Getting Unlimited Traffic to Your Site
Community Participating Through Blogs
Participating in online communities such as blogs is an effective
strategy for building links and generating traffic. Blogs allow you to
provide comments and feedback on each blog entry posted by the author of
the blog.
Because blog comments tend to be moderated, you should provide useful
and constructive responses to avoid being labeled as spam. Adding
value to the community increases the likelihood that your link and
comment are posted.
Comment on blogs that are as closely related to the theme of your web
site as possible. Also, try to find blogs that have a PageRank higher
than 4 and possess a large number of relevant incoming links. You can
find these blogs by searching for a keyword related to your site in a
blog directory such as
BlogSearch.Google.com or
BlogCatalog.com.
Once you find blogs that you would like to participate in, perform an
evaluation as you would for any other potential linking partner as
shown in
3 – Understanding the Roles of Links & Linking – Evaluate Potential Linking Partners. Do not waste your time submitting comments to blogs that are unrelated to the content on your site.
Acquiring links through blog participation works especially well to
achieve rankings in the Yahoo and MSN search engines, but is not as
effective a strategy to use in Google. This is due to most blogs
attaching by default, the nofollow attribute to links in blog comments.
This tag is supposed to prevent the search engines from following and
taking into account that link in their ranking algorithm. Google
appears to follow this rule more strictly than the Yahoo and MSN search
engines. I have written an article about the
nofollow attribute, you will also find the link at the end of this lesson.
Directly below is an awesome code that you can implement into
Google.com to narrow your blog search with ease, but before you use this
code, you should download the SEO Quake Firefox Toolbar extension which
will help you tremendously. If you don’t use Firefox as your browser,
maybe now is the time to change, because this special code is more than
worth its weight in gold, and the Firefox Toolbar extension compliments
the code, and will also be beneficial for much more down the road with
your SEO. Here is the Firefox SEO Quake extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036/
site:.com inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “Add Keywords”
The code above is designed to locate blogs that allow for commenting.
Copy then paste the code into the Google search box, change the words Add Keywords,
to the keywords you would like to search for. Typing your keywords
related to your site ensures that the blogs you comment on will be at
least somewhat related to your site.
You can also change the “.com
” to .gov, .org, .edu, etc. to search for blogs with those extensions.
Once you receive the results page, the first step is to sort your
results based on PageRank.
SEOQuake has appeared to have made some changes… you used to be able
to click on the “down arrow” without doing anything else first. Now you
need to click on the “Request Parameters” button, then click on the
small “down arrow” next to the “PR” in the top “Sort” column as shown
below.
QUICK TIP: If your search returns zero results, broaden your keyword phrase a bit (i.e. go from “dog walking” to “dog”).
SIDE NOTE: PageRank is not as vital with .edu and
.gov sites because they already carry so much authority. Don’t worry if
you don’t find too many of these sites that you can comment on… a link
is a link, and a link from a PR1 is still better than no link at all.
If you don’t find any relevant sites on page 1 of the search results,
check out page 2 and page 3. Often times you’ll find just as many high
PR sites on page 3 as on page 1 of the search results.
If you do a little digging, you should easily be able to locate a
handful of relevant sites that allow commenting and are worth posting
to.
Community Participation through Forums
Participating in online communities like forums is also an effective
strategy for building links and generating traffic. Forums are internet
message boards that allow you to start new discussions or participate
in ongoing discussions about a variety of topics. Most forums allow you
to participate by simply signing up for a free account with your e-mail
address and very little personal information.
Forums tend to be moderated, but unlike blogs, your forum posts are
often posted for public viewing without having to go through a review
process. Adding value to the community increases the likelihood that
your link and comment stay posted and that your site will be visited by
other forum participants. As mentioned before, participate in forums
that are closely related to the theme of your web site, and try and find
forums with a PageRank higher than 4, have high traffic, and possess a
large number of relevant incoming links.
Don’t waste your time submitting posts to forums that are unrelated
to the content of your site. Acquiring links through forum
participation works well to increase your rankings in all the major
search engines as well as your overall site traffic from the forums
themselves.
You can find these forums by using the search box in Google, Yahoo,
etc., by searching for a keyword or keyword phrase related to your site
and adding the word “forums” at the end of your keywords.
GOOD NEWS: You can also use the same code from above that you used for blogs, just change the word “blog” to “forum”, next to the ‘inurl:’.
Article Directory Submissions
Article directory submission sites are a great way to generate a
large number of relevant links to your site. You can write unique
articles then submit them to these directories to where they can be
picked up by other webmasters and placed on their site. Article
directories are public content depositories to where owners of other
sites can select content to place on their own site. When a person
chooses your article from one of these depositories, they must leave the
link back to your site intact.
Try to write articles between 400 and 750 words in length as mentioned in
5 – Content Writing & SEO – Article Length.
Make the articles unique, and also make sure they have proper spelling,
grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure in order
to have the best chance at being accepted.
There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories scattered
throughout the internet, but you should focus your submission efforts on
only those that have a large visitor base to give yourself the best
chance at exposure.
For example, Ezinearticles.com is one of the largest article
directories on the Internet. Your article will be reviewed by a human
before it is selected and placed into the Ezinearticles directory. The
directory is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, so
you should make submitting your articles to this directory a priority.
I recently wrote an article – “
7 DoFollow High PageRank Backlink Submission Sites!”
in which these are article directory submission sites that do not
contain the “nofollow” attribute for their outbound links. For more
information, follow the link above!
Other examples of high-quality article directories include
Goarticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com and Isnare.com. At the end of this
lesson you will find a link that has the 4 mentioned article
directories, plus 46 others.
Offer RSS/Email Delivery Technology to Your Blog Readers
If you would like people to have an easy way to frequently follow
your blog, then you need to offer your content through Really Simple
Syndication, or RSS. RSS is an XML-based protocol which among other
things offers simple website summaries and syndication. RSS allows your
readers to keep up with your blog in an automated manner and is easier
for them than checking your blog randomly for new content. I have
recently read an article that stated, “studies confirm that only a small
percentage of the Internet users know about or use RSS feeds. It is
said that this number is below 10% around the world.”
Right now, the most popular blog feed management provider is
Feedburner.com.
Once you join Feedburner and add a Feedburner icon to your web site,
your readers can easily join your RSS feed or email. For example, via
the Feedburner blog feed management system, your readers can elect to
receive an email notification every time you write new blog content.
Once you sign up, you will need to activate your subscription. Go to
the tab “Publicize” then click “Email Subscriptions”, then
“Subscription Management”… click on the activate button at the bottom of
the page, to activate your subscription.
If you would like to, you can offer a ‘Join Newsletter’ page, as shown in the photo below:
All you need to do is to copy and paste the code from your Google
Feedburner Subscription Management box into a page on your blog (make
sure you add the code to a “Page” [I.E. WordPress Dashboard > Pages],
not a post). To find the code, navigate to the same location that you
activated your subscription… click the “Publicize” tab, then
“Subscription Management” under “Email Subscriptions”.
After you have added the code to your Join Newsletter page, your
subscription form will be automatically inserted each time the page is
loaded. From there, readers can subscribe to receive emails with your
newest content.
Another form of getting people to subscribe to your blog posts is a
box that you can add to the top or bottom of your posts page, that
encourages people to sign up for your Newsletter or RSS feed… I chose to
add this box to the top of my post pages, see photo below.
This box is provided by a plug-in called
What Would Seth Godin Do…
once you upload and activate this plug-in, click on the link ‘WWSGD’
under your Dashboard > Settings. You will come to a box ‘Message to
New Visitors:’ with your information already in box, as shown below.
If you’ve created a “Join Newsletter” page as described above, then
you will want to change the word “feed” directly after the web site
address (as shown in the photo above), to “join-newsletter”, or whatever
your URL file name is. You can then change the words “RSS Feed” to
“Free Newsletter, or whatever you choose.
This plug-in also provides a box marked “Message to Return Visitors”
which works well by providing a different message for those that
frequently return to your site… you just put a number in the box marked
“Repetition” for how many times you want the first message to show to
your visitors before showing them the message marked for return
visitors. To make it easy, just copy and paste the message from your
New Visitor’s box to the Returning Visitor’s box, then change the
wording around to your liking.
HELPFUL HINT: if you are
testing to see your finished message and your “Returning Visitor’s”
message continues to show up, just put a larger number in the
“Repetition” box, click save, then look at your message. When you are
satisfied with your first message, reset the number in the repetition
box back to 5 or whatever you have chosen.
Press Release
Press releases are the mainstays of any marketing program. What’s so
powerful about a press release? It’s just the facts, including
benefits, and it’s sent out to publications and organizations that might
publish all or part of the press release. Use press releases to send
out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. News
organizations, publications, newsletters, and even some forums, will
post press releases. When you write the release, be sure to include a
link back to your site.
Aside from letting the world know about what’s going on at your
company, press releases also help your company’s website build and
maintain high search engine rankings. In the past, press releases were
only for journalists who may be interested in your company or industry.
At the end of this lesson, there is also a web site included that shows 50 Free Press Release Submission web sites.
Participate on Social Media Web Sites
A proven effective approach to marketing your blog is through
participation on social media web sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg,
MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and others. You can use these social media
web sites to generate traffic and buzz, and build backlinks to your web
site. Social networks allow you to build large lists of contacts and
supporters that can help to spread the word about your business and web
site. Social news services provide a platform for others to vote on
your content and share your story with others. Video sharing web sites
allow you to upload, view and share video clips with millions of
potential visitors.
Network with Facebook
Facebook, located at
http://www.facebook.com/,
is a poplular social networking web site that enables you to build
lists of contacts and interact with people all over the world through
profile pages, pictures, videos, message boards, and various technology
applications. Facebook is one of the top ten most trafficked web sites
in the United States and boasts over 500 million active members for the
U.S. according to Mashable.com. You can use Facebook to interact with
current and prospective business associates while generating
considerable traffic to your web site and buzz about your business.
Network with MySpace
MySpace
is a leading social networking community that enables you to build
lists of contacts and interact with people all over the world through
profile pages, pictures, videos, and blogs. According to Alexa, MySpace
is one of the top five most popular web sites in the United Statees.
The MySpace community has over 200 million members and includes people
of all ages and demographics. Despite the common misconception that
MySace is used only by teenagers, millions of adults and businesses use
MySpace as a vehicle to manage reputation, build brand recognition,
promote products, and generate buzz.
The first step to becoming a member of the MySpace community is to
open a free account and create a profile page. The name of your profile
page serves as your URL extension on the www.myspace.com domain. For
example, if I were to use a profile name “SEOBlogOptimizer”, then my
public MySpace profile address would be
www.myspace.com/seoblogoptimizer.
Therefore, when you use MySpace for
business purposes, you should try to name your profile page after your
business, or you can name your profile page using keywords that describe
the products or services you sell.
Maximize Exposure with StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a peer and social networking technology that includes a
toolbar that you install in your web browser; you can use this toolbar
to discover and rate web pages, videos, photos, and news articles. The
StumbleUpon service also allows you to submit your own web pages,
videos, photos, and news articles, all of which can help you generate
buzz and traffic, and build backlinks to your web site.
The key to generating buzz, traffic, and links from StumbleUpon is to
make sure that your content is submitted and available to other
StumbleUpon users. You may want to have other people submit your
content so that you can vote positively on it and not come across to
other StumbleUpon users as partial. The best kind of content to submit
to StumbleUpon is entertaining, informative, or unique.
To join StumbleUpon, navigate to
http://www.stumbleupon.com/,
click Join StumbleUpon, fill in the required information, click Join
and Download Now… when prompted, install the StumbleUpon toolbar.
After installing the StumbleUpon toolbar, visit your web site, then
click the “I Like it” button. The review window will appear, then add a
short review of your web site and choose an appropriate topic, and
adult classification. Click Submit This Site. Your web site is now
available to other users when they “Stumble”.
Micro-Blog with Twitter
A very powerful and increasingly popular way to communicate with
friends and clients, build buzz, and generate prospective business leads
is through micro-blogging. Micro-blogging is a form of social
networking that enables you to keep your followers up-to-date with what
you are doing at any given time of the day.
The most widely used micro-blogging network is Twitter. Twitter, located at
http://twitter.com/,
is a free social networking service that allows you to micro-blog by
sending short “updates” of 140 characters or less to others via a text
message from your mobile phone, or by typing a message.
One of the ways you can use Twitter to generate Web site traffic and
buzz is by sharing daily deals, special offers, or exciting product news
with your readers. If you have an e-commerce web site, you may want to
send out a message each morning announcing your top-selling products.
For example, “Yesterday we sold over 1000 red widgets. We have less
than that left in inventory, so order now to guarantee shipment.”
Connect with LinkedIn
LinkedIn, located at
http://www.linkedin.com/,
is a popular business-oriented social networking site that enables you
to build a professional network of contacts. The primary purpose of
this social network site is to allow you to maintain a list of contact
details of people you know and trust in business. The people in your
LinkedIn contact list are referred to as connections. You can invite
anyone, regardless of whether or not the person is a LinkedIn user, to
become one of your connections.
Each time you add a new connection to your LinkedIn network you gain
access to that person’s connections. For example, by adding a new
connection, you gain indirect access to that person’s direct connections
(your second-degree connections) and also the connections of your
second-degree connections (called third-degree connections). Every time
you create new connections, you are, in turn, tapping into a
potentially large network of business leads that you can use to help
grow your business.
Share Videos with YouTube
Video Web sites such as YouTube provide one of the most powerful
forms of communication for you to attract potential visitors and get
them interested in your products, services, and web site. YouTube,
located at
http://www.youtube.com/,
is a video sharing web site that allows users to upload, view, and
share video clips. Posting videos on YouTube is easy and requires
minimal time and investment on your part.
Users of all kinds, including small and large businesses, amateur
videographers, and everyday people, have successfully posted videos to
YouTube. You can create videos that both inform and entertain your
viewers… videos that entertain tend to create more buzz and result in
more viewers than information videos. Regardless of whether your goal
is to inform, entertain, or both inform and entertain, try to make your
videos interesting so that people will want to share your video with
friends.
Take Advantage of Digg Traffic
Digg is a popular social news web site located at:
http://digg.com/,
allow users to post and vote on user-submitted content. News stories
and Web sites are submitted by users and then promoted to the front page
through a user-based ranking system. Stories and web sites that make
the front page of Digg.com can lead to thousands of unique visitors
within a very short period of time and can lead other web site,
typically blogs and news web sites, to link to your web site.
You can significantly increase your chances of getting users to vote
your content or news story to the front page of Digg by following
several basic strategies. Do not submit your own web site or story to
Digg. Content submitted by the content creator rarely makes the front
page of Digg.
As a member of Digg, you can add friends to your member account.
Adding lots of friends is a good idea because your friends will often
vote on the same stories that you do. Story titles that capture users’
attention are more likely to get voted on and make the front page of
Digg. Title with sensational, compelling headlines and interesting
summaries tend to work best.
Network with Sphinn
Sphinn, located at
http://sphinn.com/,
is a social news web site that allows you to read, submit, and vote on
content; read and take part in online discussions; and network with
others.
The Sphinn web site is an extension of the popular
search-engine marketing web site SearchEngineLand.com. The Sphinn
community consists primarily of search-engine and interactive marketing
professional interested in a broad range of topics in the technology
field.
Closing Comments about Social Networking
One thing to keep in mind… Submitting your own content may appear to
readers as an attempt to spam or self-promote, which is typically
frowned upon with-in the social networking space. Instead, have a
friend, preferably an active member of the social network to which you
would like the story to be sent to, vote on or submit your story. Once
the story is submitted, you can comment or vote on your own story.
SEO Boot Camp Comments:
If you want the most from your online business, plus receive
the highest volumes of organic traffic possible that some of your most
successful competitors already have, then you need to take SEO
seriously.
SEO is a comprehensive approach to improving your search
engine rankings. As such, it requires attention to your whole site. It
does little good to optimize portions of your site and leave other areas
lacking the same attention to detail. If you feel that your site is in
need of optimizing, do it right and make sure you hit all of the
elements as you go.
You Have the Blueprints at Your Disposal… Now Put One Foot in Front of the Other, and Take One Baby Step at a Time!
When I come across additional or updated information, I will
be sure to add it to my lessons, then pass it on to you through the
information you provided while signing up for these lessons.
Below are the links from this lesson in order of appearance (each
link will open a new window or tab to allow you to easily return to this
page for more link navigation.)
Blog Directories
Reminder from 3 – Evaluate Potential Linking Partners
My “NoFollow” Article
SEOQuake Firefox Extension
My Dofollow Article & Top 50 Directory Submission Sites!
Google FeedBurner RSS/Email Delivery Technology
Press Release Info
Social Media Web Sites:
