Traffic from social bookmarking sites is notoriously unreliable. They tend to drop in and disappear again within 30 seconds. If you have something special, they may stay around longer. If you are using social bookmarking to gain traffic, forget it. However, if you are using it for link building, go for it.
If one of your pages gets bookmarked and receives a few votes, you may see your traffic spike a little, ignore it. Having your pages submitted to social bookmarking sites can have several benefits besides traffic.
Most social bookmarking sites flow link juice. Every time one of your pages gets submitted, it will get linked back. The more pages submitted the more link juice that will flow. The more sites you submit your content too, again, the more links.
If there is a word of warning, there have been mutterings around the web that Google will start looking at unusual social bookmarking activities and discount unnatural activity. What defines unnatural? Who knows. For now it is only a rumor. However Google are famous for trying to shutdown anything it considers unnatural. Social bookmarking can help increase the number of links coming in to your site.
Do you ever get stuck wondering what to write and where to start. What is your method? Do you start with a title and try and write to it?
I find this to be one of the biggest sticking points. Trying to find a title and then writing content to match the title. A more sensible approach is to find a theme for your post. Once you have established what you want to write about - go ahead and write it.
You will find, as you start writing, numerous titles coming to mind. Make a note of them if you must. Alternatively, keep writing until the post is complete. Then find the title.
There are several advantages to putting the post before the title. With the post complete, you can go back and optimize your keywords. Those keywords can then flow back up to the post title.
The end result is a post that has been written and optimized well. You will also have a post title that is not only well suited to the content, it is also optimized for the search engines. The hard part is finding your theme for the day and the content for it. What comes first for you, the title or the post?
There are blog metrics toolsthat do a reasonable job of collecting and displaying all sorts of data related to your blog and your visitors. There are two mistakes that most bloggers, particularly new bloggers, make.
The first mistake that many bloggers make relates to the number of metrics tools they use. You really only need a small number particularly if you use Google Analytics. If you also have a host based tool such as AW Stats then you are halfway there.
The only other blog metrics tools that may come in useful are the ones that check links and keywords. Whilst checking these is important, you don’t need to use two or three different tools. Find a tool that provides accurate information and stick to that.
The second mistake that many blogger make it the amount of time they spend using these blog metrics tools. It’s not just the time either. Because more than one tool is being used, they often wind up with conflicting results so they spend their time trying to work out why.
Using the one blog metrics tool provides a baseline from which further comparisons can be made. That is the only way to measure the progress of your blog. Forget trying to use all the tools. You will confuse yourself, make mistakes, and still not be able to accurately measure the progress of your blog.
There is an increasing trend in business to install a blog and get a blog and website services provider to run if for them. It makes sense, at least up to a certain point.
If your running a business either offline or online, a blog can make a lot of sense. It is a great way to communicate with your customers, provide information in an easy bite size format, and to deliver new customers to your door (or website). Running a business takes time and focus. The last thing that many business owners need it to add additional tasks to their busy work load. For this reason, blog and website services are starting to grow.
Most blog and website service providers offer the complete package. Installation of the blog software and setting it up with an appropriate theme and the plugins required to run support your blog. The can also provide content on a regular basis, daily, twice daily, twice weekly; it depends on your needs. Generally speaking, the more content the better.
Once the blog is up and running and having content published on a regular basis, your blog and website service provider will arrange to have your content bookmarked and your site submitted to the appropriate directories. Over time, this will help to boost your rankings within the search engines resulting in a steady supply of visitors to your blog.
These services have proven to be highly successful for many businesses delivering targeted traffic to their blog, and onto their web page, or in to their bricks and mortar store. Find a good blog and website services provider and the whole business about blogging suddenly gets easier.
Do you have a firm idea of who you want your audience to be, or are you happy to accept anyone - desperate even? There are many blogs that appear to be in that situation. If your blog is a business blog then you don’t want just any audience, you should be targeting an audience that will act in line with your business goals.
With that in mind, to advise you to provide content for your audience could be poor advice. In reality, you should be producing blog content that will attract the right audience; that is, an audience that will move on and buy, or become a lead, or sign up for a newsletter.
There are times when the blog content published has been written for what the author thinks their audience wants to read. This can lead to attracting the wrong audience. People will come, they will read, then they will move on. For a blog that is trying to attract business, that is the wrong audience.
How do you write to attract the right audience? You write to your product or service. If you are selling ‘green widgets’ then you need to write about ‘green widgets’. The audience you are trying to attract are those interested in buying ‘green widgets’. It should be remembered that your blog content can be directed at different audiences.
If you are trying to attract links from other sites, then your blog content needs to be written to attract that particular audience. This is often referred to as ‘link bait’ - really, it is content written to attract a certain audience.
Do you know who you want your audience to be? Can you define it along set demographics? If you are selling items that are in demand by 18-30 year old males, then your content should be written to that audience. Every now and then you may also want to write to an 18-30 year old female audience - why? Because they may buy your product as a gift for an 18-30 year old male.
Think about your audience. Think about who you want to attract and then ensure your blog content is written to attract them to your blog - attract them, hold them, and have them coming back for more.
Although Google can now crawl many of the components of a flash site, they along with the other search engines still have trouble with them. If you’re in that situation, get yourself a blog and work your blog SEO as tight as possible.
Having said get a blog, make sure you place it in the best possible place, a subfolder. Avoid different IP addresses or sub domains, run your blog from a sub folder off your domain.
As the blogs SEO starts to take effect, the ranking from your blog will filter down to your flash pages and they will start to rank.
Flash pages can look good but if they don’t rank, you won’t get any search engine traffic. A blog can be used to expand much of the content from your flash site. Strategically place links back to the flash pages and your will find your traffic starting to grow.
Don’t put up with poor ranking on a flash site - get a blog and start climbing the rankings.
Google has long had a special blog search feature; they have also had a link in the Google News search that allowed searchers to see results from blogs with articles on the news item searched for. It appears now that Yahoo! will also add a similar feature.
Whilst it has not been released yet, Yahoo! News is planning a ‘Most Blogged’ section where you can see blogs that have articles or posts on the news item. This is good news for bloggers who like to report on the news.
In many sectors of the online community, blogs are seen as second class citizens. In reality, blogs are just as valuable as any other content currently online. Even newspapers have their own blogs these days; in fact some media outlets have encouraged each of their feature writers to publish a blog. Both Google and Yahoo! use blogs as a means of communicating new information to the world at large.
It makes sense to bring to the search public’s attention blogs that have posts related to what they are searching for. At present, unless you use blog search, you have to hunt for any blogs with relevant information.
Yahoo!’s planned feature will include snippets on the News search results page. If you are a blogger that likes to report on the news, this may be a bonus for you. WebProNews has a post on the new release together with screen shots. The concept looks good so hopefully Yahoo! will release it soon.
Blog content seems to fit into three modes; a post that is keyword stuffed for the search engines, a post for the sake of a post, and a post that is informative and engaging; it is the later that is the hardest to write.
Informative posts are not that difficult to write, making them engaging is the tough part. One of the easiest ways to learn how to write engaging blog content is by watching other writers. Think back to any posts that have really stood out and go back and re-read them.
When looking to learn from those posts, forget the content, look at the writing style. Why did it stand out? What can you learn from it? Not every post will stand out, even from the same writers. The reality is, writing every day, when you are perhaps also running a business, can be a mental drain.
If you are able to write posts that are interesting, informative, and engaging, at least two or three time a week, the posts you write in between can be a little more relaxed. What you may find, over time, because you are writing engaging posts on a regular basis that visitors leave comments and offer further information. This can then be used to expand upon in future posts. Blog content then becomes easier to create.
What do we mean by engaging? Blog content that engages is the type of content that has the visitor reading from start to finish and often compels them to leave a comment. Not every post you write will fall into this category, however if you try, you may just surprise yourself.
There are literally hundreds of different ways to undertake a blog marketing campaign. You can submit your site to directories, you can submit articles to article directories and you can spend time on the various social sites promoting yourself and your blog.
It is that final aspect that can often be the stumbling block. Rather than trying to promote your blog, stop thinking of it as a blog and start thinking of it as a website.
Admittedly it is a blog - if that is all you want it to be. Websites come in all shapes and sizes. Whether they are static single page sites, sites with multiple page, catalog sites or ecommerce sites, they are all websites. You just happen to use a blog as the delivery method.
Blogs often get either too personal, that is, they start talking about what they had for breakfast when they run out of things to say, or they become too narrow in their focus. Websites, on the other hand, have a specific focus and try to cover every aspect of that focus. You can do the same on your blog - perhaps even better.
Whilst it is only a modification of your thinking, by consider your blog a website it may open your eyes to many other marketing opportunities - in this case, blog marketing opportunities, but only because you are marketing a website that just happens to be - a blog.
Inside Adsense has published a post that should be of interest to anyone publishing Adwords units as part of their blogging income.
If the content is good quality and brings in a good supply of traffic, your click through rate is going to improve. If your click through rate improves the chances are your traffic that moves onto an advertisers site will convert at a higher rate. The end result - advertisers will be willing to pay more to advertise on your site. As the post states:
Overall, you’re likely to earn more revenue with your site if advertisers are generating conversions and receiving quality leads from your site.
The opposite is also true. If the conversion rate from your site is low, advertisers will not want to advertise. The end result is less competition for the ads you do publish.
On the other hand, if your website performs poorly for advertisers, they may be less inclined to display on your site.
This is fairly straightforward and a double edged sword. If your content leads to increased conversions for publishers, they will pay more. You will receive a per-click return. Add to that an increase in the number of clicks due to the better targeting of ads and you’re a long way in front.
Blogging income - more clicks and a higher rate per click sounds like a win win situation to me - and it is you who is winning!
WebSite Marketing Strategy