50 Ways to IncreaseTraffic...
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- Add Google analytics to your blog or website. This
will give you detailed statistics to show you where your traffic is
coming from so you'll know what's working and what you need to do
differently. It will also show you your bounce rate and how long
someone stays on your site. Usually, the lower the bounce rate, the
better for you and the more chances you'll have to share about your
books and products with that visitor.
- Use keyword research tools, like the Google
Keyword Tool to find potential keywords to optimize your content for.
Look for questions that people want to know the answers to that aren't
very well answered yet. SBI gives me access to their brainstorming software
that comes up with keyword supply and demand for me. This is
invaluable and I know that this keyword research has helped my website
articles rise to the top of the search engines for free traffic.
- Find a professionally designed template to use. Make
sure it has both excellent design and ease of navigation. If your
visitors don't know where to go next, they'll probably leave your blog.
- Update your blog as well as your ping list. Most
blogging platforms come with a built-in list that hasn't been updated
recently. Update this list to increase blog traffic and distribution.
As I've mentioned before, I use SBI to build my website.
SBI automatically sends out a ping to the major search engines for me
everytime a new page is built. This saves me a lot of time.
- Modify your blog linking structure. By default,
most blogs don't have search engine friendly link
Structures. Change it so your keywords are in there by default. You can
do this under settings and permalink. For my Wordpress audio podcasts,
I use this permalink structure in the custom structure:
/%Category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
- Create a posting schedule. It's more important that you post consistently than quickly. If you
can have at least 1-2 posts scheduled at any given time, you're in good shape.
- Begin commenting on other blogs related to yours niche. This can increase blog traffic as well as help you get known in your niche.
- Start posting in forums related to yours. Again, this helps build a name for yourself in your area of expertise.
- Create articles on controversial topics designed to
get people to link to you. This in turn will increase blog traffic and
visitors to your site. What are the hot topics in your niche?
- Create an infographic. This is a graphic with a lot of data about one specific topic. These tend to get passed around like wildfire.
- Create an interactive experience that people would want to share with their friends. Quizzes
related to your topic are a great example of this. I have added several quizzes to my site for teen girls through SBI's form builder.
Not only is it helpful for creating an interactive experience, but it
also provides valuable research about my target audience for me. I have
used this research in my books and speaking engagements.
- Create a "Frequently Asked Questions" about your topic. If you answer questions nobody else is
answering, you'll often get a lot of links back.
- Twitter. Create a Twitter account and start actively courting followers. I use MarketMeSuite
which also allows me to create backlinks to my site. At the bottom of
my tweets it says via Self Publishing Coach instead of applications like
Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.
- Create a Facebook fan page or group page. Stay in touch with your visitors with Facebook. I created a custom left sidebar image and welcome page on my Facebook page where I posted links back to my site. This is something you can easily outsource if you don't have graphic design skills.
- Submit press releases to online PR sites. At the very worse this will result in a
bunch of backlinks to your blog, at best you'll get picked up by a highly regarded website which
could result in increase blog
traffic as well as a high PR backlink.
I have compiled a list of my 8 favorite online PR sites that get the best results.
- Target Local News. It's hard to get national press
attention, but getting local attention will
often result in a lot of exposure, backlinks and increase blog traffic.
You can also attract attention from the media through the website:
http://helpareporter.com.
- Contact the press directly if you think you have a newsworthy story. Write personal emails to
editors and journalists. However, don't email blast.
- Track your most popular posts and try to boost their
rankings. For example, if you have a post getting a lot of traffic and
its ranked #7 for a keyword, change other internal links in your
blog to point to that post with relevant anchor text. An extra
blogging advice tip is to also link to this page from a hubpage, squidoo
lens or articles.
- Get on the RSS feeds of the top 3 blogs in your industry. When something important happens in
your industry, you want to know about it ASAP so you can respond. You can set up Google alerts for your niche as well.
- Create an RSS feed so others with feed readers can track your blog. We have a tutorial on how to use Google feedburner for your blog or website.
- Post your RSS feed prominently along with a button
so people can subscribe to it easily. I purchased some inexpensive
social media icons to add to my site at the top left corner and at the
bottom of each page.
- Answer emails! When someone asks you a question,
answer them. You might not know them, but they may turn out to be a
valuable contact down the road. Better yet, ask if you can publicly
answer
their question if you believe more people would benefit by hearing the
answer. You can then include their questions on your FAQ page.
- Create both a "For Experts" and a "For Dummies" section for your posts. This helps you capture both savvy and beginner audiences to increase blog traffic.
- Guest blog posts. Offer other bloggers and website owners high quality articles in exchange for a
backlink.
As you know, blogging is very time intensive, so many blog owners are looking for ways to create quality content easily. Guest blog posts
do just that. And they help you increase blog traffic and visitors.
- Also include guest posts on your blog or website.
This gives your audience exposure to a wider range of topics and
expertise. It also induces reciprocity – Other bloggers will more likely
want to have you
guest blog.
- Always be targeting! You should know what keywords
you want your overall blog to rank well for as well
as what you want your specific posts to rank for. Don't compromise post
quality for rankings; but
optimize your blog to the best of your ability. Because when you do,
you'll draw tons of free search engine traffic that way. One nice
feature of SBI
is their search engine HQ, which helps me to know where my pages rank
for my selected keywords in the most popular search engines.
- Create a YouTube video. Embed it in your blog and make sure the YouTube video title has your main
keywords in it.
- Submit your site's highest quality and funniest posts to Digg and Reddit. However, don't overdo it or you'll be seen as a spammer.
- Bookmark your site on Del.Ico.Us.
- Submit your overall site to StumbleUpon.
- Look through your LinkedIn profile to see who's in your industry and see if you can find a way to promote your blog using that connection.
- Nominate your blog for various blogging contests. Whether or not you win, you'll get backlinks and
attention as well as increase blog traffic.
- Check Google Trends for the most popular searches of late. Make posts about topics that are
currently hot trends.
- Consider buying an ad in the Radio Television
Interview Report (RTIR). This is the report that newscasters and radio
hosts use to find experts. It's definitely going to cost you some money,
but the exposure is often worth the price.
- Respond to your blog comments! Authors who respond
to comments generally get a lot more comments than those who ignore
their commenters. This is a technique to increase blog traffic by
bringing back loyal readers to your site.
- Find out who's linking to you by watching your logs. See if you can do a joint venture with
people who already like your work.
- Create pages on Squidoo and Hubpages. This will drive both traffic and create quality backlinks to your blog.
- Start a newsletter. Not everyone has an RSS reader and many don't follow on Twitter and Facebook.
For many people, the old fashion e-mail newsletter is the best way to go.
- Host your images on flickr. Believe it or not, you'll actually get traffic from your images!
- Get on MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog. These are both popular sites for finding blogs to follow.
- Create a keyword cloud to help people find out what's popular on your site.
- Consider buying traffic from Facebook, AdWords or the Google Content Network.
- Showcase your top articles. Make it visible from the front page and make a killer first impression
so people come back.
- Install the related posts plugin. This helps people see more pages and in turn increase blog traffic.
- Host a contest! The winner gets a small prize like a
$20 starbucks card. This can generate a lot
of buzz in your niche. Plus, many times you can find sponsors who will
donate a prize in exchange for the exposure on your blog or site.
- Be interviewed. Talk to others in your industry to see if they'd be interested in hosting you on
their site in an interview. This can be a written or audio interview.
- Interview others in your industry. A great interview
can generate a lot of traffic and backlinks. This is a technique I use
on my site. Many link building tasks are tedious and boring, however I
really enjoy interviewing others in the self publishing industry. It's
interesting and also provides quality content for my site.
- Create a post talking about something that just happened in your niche. Message everyone who's
also talking about the same topic and see if you can get a backlink by providing a unique
perspective on what's going on.
- Add your blog URL to your email signature. You won't get much traffic, but people will see that
you're committed and high-powered individuals with influence will take notice.
- Start podcasting. Get your audio in iTunes.
