This is part three in a three part series on the steps to increase your blog traffic. If you are looking for quick and simple ways to increase your blog traffic, or more involved ways with bigger returns, keep reading for some great information.

1 – Avoid jumping on the bandwagon.

Some memes are definitely worth being talked about by everyone online, but most of them simply are not. Just because there is a huge piece of news in your niche, then that does not mean that you personally need to be covering it in order to increase your blog traffic. Many of the best blogs online are already talking about the big names and the big trends but this is because they are already established and popular. If you are just launching a brand new blog, then you need to show people something that is unique rather than just the same old re-hashed stuff that everyone else is already posting.

2 – Link in an intelligent way.

When you are linking out in your blog posts, make sure that you are using convention where it is applicable, and using creativity when it is warranted. But above all else, make sure that you are being aware of how the links you create are a part of the content that you are providing. Not every single issue that you discuss is going to need a link, and there is a very fine line that exists between under linking and over linking that you cannot cross. The best thing to do is to look at it from the standpoint of a reader that is relatively uninformed. If you mentioned Wikipedia, leave the link out. If you mention a more obscure site than that, leave the link in. It sort of goes like that.

3 – Work with guest bloggers.

If you ask a well known personality within your niche to contribute to your blog, then you can grow the value of your blog as well as its reach for a number of reasons. The guest blogger will find your blog, his or her readers will find your blog, and completely new readers will also find your blog. You will flatter the blogger by acknowledging that they have a certain level of celebrity, you will be guaranteeing yourself a new incoming link from a blog in your niche, and you will be welcoming new traffic to your website by adding more authority to what you have to say. This is one of the best things that you can do when you want to increase your blog traffic. The more that you do this with new guest bloggers, the more traffic you will generate as a result, so this is a great way to really get the ball rolling when you want to increase your blog traffic.

Photo Credits: ebrkut

Originally posted 2009-09-28 03:13:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

by John Tumbler, guest blogger

The landing page is the first page of your website where a visitor visits. Each website/company has its own landing page where they are driving all their traffic even if they are unaware of it. A visitor can reach your landing page either from Search Engine Results, online advertisement, email marketing or any other method. Therefore, creating a killer landing page can put a remarkable effect on your conversion rate and can increase your online sales or can help you in fulfilling your other desired goals which you want to attain through your landing page.

Tips to Create Killer Landing Page that Sells:

Custom Landing Page for Each Offer: – You need to create custom landing pages targeting a specific offer. The title and text of the ad which send visitors should be similar to the landing page. Don’t send all your traffic to your homepage or to a page which contains information about other offers too as these things can deviate the user mind and your conversion rate could be low.

Clear Call to Action: - Your landing page should have clear call to action which you want your visitor to take. A call to action could be to purchase a product, providing information or any other thing you want your visitor to do.

No Unnecessary Information: – Your landing page should contain only that Information which is required for your visitor to take decision and to perform desired action. Don’t fill your landing page with unwanted information as it can distract your visitor mind and you won’t be having a good conversion rate.

No Distractions: - There should be no distractions on your landing page as it can put your visitor in confusion and change his decision. Don’t put any distracting navigational links. Landing page is not for browsing the site it’s for conversions.

Keep it Simple: - Keep your landing page simple. Avoid using lot of images and Flash. Tests had shown that such landing pages have poor conversion rate.

Effective Sales Copy: – You need an effective sales copy which can push your visitor to take desired action. The content of your landing page should be short and straightforward. Break big paragraphs to short ones and use effective titles.

Easy To load: - An idle landing page should load in less than 8 seconds. Many people in remote areas are still using the dial up connection. Your landing pages should be able to load quickly even on slow connections.

Test, Modify and Test again: – Testing a landing page is very important to understand the behavior of your visitors and increase the conversion rate. It’s always good to create multiple landing pages for a same campaign and then see which page converts most. After that you can make more improvements to that landing page and test it again.

John Tumbler is a freelance writer who writes on Landing page optimization, gadgets, Technology and Internet marketing.

Photo Credits: affiliatesummit

Originally posted 2009-09-23 12:47:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This is the final post in discussing the 2 Year Blogging Curse and ways in which to counter the urge to up and quit. We talked about blogging schedules and grabbing specialty plugins, now we’ll focus on four new ideas.

Establish a Feature.

A feature is not a meme. A feature is post that periodically appears on your blog and follows a set format. It could focus on a particular topic or idea or style of blogging. For instance you could do an interview once a week. Make it a feature by focusing on interviewing regular blog commentators or established bloggers in your niche or authors published in your niche. Another example is dedicating once a week to podcasting or making a video blog. These two methods are quick ways to reach readers in a new format with the added benefit of changing it up for you.

Generate Ideas.

Take a day to sit down and jot down everything you could possibly think about to write on. Come up with specific ideas for your features, raid your emails for reader inspired ideas, reexamine old posts for new things to discuss, and more. There’s plenty of ways to get new ideas and plenty of blog posts out there focused entirely on this concept if you run out of things to consider.

Find a Partner.

Keep yourself motivated by finding yourself a partner. How you set up the partnership is up to you. It could be a highly lucrative beginning for your blog and would have the added benefit of getting another person to be equally invested in the success of your blog.

Merge.

You might have noticed that your blog is more of an offshoot to another blog you started. If you’re struggling to keep two afloat it’s time to consider merging them together into one blog. This will make it easier on you and have the added benefit of bringing all your content into one place.

That’s it! I’ve given you ten ideas to give your blog the jumpstart it needs to get past the 2 Year Blogging Curse. Now it’s your turn. Have you ever experienced blogging burnout? What did you do to get over it? Share in the comments below!

Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.

Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak

Originally posted 2010-09-24 03:33:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There are a myriad of different ways that you can learn how to increase traffic to blog. Some of them are really straight forward and easy to implement, and others will take time and effort on your behalf. By implementing a number of different techniques for attracting traffic to your blog, you can benefit significantly by garnering traffic from different places online. Here are a few must have ways to increase traffic to blog today.

1 – Submit Your Blog and your RSS Feed

If you are publishing a blog, then you should absolutely submit your blog as well as your blog’s RSS feed to relevant directories including for example, Yahoo and Dmoz, though there are a variety of other similar websites as well as you will see below. There are a myriad of different search engines and blog directories on the internet that you should be submitting to for this purpose, as the links below will show you.

Here are two places that you are going to want to check out for finding resources to submit to:

• http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
• http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

2 – Ping Blog Services

There are a large number of different services out there that are designed for the specific purpose of tracking blogs and connecting blogs to one another. By sending out a small ping to each of the services, you are letting them know that you have created and published an update to your blog, allowing them to come and check it out.

You should book mark the Ping-O-Matic website, which you can find here: http://pingomatic.com/ — This way you can easily visit the website and ping a number of these different services as simply as a single click to let them know that they should come and check out your recently published blog content.

3 – Build One-Way Links to Your Blog

Here are a number of recommended methods that you can get links on the internet that are pointing to your blog. One way links are the best type of link that you can use, as they hold the most clout in the eyes of the search engines.

• Link to the main page of your blog from every single page on your primary website,
• Use trackbacks in your posts pointing to other blogs on the internet,
• Post useful, authoritative and legitimate comments on other blogs all over the internet, provided that the topics are related and the comments leave a reason for visitors to follow them back to your blog,
• Finally, offer to exchange links with blogs and websites that are similarly themed.

These three tips will go a long way when it comes to learning to increase traffic to blog.

Photo Credits: Ben+Sam

Originally posted 2009-09-23 03:06:24. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Yesterday, I introduced the 2 Year Blogging Curse. Today let’s look at some ways to break what seems to afflict so many new and established bloggers.

Cut Back.

Who says you have to blog every day? If 365 fresh posts sounds scary know that you can make whatever posting schedule you like. Here are some other schedules to consider:

• Blog M-F for a workable 261 posts.
• Blog every other day for a comfortable 182 posts.
• Blog M-W-F for a stress-free 156 posts.
• Blog Tu & Th for an easy 104 posts.
• Blog Weekly for a painless 52 posts.
• Blog Monthly for an effortless 12 posts.

Write Less.

What’s the magical word count to get the mighty Google search engine to notice you? I’ve no idea. I have heard anywhere from 500 words to as little as 250 words. It seems more myth than truth to me.

So if you’re used to writing long in-depth articles why not scale back and pull a Seth Godin? His blog posts are notable for being short, concise, and thought provoking. You can do the same.

365 posts at 500 words a post is 182,500 words in a year, but 365 posts at 80 words a post is a manageable 29,200 words.

Get a New Angle.

If the current way you’re blogging bores you, it probably bores your readers, but quitting isn’t the answer. Just think about it. Quitting an old blog and starting a new, negates all your previous efforts. Who wants to lose 182,500 or more words on a subject? I wouldn’t. That would be so depressing. Instead of chugging away at the same old same old, come at your topic from a different angle.

Tomorrow I’ll go over three more ideas to help you break the 2 Year Blogging Curse.

Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.

Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak

Originally posted 2010-09-22 03:27:02. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

We’ve talked about what the 2 Year Blogging Curse is and covered some ways to break it, now we’ll go over some more ways to do just that.

Target a New Audience.

If you started out concentrating on beginners in your niche because you yourself were a beginning but now you’ve moved past that stage, you should be writing about intermediary or advance topics. By challenging yourself to expand or to learn you’ll be creating new content that is much more interesting to you and your long time readers while still attracting those beginning in your niche.

Old Post Promoter.

OPP is a WordPress plugin by BTE.  The concept behind this plugin is to promote old posts back to the front of your blog allowing you to cash in again on work you’ve done already. It’s perfect for going on vacation, to run permanently, or to use while you’re recuperating from being blogged out. Sure, some of your readers may have seen the articles before, but it’ll be fresh in the search engines and to new readers.

Fresh Voices.

There are several ways to get new voices. You could advertise for guest bloggers, befriend and reach out to commentators on your blog behind the scenes, hire a writer, read or watch new programs/blogs for new input, get a friend to share their thoughts, and more.

Check back in tomorrow as I am going to cover four more ideas to help you break the 2 Year Blogging Curse.

Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.

Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak

Originally posted 2010-09-23 03:29:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Have you ever noticed how many people talk about a blog that they used to write? It seems like I hear about it at least once a week and the story reads basically the same every time I see it:

They were interested in blogging, liked a topic, and went for it only to discover that they hated writing on said topic, couldn’t keep focused, found out it wasn’t as fun as they thought and quit the blog after a year or two of perseverance.

Pretty sad isn’t it? Not every blog can explode and be a star on the map in the first year. Many don’t even make that status in their second year. It’s year three and on that those who acted like the tortoise in this so-called blogging race start to really see results.

When you see who it affected, you know you’re not alone. Even the Darren of Problogger experienced it for different reasons in the past. John Marrow talks about knowing when to shoot your blog, but I want to take the opposite approach and focus on breaking the 2 Year Blogging Curse, not perpetuating it. Tune in tomorrow for the first of a 3 part series on doing just that.

In the meantime, why don’t you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your blog and how you’re feeling about it right now in the comment space below. Are you happy where you are or are you feeling disappointed? If you’re the latter be sure to stick around this week.

Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.

Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak

Originally posted 2010-09-21 03:03:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This is part two in a three part series on the steps for building blog traffic. If you are looking for quick and simple ways for building blog traffic, or more involved ways with bigger returns, keep reading for some great information.

1 – Participate in related blogs and forum websites.

Whatever niche or industry you are in, if you are interested in building blog traffic then you need to participate in blogs and forums other than your own. There are going to be online communities full of people just like you including bloggers and forum posters that are already active. Depending on how specific your focus is, you may need to broaden your horizons a bit when reaching out to other communities in order to find a large community that you can fit in with. A great way for you to find out where these people are is to use a website known as Technorati, which will help you conduct searches. Then you can sort by authority and start participating elsewhere on the net to build some authority for your name, blog and website as well.

2 – Tag all of your content.

Technorati is the first place that you should be using to tag posts. It is recommended that you have the tags directly on your page, pointing to the technorati searches that you are specifically trying to target. There are a number of other good places that you can ping as well including Flickr and del.icio.us as well. Tagging your content is going to be really valuable in giving your website bumps from big name sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. You do not want to submit all of your posts to these websites, but you do not want to offer about one out of every twenty in order to get your name out there in a big way.

3 – Launch without any comments, and then add them in later.

There is something a little sad about a blog that does not have any comments, because it feels really dead and unpopular, but if you launch your blog without allowing comments, then nobody is going to know that you’re not getting any visitors, because your lack of comments is only because you do not want any. When you start to get more subscribers and readers, THEN and only then should you open up the ability to comment, so that you can begin to see some decent commenting. Comments are a way that many readers judge the popularity of a site, after all. If they view your blog and see that you are accepting comments but not getting any, they may take this as a sign that it is not worthwhile for them to stick around, and this won’t be good for you.

Photo credits: [177]

Originally posted 2009-09-21 03:01:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Keyword analysis is an important part of search engine optimization or SEO, because your keywords will play a vital role in numerous different facets of your website design, creation and ongoing development. Before going into the details about what keyword analysis is, you should first understand a little bit about the SEO process, or how it is that SEO works. The main steps that are involved in the search engine optimization process are to map out a keyword strategy, to optimize the structure of the website, to develop the optimized content and web pages, to launch the link building and advertising or promotional campaign, to analyze the results, and then to refine those results to create even better results.

You should understand at this point that the first step in any good SEO campaign is the keyword analysis step, as this helps to map out what your plans are for the entire search engine optimization campaign. You want to analyze your keywords and then map them out in relation to your website theme and website content. There are a number of different tools available on the internet that will make this process infinitely easier, and Google offers several for you to choose from. Some keyword analysis tools cost more than others, so make sure that you shop around and choose an answer that will suit you not only in capabilities but also in price as well.

You can start off by using free tools for keyword analyzation on your website. Two of the best tools to begin with for this purpose are the external keyword tool from Google, and the free Word Tracker tool. Any time that you are planning a new website you should use these tools to come up with a main keyword phrase that represents the entire theme of your website, and then you should break it down into sub keywords and keyword phrases that come with less competition attached to them. This is possible with the external keyword tool from Google. When you load up the web application, you just have to enter your main keyword phrase into the box and click a button and you will get a whole host of different keyword ideas that you can play around with.

You should be brainstorming in order to find out what keywords and keyword phrases best suit the main keyword phrase for your website, coming up with a sizable list in the process. Next you should discover the core keywords that relate the most closely to the theme of your website. Next you are going to want to create a cluster of keywords, using some low profile keywords to dilute them. Finally, you should be adding this cluster in to your articles and web pages in order to improve the keyword ranking for your web site and in order to improve the search engine optimization for each individual web page.

Photo Credits: fakelvis

Originally posted 2009-05-18 05:44:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Why should you have to pay for obtaining traffic to your blog? There is no reason why you should spend a lot of money making your blog friendly for readers, considering that some of the best ways to get blog traffic are free. Attracting free blog traffic can easily net you traffic that is just as high a caliber as paid blog traffic, so spend your money someplace else. Here are two sure-fire ways that you are going to attract free blog traffic, meaning that it will not cost you a penny to bring people to your blog.

1 – Optimize Your Posts for Readers

Simply put, you need to be able to write posts that people are going to want to read. This is something that should come to you as common sense, and yet many people reach out to search engines while forgetting that they have real readers with real interests. You need to use the principles behind writing good online copywriting in order to create headlines and copy that are actually interested to the people that are reading.

If you make a habit out of writing posts that people find to be enjoyable, then these readers are going to reward you in the form of returning to your blog pages on a regular basis.

Your posts should be made to be conversational, topical and pithy. You should make them short and you should stick to a single topic with every post. You should also aim to write regularly and often as well, so that both the readers and the search engines are going to visit and revisit your blog more and more often.

2 – Optimize Your Posts for the Search Engines

Here are some of the most important rules that you need to follow when it comes to getting your posts listed in search engines for the keywords that are most important to you:

1. You need to make sure that the URL of your blog contains the primary search engine keyword that you are looking to optimize for.

2. You need to make use of the primary keywords in the title of every single post that you make, meaning that your titles should always be keyword rich and keyword-driven.

3. You also need to make use of your primary keywords in the body of your post, as well as your secondary keywords. Keep in mind that when using keywords, you want to write keyword-driven content, and keyword-centric content, without writing content that is clearly stuffed full of inappropriate keywords. Write content that centers around the keywords so that the content flows naturally for the best results.

4. Finally, you should use your keywords within the anchor text of any links that you place in the body of your posts. This will give the keyword more emphasis for search engines that spider your website.

Photo Credits: Ed Yourdon

Originally posted 2009-09-16 03:51:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter