Blog for Traffic and Traffic for Blogs

Today I want to talk a bit about TRAFFIC and blogging. It's always been interesting to me that people frequently talk about creating a blog in order to drive traffic to your website...

yet that has always left me wondering where is the traffic TO your blog supposed to come from?

Of course, I understand that frequently updated content keeps your blog fresh and increases the chances that someone doing a search for a specific phrase in your area of expertise might find you, yet I thought it might be valuable to share with you some ways to optimize your blog so that the search engines give you a high listing when that search happens... the natural kind of searching by people looking to find out just the kind of information you can provide.

You can find many books, big books, written on the topic and I won't be getting that in-depth but an overview might serve well.

How can SEO (Search Engine Optimization) help you get traffic?
As we've shared before, the goal of any website is to get targeted traffic. And that includes your blog. If your area of interest is pets, someone looking for information about quilting is simply not going to be part of the market you are looking to attract. The search engines role is to help the people looking for information about their pets find the sites about pets! Someone hot to find information or spend money on YOUR niche.

Stop and think about what your blog is about. Actually, what each post of your blog is about. You'll want to set up each post of your blog to be sure to let the search engines know exactly who to send you.

Where to start?
There are two factors that determine how much traffic the search engines will send you. First is the information you have on your own blog. Second is how many other websites and/or blogs are linking to your blog. Those are the two areas you'll want to work on in order to crawl up higher on the search engines for your niche.

On your blog and in each post be sure to use the keywords for your niche. If your blog is about "Marathon Walking" then be sure to use the term "Marathon Walking" as your title and in the body of your posts. Easy and obvious.

Your offsite goals are just as easy. Work on getting other people to link to your blog by writing articles, leaving comments on other subject-related blogs and include a link back to your blog, and even posting on forums.

KEYWORDS
Be sure to include your keywords or key phrases on your posts. You don't want to go overboard but you do want your page title to be very descriptive.

Bad SEO Title: "Why I'm Having a Crummy Day"
Better SEO Title: "The Effects of Acne on Self Esteem"

Assuming these posts were written with the same content, the search engines will understand the "Better SEO Title" more.

We've talked about this before yet I'll reiterate because keywords are so important whether blogging, creating websites, writing articles, building squidoo lenses, etc. There are tools you can use to find keywords that are being searched.

• Overture - A free resource that will give you ideas for keywords. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles but it's a good place to start. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
  

• Wordtracker - Provides a tool that displays the number of people searching for a term, as well as the competition. Wordtracker offers a free trial so you can test their service. http://www.wordtracker.com

Where to include your keywords
Once you have an idea of which keywords you're using stay consistent. Come up with a title that includes your keyword/s and use that word or phrase at least once in your post.

Off-Site SEO
Search engine optimization is a two-part process so work on optimizing your blog content (on-site) and work on getting many incoming links (off-site).

Think about why the search engines consider incoming links to be important. When you find impressive information on a website or blog what do you do? You link to it. This is not only proven with articles and blogs but other types of websites too. If you find a free piece of software or a really inspirational video, you may mention it on your blog or website and include a link to that website or blog where your visitors can claim it.

That's what people naturally do. The search engines recognized this and realized that the more popular websites like CNN.com or ESPN.com are linked to quite frequently and naturally.

So... how can you "force" other sites to link to you? Of course, I don't recommend any illegal or spammy methods so here are some tried and true ways to get other sites to link to yours:

• Create quality sites with unique, informative and/or entertaining content. Visitors will be more open to linking to you if you have much to offer.

• Do something newsworthy and write a press release. Not only will you have incoming links from the press release distributors but you also stand a chance to get your story picked up by TV, radio and print newspapers.

• Become a columnist for another website. Contact websites or blog owners in your niche and offer to write a regular ongoing column for them -- even provide a weekly tip or idea. You'll get plenty of links - and build a networking relationship by doing so.

• Write and submit articles to article directories. You can even use a blog post, perhaps with a bit of re-working, as an article. Simply write an informative article and let others publish it with your Author Resource box at the end which includes your URL.

These are just a few ways you can increase the number of incoming links to your blog. With a little creativity and a bit of work you'll see more traffic coming through those links in the coming months.

And there you have some thoughts about drawing traffic to YOUR blog!
Have a fabulous weekend... I do appreciate you,

--Mary K

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There's SO much more than make money online

When I first jumped into blogging I erroneously assumed the best way to make money online was by blogging about making money online.

I think a lot of people new to making money online and new to blogging think the same thing. In fact, I hear from a lot of people ~ I have this blog on making money online, but I'm not getting any hits, I'm not making any money.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and be BOLD. When you are looking for a topic for your blog DO NOT CHOOSE anything about making money online.

There I've said it, it's out there. Flog me if you must ~ but I think it is true.

Look, there are about, oh I don't know, a gajillion people out there blogging about making money online. Some of them ARE making money online. MOST of them are not. Who do you think people are going to listen to when they want advice about making money online? The person who is making 20,000 a month or the person who is only getting 4 hits to their blog a day ~ themselves, their husband, mom and dad?

I don't mean to be harsh here, but think about it logically. It really is true.

Don't DESPAIR ~ even if you already have one of those how to make money online blogs. (keep working at it, no sense leaving your baby now)

What I want to tell you is this: you have a much better chance of making money online with a blog that has NOTHING to do with making money online.

People come online to look for answers and to solve problems. These include answers and problems for anything and everything your can imagine.

What is it that you love to do, what gets you fired up? Do you think other people get fired up about that thing too? Do you think people have questions about that thing and want answers and solutions? I am SURE they do.

Why not start a blog about what you love and are passionate about. Do you feel passionate about essential oils? Maybe you even sell essential oils. Do you use your essential oils to care for your animals in a holistic way? Now that's a great blog topic. Holistic Animal Care. Do you think people who are interested in holistic animal care would find you? My guess is there is not a gajillion other blogs on holistic animal care, and chances are people would find you. Do you think if you provided interesting information about how to care for your animals holistically people interested in that subject might keep coming back to see what you else they can learn? Do you think if you wrote an article about how this particular essential oil will manage fleas so you don't have to use chemicals on your pets that people might purchase that essential oil from an ad you have on your blog?

I'm just sayin'.

There is so much more to offer, that is more likely to bring you profit in the world of blogging than just another make money online blog.

If you are short of ideas try this: go to amazon.com. In the top left corner click the button to check out all the categories. Look around and find something that interests you. Dig a little deeper, see what Amazon offers on the topic, if it's something you are interested in, chances are someone else is too, and if Amazon is selling products related to it (especially a lot of products) you can guess they are making money, and so can you.

There are products at clickbank, commission junction, linkshare and a million other affiliate marketplaces that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online. There's plenty of opportunity elsewhere. Take advantage of that. Give yourself the chance to talk about something you love every day!

Jackie Lee :)

Make Life Easy with Must Have Wordpress Plugins

When I first moved my wahm work at home mom blog from a free site and installed it on wordpress and my own hosting I realized there were a couple serious things I would have to take care of that wordpress used to manage for me.

This is where plugins come in. The wonderful world of wordpress plugins. Much like looking for a "perfect" theme you can get lost in the wonderful and seriously expansive world of wordpress plugins.

Instead of leaving you confused and wondering just what plugins you need to install I'm going to make it easy for you and just tell you ~ from my many hours researching this ~ the ones you must have and then the ones that are just fun to have (and also serve a purpose). These are the actual plugins I have installed on all my blogs.

SPAM~ this is one of those things wordpress used to manage for me, now I'm responsible for dealing with all the spam comments that come in. (it is really strange the kind of comments you find) This is the first and in my opinion MOST important plugin and the first one you should install. It is in fact, the same spam management system that wordpress uses. Akismet. This plugin will manage all your spam comments, it will delete them after 30 days, you don't even really need to think about it. (I sometimes look through my captured spam comments just to see what's in there, but I'm kinda weird)It is an excellent plugin, I have never had any spam get through, and I think I've only had 1 or 2 comments that were real end up in the spam folder. This plugin will save you tons of time weeding through spam comments. Download Akismet ~ a must have plugin.

All In One SEO Pack ~ The second most important plugin and definitely the must have plugin for SEO. This will allow you to optimize your posts for searchability. The functions in this one plugin used to be in a couple different ones, but now it's nicely bundled in one place.

Smart Update Pinger ~ This plugin pings your blog each time you add new content. You can add a personal list of sites you want pinged.

Google Sitemap ~ This will build and install a google sitemap for you site. All you have to do is install the plugin and fill in a couple blanks. It does all the work for you.

All in one Adsense and YPN ~ This plugin allows you to easily and effortlessly add adsense or Yahoo ads, or both to your site. It is really easy. I only added this plugin recently because I wasn't using adsense on my sites. However, I started earning money from adsense as soon as I installed it.

Tagalize It ~ This allows you to tag keywords to both technorati and ice rocket.

What Would Seth Godin Do? ~ A funny sounding plugin with an important job. This plugin uses cookies to place a message on your blog reminding new readers to sign up for your RSS feed. You can set the number for how many times readers see the message. After they have visited more than that number they will no longer see the message.

Those are the MUST HAVE plugins ~ here are a few I have on my blog and appreciate the work they do for me.

Viper's Video Quicktags ~ This plugin will be considered a must have for anyone who posts a lot of video on their blog. It allows you to one click add video from a variety of sources. It gives you a button on your blogging task bar.

Wordpress.com Stats ~ I started my blog at wordpress.com. I got used to the little view graph. I love it. I was sad when I moved my blog and didn't think I would be able to get the chart anymore. Then I found this plugin. It's exactly the same as wordpress.com. Of course google analytics has more info, but I love the simple chart. :) You can use both.

Sociable ~ This is a social bookmarking plugin that will put icons to social bookmarking sites at the bottom of your posts. I have tried a couple different social bookmarking plugins and this one is my favorite. You can choose which buttons you want included.

Related Posts ~ I have this installed and have yet to figure out how to make it work right. However, I'm still recommending it because I know all the blogs I read regularly that have it I read waaaay more articles on than the ones that don't.

This is the last one, and may seem a little redundant, but I am really working on getting my RSS subscriber numbers up, so I added it.

Subscribe Remind ~ This plugin adds a little reminder at the end of each post to subscribe to your RSS feed if they enjoyed the post.

There you have it ~ my plugin list, both the must haves, and the just for funs. If you are hosting your own blog you will find these plugins help your SEO as well as make your life much easier.

Jackie :)

Why blog - to earn or not to earn...

I found it interesting that when Jackie wrote a post about monetizing a blog someone left a comment asking, "What if you don't want to monetize your blog?"

Jackie responded with the simple and sensible... "Then don't" ;-)

I find myself still pondering the question. It prompts me to remind myself, as well as others, to be clear about our purpose, passion and pleasure when it comes to blogging. If you're blogging for public viewing you might want to ask yourself to what aim? Are you simply interested in sharing information? Looking to make connections with others who share your interests? Perhaps you simply enjoy writing and find pleasure in drawing an audience to appreciate your talent. Maybe you you want to supplement your current income using a blog. Maybe you want to ramp up your current income and a blog will complement that. Or maybe it's a combination of any or all of these.

At this point, I hope you have an idea of the kind of blog you would like to start as well as the reasons for starting that kind of blog.

Naturally, if you don't want to monetize your blog you would not provide any links in your blog that would connect you to payment for a product or service. And if you DO want to monetize your blog then you DO want to connect through links in your blog with something that pays you directly.

We've talked about how to get ideas and be clear about the kind of blog you want, some of the ways to drive traffic to your blog so that people are actually viewing what you are sharing and we've mentioned some of the ways to make money from your blog.

For those who DO choose to add an income stream through their blog I want to talk a bit more about that.

Text links are advertisements placed on your blog in the form of hyperlinked text. Just in case you're not familiar with the term 'hyperlinked' it means there is a link to a url embedded (hidden) in an advertising message like

"Cl'ck here to get the FREE Report Cash Pulling Blog Tactics Revealed!" or it can simply be a single word like "Toddlers" which will contain a link to a site like Jackie's lens offering activities for toddlers.

Text links like this have become very popular and are quite effective because they show up within the commentary that is only being read by people genuinely interested in the subject... a very likely candidate for your product or service.

Something I'm just learning about are text ads...
I want to share with you something I've discovered through the guys who wrote that report mentioned above:

There are basically two ways to add text ads to a blog:

1) An advertising broker

2) Text link generation software

In exchange for a share of the revenue, the following
brokers will add text links to your blog:

Adbrite.com

Advolcano.com

Blogads.com

Blogkits.com
Chitika.com

FederatedMedia.com

Text link generation software is a really great alternative
to text link brokers because you do not need to be approved
by a broker in order to start running text ads and you have
a lot more control over the both kind and quantity of text
ads appearing on your blog.

Perhaps the best software for generating text ads is called
Click Bank Text Ad Generator. Once installed, this software
will automatically scan all of the content of your blog for
certain keywords and turn those keywords into affiliate
links for products listed on Clickbank.

The products listed on Clickbank are great products to link
to because they tend to have much higher payouts than
physical products. With clickbank, it's not uncommon to
have $97 product with a 75% commission payout ($72.75
payout per sale).

A few text ads with a $72.75 payout can be very lucrative,
even if you only receive a few hundred hits a day.

For example, suppose again that your blog was receiving
just 500 visitors a day.

If 10% of these visitors clicked on one of these high
paying text ads every day and 4% of these visitors
purchased the product you would then earn a whopping
$145.50 every single day!

10% x 500 = 50 clicks

=> 50 x 4% = 2 sales

and 2 x $72.75 = $145.50!!!

And remember that all of this would be done without you
lifting a finger!

....Talk about easy money :-)

Fascinating to me are all the new discoveries to be made... we might not have the time or inspiration to implement them all and that's okay... adding even a couple of new actions periodically will boost your traffic and boost your earnings.

Here's to Prosperity!
Catch ya later...

--Mary K

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((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
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