how to drive more traffic to your blog

How to get more traffic to your blog

Overview - How to get more traffic to your blog

• Understanding your visitors

• Enhancing your blog

• Using Social Media

• Search Engine Optimisation

• Summary

• Useful Links

?

Understanding Your Visitors

Understanding Your Visitors – Google Analytics 1

Sources – balance of organic ,

direct traffic, referral

Pages/Visit - How many

pages viewed

each visit

Bounce rate -

How many people

visit and leave

Understanding Your Visitors – Google Analytics 2

Bounce rate – look to

keep this as low as possibleTop

Content – Consider

why certain

pages are popular

Understanding Your Visitors – Google Analytics 3

Navigation Summary– Visitor

path analysis

Enhancing Your Blog

Enhancing Your Blog - Quality Content

• Quality Content

Focus on quality over quantity compelling content captures readers

• Publishing Content

The more frequently you post, the more traffic you get because the search engines are indexing your content more frequently.

• Don’t Forget Images

Images are a great source of traffic. Google images and equivalent are good traffic drivers. Can measure this in GA. Use to identify types of searches driving image views

• Pay attention to blog post titles

You can increase your visitor rate by 73% by the use of a compelling headline. In studies a good headline performed 259% better than the worst headline.

Enhancing Your Blog – Sharing Content

• Set up an RSS feed

This enables users to view your blog via RSS

• Not all blog readers use RSS

Offer the option to subscribe by email, helping to drive traffic to your blog

• Add social media share buttons

http://www.addthis.com/

Has a range of buttons that work with blogger, wordpress, tumblr, and others, as well as providing an ‘email a friend’ option

• Use a Blog roll

List of sites you rate, like etc. Also good for SEO. Can measure fellow blog rolls via referral list on GA.

Enhancing Your Blog – Commenting

• Ask your visitors to leave a comment before they leave

• Include questions in your posts

• Always reply to comments

• Reward comments

Thank you costs nothing

• Comment on blogs in your industry

Helps increase awareness of your blog add to the conversation often option to include the URL to your blog (SEO links)

"site: inurl:blog + "post a comment" + health beauty“ Google

•

Social Media

Social Media – Syndication of Content

• Set up a twitter account

Integrate twitter feed into blog also add via twitter comments to

facebook and linkedin #fb #in at end of tweet. (requires

plugin)

• Set up a facebook account

Engage users with blog and additional content

• Include find us on facebook plugin

Only when good volume of facebook fans

• Set up a business page on Google+ for you blog

(include links to blog)

Social Media – Syndication of content

• Set up a tumblr account

Ideal opportunity to share images and enhance your proposition. Massive growth potential particularly in fashion

• Set up a flickr account

for all images used on your blog and more, be aware only for non commercial use

• Set up a LinkedIn profile

add a link to your blog from your profile (max 3)

Social Media – Increasing blog visibility

• Ask for bookmarks

Don’t be afraid to ask for bookmarks if you have a

created a great blog post

• Create social bookmarking accounts

Use sites like such as Delicious, reddit, digg, and

stumbleupon and submit each post

http://www.socialmarker.com/ up to 50

• Distribute your video content

Don’t just add to Youtube or vimeo. Use

Tubemogel (free) to publish to up to 20 video

platforms including YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv,

and more. (Measure using GA)

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation – 10 Top Tips

Tip 1: Keywords

Optimise each post for a keyword. Use the Google keyword tool to help

https://adwords.google.co.uk/KeywordPlanner

Ensure your keyword is in the post title, and again in the first 50 or so words of your post. You might want to repeat it every 100 words or so in your post (but don’t over-do it)

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Tip 2: Image file names

Image tend to have names given to them by the device they are taken with. Typically these are number heavy. i.e. IMG_334874

As a result the best way to optimise these is to include the key phrase in the name of the image. As an example “Gucci Red Leather Hand Bag”

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Tip 3: Alt Tags

As search engines cant see images include an alt tag describing the image (make sure you include your keyword in this.

When you save most images you also have the option to include a title and a description.

When you add an image to a post in wordpress as an example you can usually define alt-text for the image in the ‘add image’ menu.

In Blogger, you go to the ‘edit html’ version of your post and you will see something like alt =”” – just add your alt text between the quotation marks and save as usual.

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Tip 4: Meta Title and Meta Descriptions

•The meta description provides an overview of the page but more importantly it’s a great opportunity to use copy that convinces users to click through.

•Try to ensure the keyword you have chosen appear in your meta descriptions.

•Make sure each meta description is different as duplication isn’t liked by Google.

Meta Title

Meta Description

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Tip 5: URLs

•Don’t forget to ensure that your blog post URLs (sometimes called permalinks) are search optimised. Sometimes blogs will simply number new blog posts – so you’ll see sallysblog.com/p=304. That’s a missed opportunity to tell search engines what the post is about.

•The quickest and simplest way to do this is to set your blog options so that automatically new posts are given a URL like sallysblog.com/month/title. In Typepad and WordPress you can also individually edit specific URLs so that they incorporate keywords in a set order, for example.

www.yourblog.co.uk/top-10-skin-care-products

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Top tip 6 - Increase your internal links

Reference previous articles and products with a link to these i.e. product name this helps search engines identify key site pages (try to link to one common page for each)

Top Tip 7 - Submit your blog to directories

This will give some traffic but also a links to your blog

Technorati

Alltop.com

Top Tip 8 - Write guest posts

Kill two birds with one stone gain linkage to your site (SEO) and create awareness with a new audience.

http://myblogguest.com/

"beauty inurl:guest-post"

Search Engine Optimisation – Top 10 Tips

Top Tip 9 - Set up Webmaster Tools Accounts

This helps the search engines and also provides useful info on positions in search engines and any site issues.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Top Tip 10 - Create an .XML site map?

Upload to website i.e. www.blogname.co.uk/sitemap.xml

Submit Site Map to webmaster tools account

Top Tip 11 - Be Generous in Linking Out

Including links in content to other blogs. Linking out to valuable resources on the internet adds weight and trust to your blog posts.

Miscellaneous

Add a link in your email signature

If you use web-based email like Gmail, add WiseStamp to your email signature so you can include links to your blog. Add your blog’s RSS feed so your recent posts are always featured in your emails. WiseStamp works with web-based email services including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail and AOL.

Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards

There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it. Measure via google analytics

Summary

• Understand your visitors

• Content is king

• Engage in the blogging community

• Learn a little SEO

• Review and optimise

Useful Links

Free online survey tool

http://www.surveymonkey.com

Free email software

http://www.mailchimp.com

Improving website conversion headline data research

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/site-headlines.html

Free Video distribution tool

http://www.tubemogul.com/solutions/oneload/overview

20 essential blog directories to submit your blog

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-essential-blog-directories-to-submit-your-blog-to/5998/

Top social bookmarking sites November 2011

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-bookmarking-websites

Top blog award sites

http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=blog+awards

Useful Links

Headline forumla’s that work

http://socialmediaworkbook.com/wp-content/uploads/102-headline-formulas.pdf

Code for email subscription forms feedburner

http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/2010/02/edit-feedburner-email-subscription-form.html

http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/step-by-step-guide-to-setup-feedburner-for-wordpress/

Sexy bookmarks plugin wordpress

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/screenshots/

Step by step online marketing

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-online-marketing-with-giant-infographic-11928

Digg and Stumbleupon overview

http://www.slideshare.net/danielle.brigida/using-social-media-strategically-to-increase-web-traffic

Useful online and social media marketing guides

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketing-guides/

http://www.bloglovin.com/en

Useful Links

http://www.bloggerlinkup.com/

Get guest posts opportunities

http://www.copyblogger.com/guest-posts/

Advice on guest posting

http://www.toprankblog.com/rss-blog-directories/

List of top blog directories