4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results. If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that.

Number but have reached a traffic plateau lately

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).
First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day) Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on). Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work. If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”.

Here are some ideas for killer articles

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together. Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day) The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles.

Here are some ideas for killer articles

You should push it in any way you can. Examples include: * letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though), * letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it, * getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites, * getting some friends to Twitter the article, and * posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

Improve Your Search Rankings with Internal SEO

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it.

The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a ton. A few days after the post was published, I noticed that I was getting some traffic the search engines. The post was on the front page of Google, around 6 or so for the keyword phrase “government stimulus package.” This is the first step in improving your SERPs.

1. Look at Your Stats

Find out which pages you are getting traffic to from the search engines and what keywords are being used to get there. This is where we need to focus. Improving your ranking for a term from 7429 to 43 takes your traffic from 0 to 0. If you can improve from 9 to 1, you will see a huge increase in traffic if it is a phrase that people are searching for.

Now that we have a few pages that are getting some traffic and the keywords they are getting it from, we have to do a little keyword research.

2. Keyword Research

The first step is to find out which phrases we want to target. Look at the keywords that are getting the most traffic and find out where you currently rank. You could use your web analytics program for this, and then check the rankings on Google.

At this point, you can also use a keyword search tool to find out how much traffic each of these phrases gets.

Now we want to focus our efforts on the terms we rank the highest for that get the most search traffic.

3. Internal SEO

Have you ever written anything similar to this before? Go through your archives and find where you have mentioned this topic before. Update the old article with a link to the new one using the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If this is a topic that people want to know more about, consider writing another post or two expanding on the first one. In each new post, link to the original article with one of the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Next, go back to the post you are hoping to rank higher. Is the keyword already in the article? Consider making it bold. Is there a section where the phrase would make a good header? Consider adding it. Don’t stuff the article full of keywords as you still want the people that come to enjoy your writing. However, if these changes can be made without affecting the quality, they may help improve your ranking a little bit.

These things do two things. They show the search engines what your pages are about (hopefully the keywords you are targeting) and they show them that they are important pages. The more links you have pointing to the page, the more important you are making it in Google’s eyes.

4. Watch your Rankings and Traffic Surge

I went back to my post and made the keyword bold when I used it. Then I went through the archives and found another post that talked about the stimulus package and added a link to the new post. I also wrote a few more articles in the following weeks that talked about the stimulus package, so I linked back in each of those as well. The result? I moved up to #1 in Google for the phrase “government stimulus package” before it passed. It brought thousands of visitors to my blog, and the week that the bill passed is my highest traffic week ever.

The part of this that is really powerful is that all of this was done several days after the article was posted. The regular readers had read it already, and anyone who was going to link to it already had. I was then able to move from #6 to #1 in Google simply by telling Google what the page was about and that I thought it was important. Never underestimate the power of linking to yourself internally.

I have since dropped behind irs.gov and recovery.gov, but that post has been viewed more times than any other. It also gave me a valuable lesson in SEO that has helped increase my search traffic to many other posts as well.

How to optimize your Alexa Ranking

Here is a collection of methods you can use to your Alexa ranking. Most of these recommendations are by various webmaster colleagues, I know that I have said, they have positive results on their experiences with the Alexa ranking.
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Among the other recommendations and come from sources, as already mentioned at the end of this message.

Does this work? According to some, namely the work. But not that most of them require a kind of active effort, and the hours worked, provided that there will always lead to success, special operations.

To increase your Alexa ranking in the long term, I strongly recommend that the focus on developing high quality content and attract more audience, rather than relying solely on an artificial increase your Alexa ranking.

Grande-link deserves content leads to a natural growth in traffic and the site is an excellent way to stand your Alexa ranking.

It is important that absolutely should spend their efforts more and more on the public website, with the implementation of integrated one of the following below.

* Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox extension of the research and the state define a blog as a home. It is the basic step.

* Put a ranking Alexa widget on website. I have a few days ago and has a high dose of clicks per day. After some click on each account, such a visit, even if the toolbar is not by the visitors.

* Tell to others to use the Alexa toolbar. This also applies to the friends who are webmasters and other visitors to the website / blog readers. Make sure that the link to the Declaration of Alexa toolbar and tracking system, so that your readers know what installing the toolbar or the enlargement means.

* Recommend a friend to assess and Alexa's site in your profile. It is not entirely sure his influence on the ranking, but help in a certain Art

* Write about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. With them and send targeted traffic (visitors with the toolbar already installed). This has implications gradually in the Alexa.

* Post in the Asia-sites and social networking forums. Some webmasters have suggested that East Asian Internet users are big fans of the Alexa toolbar, to judge by the presence of several Asia-site and in the top 500 by Alexa. I suggest you try this option only if you have the time or ability to do so.

* Take a part of webmaster tools to your website. That was a magnet for webmasters who repeatedly for your site access to the tools.

* PayPerClick campaigns. Purchase of advertising in search engines like Google or Ask for help, just in the traffic. Twice the range, if your ad is very important for webmasters.

* Creat Alexa category in your blog or website.

* Use Alexa autosurf. Work? Perhaps the brand for the new locations. I believe that the new websites with a very poor Alexa ranking. Note that there are problems when you try to run the car sailed at the side of contextual advertising like Google AdSense. They are also long-term solutions for improving your Alexa ranking, so we advise you to be used with caution.

Learn About Ping Service

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The thing is, you don't know what it is and what it can do for your blog. Well that's fine because a lot of bloggers don't quite understand pinging. In this newsletter, we will explain what pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging services are. After you've read this newsletter, you'll know exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders—both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey, there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs

Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls (updates) through a web-based interface. Recently updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

Pinging tells people when your blog is updated. It is an incredibly useful, and easy to sign up for service, so be sure to sign your blog up for pinging!