January 27, 2008

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog

How to generate tons of traffic to your site:

An In Depth-Study of Traffic Generation

In this article, as the title implies, I discuss different ways to generate traffic to your site. I'm going to start off with the assumption that you know nothing about internet marketing, traffic building, SEO, and social marketing. Even if you already know some (or even a lot) about these things, I'm sure this article will still be a valuable read. My goal is to provide you with a launching point; there is tons of stuff you can build on in this article. It should provide you with ample material and information to begin and boost traffic to your site, whether it's a first-week site, or a four-year-old competitive blog. Also, when talking about social sites, I try to outline general principles so that you can take them and apply them to a wide range of sites. So, on to the content.

Why Do People Even Come to Your Site?

The internet is a truly amazing technology. It allows us to share information with others, and, more importantly, to make money from the comfort of home. But before you can make any money, you're going to need people to come to your site; traffic.

If you're new to building traffic, it may seem like a really big, really confusing world. It's hard to know where to start, and even if you have been trying to build traffic for a long time, you are probably always looking for more ways to increase the numbers.

First off, generating masses of traffic really isn't a magical thing that only a few people know how to do. There isn't a god of internet who sits in a server on the France/Switzerland border dealing out huge amounts to certain lucky (and random) sites, and taking away traffic from other sites. Getting traffic is much more scientific. Here's my formula for traffic Generation:

Unique, Quality content + Lots of Hard Work = Lots of Quality Traffic

Now of course, you have to know what to work on. But that's why I'm writing this article.

One thing that I can't stress enough is the need for quality content. This is probably the most key point to traffic generation. If something is interesting, unique, and informative, people will want to read it. That's why the internet was invented, to share information. If you realize that people are looking for information, and you give them what they're looking for, then all you have to do is get the word out about your content, and people will come.

Now of course, if you're selling a product, the same basic principles hold true. If you have a unique and quality product, all you have to do is tell people about that and they'll be happy to buy.

So if someone comes to your site, he is probably looking for information on some topic or another. If you can offer him that information, you are all set.

The Two Basic Traffic Sources of the Internet

There are two sources of traffic on the internet. These are the search engines, and the social sites. There are many other minor sources, but none make much of an impact on anything. They just give you a random visit here and there.

These two methods of traffic generation are becoming more and more integrated. Search engines rank sites according to content and links. Social sites give out TONS of links. It's a pretty simple conclusion that social sites are a major benefit to SEO. Now, on to some specific strategies for building traffic via SEO, and more importantly, Social Sites.

Social Sites Strategies

If you don't really know anything about social sites, it can be very hard to know where to even begin, let alone WHAT to begin. The world of social sites is growing, actually, it's more than growing, it's exploding at an exponential rate. I don't know the exact statistics, but at the very least, multiple new sites pop up every day.

(1) Invest in the future. Here is my long term investment strategy: become an authority on small, relatively new sites. Why? Because the internet and the number of people who use social sites is expanding so quickly, in a year or two, small sites have the potential to be as big as stumbleupon, digg, del.icio.us, and reddit are now. Of course, it would be stupid not to exploit the power of these 800 pound gorillas now, but I also like to invest in the future traffic of my site.

(2) Build a large network of friends. The best strategy in social sites is to build a large network of friends. Even if this means an "I'll add you, you add me" approach, it's worth it. Once you build a network of friends, you have your authority spread out through a site; you essentially have roots that help you to grow the tree of traffic to your site. Generally, the more friends you have, the more internal links you have planted somewhere in the site, giving you more authority in the eyes of the site. So just get down and sludge through a site, getting anyone you can to be your friend. This is a major point, especially in big sites (more below).

(3) How do you get your stuff shared or bookmarked? You give people good content. It seems obvious, but sometimes the obvious is the most hard to see: people are looking for good content when they go on these sites, so if you give them what they're looking for, then they'll give you their support. Don't even bother to bookmark or share average or trash material, because it will get you nowhere, and it will be a waste of time. Here are 5 things that people tend to bookmark or share:

     -Funny or disgusting. Let's face it, your average internet surfer is probably looking for a way to pass the time. People like to laugh, and they like to be grossed out (I don't know why, but think about it, it's true). He's trying to entertain himself. If you give him entertainment, he'll support you.
     -Truly useful information. People actually look for information. If you can offer useful, fresh information to someone, he will appreciate that and support you.
     -Bashing people, brand-names, and companies. People can get very emotional about companies or websites or people they dislike. Out of pure resentment or identification, people will support something that bashes someone or something they don't like. Get people to identify with your article.
     -Controversial topics. This is similar to the one above. People can get very emotional, and will many times support something just because they feel strongly about it.
     -Breaking news. News stories that are the first to tell about a major event that people care about also go up very fast in bookmarking and sharing sites.

(4) If you have good content, how can you get people to find it? The nice thing about the social sharing sites is that they are viral. If one person likes it, they'll tell his two friends, who will then tell their two friends… etc. etc. It builds on itself. But you have to get the first group of people. This can be challenging, but there are a couple of ways to work it out. First of all, utilize the friends that you have on that given website (this is where having a large network of friends comes in handy). Send a shout out, or leave a comment somewhere so that your content gets exposed directly on that website. Next, you'll want to utilize any social networking sites your a part of (i.e. facebook, myspace, bebo, etc). Send a message to your friends and tell them briefly about the site. It will give you more traffic exposure. Another thing you should do is make it very easy to bookmark or share your page; put up buttons directly on your page if possible.

SEO Strategies

SEO is basically about two things: links and content. If you can get a lot of both, then you're all set. Again, it will be a huge help if you have original

(1) How do you get good quality inbound links? Well, there are multiple ways. The best linking strategy is this: find some sort of portal where you can put up content, and link back to your site after writing an article. Make sure to use a good keyword when linking back to your site. Don't just say, "For more info, click here." Use a keyword phrase, for example, if your site was on red racing cars… "A good site for information on red racing cars." Here are some examples of sites you could use to post content wit backlinks.
     -A Squidoo lens
     -A blogger devoted to this purpose
     -A hub on Hubpages.com
     -An article on ezinearticles.com
     -An article on goarticles.com
     -An article on Gather.com
     -A Myspace blog
Don't just post links to your homepage; if you have a blog, link to specific posts as well as your main bog URL, if you own a multi-page website, link to relevant subpages off the homepage. Now posting content with backlinks on those sites alone could get you through a whole SEO career, so don't take this part lightly. Granted, there are many other little things you can do, but much of the rest is up to other people linking to you, which may or may not happen. Putting up content on these sites also serves a double purpose, you can get a lot of direct incoming traffic form these links. If people like your article or portal, then they'll click through your links, and it won't be just search engine spiders coming through. Here are two other small things you can do to boost your rankings.

(2) Look at blogs related to the topic your site is on. This way, you can stay up to date on your topic, you can see what other people think, and best of all, you can comment on their blogs with a link to your site. It's a bad idea to just put up a comment with a link to your site; that's spam. But if you take the time to just skim a post and write a comment addressing the post with a link at the end, people appreciate that, and sometimes they'll even check out your blog (always a bonus).

(3) If you want to rank for a certain term, make sure you mention that keyword at least a few pages on the page you're trying to rank in the search engines. Also, try to use that keyword, or a variant, when linking back to the page.

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January 27, 2008

PostOnFire.com @ 1:02 am (Trackback)

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog

Thorough article going through the steps of traffic building. Breakdown of the facts, Must read.

January 27, 2008

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog

How to generate tons of traffic to your site:

An In Depth-Study of Traffic Generation

Spread the word

Trackback uri

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