Blog Promotion: 7 Strategies That Work By Jack Humphrey
Filed under: Blogging, Getting Links, Traffic Generation
I just finished looking at my stats and thought I would
show you where my traffic is coming from and what
marketing tactic I used to get it.
Below are only the things that produced visitors to my
site in the last 48 hours. Nothing theoretical
whatsoever.
1) Search Engines
Yesterday was my biggest day yet with this new site
platform and the performance is unlike anything I have
ever experienced before.
I had more search engine traffic from more phrases in
one 48 hour period than ever.
>From very nice short tail keywords like “video
syndication” to fat long tail phrases like “how to get
more friends on myspace.”
And everything in between.
How do I do so well in the engines?
I use the very best publishing system on Planet Earth.
Nuff said.
2) Article Syndication
LOL - right? Wrong. Article syndication is still a very
powerful traffic driver if you do it properly.
Rather than try to be on every article directory on the
web, I go for the most important article directories on
the web.
I also write the best content I can on highly relevant,
topical, hot issues in my niche.
I do not wirte and syndicate articles for links. I
write for traffic. Huge difference most people
completely ignore.
I syndicated this article over the weekend and am
getting traffic from the following article sites:
* GoArticles.com * Ezinearticles.com
I will get traffic from many others, but I am only
showing you today what happened to drive real targeted
traffic in the last 24 hours. (People don’t do this
anywhere else that I know of by the way!)
I syndicate my articles exclusively with
SubmitYourArticle.com.
3) News Readers
Because I have several feeds to choose from, and a wide
range of related topics I publish on, I have feed
subscribers on all kinds of readers.
In the last 24 hours I have gotten traffic from people
using feed readers from:
* Yahoo * Google * Bloglines * Delicious, and *
different versions of desktop readers like
MyWebTop.com.
4) Links
I’ve gotten significant traffic in the last 48 hours
from sites such as:
* BradFallon.com * CreativeBits.org *
WillieCrawford.com * MichelFortin.com
and many many others.
These are link partnerships or just people pointing to
specific posts here and commenting on their blogs.
The better your content, the more people comment and
trackback your site. So good content equals good link
traffic.
5) TrafficSwarm
I get a good amount of traffic each day from
TrafficSwarm, which is no new kid on the block.
I have tested the traffic from this service and opt-in
rates are good, meaning the traffic isn’t junk traffic,
if you were wondering.
They have a free and paid version. Don’t bother with it
on the free level. It is extremely inexpensive traffic
compared to Adwords and Co-registration, and there are
other benefits of membership aside from direct traffic
and subscribers.
6) Video Syndication
I have been doing screen capture blog marketing videos
lately and syndicating them on all the free video
sharing sites available.
Since I started (I have only done 4 so far) I can
attribute top 10 rankings in Google for terms like
“blog marketing videos” and many others to this
marketing tactic alone.
Since video sharing sites are all popular (none of the
sites I syndicate videos to are under PR5, most PR6 or
higher) the links are worth a lot and the traffic is
great each time I submit a video.
Video syndication will be one of the buzz phrases of
2007. Glad I am in the top 10 for that phrase too!
7) Tagging and Pinging
Or simply posting properly and showing up automatically
(and practically instantly) in places like Technorati
which track blogs, is a big daily traffic driver.
Right after I post this I will see traffic from
Technorati and other sites that I ping.
Kind of encourages me to post regularly knowing every
post brings me more traffic and another chance to score
in the engines for more keywords.
If you don’t know how this is all done, the best
information available on the subject is from Sean Wu.
Again, the above tactics all resulted in real, live,
free targeted traffic to the Friday Traffic Report in
the last 48 hours.
Thought you’d like to see what is working based on my
actual log files rather than more theoretical pieces
from people who don’t necessarily use the tactics they
push to drive traffic to their own sites.
—About Jack Humphrey—
Jack Humphrey is the editor of the Friday Traffic
Report. He teaches blog marketing, social marketing,
and link building strategies. Stop by and subscribe to
his blog at http://www.jackhumphrey.com
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Blog Posts that Get Attention
By Sharon Housley
Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers…
1. Draw Attention
Use titles to attract the reader’s attention to the blog post. The title should mimic newspaper headlines and generate interest in the blog post. The title can be controversial, but not to the extent of being misleading. Use action words in the title. Bloggers will often come up with a handful of potential titles for blog posts, and then settle on the title that is best suited to a particular blog post.
2. Deliver
Having a catchy title, but following it with content that fails to deliver, will not endear you to your readers. The blog content must deliver what is promised in the blog title, or readers will unsubscribe and stop reading. When deciding on a blog title, do not stray too far from the content, as the two are intricately related — the title will attract the reader’s attention, but the content must then live up to expectations… or the blogger’s reputation will suffer.
3. Accurate
Nothing stains a blogger’s reputation like inaccurate information, so be sure that your blog posts contain accurate information. Intentionally posting inaccurate or false information will significantly damage a blogger’s reputation. But if an error unintentionally or inadvertently occurs in a blog post, be sure to quickly post a retraction or correction, along with an explanation and an apology in order to salvage your good reputation.
4. Relevant & Timely
Blog posts should always be relevant and timely. Hearing about something long after it has occurred will not captivate readers. Blog about information that is occurring in the here and now. If you are going to write something that is no longer timely, be sure to add some sort of twist, or include new or updated information to make it relevant.
5. On Topic
All blogs should have a general theme that connects all the posts on the blog. Readers will expect posts that are related, so stay true to the blog’s theme and topic.
6. Use Keywords
Use keywords liberally in blog posts. Search engines will attempt to categorize the content of a blog post and discern its general topic. By including related keywords or keyword phrases, search engines will have an easier time classifying the blog’s contents. Additionally, a blog that uses keywords will have a better chance of ranking well for those keywords or keyword phrases in organic search listings.
7. Evaluate Web Logs
Review web logs to determine what blog posts have been popular with readers. Then figure out how to provide similar or related content that might also be of interest to those readers.
8. Original
Blog posts should always contain original and unique content. If you are simply re-posting information from others, include editorial content or a different spin to the information. Readers do not want to constantly rehash the same information — they are interested in reading new material.
9. Chunky Content
Break content into smaller, readable chunks. Most website visitors will just scan paragraphs for information, and very few will take the time to read all the words contained in a post. Use bulleted lists, or break web copy into paragraphs with bolded sub-topics that appear before the paragraphs.
Writing blog posts is not just about spewing forth content. The best blogs are well thought out, and contain provocative and interesting unique content. Follow the above steps to produce a relevant blog worth reading.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.
Instant Wordpress Themes
I just came across something interesting today! I found out that Gobala Krishnan just launched Volume 1 of his “Instant Wordpress Themes”, and you can get 7 beautifully designed Wordpress themes for just $1 each.
According to Gobala, these themes are “plug-in-profit” themes, which means all you need to do is insert your Adsense ID and Clickbank ID, and you’re in the money making zone.
I just got my copy, and it looks great! Click here to check it out.
10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be series about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
-
MMEzine
Subscribe to the MMEzine today and you will be able to submit your ad to our Classifieds page every week at no cost!
Your details will never be shared with a 3rd party.