Web Traffic | Blog Traffic

13 Steps to Successful Blogging By Ant Onaf Platinum Quality Author

2009-12-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google AdSense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.

http://ezinearticles.com/?13-Steps-to-Successful-Blogging&id=44258

16 More Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog By Denise Wakeman

2009-12-31T07:05:00.000-08:00

You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up an email subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine.

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines.

6. Submit your blog to blog directories.

Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

http://ezinearticles.com/?16-Ways-to-Drive-Traffic-to-Your-Blog&id=22928

Participate In Forums,Groups,etc

2009-10-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

Just go to Google and search the keywords i.e .Suppose,your blog is about blogging,then search 'Blogging forum'.You will find some forums,groups related to your site.Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog(as a signature).Answer questions,clarify doubts and provide a link to your blog.But,Don't SPAM.

Social Bookmarking

2009-10-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

It is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog.If you don't know what Social Bookmarking is
"Social Bookmarking is a practise of saving Bookmarks,tagging the posts with keywords in a website".Bookmarking means saving a specific website url(address) in your browser that you wish to visit later.There are so many Social Bookmarking sites.
One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is,you will get instant traffic.Just register with them,store your bookmarks,tags,.. and you are done,See your site meter blasting with traffic.

Here are the Top 5 Social Bookmarking Websites:
1. http://www.delicious.com
2. http://www.diigo.com
3. http://www.buzz.yahoo.com
4. http://www.digg.com
5. http://www.reddit.com

Free Directory Submission Softwares Download

2009-10-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

1. Submitting Monster - A Monster Of Directory Submission:

Submitting Monster, backed-up by a huge list of quality hand-chosen web directories is capable of saving you lots of time and money. You don’t have to search for quality directories to submit your site to anymore! Here's how the software works:

Download:
www.submittingmonster.com/directory-submission-tool-demo.php

2. Fast Directory Submitter - Increase your site popularity:

Let us introduce you to Fast Directory Submitter, the only directory submission software you will ever need. With Fast Directory Submitter, you put in your site profile only once and then click Submit in each directory. Nothing could be easier.

Fast Directory Submitter is an easy-to-use free directory submission tool that allows you submit your website with varying title (anchor text) and description to thousands of web directories in a record time. With smart build-in features of Fast Directory Submitter, you can save a lot of your time, money and generate natural traffic to your site. Fast Directory Submitter includes 2885 directories.

Download:
www.fastdirectorysubmitter.com

Free Directories Collection

2009-10-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Directory Submission

2009-10-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

Automated services make search engine submission a snap, but directory submission is more difficult - and takes longer. Human editors review each submission for quality and content before accepting it into the directory. The volume of new site submissions is so huge that they can afford to be selective. Increase the chances they'll choose you by submitting a first-rate site and following submission guidelines exactly.

Free Search Engines Collection

2009-10-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Here I am Providing you my Search Engines Collection so you can submit your blog/website here , Use the Following banner links to Submit :

They Submit your blog to the Following Search Engines .. and more .. !

Engine Name	Country	Language
Alexa.com	United States	English
All The Web	United States	English
Altavista	United States	English
Google	United States	English
MSN	United States	English
Hotbot-Lycos	United Kingdom	English
2kCity.com	United States	English
Abacho.uk	United Kingdom	English
Acoon	Germany	German
Aeiwi	United States	English
Aesop	United States	English
Asquickas	United States	English
Bnknet	United States	English
Cannock-Online	United Kingdom	English
Claymont	United States	English
CrucesOnline	United States	English
Cupe	Canada	English
Deals4u	United States	English
Dino Search	United States	English
Entireweb.com	United States	English
Eviet	United States	English
EVisum	United States	English
ExactSeek	United States	English
Fire Engine Search Engine	Canada	English
Free-1	United States	English
Frequentfinders.com	United States	English
Hotbot.es	Spain	Spanish
HotBot.fr	France	French
Hotbot.it	Italy	Italian
Hotbot.nl	Netherlands	German
Iguana	Mexico	Spanish
Improve My Search	United States	English
Info World	United States	English
Intermont	Germany	German
Internet Cruiser	United States	English
Jade.com	United States	English
Jadoo	United States	English
Jewish-Europe	United Kingdom	English
Jnternet	United States	English
MediaMiner	United States	English
Mexiko Playadelcarmen	Germany	German
Mix Cat	United States	English
Poland Online	United States	English
Primefind.net	United States	English
Questfinder	United States	English
Rex Search	United States	English
scrubtheweb	United States	English
Search Engine	United Kingdom	English
Search It	United States	English
Search UK	United Kingdom	English
Search Web	United States	English
Sofcom	Australia	English
Spark Search	United States	English
Surf Gopher	United States	English
Sympatico.ca	Canada	English
Tryamerica	United States	English
VeryGoodSearch	United States	English
Voila	France	French
Wal Hello	United States	English
WapTiger	Germany	English
Web Wombat	Australia	English
Web Yield	United States	English
WebSquash	United States	English
WhatUnited Stateseek	United States	English
YuSearch	United States	English
1lists.com classified ads	Philippines	English
1lists.com ffa network	Philippines	English
1weblord.com classified ads	Philippines	English
AtoZ.com		English
AxxaSearch.com	United States	English
E-Com Search The Web	United Kingdom	English
e-sygoing	United States	English
eCavite.org classified ads	Philippines	English
firengine	Canada	English
gestialba	Spain	Spanish
ketoanviet.net Search Engine	Vietnam	Vietnamese
Moosit Search	Canada	English
mybigmoney.com ffa network	Philippines	English
Navegalis	Spain	Spanish
Netplanet	India	English
Splat Search	United States	English
Submition to 40 engines	United States	English
Superpack	Sri Lanka	English
Sympatico	Canada	French
Tooga.de	Germany	German
TrueSearch	United States	English
Vindex.nl	Netherlands	Others
Walhello.nl	Netherlands	Others
Zenn.nl	Netherlands	Others

Search Engine Submission

2009-10-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Submission is almost the way of 80% of web traffic.Because now a days , search engines are going fast and easy to use on the internet , specially Google , the biggest and the best search Engine on the internet is running all over the world , and it is assumed that 98% of Internet users use Google to find the content they are searching on the internet. So , If you have a blog or website , its content and also pages should be in the search engines so the visitor can reach to your blog / website.You should have tags on every topic/post of your blog/website that is searched on the internet and your blog/website will be visible for the viewer.

Free Blog Submission Collection

2009-10-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.topblogging.com
A Blog Directory sorted by unique visitors. Submit your blog today.

http://www.ontoplist.com
Submit Blog For Free

http://www.superblogdirectory.com
Blog only human edited directory featuring the best blogs and blog resources on the web.

http://www.lsblogs.com
Submit Blog For Free

http://www.blogtoplist.com
Submit your blog to a great blog directory

http://www.bloggapedia.com/
Bloggapedia is a blog directory, blog search engine and a social network for bloggers. Register now to find other bloggers and blog posts that you like!

http://www.blogsbycategory.com/
Submit Blog For Free

http://www.india-topsites.com
Submit Blog For Free

http://www.zimbio.com
Zimbio - An Interactive Magazine With 10 Million Readers A Month.

http://www.blogflux.com
Blog Flux - Blog Services Portal

http://www.bloghub.com/
Search blog directory using our advance blogs search engine feature at bloghub.

http://www.topblogarea.com
Blog directory with a inbuild toplist.

http://www.seo-supreme.com
SEO Supreme - Narzedzia

http://topofblogs.com
Top Blog Directory.

http://www.blogcatalog.com
Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Search, Browse, Rate and Review thousands of blog sites.

http://www.dignow.net/
A Good Blog Directory.

http://www.bloggernity.com/
Search at blog directory Bloggernity.com using our blog search engine tool.

http://www.bloglisting.net/
A Free blog Directory.

http://www.blogdigger.com/
Blogdigger is an RSS Search Engine. Blogdigger gathers information from syndicated content to offer services like full text search, media search link tracking, blog aggregation, popular links and more. Add your feed in seconds!

http://www.bloggernow.com/
Free Blog Submission.

http://www.blogged.com
Blogged - Blog Social Network & Blog Directory

http://www.blogarama.com/
Get Listed At One Of The Largest FREE Blog Directories Online. Let People Find And Rate Your Blog In The Blog Directory!

http://www.sonicrun.com/
An internet search engine providing web, meta, article, blog, and news search results.

http://www.blog-directory.org/
Free blog Directory Organization.

How To Find more Blog Submission , Search Engines & Directories?

2009-10-18T04:05:00.000-07:00

Searching on the internet is easy and just 2 clicks away from your desktop, all you need to do is open any search engine (I Prefer Google.com) as Google is the Biggest and the Best Search Engine on the internet , open up Google.com or you can also use Google Search bar placed on the top, and Search For the Keywords i.e

The Top 10 Keywords for the Best Results:

1. Free Blog Submission
2. Free blog Directories
3. Free Website Submission
4. Add My Link
5. Add My Blog
6. Add my Url
7. Add my website
8. Free Submit
9. Submit link to Search Engines
10. Free Search Engine Submission.

And Also I am providing you About 25 Free Blog/Website Submission Websites.

What is Blog / Website Submission?

2009-10-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

Many new Internet users or new Webmasters or bloggers may be confuse to the question , that what is Blog/Website Submission? the answer is the blog/website submission is the way to promote your website , All you need to do is Sign up to the blog/website Website , then Login to your account select a category of your blog/website and then write in your blog/website details i.e Title , Description , Url , Tags (Tags are the Search Words which you want your blog/website to be visible in the search) , and then Click Submit , it will ask to confim your Email , Login to your Email and Click the Confirmation link , then your blog/website will be activated and start running on the Blog Directory.

Blog / Website Submission

2009-10-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

Blog / Website Submission is one of the biggest way for the traffic on your blog / website. Now a days , there are many Ad-Networks (Most Common - Google Adsense) and also Affiliate Marketing on the internet for the webmaster to sign up and put their Ad Codes (In HTML form) into the Html of the blog or website. And then , Webmaster first need is the visitors on the blog / website. More Visitors = More Impressions to the ads and also to the Affiliate products.It is assumed that minimum of 2% traffic click on the ads placed on website / blog .i.e 100 Unique Visitors = 2 Clicks. The summary of this article is that .. a webmaster or blogger and also an Affiliate needs genuine visitors to the blog / website for the page views and also for the genuine Clicks on the ads to earn money through Ad-Networks , and also for the affiliate marketing , more products = more clicks = more sells.