance setup can look confusing, but truth is far from it. On the other hand you don’t want to stop just with WordPress installation, because making just few neat tweaks can bring SEO friendly weblog. Best of all, you will have video help. This is basic set of WordPress video tutorials.
Installing right plugins for WordPress helps search engine optimization for the blog. It makes the difference in front of other publishing softwares, putting you ahead of other bloggers. Step by step video tutorials will lead you through proper search engine friendly WordPress installation, but first let’s check what you need before starting the setup:
- Web host – You need domain name and hosting for your WordPress weblog. If you haven’t already gotten your own hosting account setup, I recommend that you start off using Hostgator. They are one of the best services in the market with quality customer support (phone, forum, chat, email support). I don’t want to spoil them, but you should know:
· for affordable price Hostgator is offering high bandwidth
· WordPress installation with Fantastico which makes set up even more leisurely
· there are no hidden charges
- Ftp program - for uploading files from computer to the hosting server. You can download and use FileZilla, which is completely free. There are a lot of ftp software programs, but for most of them, you need to buy the software. Actually I only know for FileZilla as a free. Using those programs is extremely easy…just watch this short video clip which is explaining basics for FileZilla usage.
FileZilla Instructions
- Now you’re ready to download WordPress and to start with installation.
Video tutorials for WordPress
These videos will guide you and help you to install plugins that will give you higher search engine rankings, you will find which plugin to use for indexing optimization, which is the correct permalinks structure to use… and more tips. So lets begin:
- Famous 5 minute WordPress installation;
- WordPress blog administration guide;
- seo plugin installation;
- WordPress blog meta optimization;
- Google sitemap configuration;
- related posts plugin;
- tag plugin setup.
Structure A SEO Blog
July 11, 2008
Keeping blog organized is very important, making navigation smooth for you and for readers. As blog organization I think on building WordPress as silos, what in essence means thematically. Purpose of silos creating is to help Google and other search engines easier to see the site, indexing it in the right way, and eventually bringing more traffic. WordPress categories are helping so much for proper silo building. Besides that, in this article, I will guide you through plugin and pinging organization for WordPress. So, if you’re not sure how properly to build and organize your WordPress weblog, here is a clue:
Blog’s Tagline
Tagline is important, because it shows in search engine results. Besides that, it also displays in the browser’s tag when your website loads.
To set up weblog’s tagline, go to your WordPress admin / Settings / General, and enter the name and tagline for your weblog.
Make sure to include your major keyword, and even better, if you can, put it as a first word of the phrase.
Why Blog Categories Are Important?
Here we are coming to building WordPress in silo way. I have researched and watched several videos, and found this one from seomoz helpful and the easiest to understand. Watch the video and see what I mean.
In short, keep your categories organized:
- so your visitors can navigate through your WordPress weblog better and easily can find what they want
- in purpose of search engine optimization (silo organized categories help search engine to see properly your site, giving you better SEO rank and eventually send you more traffic),
- In silo-ed categories you need deep linking, to link your posts to other posts in the same silo. For example, if your silos (categories) are “SEO” and “WordPress,” then the goal is to have your SEO posts interlinking with one another and your WordPress posts interlinking with one another.
Manage Categories for your WordPress:
- Use paper and pen to design your blog;
- Go to your WordPress admin/ Manage/ Categories, and set up your categories and sub-categories. Make sure the keyword for your topic or sub-niche is included in your category name;
- Use the “description” box to enter a phrase that will show up when the visitor’s cursor hovers over the category name.
WordPress Plugins
With WordPress you can easily install add-ons called plugins which will bring more functionality to your blog. There are hundreds of them from helping you to optimize for Search Engines to translating blog in other languages, or saving it from spam comments.
Installing and Activating Plugins - Watch my WordPress weblog video tutorials. There you will find how to install and which plugins are important for search engine optimization. The installation is quite similar for all of them, and once you install the first WordPress plugin, you will be confident with configuration of others as well. Further you can browse through WordPress plugins directory.
Internal links
To connect your pages use anchor text. You can check at Wikipedia but in sum anchor text is clickable hyperlink, giving you option to put keywords, and if you are linking from the page that has good page rank, it will boost page rank of the blog post you are linking to, eventually boosting the SEO rank and getting more traffic to that blog post. At seomoz this process has been explained in details.
Additionally to that, I encourage you to check Ian Roger’s post The Google Pagerank Algorithm and How It Works. It will give you an idea how to interact your blog links.
Now, this is very important. I already said that you can watch WordPress Video Tutorials, where you can see configuration of “All in one SEO”, “Google Sitemap” and couple more SEO important plugins. Nevertheless, I want to list 3 more plugins which are for advanced bloggers. What I mean, if you’re new to blogging and website building you can encounter terminology which can be confusing. If it’s your situation, then I suggest you go step by step with video tutorials first, and after that follow instructions for these plugins:
These plugins will give you more control in your blog structure linking. You will be able to determine nofollow for external links and you will have more control for your internal link juice.
You will notice mutual overlapping of some functions, and overlapping with “All in one SEO” and “Google Sitemap”, but it’s important to install and configure all these WordPress plugins, because every of them is bringing something unique. Where convergence is present, just disable that option for one of them (for example “WordPress SEO Master” meta description is overlapping with “All in one SEO” meta description - so I have just disabled this option in “WordPress SEO Master” plugin). It’s not wise just to install these plugins, so read carefully instructions from plugins sites and follow instructions on plugins options page in your WordPress admin.
External links
Use external links to provide relevant resources. If you are using Blogroll to exchange links with other bloggers, then stay in your niche, because Google can „penalize“ you and you can lose SEO traffic if you are linking too much to topics outside of yours. This also count for blog posts, i.e. external link has to be relevant to post topic.
Ping blog
When you publish new post on your WordPress blog, it automatically announces that content to various directories by “pinging” them. Here is the list of services I ping every time with new post:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.kping.com/ping/
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc
There is no need to adjust that every time, it needs to be set only once on your blog and it will be remembered for all next posts. To set up this, in your WordPress admin, just go to Settings/ Writing and scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter the links in the rectangle.
It is important to have pingomatic (or similar services) in the list. I saw many larger lists, but I do not see point if you ping Pingomatic and after separately ping many other services (technorati, weblogs…) which are already pinged with pingomatic. Similar service is kping. I use both (pingomatic and kping) because there are some directories that are not covered on pingomatic.
There’s just one more thing. You will certainly want to install plugin Smart Update Pinger. It will adjust your blog to ping directories only when you’re publishing a new post, not when editing (what will prevent blogging directories to see your pings as spam).
This is end of the 3rd step from How to create a successful blog? Happy silos building and happy blogging!
What’s A Trackback?
June 8, 2008
In a nutshell it’s a type of linkback. It’s a process for bloggers to send a notification and demand for linkback once they write something in one of their documents that directs to other blogger content. Once a weblog author publishes a post, the other blogger receives a notification, and through moderation process can permit or refuse the trackback. They moderate it just like a regular comment. If they permit it, trackback will show in comment sector of their post, with linkback to the first blogger.
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Hello! I am Sloba and this is web2whizzing. Welcome and enjoy!
