This is the last post in the blog traffic series this time through .
Quite often I see people not use the most powerful part of their blog - the feed.
Here are just a few places and sites that you may be using where you can add in your feed and give people a chance to find your blog from things you are already doing. (This is not an all inclusive list by any means.)
Facebook Profile
Friend feed
Squidoo pages
Hub Pages
Wet Paint pages
In almost all of these you just need to add the url to your feed and they will start updating your listing on all of those pages each time you update your blog.
If you have not set up feed burner or done anything special with plugins the default feed url for your self hosted WordPress blog will be http://yourdomain.com/folder/feed.
Now if that is not your feed look for the feed link, right click and check properties and you can see exactly what your feed url is.
Adding your feed into all these places will give more people the chance to find your blog while just doing what you normally do anyhow.
Even better especially for the various sites like Squidoo, et al your lens is getting new content added each time you post to your blog. Gotta love things that allow you to automate updating and we all know how much Google loves fresh content when the spiders visit.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
If you are blogging Twitter is a must. It incorporates quite well with any blog traffic strategy. Twitter is basically micro blogging. You can post as often as you want but have to keep your post to just 140 characters.
It makes you get your thoughts into a very compact format. This makes it perfect as a lead in to your blog and like all social media others blogs.
Now lets look at how you can get traffic for your blog from Twitter. As there are books written on all of the ways that you can use Twitter for promoting you we will stick primarily to promoting your blog.
First like all social media you need to be participating in the community not just promoting your blog. Otherwise you are nothing but a spammer and people will not continue to follow you and no one will see your message. Nuff said.
There are some tools that can help automate the posting for you. Tweet My Blog will automatically post to Twitter and also allow you to show your latest “tweets” on you blog in the sidebar. You can also use Twitter Feed which will automatically post when it monitors a change in your RSS feed. There are probably others but those are two that I have used.
You should also remember like bookmarking it does not hurt you to “tweet” about posts that you have commented on. All of these can bring you increased traffic and enlarge your circle of influence.
Like all social media it is a matter of being a good resource and not just promoting your items solely.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
MyBlogLog is a social site for bloggers. Started originally as a straight social site they have continued to add more items to it. You can join it free.
Now how do you get traffic from MyBlogLog?
MyBlogLog allows you to add a widget to your blog that will let you see who is visiting your blog that belongs to MyBlogLog. More importantly you will show up on other blogs showing the widget that you visit. These link to your MyBlogLog page and allow people to find out more about you and the blog/s you have.
You can add others as contacts through MyBlogLog just as you can add friends at Facebook or MySpace. It is another way to connect with others.
The real power though is that you can add your other social sites to MyBlogLog. Sites like Facebook, Stumble Upon, Digg, Furl, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
The nice things is that each of these creates links that Google finds that go back to your various blog/s from these social sites.
Here is an example by just looking quickly at my profile this am. The following links were created and do get indexed because they show up in my Google Alerts all the time.
4 Stumbles I made yesterday
A comment I made on someone else’s blog
A new video I added at YouTube
5 Twitter conversations
Feed of my latest blog posts
Latest updates at Facebook
So just by using MyBlogLog all of the other things I do to create backlinks gets amplified automatically. That is the real power of MyBlogLog.
I can also look and see the latest things that all of my contacts have done too. (So add me as a contact so we can interact.)
You get to network with others and create extra links on autopilot. Definitely worth the time to set it up once to help you generate more traffic.
There is one more thing about MyBlogLog though. If you upgrade they provide you with some excellent tracking of what is happening on your blogs. You will be able to see how people found your blog, which pages they viewed and what links they clicked.
Free members get to see the top 10 but paying the $25 a year lets you see all of the stats available to you. Truly invaluable information to help you improve your blog’s performance.
There are other similar type sites like Blog Catalog but noen that are as powerful as MyBlogLog.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
This is the continuation of the series on blog traffic. I was using the 5 comment rule here and stopped it because of a lack of comments but comments have picked up considerably so I have decided to continue the series.
First a bit about what social bookmarking is. There are hundreds of sites out there that allow you to bookmark your posts. Digg, Stumble, Propellor are a few of the bigger ones.
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.
As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[1]
So just like the bookmarks you keep on your browser to be able to return to at your leisure social bookmarks are similar except that others can see your bookmarks and rate them accordingly.
Here is the key though. You need to bookmark regularly and not just your sites. If you find a quality post let others know about it.
If you are sharing lots of posts and your quality is good on what you save others are more likely to pay attention to what you are saving. If all you save are your sites you will soon get branded as a spammer and in some cases may lose your account with that service.
So like most things in the Web 2.0 world the key is to be participating in the community. Trying to game the system may work short term but usually comes back to bite you.
That being said here are a few things you can do that will be helpful both to you and to the community. If you are commenting on other blogs and participating in the conversation make sure that you are bookmarking them.
This helps both the blog owner and you. More traffic for them is likely to see more people follow through to your blog. This is especially true if you are adding to the conversation and not trying to spam them.
So start bookmarking regularly and watch the traffic increase.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
One of the things I love is tracking where my visitors come from so I know what is driving my traffic. It helps me to understand what is working and what is not.
Now I use both Google Analytics and for blogs My BlogLog. Was there today as usual (yes I am always checking stats a bad habit - NOT unless you use that as an excuse not to do what needs to be done) and noticed something.
The other day AWeber announced their new feature that allows you to tweet your email broadcasts automatically. Relatively simple even for an Old Bald Guy like me.
So………
I wrote about it as soon as I saw it and tracked back to their blog from another blog of mine as it fit what I had been writing about at Three Turtle Marketing.
Because I was doing this very shortly after they announced this on their blog it ended up as the 5th comment on their blog. So now I am getting visitors stopping over from that.
Getting out there and interacting on topics that will get a bit of play early can make a nice difference in your traffic. Are you doing it? If so how regularly?
Just a few thoughts to help you improve your traffic.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
If you have not left a question please leave one for the Blog Talk Radio Show tomorrow at 3pm on the post below this.
Just finished reading a great post from Alex Syseof who I met last June in Philadelphia, Alex has guest posted here a while back and has a blog I follow regularly.
I strongly recommend you check it out. This blog uses comment luv and do follow. His post will show you how to let Google tell you what to write about next and then you will be able to use that info for more traffic.
My traffic tip series is stalled due to lack of 5 comments (hint, hint) but this is an article worth your time to read and implement.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Before I start on this topic a special thank you to Joel Osborne who added the 5th comment on the last traffic post. Thought the series was going to die for lack of response.
You can also see that I have added comment luv to this blog which shows your latest blog post when you leave a comment. Go check out Joel’s to thank him for continuing the series.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Video has become huge and is increasing in usage daily. Look at the traffic stats for places like YouTube. See how many video sales letters and squeeze pages you run across now.
The reason is the spread of high speed connections. Back when most people accessed the internet by way of a phone modem it was not possible. Now it is and people love video they are trained to like it by watching television.
Now how can this help your blog get traffic?
When you add a video at places like YouTube add your full link into the start of the description. ie - http://wptutorial.com/blog It is important to add the http:// or it won’t be clickable.
You can also add it as part of your video when submitting them. Now I use my videos that would promote this blog for my products because I have created products about WordPress but could use the same techniques to drive people here instead of to my products.
Videos also can be very useful when added to your blog. Each time WordPress issues an upgrade I tend to bring back my video that shows people how to upgrade here and as it promotes my product it works both ways.
Remember this post needs 5 comments before the next part of the traffic series will be posted and now I will even promote your latest blog post with comment luv.
Many of the questions I get on a regular basis here and on the monthly Q and A have to do with generating traffic.
Every one is looking for a magic button. Guess what the magic button is a 4 letter word you really don’t want to hear but I will tell you anyhow - WORK.
When is the last time you did any of these for your blog?
Wrote an article and submitted it to various directories linking to your blog
Commented on a related blog with a thoughtful comment and a link back to your blog
Posted a video with your link to You Tube, Revver, et al
Added a podcast and submitted it
Bookmarked your content and others at Stumble Upon, Digg, et al
Commented on others pages at MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, et al
Posted on Twitter about your latest post
Use Facebook and added your RSS feed
Added your RSS feed to a Squidoo lens, Hub page, Wet Paint, et al
If all you are doing is posting to your blog once a week and wondering why no one stops by guess what?
Spend a few minutes each day doing just one thing on the list above and you will see an increase in your traffic. Do 2 or 3 and see a bigger increase in your traffic.
Stop looking for the BIG RED EASY BUTTON and do something and do it regularly.
In future articles I will be going into detail on some of these items and how if you are willing to put in just a little bit of effort in a few minutes each day you will have found the button but…
Creating the button requires - EFFORT.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. For these traffic posts I am implementing a 5 comment rule. I will not address any of these topics unless I have received 5 comments on this post. So if you want me to continue to add valuable tips and tricks leave your comment below.
Today is day 4 of the 5 steps to a profitable blog. We have already covered finding your niche, setting up your blog and how to post your blog. Today we will work on generating visitors.
The first thing I do with any new blog is to submit my feed to as many RSS directories as I can. To do this I use a FireFox plugin called Submit Em Now. It is easy to use and the payback for the hour or so of effort is huge as it is one time effort.
Start bookmarking your posts to various bookmarking sites. I use a service called OnlyWire which allows me to bookmark once and have it submitted to various services.
Now while on the subject of bookmarking make sure that you bookmark other sites too. If all you ever bookmark is your own sites you stand the chance of losing your account at some sites. Bookmarking is supposed to help others find quality information. When you find it bookmark it.
Comment on blog posts. This allows you to generate not only links back to your site if they allow do follow it allows you to get traffic from others if…
Here is the big if on commenting on blog posts. Take part in the conversation. Add value to the blog where you comment. Don’t just go in and say “I agree” or “I like your post”.
If you like it say why and what it has done for you. If you don’t agree make a cogent argument for why you feel the way you do. Now that adds value.
A couple more items that will help you generate traffic. Submit articles to the directories especially two part articles where part one goes in the directory and part two is on your blog.
Use your blog link in forums where you are active. Note don’t spam forums to get your link in any more than you spam blog comments.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging - Step One.
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