I'm sorry I've been away so long… one of the hard drives on my server has died, and I do not have the money to buy a replacement. I have it up and working for now, but it really needs replaced.
If you would like to contribute to me, you can donate here… if you do, thank you very much.
I will try to have a new article up soon.
Sorry about my absence, and hopefully I can keep the server up even without donations (or perhaps the money will come from somewhere else).
Jason
Sorry about no posts, no answers to comments or emails for a few days… I've been as sick as I can remember being in a long time. I had a bad fever that kept me in bed, cold sweats, massive sinus problems, a really ugly cough, and various other problems… essentially everything but throwing up.
I'm somewhat better today, but still not entirely healthy, so I'm going to conserve my energy, try to heal some more, and be back as soon as I can.
At least in these days of the Internet, you aren't likely to catch it from me… this kind of virus doesn't spread that way.
Strangely enough, I get asked questions about this frequently, in spite of the fact that my blog is not that large (though it's growing rapidly), and the fact that my articles are about self development and relationships. Perhaps that's because others in my niche don't know where to look outside of it, or maybe those other sites are too intimidating, with thousands of articles, many of which are written for the benefit of people already familiar with the basics.
There are four basic elements to drawing traffic to your site, and I'll cover each one individually, but for your convenience here they are, in order of when you should deal with them: content, design, SEO (search engine optimization… making your site Google friendly), and social interaction.
We'll start off with content, or what you write… the niche, or specific area, that your articles cover doesn't really matter for the purposes of discussing the very basics. What does matter is the basics of writing… spelling, grammar, etc. If you miss the basics, you will miss out on a substantial number of readers, who will turn away before they even read the core of your article.
Once you have the basics of writing covered, there are a few things which specifically help when writing on the web. One of these is the formatting of your article… you need to have your content in easily readable "chunks".
That means limiting paragraphs to just two or three sentences, all focused on one idea. It also means breaking your article, if it's of any substantial length, into pieces, each with their own "sub-heading"… like the items in this list, for example.
Speaking of lists, lists tend to be one of the most popular forms of content, and if your article can be broken down into a list, it's probably worth doing so. Even better is if you can list specific things that the reader can do in regards to the topic of the article (see my most popular article for an example). Large lists of resources to help your reader, especially little known but useful resources, can also be very popular.
Now you have some content, but what do you do with it? Design is extremely important in building your traffic… poor design can turn people away instantly, while good design can grab their attention, leading them to actually read your material.
What is good design? Well, that's a widely debated topic, but there are a few things which are nearly universal… the most important of which is making sure that the site is easily readable (a large enough font with enough contrast to the background, etc.), followed closely by the concept of "above the fold".
"Above the fold" refers to what a visitor can see of your website without having to scroll… because a large percentage of people will not do so unless your design captures their attention enough. One mistake a lot of people make is to have the beginning of their article fall below this point… especially if your title does, too (How are they going to even know what the page is about?).
What you want to have above the fold is up to you… but it's generally good to have the title of your article, a picture (pictures grab our attention more than words) that goes with your article, and, if possible, the first paragraph of the article itself. You may also want to make sure that the most important items on your sidebar are above the fold… for instance, I have subscribe buttons there, and the header for my "Most Popular Articles" section.
Other important areas of the page are the top left corner (the most viewed part of a web page), just below the first paragraph, and at the bottom of the article (they finished reading, now what should they do?). These are all good places, especially at the bottom of the article, to put things that encourage them to read more of your content… links to other articles, links to subscribe, etc.
SEO is short for search engine optimization, a fancy way of to describe making your website more easily understood, and therefore higher ranked, by Google, Yahoo, etc. SEO consists of two main elements, on-site SEO and off-site SEO. We'll stick to on-site SEO, other than to say that off-site generally consists of getting people to link to your article using link text (the words you actually click on) that is relevant (ie not "click here", though that still lends SOME help in ranking higher).
On-site SEO essentially consists of two pieces… having your articles link to each other in intelligent places, and making it clear what the article is about. Having your articles link to each other is easy… any time you have another article that you've written that is relevant, make sure you link to it, preferrably with words under which you would like to appear when someone searches on Google. For example, I could do something like linking to my article on how to be a good dad.
The second piece, making it clear what it's about, is in reference to search engines… but it helps to make it clear to your readers, as well. The basics work like this… you think of what you would put in Google if you were wanting to find the article you're writing. You then take that and look at the most important words in it… these are your "keywords" (a common SEO term).
Once you know what your keywords are, you'll need to write an interesting title containing them, ie "The Very Basics Of SEO And Getting Traffic For Your Blog". Keep in mind that this title is what shows up in Google (or should be if you're using any halfway decent blogging software, at any rate) for people to click… so in addition to helping Google understand better, it's also what has to convince searchers to click on it to come to your site.
Once you have your title, it should show up at the top of your article in large print, using what's called a header tag (H1, H2, H3, etc… the smaller the number the larger the font is, with H1 being the largest). In addition to that, if you include an image (and you should), you should use it again, or a reworded form, as the "alt" tag, which is a text description of the picture. If you can find a way to use the keywords again in bold (or another header tag, such as the "sub-titles" mentioned above), that helps also.
Besides these intentional placements of your keywords, it is also important to make sure you use them a few times naturally in the text… but that should happen anyway, since you're writing an article that can be described by the title that contains them.
This is, as the title states, the very basics of SEO… there are far more advanced techniques available, if you want to get into them, but I'll leave it to sites who specialize in it to cover them.
The final piece of getting traffic is the social aspect. You already have good content, a decent design, and are including little hints for Google as to what your articles are about… but none of that gets you too far without some sort of social interaction.
The social interaction that I'm referring to here, the kind that gets you traffic, breaks down into three pieces: other bloggers, forums, and social media… all of which can interact with each other. Let's cover each piece separately.
You can't really rate any one of these as being "better" than the others… while social media will, generally, drive more traffic directly, traffic from bloggers and forums is generally better quality traffic, meaning that they are more likely to add to the conversation on your own blog, and more likely to come back or even subscribe. Being mentioned on a high-profile blogger's site can also cause people to transfer some of the authority/respect that they give that blogger to you… a guest article on their site even more so.
The different types of social interaction also often intertwine… readers of forums may be bloggers, or a mention on a blogger's site can get people to submit your article to a social media site, which in turn can drive bloggers and forum members to talk about it.
The greatest difference between the three types may be in the difficulty of starting out… forums are very easy, right from the beginning: you find a thread that interests you, you write a response, and people will read it. Bloggers are the next step up in difficulty, at least if you're trying to get the attention of any of the bigger ones… you may have to be a regular commenter for weeks before they really become familiar with who you are enough for the interaction to move beyond just comments. Social media sites, in general, are the most difficult… it can take some serious effort over months to build your social profile up to the point where you are influential.
There is a fair amount of material here, but if you learn it and use it, it should be enough information to get you started on the road to getting more traffic, including from the search engines. If you want to know more, there are a lot of good sources across the web… a few of my favorites are ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, and SEOMoz.
What do you think? Did I leave anything important out, or give too much attention to something that is not of that much importance? Let me know… I love to learn.
I need your help with something. I set a goal, quite some time back, of reaching 100 subscribers. As you can see if you look near the top left corner of this page, I've reached that goal. I was talking about this fact with my wife last night, and she asked me what my next goal would be. I had already thought about this, of course, so it didn't take me long to answer: 500 subscribers.
Now here comes the part where I need your help: She told me that she wanted that as an anniversary present. My anniversary is November 20th, or less than two months away. My subscriber count HAS nearly quintupled over the last six weeks, going from around 22 to, as of last time I looked, 104. If I continued that trend, I WOULD be able to give my wife the present she asked for.
On the other hand, increasing my subscribers by 82 over 6 weeks is a very different thing than increasing it by 396, even if the percentages are similar. The only way I can think of to reach that count is if I get linked by bigger bloggers. So, this is where I need help: If you are one of the bigger bloggers I link to in this article, and you check your links, if you find something of interest on my site (and I'll provide a choice or two I think might interest you), please help me and link to it.
If you are one of my normal readers, and have a blog of your own, I would appreciate any link from you, as well… any link can bring readers, who can then become subscribers if they so choose. Or, if you happen to be reading this and know someone who might be interested in linking to my content to help me give my wife her present, let them know. I know I'm unlikely to send enough traffic to any of these links to get the attention of a blog of any size, so I'm hoping they watch who links to them, and if not, that we can contact them by other means and get them to participate.
Okay, so all of that out of the way, here are some of the bloggers that I read, that have higher (mostly a LOT higher) traffic and subscriber count, and whom might be interested in content on this site:
This request is by no means limited to the people listed above… as I said above, if you know someone else who might be interested in my content, and willing to help me out, please feel free to contact them and give them the address of this website in general or this article in particular… in fact, here is a link that you can copy and paste for this article, in case you would like to pass it along: I Need Your Help at A Miracle A Day.
So… sorry to call in the good will of my readers, but I really do need help in order to give my wife the anniversary present she asked for, which, of course, I walked blindly into. Oh, and to any bloggers who read this, whether mentioned above or not, if you were to pass along this request, that would be much appreciated.
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site with a feature most (if not all) others lack… you can choose categories of interest and then "stumble", which takes you to a page that someone else bookmarked in one of those categories. It can be a fun way to kill time when you're at the computer and bored. It can also, and this is the focus of this article, drive a lot of traffic to your website.
StumbleUpon users can, and do, click the button to go to the next page unless you grab their attention quickly. Pictures can help with this, as can a good site design. Probably the most important, however, as with most ways of generating traffic, is your title… if you have an interesting title, you can grab their attention, and get them to read more.
So now that you have their attention, what gets them to give you a thumbs up? One of the easiest things to get a thumbs up for is a picture, preferrably a funny one, but interesting or beautiful can work, as well. But since this isn't a photo blog, I'm going to go more into what I've found works with written content.
StumbleUpon users, or "stumblers", tend to like content that is easily digested. Most of my articles that have gotten the most thumbs up, and the most traffic, are simple to understand. I get a few votes for my more in-depth articles, but two of my top three articles even have "Simple" in the title: How To Make Your Life Happier In One Simple Change and The Very Simple Secret To A Happy Marriage.
That doesn't mean that the content is shallow and meaningless, however. My top article, A Potentially Fatal Mistake, is about how low self-worth leads to depression, not low self-esteem. It's still easy to read and understand, however.
So easy to understand content on a topic that is commonly (or even more so, currently) discussed, laid out in a reasonably attractive manner, with a good picture and headline to catch their first attention will often do well in StumbleUpon, bringing you thousands of visitors in a day or two, with the traffic continuing in dribbles after that.
Bonus Information: The headline is how many page views StumbleUpon has brought me so far this month… but it's misleading: StumbleUpon loads the stumbled article twice for each visitor it sends your way by default, artificially inflating your page view count. This option for "pre-fetch" can be turned off, but it very seldom is. If you want to know how many actual people saw your article, divide the StumbleUpon traffic in half… in other words, for 17158 page views, StumbleUpon sent me roughly 8500 visitors.
An RSS reader, once set up, is much like a newspaper targeted specifically at your interests. It's nice, in the morning, to sit down and read a bit about a few different topics, find out what's going on in your areas of interest, and maybe learn something new. It's even nicer when you don't have to weed through other things which don't even slightly interest you in order to find those bits that do.
That's what an RSS reader does… it provides you with updates to "feeds" of information that interest you, without any extra "junk" (one man's junk is another man's treasure) to waste your time. It allows you to efficiently remain up to date in your chosen areas without having to visit dozens of websites to see if they've updated their content.
Of course, you can "subscribe", or request updates be sent to your reader of choice, to general news feeds, and get the same sort of articles that would be in a standard newspaper, although without an editor deciding which ones deserve the front page. But if you're only interested in one section of the paper, say sports, you can subscribe to feeds that only pass along sports news. Or if sports aren't your style, you can subscribe to financial news, tech news, or any other kind of news.
But where RSS readers have an advantage over newspapers is the fact that you can also subscribe to feeds offering articles on self development (a little plug for my own niche… hope you don't mind), gardening, bird watching, or any other subject of interest shared with too few people to make it into a newspaper on a regular basis. You can, essentially, build your own daily newspaper.
Newspapers do have an advantage over RSS in one area, though. Any given newspaper is likely to be read by far more people than a given set of RSS feeds. That means there is more of a social aspect… you can discuss the articles in the paper with others who have read them.
This advantage of newspapers is only fleeting, however, because while the "set" of articles is shared among readers, any individual RSS feed (and the articles it contains) can have anywhere from a handful to hundreds of thousands of subscribers… and they are all interested in the same topic. That's quite an advantage for socializing… anyone else that you find, through whatever means, that reads that same feed shares at least one interest with you.
And the even stronger advantage for social interaction is that you can generally click on any given article to go to that website, and on that website there is a very good chance that they have the ability to leave comments, thus giving you a way to communicate with those other people who share this one (at least) interest with you.
So… articles only on subjects that interest you, which interests you can change at any time (unsubscribe from a feed and/or subscribe to a new one), the ability to get articles on a vastly more wide array of subjects, and the ability to interact with others who you KNOW share at least one interest with you… RSS readers seem likely to, at some point, replace physical newspapers (you can always subscribe to your local paper's RSS feed) as a means to keep current on whatever your topics of interest.
And once someone invents (or popularizes) some way of sharing your entire set of feeds, that takes away the one social advantage that newspapers have left… that people have a good idea which other articles someone might have read.
A lot of people want to get traffic for their blog more than anything else. Digg is one of the biggest social bookmarking sites, and is famous for sending huge volumes of traffic in a short time (other sites can do it, too, such as Slashdot, but it's much harder to get a story on there, as it has to pass the editors).
So, how do you get on Digg? Well, you can add a button to each of your articles to allow users to submit it (or vote for it, if it's already been submitted). That allows it to get on there in the first place, and may yield dribs and drabs of traffic. If you have friends who use Digg, you can get them to vote for your story, too, so that the social herd instinct starts kicking in ("Hey, this one interested x people already, I'll go check it out!").
One of the most important things, though, is to recognize what topics are of interest to Digg users. This is true for any social bookmarking site, of course, but this article is about Digg. So what do Digg users like?
If you can't guess by the title of this article (the results are at the bottom of this article), you need some serious help. Digg users love politics (with a liberal slant), IT (especially Apple), and of course, articles about Digg itself.
So what are you to do if you don't like any of those things, or don't want to write about them? Well, there are a few other topics that are slightly less popular, including games, photos, and general web related things. None of those float your boat, either? Find another social bookmarking site… Digg users like what they like (see my point above about knowing the interests of the site's users).
For those of us who (generally) write in a niche not popular amonst Digg users, one you might be interested in trying is StumbleUpon, which has more targeted traffic, and users who are interested in a much wider range of niches (You don't see that word plurarlized much, do you?).
So, for Digg users:
Steve Jobs has, as of the time of my writing this, 3388 stories with the highest one having 7013 diggs.
George Bush has 4486 stories, with the highest one having 6268 diggs.
So, if it were a fight, George Bush landed the most blows, but Steve Jobs landed the best shot.
* My apologies to my regular readers… I allowed myself to get bored, and didn't have enough time to write a self-development article up to my normal quality, so I decided to let my humor express itself.
.
Click the link below to enter:
A Miracle A Day Contests – Win A Free Copy Of ‘The Secret’
We all know what deja vu is… when you feel like you've experienced whatever it is you're going through before. Blogja vu is my made up word (phrase?) for when you write about something, and then it comes up in a conversation with someone outside of the online world.
It makes you feel odd, like you're echoing yourself, or quoting something you've read. You can have seventeen conversations with different people about one subject, all offline, and it doesn't feel weird. But as soon as you write about it, even (or maybe especially) if the article was inspired by talking about that subject with that very same person, it feels different.
It's not necessarily a bad feeling… just odd. It can feel a little awkward, too, like the example above, quoting something you've read. It just doesn't feel like it belongs in the natural flow of a conversation, more like it belongs in a prepared speech.
So what can you do about it? Not much, as far as I can tell… I haven't been blogging THAT long, and it may be more prevalent in my specific niche of self-development (I'm not sure how often that feeling would come up for someone who blogs about, say, digital photography). Hopefully, with more time and exposure to the feeling, the awkwardness will fade.
.
Click the link below to enter:
A Miracle A Day Contests – Win A Free Copy Of ‘The Secret’
Want to know how to increase your traffic immensely? There is nothing else like the social bookmarking sites… they can potentially bring in an extra 100,000 visitors in a day or two, if your article is popular enough.
So how do you get results like that? While there are no guarantees, if you follow the guidelines below, you'll increase your chances immensely.
* This is not my normal topic, I know, but I've gotten several times my normal traffic lately, and it has been mostly from social bookmarking sites. I also know that at least the most vocal of my readers also have their own blogs, so maybe this will help.
You need to write a headline that draws attention. Many of you already know this, as it's also important for SEO, but the headline is even more important on social bookmarking sites than elsewhere. If your headline isn't good enough, users of the social bookmarking sites will never even read the description, let alone the content. Copyblogger has a series on how to write magnetic headlines that can help.
Once the headline makes the reader bite, you have about thirty or so words in the description to set the hook. This has to take the attention the headline has gathered and focus it into enough interest for the reader to click the link to go back to your site to read the article. This is a good place to summarize the benefits from reading the article, as well as to inject a little humor.
This can make or break your chances on a social bookmarking site. If you have 10 friends on one of the sites, whether you met them through the site or know them in the outside world, and they vote for your article, it can easily start a trend. Articles with very few votes don't gather as much attention as those who already have a presence… and the higher the number you can jumpstart your article with, the more likely other people are to click on it (there's a reason why the sites are called SOCIAL bookmarking, after all).
Save your readers from having to copy and paste your URL by putting links or buttons at the bottom of the article that allow them to quickly and easily vote for it. To be honest, I may have gone overkill on this, as I have included most of the bigger sites of which I am aware. You might be better served offering only a few, as that concentrates any votes you have on those sites, bringing a higher potential rating on that site, in turn generating more traffic as people want to see what is so interesting.
This one should be obvious… if your content stinks, even with the above advantages, people will not vote you up. They also will not return to your site (which is presumably why you want traffic in the first place).
So… short, but hopefully sweet, that is how you get traffic from social networking sites. I hope my regular readers will forgive my stepping away from my normal topic, but the increased traffic lately has made me happy, and hopefully following these directions will allow others to share that happiness.
Have more tips? Leave them in the comments below.
