Improving traffic to a blog

[grandad]

I have a blog running for the last five months - The Other Fellow.

I haven't really advertised the existence of the site yet, and am currently starting a wee series on blog promotion. I am going to use the usual standards like adding the URL to my signature in forums, commenting on other sites and the like.

Are there any quirky ideas out there that I could include in the series?

 

[link8r]

Most bloggers ignore two important points:

1. Authority
2. Relevance

Most blogs aren't promoted, they're not a part of a community and they don't encourage/attract followers.

Obviously good content is key. This is the whole idea.

But you need authority, which comes from links and trackbacks you get from the web and the wider blogging community. You'll have to join and connect and engage with people, unless you're a well known personality/celebrity.

So things like Blogger, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Irishblogs etc are alll good places to start.

Relevance: Blogs can have great search positions - but most newbies have a splattergun approach - posting for everything from soccer results to reviews of electronic products to private rants. That type of blog, unless its incredibly insightful, funny or intelligent will probably just serve as a hobby horse.

If you had a proper "theme" and you focused on that theme - e.g. Pony Trekking and each post covered different aspects and events in the life of a Pony Trekker - chances are that it will rank for searches related to Pony Trekking. Posts that cover everything fromArsenal, Greyhounds, cars and Kerry Football are unlikely to rank for anyhting and certainly wont rank for "great blog" or "funny blog" etc.

Traffic doesn't come by accident. Its worth remembering that when people first discover a form of technology (like blogs and twitter) and learn to use these tools - they (naturally) get a certain sense of great personal satisfaction and achievement. Little indicators that they get some traffic or PageRank (which isn't related to SERP's btw) quickly leads into the self-belief that they are now internet traffic and marketing whizz kids and billions of people will now follow suit and read their blog which will generate gazillions in revenue from Adsense and Affiliate sales following a twitter account that reads "Internet MArketing Guru and Social Marketing Ninja" with 119,000 followers etc.

The internet is too full of this crap .... sorry, the last paragraph was just written for my amusement and those of anyone else on the forum that has seen this developing

 

[grandad]

Thanks for going to the trouble and the detail, Link8r.

I confess, I'm no beginner when it comes to the blogging scene, and have had a little success with my other effort.

This new site is more of a relaxation from the other one. It isn't really focussed yet, nor does it have any kind of theme. It is purely a personal space. There will be a certain amount of technical stuff in there, based on a few years experience of running my own web design and hosting business. In fact this is partially an excercise to see if I can boost the rankings a little just to see how it can be done with an aimless blog!

I am well aware that just because it it exists, a blog doesn't necessarily attract traffic. In fact, I have a nice little revenue stream from the other site [which, incidentally is themeless and completely unstructured!], and it would be nice if I could double up on that. I'm not counting on it though.

So my exercise, and it purely that, is to see if I can increase traffic to a site that is essentially full of crap.

 

[link8r]

Totally understand and agree Grandad - was enjoying your blog - will have a read of it later when I get home. Just to note that none of my post was aimed at you of course, just to newbies - I have a "philosophical" concept I share with newbies - just because you can doesn't mean you should - its aimed at the multitude of people who want to take on Argos/Amazon/The Indo with a budget based on what they've managed to scrape together versus doing any sort of actual research. It's amazing how many web experts there are out there who never yet owned a website.

 

[grandad]

The key here is relevant content. A personal type blog, as distinct from a business blog will generally have a veriety of topics.

I have found from experience that personal blogs do receive a significant amount of traffic from search engines, but they tend to be very specific to a topic, and not necessarily pertinant to the blog as a whole.

For example, I get very few visits for 'rambling, irish, blog' but a lot of hits for 'roisin ingles', 'how to remove a wasps nest' and a few more that I daren't quote here!

 

[link8r]

The key here is relevant content. A personal type blog, as distinct from a business blog will generally have a veriety of topics.

I have found from experience that personal blogs do receive a significant amount of traffic from search engines, but they tend to be very specific to a topic, and not necessarily pertinant to the blog as a whole.

For example, I get very few visits for 'rambling, irish, blog' but a lot of hits for 'roisin ingles', 'how to remove a wasps nest' and a few more that I daren't quote here!

Well thats the crux of the problem - you may rank for keyphrases but if nobody is searching for those phrases you aren't going to get any links now are you?

Problem with SEO - and where it partially goes against brand-philosophy marketing (which isn't the only form of marketing, please people) - is that unless people are aware you/your/blog/your service/your ideas exist, they can't search for you. I would say the majority of your readership is going to be made up of exisiting readers, referral from other blogs and aggregators, referral via social media in general and then off-line or direct referrral. I said readership, not necessarily just hits.

Essentially if you go back to what problem does your site solve (like a plumbers site solves the issue of finding a plumber etc) - then your site is for social entertainment. Then you need to start thinking about your readership and your Unique Root Keywords , which could be:

• Irish
• Blog
• Comedy
• Ireland
• Humour
• Stories
• Author
• Writer
• Funny

Now combine these into phrases you've been found for to get some "base" phrases:

• Irish blog
• irish humour
• irish author
• irish stories
• irish funny stories
• funny irish blog
• Irish writer
• Irish jokes

Now do you rank for these ? do you rank for these

 

[grandad]

To be honest, I have never really relied on search engines. I have played with them from time to time, and have successfully ranked higher than a couple of Irish companies for their own name!

Personal blogs are like books - you either have an established readership or you don't. The key is in building up that readership in the first place which is more by word of mouth than by casual searches.

 

[link8r]

Well that can be easy with the lack of regard many Irish and even Irish 'SEO' companies have to how SEO works.

I use search engines a lot to find blogs personally - even for non-business ones. finding blogs through other blogs can be slow, as they tend to reflect that blogger's own personal tastes... just my 2c!

 

[Hafsoh]

Also give your visitors what they want and do it consistently, try and have quality content on a regular basis. Then post quality over quantity.

 

[Niche]

.... am currently starting a wee series on blog promotion. I am going to use the usual standards like adding the URL to my signature in forums, commenting on other sites and the like.

Are there any quirky ideas out there that I could include in the series?

I think the best tutorials are the ones based on your own personal experience. So I would suggest that if you have good traffic to your blogs, then write a series about how YOU were able to generate this traffic. The methods YOU used to get where you are

Obviously, you'll have to be someone who has been successful at generating a ton of traffic consistently to your blog to make this convincing

 

[grandad]

Hah! My problem is that I have two blogs. One is quite successful, but if I started posting things there about improving site traffic, I'd be shot! It isn't that sort of blog.

The other one is more technical in nature, and is the one I am experimenting with. So far, I have seen some hope for my efforts - a rise in Alexa from 1,600,000 to near 1,000,000.

Here's to breaking the million barrier soon!

[and a footnote to those who say Alexa is useless as a guage - very true, but the advertisers seem to think it's important.......]