This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.
- Before you write your first blog post, make a list of topics that speak directly to what people in your industry are most asking about. If you don’t know, consult WordTracker Questions.
- Do keyword research on your topic to use as tags and as subjects to write about. Run them through an online thesaurus as well.
- Optimize your blog for search engines. Properly configured blogs can get a continuous flow of traffic from search engines that is easy to maintain.
- Already have a blog? Double your blog posting for a week. Look at your traffic stats – this can bring 25 – 200% more traffic.
- Comment on more blogs by people in compatible markets. If you’re an interior decorator, it’s all well and good to comment on other interior decorator’s blogs, but you have more of an exclusive market among, say, local realtor blogs
- Submit to as many blogs taking guest blog posts as you can.
- Get some guest blogging happening on your site – it’ll give you a break and help you form partnerships.
- Don’t discount blog carnivals, or think that they’re beneath you. They tend to drive a lot of targeted traffic that’s actively interested in the topic.
Tags: blog traffic, blog traffic tips, increase web site traffic, increase-website-traffic, traffic from blog
Filed in
Google,
Search Posted by
Tinu Abayomi-Paul @
March 9th, 2010
This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.
- Choose one cookie based and one IP based statistics program, as the numbers are a bit different depending on which one you use.
- Look at a snapshot of your traffic using your statistics program weekly or monthly.
- Before you do keyword research, make sure you’re using the right keywords.
- Try asking your audience what they’d type into a search engine to find you.
- Instead of pursuing just the competitive, short tail terms (short phrases like “internet marketing“), or only less competitive, long tail phrases (longer phrases such as “how do I get started in internet marketing?”), use some of the longer phrases to reach the shorter phrases – rank for both.
- Choose one family of keywords and optimize for it. Unless you’re a seasoned expert, you’re not going to rank for dentist, dental practice, cosmetic dentistry, california dental work and los angeles crown settings. Pick an area, dominate it, then if you can, leverage your way into some of the other less competitive areas.
- Getting good search rankings is mainly about the quest to present to the search engines a balance of content and links.
- The harder, or more competitive, the keyword, the more complex it is to correctly balance the equation of content + links= a good ranking. The harder the keywords, the more multiple subtle factors come into play, but they are all related to these two items.
- There’s more than one way to skin a cat (and I still want to know when and why, in history we inherited this expression. Why would I want to skin a cat?) Nearly every theory of search can be debunked or supported by theory. What you want to find is the method that got results for companies like yours.
- Now that Google is trending towards personalization based on social circles, the quality of your social circle matters more than ever, as does the content you submit. Keep keywords and content in mind.
- Get into Google News with a press release.
- Get into Google News with an article.
- Get into Google News as a news provider.
- Pay more attention to Video. Film and television are the two mediums the masses are used to, and by far appear to be the most successful vehicles to promote your content. It’s far easier to rank with video than with text as many companies fail to realize how important video is.
- Go into any videos you have on YouTube and request the new auto-captioning available for all videos on YouTube with clear audio tracks. You can later take the auto-captioned file, improve it and re-upload with your corrections.
- Google is also placing more of an emphasis on localization in its shift to more personalized results. Be sure to log into the Google Local Business Center, as well as Yahoo’s, and get your local business office set up, whether or not you have a site.
- Google Blog Search is increasing in prominence as Google continues to change the look of the results page. If you don’t have a blog, start one. If you do have one, make sure it’s positioned correctly in Google Blog Search, not just for a general search, but for the times you publish a new post.
- Updates are another featured area of the upcoming new Google results page (you can already see this new Google look as the default on new computers, reportedly). To get in on this action, you want to make sure your tweets, and other real-time updates are on-message. That doesn’t mean talk about yourself all the time, it means, be consistent.
- If you have things to sell, Google products is for you. It’s much easier to submit than it was back when it was Google Base.
- Don’t forget about Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or the major directories, general or niche. Just because they aren’t Google doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Those of us who thought Yahoo was the only place that mattered were blindsided when Google came along, as were those who refused to add social media to their marketing mix, now that Facebook is driving as much traffic, or more than, Google. Today’s newbie could be tomorrow’s giant.
- Pay attention to the major players, and niche rulers in search and directories, but be selective about anyone outside the top ten. The idea that submitting your site to 6000 directories will get you anything other than links at the 10% of them that count at all, is a myth. And you can get 600 equivalent links from article marketing, forum marketing, or buying them, so what’s the difference?
Tags: google social search, Google-rankings, search rankings, search tips, search traffic, seo
This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.
- There’s two types of article marketing, high profit and high link value. To maximize exposure and be considered a thought leader, you want to do a lot of the first type, in order to get noticed by people who can offer the second type to you.
- In high link value article marketing, you’re attempting to get your articles published in as many venues as possible that are noticed by search engines.
- In high profit article marketing, you want two things. First, to be published in ezines. Second, for the high link value articles you’ve written to be noticed by editors on major publications, so they can invite you to write as part of their small, exclusive bank of expert writers. Some of these publications have tens of thousands, even millions of subscribers.
- In high value article marketing, you can worry about things like anchor text (what words are used when linking to a page) or other issues that associate your content or site with a given keyword, but don’t obsess. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in article marketing is secondary. The primary goal is the same as the primary goal always is – make more sales. Don’t lose sight of this in the name of SEO.
- If you’re having trouble coming up with a topic to write about, start with your product. What problem does it solve? What are people who have that problem typing into search engines?
- The number one thing to worry about when writing an article isn’t the title, the resource box, the keywords, the links, or even the content. It’s how many people that article can reach, followed by what percentage of those people can be persuaded to take your most desired action after reading it.
- If you don’t like to write, record yourself talking about the issue for three to five minutes, then send it to be transcribed. Clean it up and you have an article.
- Try and tie your tip to breaking news when you can. If you can’t get an editor to publish it quickly enough, post it to your blog first.
- If you’re trying to leverage search results to your site, post articles to your site first. Then the article on your site is the original, and every one else’s is the duplicate.
- If you want to leverage the search power of another site that has a better chance of capturing a top ten ranking than your site, publish your article at that site first.
Tags: article marketing, high-profile-article-marketing, high-profit-article-marketing, how to market with articles, marketing with articles
This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.
- The first thing you want to do when attempting to drive traffic to a site is assess whether or not methods other than advertising will work on the site. For example, you can’t do article marketing successfully with an affiliate link.
- The next thing you want to do if a site is viable, is determine which of the available methods will go with your site, prioritizing from the most compatible to the least.
- Every business that has a web site, and many that don’t, can benefit from organic search or social media, usually both. The complicated part is how. When in doubt, rely on a plan with those two things at its center.
- Make sure that at some point before proceeding, you have a goal for the project. You can’t evaluate whether you’ve been successful if you don’t know whether traffic has gone up, if sales are rising, if more people are subscribing etc. Choose a traffic goal that’s directly related to your business objectives.
- Determine the desired path through your site to a sale – what is the money funnel, and is it sound? Do people come to the site, subscribe, buy? Should they see your ad and then call? If so, are they doing it? If not, why not?
- Never rely on one traffic method – what happens if it fails or is suddenly obsolete?
- Don’t try to do ALL the traffic methods you come across either, not unless you have a staff to execute on your behalf. Instead of attempting to do every traffic method you’ve heard of, add one at a time of up to five methods. Drop the ones that don’t work and replace them with new techniques.
- In selecting the five core techniques you want to use, it helps if they play off each other. In other words, if part of your mission is to build links, then article marketing or forum posting might help you get there faster. Approaching them with a mind to maximize those particular strengths will be more effective than doing so as an after thought.
- Test each traffic technique by isolating as much as you can. Try blocking a page from being indexed by search engines, and testing the method on only that page.
- At the same time, don’t get so attached to testing and test results that you can’t proceed without 100% proof positive that the specific technique works the way you wanted it to – sometimes that gets in the way. For example, a tracking link in a resource box of an article will get much less traffic than a regular link.
- Get help if you need it. No one expects you to be brilliant at your business And at marketing it. Even if you are, you only have two hands. Get a virtual assistant. Hire a marketing team or a search expert.
- When you hire someone, or choose someone’s advice to follow, do your homework. Google their name, their site and their company, and pay attention to both compliments and complaints. Check if they’re respected by their peers – are they guest speakers or authors outside their own web site? Who are they affiliated with?
Tags: free-traffic, how to, how to get traffic, how to get web traffic, how to increase traffic, how to know whether to trust an expert, traffic tips
