30 Days to Pumped Up Blog Traffic

It’s pretty much universally accepted these days that having a blog is a smart move for any business.  And because just about everyone understands that, just about everyone (and their uncle) has a blog.  What that means is that the competition for traffic to your blog is strong and growing on a daily basis.  After all, people can only read so much every day, so they’ll naturally gravitate to the blog content that is most relevant and meaningful to them.  But even the best-written, most content-packed blogs are useless if no one sees them in the first place.  So building traffic flow to your blog is at least as important as making it stick (getting people to follow you).

Especially if you’re just getting started with blogging, building traffic can be a bewildering, and often frustrating proposition.  With all the advice out there on what to do and how to do it, how can you know what works best for you?  The truth is, you can’t know.  Mostly, you have to research and see what makes the most sense to you, then try it and adjust as you go.  And once you have the formula down… well, actually, there is no formula.  If you think you’ve found the perfect formula, don’t get too comfortable.  It will change soon enough.  All that said, below are just four simple steps you can take immediately that will begin to increase your blog traffic.  It will take time to see significant results, and you’ll have to pick and choose where to spend most of your time, but these methods (as of today) will put you on the path to more traffic within 30 days.

1. Participate in forums. Forums, like the one at YoungEntrepreneur.com, are a great way to connect with fellow business people in your field as well as blog readers.  If you target your efforts at forums within your target audience, you’ll often find hundreds or even thousands of people interested in exactly what you’re talking about in your blog.  Get involved in the forums, offer real, useful advice, and when appropriate (and not too obviously), direct people to relevant blog articles on your site.  Also include your blog URL in your signature when allowed.

2. Use social media. We’ve written extensively on this site about the benefits of using social media sites like Twitter & Facebook and others.  So without going into great detail, let’s just say once more that social media is like no other medium in its ability to reach a targeted audience in a meaningful way, at little or no expense.  If you’re not using these tools, you’re missing out on traffic that you could be gaining right now.

3. Comment on other blogs. You probably read other blogs right?  So make it a point, whenever you’re on another person’s blog page, to comment on their posts.  This will often help to build a relationship with the blog writer, which can be beneficial in many ways, and it will allow you to post a link back to your blog.  As these are pretty much always no-follow links, you won’t benefit in that way, but you will benefit from the traffic generated by people clicking on your name.  Of course that won’t happen if your comments aren’t thoughtful or interesting, so, “Nice post” won’t help much.  For more on the topic of comment marketing, read this.

4. Make sharing easy. It’s amazing how many smaller blogs don’t offer an easy way for readers to share posts with others.  Even if you don’t like Twitter, for example, or if you don’t think having a Twitter account will help your business, you have to recognize that millions of people, including most of your readers, do use Twitter.  So at the very least, install TweetMeme or Topsy buttons on your posts.  If you want to really optimize the possibilities and you’re using WordPress, SexyBookmarks is a great plugin that makes it easy for readers to share on over 80 bookmarking sites.  Whatever you use, make sure people who love your stuff can easily tell others about it.  Word of mouth is still king when it comes to getting people to look at what you have to offer.

Is there more to driving traffic to your blog? Of course there is.  We didn’t even touch on SEO, SEM, backlinks, or a thousand other tools and methods you can use.  But these four steps are some that anyone can take without having to do much research or decipher complex methodology.  And if you start using them today, you just might see pumped up traffic in 30 days or less.

Quit Wasting Time on SEO

Now hold on… Before you think I’ve lost my mind, notice the title doesn’t say “Don’t do SEO” or “SEO Doesn’t Matter.”  In fact, spending quality time on SEO is anything but a waste of time.  It’s no secret that search engines are the primary source people use to find your site, and it’s also true that if you’re not ranking pretty high in the search results for your relevant keywords, you’re not going to get much of that traffic.  So SEO is unquestionably vital to your site’s success.  But which areas of your site’s pages should you be focusing on to improve your SEO?  If you focus equally on everything you can, you’re going to be wasting your time, because the truth is, some areas just don’t matter as much as others.  While people have different views about which areas are most important, most agree that there are 5 critical areas you must nail to really have a positive effect on your SEO, so here they are:

1. Content - Well, duh, right?  As is often said, content is king.  That’s not only true for keeping people coming back to your site - it’s also true for SEO purposes.  Search engines love fresh new (relevant) content.  There are a lot of bloggers who post infrequently and sporadically, and they’re just not doing themselves any favors from an SEO standpoint.  Relevance is another important issue when planning your content.  There are blogs out there that are mind-blowingly broad in their content topics, and this makes them less attractive to the search engines.  If you have posts about software, nutrition, politics, celebrity gossip, and how to do origami all on the same page, chances are you won’t rank high for any of those topics.  The exception might be a news site that already has substantial traffic, but even those tend to categorize their content both for better readability and SEO performance.

2. Keyword Frequency - The trick for some people is to balance quality, well-written content with keyword frequency.  This shouldn’t be hard though.  If you’re writing about a topic and you’re going to cover it well, you’ll naturally use your keywords in your writing.  One thing you can do though is scan what you’ve written and change some wording to other keyword variations - as long as it doesn’t make your writing sound dumb.  For instance, in this post, it would be fine to mix it up and spell out SEO as “search engine optimization” now and then, as long as it flows and doesn’t detract from the writing.  But it shouldn’t be obvious that you’re optimizing.  That’s annoying to read (even if it’s an SEO blog about SEO), and your readers - who want to learn about search engine optimization - will not tolerate it, nor will the search engines who you’re trying to search engine optimize your search engine keywords for in your article about search engine optimization. (SEO)

3. Title - Your title tag (or post title for a blog) is an important consideration for a couple of reasons.  First of all, and perhaps most importantly, you want to give your readers and idea of what the page is about.  In doing so, you’ll no doubt use your target keywords in your title - which is the other important aspect of title tags.  This makes perfect sense.  When people get a long list of search results, what do they do?  They scan the titles to find the result most relevant to their search.  So you’re helping yourself by helping your site’s visitors when you optimize your title tag with relevant keywords.  Also, for search purposes, try to keep your title under 72 characters.  That way the full title will show in search results.

4. Meta Description - Following your page’s title in the search results is the page description.  There are varying opinions about whether using keywords in your description meta will improve SEO, but it’s still something you want to pay attention to.  Why?  Because even if it won’t help you get ranked higher, it will increase click-through rates once you are ranked.  After scanning titles of search results for relevant content, searchers read descriptions, so even if you have the perfect title, the proper description will validate and cement their decision to click through to your page.

5. Links - Search engines believe (if a computerized algorithm can believe something) that the more connected you are, the more relevant you are.  So both incoming and outgoing links matter when it comes to SEO.  Outgoing links can be to other sites with related content or to relevant internal pages.  This basically tells the search engine, “See - what I’m presenting must be relevant.  Here are other sites and pages talking about the same thing.”

Obviously, like I said in the beginning, there are a lot of other areas that can affect SEO, including H1 tags, link alt tags, image alt tags, keyword meta tags, etc.  But if you want to spend more of your time running your business, focusing on the above five areas will improve your SEO without wasting your time.

Search Engine Marketing – The Basics on Getting Started Today

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, ranging from free methods, like social media, to very expensive approaches, like buying banner advertising.  Somewhere in the middle is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  While this method is never free, you can decide how much you’ll spend, and that number can literally go as high as you’d like.  If your marketing budget isn’t unlimited (is anyone’s?), can SEM be an effective way to get traffic to your site?  The answer is almost certainly, yes - if it’s done right.

What exactly is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing is buying search terms and keywords from a search engine.  This means that when someone searches for these terms, they see your ad.  Obviously there’s more to it than that, but that’s basically the general idea.

What Makes SEM Effective?

Whatever form of marketing you use, you goal is obviously to get your target market (those who most want your products and services) to see that marketing.  The more laser-focused your marketing is, the less your per-customer acquisition costs are, because you’re not wasting marketing dollars getting your name in front of people who don’t care.

SEM, more so than just about any other marketing vehicle, allows you to advertise to a potential customer in a highly-targeted manner.  When you think about it, when done right, SEM is effectively showing your ads only to people who just told you that your product is what they’re looking for.  It doesn’t get much more targeted than that!

How should you go about starting an SEM campaign?

As with any other marketing or general business initiative, your first step is planning.  You don’t have to put together an elaborate marketing plan, but there are some things you need to decide.  First, figure out which search terms and keywords you want to target.  This should be easy in the beginning, as you’ll simply pick the terms that most relate to your business.  As you get further into the process, you’ll evaluate other possible terms, using tools like Google’s keyword tool.  Next, you want to set a budget for your campaign.  This of course is an individual decision that only you can determine.  Suffice to say that in general the more you spend, the faster you can expect results.  Once you’ve decided on your keywords and budget, you’ll want to figure out exactly what will display when people see your ad.  There are volumes of information online about how to write compelling SEM copy, and it’s a great idea to review some of it.  Don’t try to reinvent the wheel on this one.  Last, but certainly not least, you’ll need to decide which page on your site people will land on when clicking on your ad.  While at first it might seem like your homepage makes sense, there are a lot of reasons to customize your landing pages based on specific SEM purchases.  Again, there is a lot written about landing pages, and you should research this thoroughly.

Ready, Set, Go!

There are three primary search engines, and most agree that your efforts are best spent with them than with any of the smaller sites.  Here are the three, with links to their SEM programs:

Google: AdWords

Yahoo: Yahoo Advertising

Bing: Microsoft adCenter

Each of the above programs offers solutions for the smallest of budgets, and each provides a wide range of tools and training to help you realize success in your SEM efforts.  This post is just an introduction to SEM.  If you’re considering your own SEM campaign, be sure to research your options and educate yourself on the ins and outs of this advertising medium.  And if you have experience to share, please don’t hesitate to do so in the comments!

Tweeting For Clicks

Like any other business or marketing tool, Twitter works well only when it’s used properly. But what does that mean? If you’re using it to drive traffic to your site, it means using some simple, specific techniques to improve Twitter’s effectiveness. Overall, the key is to stand out from the crowd. The problem is, Twitter’s greatest attraction can be its greatest flaw – it’s free. So it is flooded with millions upon millions of people, all screaming, “Look at me! Look at me!” With just a couple of simple guidelines though, you can stand out from the crowd. With patience and the right approach, people will not just follow your tweets, but click through when you post a link – and better yet, re-tweet it.

Offer value

Take a look at the screen shots of two Twitter timelines below. Both post links in pretty much every update, but with very different results. The user on the left probably wonders why his/her Twitter marketing efforts aren’t paying off, while on the right, Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki), with over 200,000 followers, gets thousands of click-throughs every day. The big difference is that the person on the left posts links that are entirely self-serving. In other words, however cleverly disguised, there is little doubt that when you click on one of those links, he/she is getting something out of it. On the other hand, Guy posts links to useful information. Yes, the information lies primarily on his site, so he benefits from your clicks, but he’s not trying to sell you something at every turn. He has set the expectation of his followers that he’s a resource, not a snake oil salesman.

The lesson to learn is that when you have a reputation for helping, people will respond favorably to what you have to offer. That of course is true everywhere, not just Twitter, but with all the scammers and spammers on Twitter, it’s especially applicable. We don’t recommend posting a link every time you post, and when you do, link to a helpful article, funny video, or cool new site more often than you post to what you sell. That way when you do direct followers to your own site, people will gladly click away!

Mix it up

Social Media is all about building relationships. It is a great opportunity for your prospects, readers, and customers to get to know you better. Even online, people do business with people, and even more so with people they like. So regardless of your industry, don’t make your Twitter feed all about business. A combination of personal posts about yourself, posts about your business, informational or general-interest posts, and re-tweets keeps your feed interesting and therefore worth following. Pam Moore (@PamMktgNut) with FruitZoom, Inc., a Florida-based marketing and Social Media consulting firm, does a great job of this. Her last 24 hours of posts, as of the time of this writing, included a link to a poll she created using PollDaddy, a few re-tweets, some @-replies, a link to a useful Social Media guide (on a site other than hers), a link to a blog post on her company’s site, and a post that she accidentally left her Blackberry at home today. Her 15,000+ followers know Pam’s feed is going to offer a variety of usefulness, entertainment, and personalization. So when she posts that link to her own site, her followers gladly click through.

Using Twitter effectively is part art and part science, and it takes time and patience to perfect it, but if your aim is to drive traffic to your site, we hope these tips will help. If you’ve got other advice, join in the conversation by leaving a comment below. We’d love to hear what’s worked well for you!

Understand Your Traffic Streams

If there is one thing that we would like you to take away from this blog post, it is that you cannot use generalizations when it comes to tracking and testing your marketing efforts. You really need to understand where your traffic streams are coming from and micromanage each stream, effectively, if you want to make an overall improvement in your performance. It makes little sense to try and establish averages over a number of different initiatives, just so that you can see how you are doing in overall terms.

We always seem under pressure to come up with statistics, to show that we are being productive with our time or initiatives or to prove that the money truly is “well spent.” The truth is that any analytics program worth its salt will enable you to drill down and really analyze every single visitor.

If you favor Google Analytics, you may have one of those plug-ins added to your blog to show you how you are doing through a summarized form, complete with miniature graph over the last 30 days. You will see your average “bounce rate,” and this may send you running for the hills, but after all what use are these figures by themselves?

The whole purpose of tracking and testing is to make changes. For sure, you could be the smartest marketer in creation or just plain lucky, find that your promotional and advertising methods work right out of the box and you need to do little to modify. We all know marketing a business is about trial and error and even the most educated and successful among us make mistakes and need to make changes. Be prepared to understand that you need to track each initiative before you put it in place, associate results with that particular track and you must be able to differentiate those results from any other concurrent initiative.

It is important to develop separate landing pages and associated anchor text, crucial reference points to enable you to quickly see where consummated sales originate. Remember also that a good proportion of visitors to your site will be poorly qualified and these will certainly help to skew your conversion rates.

If you are lucky enough to have a very highly trafficked site and have not taken steps to differentiate your sources, you will find it very difficult to move forward with any confidence. Whatever you may do to try and increase conversion rates in one particular area will be difficult to quantify as your average conversion rate, bounce rate or simple visitor rate will tend to absorb your efforts.

If you have not set up a trackable, definable list of goals and events and your landing pages are insufficiently identified, then it may be time for you to start afresh, redefine your objectives, come up with a plan and a means to track it and set a future date to start understanding and manipulating your traffic streams correctly.

Are all your traffic streams profitable - if not which ones are dragging you down?

Adam Toren

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