Showing posts with label blogging techniques. Show all posts

65 Website Traffic & Link Building Techniques


by Nick · 85 comments

Photo by Hector Melo A.
This originally posted as 65 Website Traffic & Link Building Techniques. It has been reposted with the author’s permission.
1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you
2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site
3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.
4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).
5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic, providing you can justify it. Everyone will get annoyed and link to you saying your wrong
6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers – quote your website as the source.
7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature
8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors
9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page
10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)
11. Write articles and submit them to article directories
12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)
13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)
14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site
15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site
16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site
17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.
18. Submit a blog to a blog directory
19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories
20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)
21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for
22. Buy links to your site
23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site
24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI
25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website
26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!
27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook
28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush
29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)
30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)
31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list
32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.
33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.
34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche
35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates
36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.
37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.
38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them
39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages
40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website
41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site
42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche
43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.
44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.
45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters
46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews
47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.
48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.
49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.
50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.
51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.
52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.
53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.
54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.
55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.
56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.
57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)
58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).
59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).
60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.
61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.
62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.
63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.
64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.
65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”
Tagged as: traffic

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Email me anytime with your questions: NicksTrafficTricks@gmail.com
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5 Creative Tips to Increase Blog Traffic and Boost Your Business


5 Creative Tips to Increase Blog Traffic and Boost Your Business

By 
Published April 4, 2012 Printer-Friendly
social media how toDoes your business have a blog?
Is it working for you?
If you said “no,” I wouldn’t be surprised.
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Keep reading to discover why many blogs fail and what you can do to boost your traffic and brand.

What’s Wrong With Blogs?

This platform, if done properly, can generate tremendous traffic, leads and sales for your business that you otherwise would not have had.
Unfortunately though, most businesses do not blog well. Why? Because they refuse to think like a consumer.
They refuse to tell consumers the answers to the questions they most want answered. And it is because of this approach we so often hear the phrase, “Yeah, our company tried blogging, but it didn’t work for us.”
I own a swimming pool company, and when the economy crashed in 2008, it was our blog that really saved our business.
river pool blog
It's important to remember that it's called a "blog", not a "brag". In other words, we need to have our focus on education and information if we truly want to gain respect, trust, and authority.
By being relentless in our efforts to walk, talk and think like consumers—we were able to garner the love of search engines like Google and thereby get huge search traffic—but we were also able to rise to the top of the entire fiberglass pool industry.
Today, as I share these blogging success principles with companies around the country, I find there are basically two ways that people receive this unique approach to blogging:
“Sure this will work for our industry!”
“Oh no, this doesn’t apply to us at all!”
What’s funny is that folks in the same field often make these statements, yet the only difference is the desire and willingness to experiment with something new.
I say this because I don’t want you to automatically disqualify yourself and your business from what you’re about to read.
Whether you’re a B2B, B2C, product, service, local, international, big or small business—there are sound blogging practices here that could truly help your company.
But enough on that. Let’s talk about how you can take your blog to the next level.

5 Blogging Tips That Work!

#1: Leverage the power of “versus”

As consumers, we love to compare. In fact, we compare companies, products and “stuff” like crazy just to make sure we know we are making a sound buying decision and choosing the best product or service to fit our needs.
For example, because my company sells fiberglass pools, we are constantly explaining to our customers the differences among fiberglass, concrete and vinyl liner in-ground pools. For years, we kept getting these comparison questions on the phone or face to face from customers, so we knew it only made sense to blog about these subjects when we started this process of content marketing in 2009. In fact, the first comparison/versus article we ever wrote was entitled, “Fiberglass Pools vs. Vinyl Liner Pools vs. Concrete Pools: An Honest Comparison.”
article links
This one article led to tons of search traffic for my company, but it also opened the floodgates to so many other blogging possibilities and subjects.
After this article was written, I was able to see just how powerful the post was, as it ranked #1 on Google for many important keyword phrases, including:
  • Fiberglass vs. vinyl liner pools
  • Fiberglass vs. concrete pools
  • Concrete pools vs. vinyl liner pools
  • And many others
When I saw how quickly this article had captured so many long-tail keyword phrases (phrases of three or more words that have less search competition) in Google search engine rankings, I knew it would only make sense to continue with these comparison-based articles on the blog.
As you can see from the image below, the results thus far have been profound. In fact, just try searching any of the “versus” keyword phrases you see above and you’ll be able to verify how my pool company is on the first page of Google almost every time, usually with the ranking of #1.
versus search
Here are some of the top "versus" articles of my company website. Try searching the keyword phrases of each in Google and notice the results.
Keep in mind though these types of “versus” comparison-based articles aren’t just for getting the attention of Google and the search engines. In the article that compared fiberglass, vinyl and concrete swimming pools, the comparisons were truly unbiased and honest. I didn’t make fiberglass out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I talked about its pros and cons compared to the other types of pools in a very open manner.
And it was because of this (and all of the other comparison articles I wrote) that the blog soon became “the consumer voice” of the in-ground pool industry. People knew they could go there for honest and accurate information, and as a natural byproduct, our customers in Virginia and Maryland felt like they were dealing with the thought leaders of the entire industry.
So look for ways to compare the products and services you sell versus the products and services of others in your field. Give factual information about each. The opportunities here are almost endless and the amount of content ideas that can come from this one subject could very well give you dozens or even hundreds of blog post possibilities.

#2: People want the best, now give it to them

Think about all of the times you’ve asked the question,
“What is the best way to…?” or
“What is the best type of…?”
When it comes to researching and making a buying decision, we love to know the “best.”
There is also a very good chance the prospects and customers in your industry are online searching these types of phrases, which is why you should look for opportunities to utilize the word “best” in your content.
For example, as someone who writes about business blogging all the time, I decided to write an article on my marketing blog entitled “50 Qualities of the Best Business Blogs in the World.” Within two days of writing that post, it was ranked on the first page of Google for the phrase “Best Business Blogs,” which has generated significant traffic to the site since it was published. Furthermore, it’s these types of articles that will build your reputation as an expert in your field.
best article
Within 48 hours of writing this post, it was ranked on the first page of Google for a very important keyword phrase—"best business blogs."

#3: Focus on problems

Let’s pretend for a second you’re going to buy a pool and you decide to meet with a fiberglass pool builder and a concrete pool builder. Assuming you meet with the concrete pool builder and you tell him that you’re also considering fiberglass, what do you think he would say about the merits of fiberglass?
If you guessed he would likely start telling you about all the “problems” and “issues” of fiberglass pools, you’re right.
In most cases, when consumers are left to debate the merits of the two pools (or anything else, for that matter), where do you think they’re going to go to find out the truth and get an “expert” opinion?
The answer, of course, is the Internet. And in this case, they’ll likely go to Google (or any other search engine) and type in something like, “fiberglass pool problems” or “What are the problems with a fiberglass pool?”
problems
If you're willing to address negative phrases like "problems" in your blog and company content, consumers will be impressed with your transparency and your brand will greatly benefit.
Knowing that people were constantly typing this phrase into the search engines, instead of being an ostrich and burying our heads in the sand, we decided to write an article on the entitled  ”Top 5 Fiberglass Pool Problems and Solutions.”
Immediately, the article shot up to #1 on Google for the phrase “fiberglass pool problems.” But not only that, because consumers saw how open and honest our company was about the product we sold, the article also generated many, many leads, as shown in the image below, and has been read over 100,000 times in the last two years.
problems conversions
Here are the highest-converting keyword phrases of my swimming pool website. Notice how well the phrase "fiberglass pool problem(s)" has done for lead generation. In fact, this one article has made our company over $500k in sales, as many of those leads eventually became customers.

#4: Reveal pricing

A few weeks back, I wrote an article on 5 reasons your content marketing must address price, in which I discussed the merits of addressing the subject of pricing on company websites. So as to not repeat that whole post, the premise behind being more open about this subject comes down to these factors:
  • Pricing questions are the first ones consumers tend to ask, whether it’s to Google or an actual person. So if pricing is that important to a potential customer, then we need to figure out ways to address the subject in our content or risk the chance of our web visitors looking elsewhere for the information they seek.
  • Because the pricing/cost subject is so critical and a popular search term in every industry, if you address this subject you’ve now put yourself in the position to possibly rank for those keywords in search and experience the huge numbers of visitors that come with it.
  • Be more open about pricing to set yourself apart from your competitors andgarner respect from consumers who appreciate your willingness to address their questions.
pricing stats
Here are the top 15 pages (in terms of views) for my swimming pool website over the last two years. Of these top 15, 5 are cost/price-related. These are also some of the highest-converting pages of the site as well.
Note: Just as we discussed in the previous article, addressing the pricing/cost subject doesn’t mean you necessarily give specifics. It may just include ranges or an explanation of the factors that dictate what a customer ultimately spends on your product or service.
With respect to your blog and business, a good idea when it comes to price is to write a cost-related article for every product or service that you sell. For some businesses, this means dozens if not hundreds of content opportunities, which will in turn continue to aggregate more search visitors and traffic to your site for months and years to come.

#5: Break news

If you truly want to be known as the voice of your industry, the subject of real-time breaking news can have an incredible impact on your company’s brand and authority.
Popular speaker and author David Meerman Scott has put a new name to this action: “Newsjacking.” He further says:
Whenever there is a hot story in the news, there is an opportunity to create and publish original content that the media will find and will get you coverage.
Newsjacking can be by writing a blog post, doing a YouTube video, creating an infographic, or even publishing a book on Kindle.
I’ve seen cases of “newsjacking” in all industries, but I’ll just mention one of my own here. About two years ago, a major fiberglass pool manufacturer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The day it happened, a few people who were familiar with my blog emailed me the news, at which point I immediately ran a story on the event. Not only did that article bring a record amount of traffic and attention to my blog that day, but it also still ranks for major keywords as well, which means continued traffic and leads to my website.
viking bankruptcy
If big news breaks in your industry, act fast and discuss the event on your blog. The results can have a lasting impact on your business.
So if you have a blog, keep your ear to the ground and listen for opportunities to present breaking news to the public. By doing this, peers and consumers alike will see you as a leader in your field, which will ultimately increase your chances of getting more business.

Now it’s your turn…

So there you have it, folks—5 unique blogging tips that will boost your business and brand.
What do you think? I’d love to know if you’ve tried any of the above suggestions. If so, what were the results of your efforts? Which ones do you feel like you can improve on the most? Finally, what are some other blogging subjects you would add to the list? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.


Overview of Blogging Tools

Learn to Navigate the Sea of Blogging Tools Available to Bloggers

By , About.com Guide

See More About:
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The blogosphere is an ever-changing place with new tools popping up everyday to help you make your blog as successful as possible. From tools to protect your blog from spam to tools to make your blog pretty, you can find them online. Following is an overview of the types of blogging tools available to bloggers through simple online searches:
Types of Blogging Tools
About Web Logs will help you understand what blogging tools can do for you and your blog and help you find those tools. Take some time to follow the links on this page. You just might find a tool that will help you save time or earn money!

  1. Before You Start a Blog
  2. Selecting a Blogging Application and Host
  3. Team Blogs and Multi-Author Blogs
  4. Creating a Blog
  5. Designing a Blog
  6. Writing a Blog
  7. Parts of a Blog
  8. Blogging Tools and Add-ons
  1. WordPress Plugins
  2. Wordpress Tips and Tutorials
  3. Developing a Successful Blog
  4. Blogging Rules and Ethics
  5. Reading and Finding Blogs
  6. Popular Blogs and Bloggers
  7. Blogging Reference Guide

Before You Start a Blog

Before you join the blogosphere, take a look at these articles to make sure you're ready.
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Selecting a Blogging Application and Host

Learn about the various blogging applications and hosts to help you choose the best one for you.

Team Blogs and Multi-Author Blogs

Learn how to create and manage a team blog and the multiple contributors who write for a team blog.

Creating a Blog

These tutorials and lessons will help you start your blog.

Designing a Blog

The articles below will help you improve the overall look of your blog.

Writing a Blog

The information in the articles listed below will help you learn how to write a blog that people want to read.

Parts of a Blog

Blogs are made up of many parts and pieces. Get the information you need to understand the basics of blog terminology.

Blogging Tools and Add-ons

Just when you thought you understood how to blog, you realized there are a wealth of tools and add-ons available to you to help you enhance and extend your blog. Learn about these tools and what they can do for you and your blog.

WordPress Plugins

Check out these WordPress plugins to add functionality and features to your WordPress.org blog.

Wordpress Tips and Tutorials

If you use Wordpress, these tips and tutorials will help you use the functions and features available to you.

Developing a Successful Blog

You've joined the blogosphere and published your blog. Now, learn how to make your blog successful.

Blogging Rules and Ethics

Understand the do's and don'ts of blogging with these articles.

Reading and Finding Blogs

Who else is blogging? Learn how to find them here.

Popular Blogs and Bloggers

Learn from the best-of-the-best in the blogosphere.

Blogging Reference Guide

Breaking down blogging into easy-to-understand snippets through frequently asked questions and a layman's glossary.
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