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10 Blog Traffic Tips

November 23, 2009 by Valerie Cudnik

In every blogger’s 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 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 serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a 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 likely 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 often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at 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.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

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:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Promoting Your Business Using Press Releases

November 10, 2009 by Valerie Cudnik

press-release Press releases are a great way to get media coverage of your business as well as links to your website. The trick is getting the press releases to the right people. There are several ways to go about this, some are free and some cost money.

For now, let’s consider the free options. There are many, many sources out there that will distribute your press release for free. I found a fairly comprehensive list of free press release sources in an article on Mashable.

Another source of contact information is to pay for access to a site such as Mondo Times. They maintain comprehensive lists of staff members, editors, etc., for most newspapers, magazines, tv stations, etc. Each record contains the name, phone number, fax number, email address, and street address. The basic membership gets you access to each individual record, but they can be painstakingly slow to build one record at a time. The costs for specialized purchased lists can add up quickly.

When choosing to promote your business with press releases, you may want to consider hiring a professional writer to help compose it. A professional can help maintain the focus of the information, as well as write in a professional format that media folks are used to reading. I work closely with a few professional writers, so please contact me if you need help with this part of your marketing campaign.

Quality Links = Better Rankings

October 3, 2009 by Valerie Cudnik

Link building must be part of your search engine optimization (SEO) plan. Where content is king on the internet, links are queen. Links back to your site are how the search engines tell whether your content is valuable or not.

Quality Counts

While there are many products available on the internet that claim to get you a substantial number of links back to your site, the quality, or lack thereof, may actually be detrimental to your rankings. If your business is a pet store and your links are on a site about vacations in the Bahamas, the search engines consider this a “junk” link and you may actually be penalized in the rankings game.

Some of the software out there that targets other sites for linking is actually quite sophisticated and will only give you results based on specific keywords.

You want to focus on links on sites that have complementary subjects. If you specialize in accessible real estate for handicapped people, a link on a site with other resources for handicapped people is a quality link. If that site has a good page rank on the search engines, then your link is even more valuable.

Anchor Text

The anchor text is the actual words on the page that you click on. The anchor text of a link is extremely important, because it’s that text that tells the search engine what your site is about.

For example:

For great information about home staging in Norfolk, click here

Check out this valuable information about home staging in Norfolk.

In these two examples the first one appears to be a link about “click here”, not good at all! The second example is a link about specific keywords. The links should be variations of the keywords you are trying to rank for.

Ideally, the links should also be to various pages on your website and not necessarily the home page. A link to the home page is a link to your site, but a link to a sub-page is a link to your CONTENT.

Conclusion

Focus on getting backlinks to your site with consideration to the source of the link, the content of the link, and the destination of the link.

Why Small Businesses Need Both A Logo And An Identity System

August 16, 2009 by Valerie Cudnik

By Erin Ferree

Experts urge small business owners to “brand” their business – to use a logo and a set of consistent marketing materials. But, they rarely go into the reasons behind this advice. Here’s a list of some of the benefits to having a professionally designed logo and marketing package:

Not to look so small – Home-printed business cards with perforated edges, or cards printed with standard designs available through Microsoft software or online business card vendors (like Vistaprint) scream, “Small-time vendor!” to your potential clients – and you’ll be similarly compensated.

To increase your chance of getting venture capital or selling a business – If you present a thorough business package, including marketing materials and graphics, your business will look more complete.

To attract more clients – Some clients look for a well-defined company look-and-feel as part of their qualifiers for making a purchasing decision.

To brand yourself – If you’re a consultant, you need a logo in order to build an image and a brand that’s bigger than just yourself.

To convey that you are established – A logo and professionally printed materials show that you are committed to both your business and to your clients.

To give clients a sense of stability – You may not have been in business “Since 1908”, but if you’ve invested in an identity, you’re much less likely to fold in the eyes of your customers. It goes a long way toward building the all-important “trust” factor.

To be more memorable – Forty percent of people better remember what they see better than what they hear or read. So having graphics associated with your business and having consistent graphics on your business materials make you more likely to come to the forefront of potential clients’ minds when they have a need for your goods or services.

To explain your company name – If your company name contains a little-known word or an acronym, the logo gives visual clues to its meaning.

To endear your company name to your clients – A difficult-to-pronounce or -remember company name may make it difficult for your clients to hire you. When potential clients have the need for your services, they can’t recall who you are! But if you reinforce the name with interesting, compelling graphics, they’re more likely to remember that hard-to-recall name, and to pick up the phone and hire you.

To explain an unusual line of business – If your business is nontraditional, or in a hard-to-explain industry, a logo can help to explain exactly what it is that you do.

To show what practices differentiate you from your competition – A well-designed logo can have many subtle meanings, and it can begin to tell the story of how you do business – what special practices make you stand apart from the competition.

To stand out in your field – A well-designed logo and an identity system can put you far above the competition, especially if they are paired with a strong marketing program.

In some industries, a logo is just expected – In the creative services industry, especially, having a logo is an industry standard.

Lastly, do it for yourself! – To show your commitment and for the sense of personal pride it will add to your practice.

These are just some of the benefits of having a professionally designed logo. If your business could use the kind of boost that having a logo provides, then contact us today for a free estimate!

About the Author

Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, is a brand identity and graphic design expert. She has been helping small businesses grow with bold, clean and effective logo and marketing material designs for over a decade. elf design offers the comprehensive graphic and web design services of a large agency, with the one-on-one, personalized attention of an independent design specialist. Erin works closely in partnership with her clients to create designs that are visible, credible and memorable – and that tell their unique business stories in a clear and consistent way. For more information about elf design, please visit:

Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erin_Ferree
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