8 Pages on how to get traffic to your site

“How to get traffic,” is probably the most asked question among serious bloggers. This is because traffic, is the way to make money from your blog, and the best way to make money online. With traffic you can get money lots of ways, through adsense, affilates, and selling adspace… But first you need to answer the million dollar question, how to get traffic.

There is an entire industry of blogs that have been devoted to it. There are literally tens of thousands of sites claiming to know the secret, saying they’ll tell it to you, but first you have to subscribe to their RSS feed, and stumble their posts, and link to their site. And the secret they claim is to keep reading their blog and over time you will learn it, say over the next two years or so. And meanwhile your reading their posts, and helping them out, Their Just Robbing You!

The #1 key to getting traffic to your blog, is this, to write, write, write, write, write, and then write some more… Writings new posts as much as you can will dramatically grow your site’s traffic. Although, depending on how much you’re used to writing, “a lot” could vary. Let me show you an example from John Chow’s site.

Those pictures you just saw were the dates of the blog posts on the first page of his blog. There were seven posts in three days. That’s the type of commitment you need to make it big. But most of can’t afford to write 7 posts in three days, unlike John Chow we aren’t making thousands every week from our blogs, yet. So your going to need to figure out for yourself how much you can write. But if you look at the popular sites in the blogging world, they’re writing generally, no less then once a day, usually more then once a day. I’m not saying you can’t be successfully writing only once a week, but if your getting lots of traffic from once a week writing, I guarantee if you move that up to every day writing, your traffic will grow dramatically.

I used to write on this blog once every two or three days. Since then I’ve moved it up to every day and the traffic has definitely grown.

However to get lot’s of traffic you can’t just write, though that is the most important, you also need to know what to write about, when to write, how often, in what way… I have created a list of 8 things explaining what I mean by write, write, write…

1.

            Find a Popular Niche to write in

I’m sorry but no matter how much you write, and work, and slave over your blog, your not going to get tons of people on a blog about “Raising Squirrel Awareness.”   And no I did not make that up, it’s a real blog, you can check out the link, his alexa ranking is around 21 million so your visit will probably make the old guy’s day.

But anyway, so you can’t write about just anything, it has to be something more and more people will be looking for daily. So find something to write about that people can, and will use. Don’t narrow in too much on one little topic. Because to make the big bucks, and large traffic amounts, you need to be writing on a popular topic.

2.

            Write so every person alive can understand

Unless your blog is technology for tech lovers who love really complicated things, write in simple English so you can appeal to every reader. And what I mean by “simple English,” is that don’t assume your readers understand all the terms you use. Try and use a little html, internet, blogging terms as you can. There’s been times when I read a post and go hmm… hmm…. hmm, nope I have no idea what he just said. I understood it was good for me, and it helps my site some how, but I don’t know how it helps, and most importantly How To Do It!? If your going to tell people how to do something, make it so that any person could follow your instructions. Because honestly there is a lot of people who have no clue about how to use the internet out there, and they will need very basic instructions.

            The entire point of this blog is to help people get traffic to their sites. I started it when I saw all the blogs claiming to show how to get traffic, but when I read their posts, I didn’t know what to do; or their suggestions just didn’t work as much as advertised. And often they didn’t even talk about how to really make money, or really get traffic.  So I was determined, when I’d learned enough, I’d make a blog to show people how to get traffic; but in a language beginners could understand.; And so that’s why I always include instructions for set up. Do not assume people know how to do it. And honestly, what do you have to lose? If people do know how to, they’ll skip over it, and If they don’t they’ll use it, what’s five more minutes out of your day, when it turns one hundred readers into fans of your site because you explained to them what to do. So write so that everyone can understand, and I guarantee this will help your blog. In addition, the word will get around that you are a beginner friendly site, and suddenly you will appeal to the largest group of bloggers out there. The new bloggers, and more and more of them are swarming the internet every day.

3.

            Write at the right times

Though it’s never bad to write an article, you can maximize the value of it, by posting it at the right times. Most of readers read during the workweek, so weekdays. So try to get a new blog post out on as many new week days as you can. The only way to get a large body of readers consistently is to get lots and lots of returning visitors. So keep giving out new content every day to appease them. Also, post as early as you can. I try to post every morning around 6 before I go to work. That way every day there’s new content up for my readers to read. So write often, write on week days over week ends if you have to choose, and write early as opposed to late.

4.

            Write Consistently

Be consistent! I say this over and over again. Don’t be a sporadic blogger, unless you want to commit blogging suicide. Find a time, and day, when you can post, and stick too it. After doing it long enough your readers will understand when you post and then will know when to visit for new content. However if you are posting weekly, letting people know you are only posting weekly may destroy your blog. So plan on writing every day or two days, and be consistent. It will keep your readers happy and you’ll see a lot more returning visitors.

Remember, you are a slave to your readers whims. If your readers don’t like you, that that equals 0 traffic. So if a readers comments saying your template is confusing, the listen to him. Do everything you can to fix the problem, he’s probably not the only one who thinks that way.

5.

            Write Often

I know I’ve already kind of said this already, but there’s another reason for why this is so essential. The more you post the more google likes  you, and the more all sites will like you. Being very active is a major bonus for your site. As simply put as possible, more posts=more traffic, assuming your following the right steps. Say for example, you write a post and it gets 3 visits a day from the search engines, which isn’t very much. Times that by 25 posts and that’s 75 visits a day from search engines. And honestly 3 a day isn’t very good, for a good search term you can get hundreds of visits a day. But so say you have 50 posts, that’s 150 visits and so on… That’s a lot, and with a little luck and some good page rank, maybe you’ll get a big fish and get more.

            The more posts you have, the more search terms in Google you’ll rank for, so the more traffic you’ll get. And the greater potential for links. If you have 25-50 articles on different things, people will find the ones they like and link to them, thus you’ll be able to please more readers, and get new ones, and also get links, which will improve your rankings for other search terms.

6.

            Write in lists and Write about people

First off, about lists. Everybody wants to see 100 reasons for so and so, and 50 top sites… The greater the number the more impressed people will be and you’ll get hits from people who don’t even care about the topic they just want to see what you could list 100 things about.

Second, write about people. The art of turning an interested commentator into an adoring fan is essential to creating a big blog. Never, Never! be rude with anyone. I don’t care if he only get’s five hits annually. Why make an enemy, when you can make a friend so easily. Whenever you get a comment, visit them back and comment on their blog. Compliment them for their lay out, their success, their most recent post, whatever… It doesn’t matter what, but find something to compliment them on, and Be Truthful. Don’t lie to them, that falls under the don’t being rude. But when you help a little blog out it’ll make them love you and your blog because you bent down to help them, and fans are essential. You need people who will subscribe to your blog, comment, and stumble/digg your posts, so always, Always! be polite.

Also, write about up and coming blogs in your niche. And then email them saying you like their blog and want to write a post about them, asking permission of course. They’ll be so excited just to get an email at all, and to have their blogs going to be talked about by a big blog, it will instantly turn them into a fan.

And also include lots of links in your posts, often they will return the favor in their posts.

7.

            Write good content

Work on your blog posts. Imagine them as papers for a teacher, except there’s hundreds of teachers all looking for different things, and your trying to get an, “A” from as many of them as you can. So spell check your posts, read them over for grammar. And don’t just write about random things. Every post should be insightful, enjoyable to read, and profitable to the reader. Unless you absolutely have to, make them short and to the point. Post every post, like it was your last post. As you finish it, think about if this post will continue to be getting traffic in a week or two weeks.

8.

            Write timeless posts

Now this I realize is not always possible, but whenever it is, do it! Make your posts relevant today, tomorrow, yesterday, and two years from now. Let them appeal to readers forever. And still be read even when their four pages back on your home page. Relevancy is key because every blogger is unique. Just like very blog is unique. They’re all looking for different things that are relevant to them, so make your posts relevant to your niche, and timeless so that they can always be read, and put into practice.

For those of you who like to see short bullet lists, I will change these strategies into check off points.

1. Write in a Popular Niche
2. Write Simply
3. Write at the Right Times
4. Write Consistently
5. Write Often
6. Write in lists/about People
7. Write Worthy Content
8. Write Timeless

Thank you for reading! And I hope this benefits your site with a lot of traffic growth in the near future.

 I made it into a Squidoo as well if you want to read it here.

Ever seen on sites, the cool pictures they put up? Where they take selection pictures from a website, and then post it as a picture in their blog posts? It’s looks so professional and I wanted to know how to do it, but I assumed you would have to buy something. There’s a lot of computer programs you can buy to do that. But because one of my goals in running this blog is to spend zero dollars on it, and still make money, I wasn’t going to do that. But I found a free download that let’s you do the same thing. It’s quick and it’s easy, and I promise it’s not a virus. Like you I’m very wary of downloading anything, even from another blogger, because I don’t want to destroy my computer with some virus. But this one is safe and just a note for future, I will never post anything that I haven’t already tried and found to be safe. 

The program is an Add-On for Fire Fox, if you don’t already have Fire Fox get it now here. It’s the best and fastest of the web browsers, and as there releasing more and more useful Add-Ons, it only becomes more and more essential. Here’s the link to download the program, it’s called Screengrab.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146

And just because I want to show you how it works here’s a picture of the site.

Instruction for use

You simply click Add to Firefox in the center of the page, and then click install. Within moments you’ll be able to add pictures to your blog posts as well. Once you have it installed it will ask you to restart your browser, don’t worry! Though it will exit out of your sites momentarily, when it loads back up again it will bring the same sites back up, but make sure you save any text you were writing.

The new application, will not be in the bottom right corner of your web browser. You’ll see a little yellow letter, in front of a blue globe like thing. To use the application click on that. Two little options will pop up, “save” or “copy.” To take a picture you click save, then choose either complete page, or selection. If you click selection your web browser will fog, and you click some where on the page and hold down over the selection you want to copy. Then when you let go it will ask you to save it, then it will immediately show up on your desktop with whatever name you chose, and it will be there for you to paste into your blog post. 

            I used to be a huge fan of Entrecard, because I found it too be an easy way to receive traffic. And not just traffic, but traffic in a consistent amount, around 20-30 a day. I know it’s not a ton but when your just starting out, having that 20-30 a day cushion of visits just feels really good.

            The key to getting traffic was simple, you just collect credits by advertising on cheap sites then you let it grow by people advertising on you. Soon you had a couple hundred and then, here’s the selling point of the site, you could advertising on places like shoemoney, problogger, and John Chow for only some credits. It was incredible and a huge slap on the back just thinking of having your ad on their sites. It left the blogging world for about seven months earlier this year and then came back and couldn’t believe my eyes, some sites were up to 2,000! Getting your ad on their site is worth 30-60 visits, but it takes weeks to build up 2,000 unless you want to spend 30 minutes a day just dropping cards.

Entrecard appealed to me because like this site it seemed created for the new blogger. It was simple easy to use, and it worked, but it seems it’s losing some of it‘s value. Entrecard was best when nothing cost more then 500, because it was manageable for everyone, no matter how big your site. What we need is a new entrecard like site that has a price limit, or just have Entrecard put one in. It love the idea, I’m still a fan of the site, but it’s just not as good as it used to be.

Google has come out with another amazing new application. Google Reader adds to their already fantastic list of free programs such as analytics, gmail, google talk, and then the program many people use for very blogs, blogger/blogspot itself.

            The new program Google Reader is an ingenious way to check all the blogs you read simultaneously, using only one website! Now instead of having to open in new windows the dozens of sites you read, you can now just open up your account in Google Reader, and it will tell you the sites have been updated or not.

            One of my favorite parts about the application, is that you don’t need to click on every new update to make it no longer be new. All that you have to do is simply scroll down over the entire article, and it will immediately switch into the “read,” no longer “unread.” It’s not like email where you have to select every email you want switched to unread, then click mark as unread; this does it instantly. This is a huge timesaver, and gives you more time to spend on your own blog posts.

          It’s alot better then just email subscriptions because this way you don’t get 30 emails from each of the different blogs every day. Now it’s just one site!

*Instructions for Set Up*

            For those of you who are completely new to the internet, the way to make an account for this is easy (assuming you already have a google account which is also easy.) First you go to www.google.com, then click in the top right corner “sign in.” Or if you are already signed in then click “my account.” Next it says at the bottom of the page “try something new,” and beneath that is a link, “more.” Once you’ve clicked on the “more” you’ll see a list of applications you can add to your account, Google Reader is under the list that says “communicate, show & share.” Simply click on the link and Viola you have it now added to your account. Any time you want to go to it now, just go to the Google homepage, then select “my account,” it has not been added as one of your applications and can be gone to in just a click. Now that you have it added to your account and clicked on it, you just need to find the button on the side of the page that says, “Add Subscription” with a little blue plus sign next to it. Click on that and simply add the pages you want it to track. When you first add sites typically it will already say there’s a bunch new messages, so you’ll need to scroll over them all to make them old so you can start with zero new updates. And then instead of checking each of the blogs you read individually, now you can simply go to this page and it will tell you if they’ve written a new blog post.

*Bonus*

            To those of you who are blogging not just for fun and have competition, as far as I can tell this can’t be tracked by traffic spiders like Google Analytics or Statcounter… So feel free to visit this as many times as you want without giving your competitor lots of hits. He won’t even be able to tell your reading his blog posts, and yet you’ll be able to keep track of him/her without helping him out.  

Good one-way links, as I’ve said many times before, are key to good search engine rankings. Google is getting smarter and smarter, and has started to discount two-way link exchanges. So unless you’re going to be getting direct traffic from a link exchange, don’t spend much time on the "If you link to me, I’ll link to you" strategy.

One great way to build your one-way link count is with link directories. People make sites who’s purpose is to give out links to other sites. They are generally called ‘link directories’. One of the great things about these types of sites is that they provide easy one-way links, and if you find high Page Rank directories, then they will be passing that authority on to your site.

Submitting sites to Link Directories can be very, very time consuming. But once you get the knack, you can buzz through a list of directories. You’d be surprised at how hard it can be to find out how to submit your site on any given link directory. I’ll try to ease you some pain and frustration in this post.

First of all, you’re probably looking for one of three text links.

‘submit site/URL’
‘suggest site/URL’
‘add a site/URL’

There are other variants that you’ll come across every now and then. So the trick is finding where the button lies on the page. Many times, there will be a button and the very bottom of the page, along with some other links. For example:

Other times, it will be grouped in a navigation bar at the top. For example:

and

And then other times, it will be at some random point in the page.

Sometimes you won’t find an option to submit until you go looking through the directory. Because of this, I’ve made it a habit to go to the most relevant category within the directory before trying to submit. This also saves time in finding a category manually when submitting. If you go to a category and hit then submit your site, most of the time it will automatically fill in the category for you, so you don’t have to look through a long and unclear drop-down menu.

It’s also helpful to keep a text editor up while you’re going through the sites. I use notepad (when I’m on a windows) and textedit (when I’m on a mac). There are a few things you should keep in your text editor, separated by paragraph breaks.

-Your email address
-Your full URL
-A 1 to 3 sentence description of your site
-Your full name (you can make up a false identity to use if you want)
-The title of your site
-A few keywords and keyword phrases seperated by commas

If you do this, it makes going through a list of directories much easier, because you can just copy and paste the answers to questions into the appropriate boxes.  You won’t need all the above categories for all sites, and some sites will require more info. You can adjust what you put into the text editor to your needs.

Finally, two words of advice. First, do yourself a favor and don’t pay for listings in directories. It won’t do you any good (unless it gives you a lot of traffic, which is highly unlikely). There are plenty of high-PR directories out there that take free submissions. Here’s a site with a list of some authoritative directories  you can start working through (only do the free ones).

Strongest Links

And Second, don’t do reciprocal linking. It’s not worth your time. Google doesn’t count those anymore, and chances are you won’t get any direct traffic. It’s a waste of time. Anyhow, who wants to junk up their site with a list of links to spammy link directories?