Think of me as your traffic accountant.
Any good tax accountant does Not want you to evade taxes and get yourself in trouble. That’s a bad reflection on them – not to mention that a jailed client will not be a client next year. No. It’s in their best interest to help you keep your nose clean.
So when I say think of me as your traffic accountant, I mean that I wouldn’t tell you to do things that would get you in trouble with the search engines or anyone else. But I definitely Do want you to get as much quality traffic as you can for the price you pay, whether in time or in cash.
There’s nothing sadder than seeing someone have a drastic fall in traffic that was wholly unnecessary. And if that happened to my clients, or my own sites, word would get around faster than you can say “Tinu logged in and fixed the problem herself.”
I put my rep on the line each time, so it is in my best interest to help you get more traffic. People get more traffic, then they tell their friends, or they come back for help with other sites, and it flows on like the river Jordan.
Why is that of any consequence at all?
Because I’m about to give you some advice. And I don’t believe anyone should take advice from folks who can’t back it up. That includes me, if you’re new here. So feel free to test all of this on your own, or add your own tips in the comment section.
The advice? Drum roll please…
How to Keep Your Blog Traffic
- Pay closer attention to your audience than you do to your search engine rankings.
Who knows what way the wind will blow in years to come. You may be able to do without traffic from Google one day – just like you’re probably doing without traffic from Hotbot right now.
However, you’ll never be able to do without your clients and prospects. If you could you wouldn’t be in business, would you?
So pay attention to what your audience wants to hear. I used to try and keep myself on a tight leash and not ramble so much. Then my repeat visits went down and I began to wonder – does my audience actually Like It when I ramble? Turns out that you do for some reason. Maybe it makes a better connection between us, who knows.
Bottom line, I watch what you like and give as much of it as I can.
- Shut Up if you have nothing interesting to say.
Of course, I believe that there’s never nothing to say. But I’m a writer and not everyone thinks that way.
For the past two months I have been going through a lot of personal issues, not to mention the recovery time I announced back in December. I could have logged in once a week to say “you won’t Believe what just happened to me.” But since it had no direct bearing on Free Traffic Tips et al? I kept it zipped up.
So yes, share relevant personal news. No, we don’t need to know that your ex was on Maury Povich.
After the first six weeks, post every day if it suits you and you have words of interest. But if you can sense that your posts aren’t full bodied and home brewed, it really is okay to make us go without for a few weeks. We’ll live. We won’t think so, but trust us, we will.
- When you Do Talk, Do It Loud and Proud
(Even if you find out later you were Loud and Wrong)It is considered impolite to be… how can I say this… wait, why am I trying to be politically correct? I’m blogging, not writing an article….
It’s considered impolite to be a Rock Star when you’re having a business dinner.
When you’re blogging, you aren’t at a business dinner. You don’t Have to be a Rock Star. You don’t even have to be a Star. But you definitely want to be noticed, maybe referenced, and hopefully linked.
So if you have news, share it. Heck, if you have gossip share it, just always, always, always, link to your suspicions or sources. On the rare occasion that a high-profile blogger’s information is totally off-base, they print a retraction. So don’t be afraid to suppose. Just let us know you are sharing a rumor or a hunch or a fact or an opinon.
- Do Unto the Blogosphere, and Make It Easy for Them to Do Unto You
When I have credible sources, I link to them. Even if I read something from the Google Blog but saw it first at Micropersuasion, I’m linking to Micropersuasion. That’s all there is to it. And let me tell you – it’s a Huge deal when Steve Rubel links to an article that you wrote even when it’s not posted on your site.
For the majority of people, I realize, that situation may never be in consideration. Most of the people reading this have nothing to do with search engines, public relations, or internet marketing.
Well, I’m here to tell you that even if your business is timeshare resales, link to your sources. You never know who is reading and who is going to link back. Especially if you’re in a business niche where twenty visitors eventually means at least one sale, find out what the neighborhood is like in your part of the Blogosphere, look around, and play nice with the other kids.
- Blog Like You Talk – But if You Talk “Funny” Get Sometone Else to Blog
Nothing will scare your visitors away faster than landing in technobabble by accident. I landed at a friend’s site about search engines, and the first paragraph I saw said somethinga bout (a+n) times the square root of pi and I clicked out before I even remembered why I went there.
Don’t get me wrong – if that’s how you talk, keep it real. But if that’s not the language your clients speak, you might want to either have an employee represent your company in the blog, or do a team blog that represents all the prominent voices.
- Give Every Subscription Option Under the Sun
I have a client overseas who can only pay by money order or similiar means. Do you think I refuse their orders just because it will take me extra steps to process it?
Most people paying online are going to use their credit card or debit card, by far. How crazy would you have to be to say, hm, 90% of people use credit cards, but the hell with that. If they want my binoculars, their only choice is to send me $20 by PayPal on Tuesday mornings.
In this same way, refusing to turn on your site feed, because most people are still following you by email makes absolutely no sense. Refusing to start an emal list or offer subscriptions to your blog headlines, summaries or posts via email is equally nuts, particularly now that there are tools in place that will translate feeds to email for you.
Not serving as much of your audience as you can is turning down money, plain and simple. I have people who subscibed to updates from me in some form or another for Years before they ever bought a single thing from me. And they are often among my best clients, the ones who last the longest and get the most out of what I teach them, because they’ve watched my business grow, and have seen me test my theories on my own sites.
If I didn’t offer a subscription version they liked, they may never have returned to hear more.
There are more of these tips but I did make that promise about not being superwoman. So I’ll be back with more first chance I get, though I can’t promise you tomorrow.
Until we meet again? Be well.
Tags: free traffic :: blog promotion :: blog traffic :: business blogging
