Archive for the 'Traffic' Category
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Disclosure: I’ve never tried submitting any of my blogs to blog directories before (because it’s a time consuming task). But that is one of the first thing many bloggers do to improve their search engine rankings and increase their traffic.
If you do try submitting your blog to blog directories, please remember:
- Blog submission won’t lead to a direct increase in traffic from those directory websites
- But if your blog is placed on a good blog directory which has a high page rank, it will help you improve your search engine rankings and lead to some indirect traffic
The problem that many bloggers face is knowing which blog directory is worth submitting your blog to. Most of them are not updated properly. Many of them don’t link to your blog at all. And a few link to you for the first couple of months and then ask you to pay a small fee if you want to remain in their listings.
But Nicolas Jeison has finally solved that problem. He has come up with a blog where all he does is reviews different blog directories. And lets us know which ones are worth submitting to and which ones are a waste of time.
If you are interested in blog directory submissions, check his blog out:
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 17 May 2007
Comments (1)
I came across this cool software that automatically signs all your outgoing emails with your latest blog post.
The software won’t generate loads of traffic to your website. But its free to use and doesn’t take a lot of resources. You download it, set it up, and you’re good to go.
It works with all the major email softwares and websites:
- Outlook
- Mail.app
- Gmail
- Hotmail
- Yahoo
The only bad thing about the software is its adware. They add the following text to all your outgoing emails too:
–Blogsigs.com, Link your own blog posts.
http://www.blogsigs.com
(You can always delete that though…)
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 15 May 2007
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Contests. They are the ultimate leverage tools to grow your traffic because:
Your costs will be lower and
your results better!
Why spend money on advertising if you can spend money on rewards and achieve better results?
The Harry-est Town in America Contest
The last Harry Potter book is due to be released on 21st July. It is bound to be a best seller and sell millions of copies once its released. There is no doubt about it. The fan base is so huge - that even if the book reads bad - people will buy it.
Amazon.com knows that 21st July is going to be a BIG day for them. But by selling the books before it is released, Amazon.com could save a lot of money on inventory and warehousing. Should they spend money on promoting the pre-order page for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?
Naa - there is a better alternative. A contest!
Here is what Amazon.com is doing. They came out with a contest. The town that pre-orders the highest number of the Harry Potter books before its release will win $5,000! The money will go to a charity that serves that town.
Because of the contest, many town councils and churches went to work and started asking people to pre-order the book from amazon.com
For the investment of $5000, amazon.com achieved something that has never been achieved before. They’ve pre-sold thousands of copies of the book. The Harry Potter book is already a best seller. And more than 2 months are left for its release!
Link: Amazon.com Contest Page
Blog Contest
Another cool contest case study is from the BloggingTips.com blog. They came up with an easy contest that their readers could participate in.
- All they have to do is add a link that says “win a mascot at BloggingTips.com”
- On May 26th, whoever has the top most link on Google for the phrase “win a mascot at BloggingTips.com” will win a reward.
BloggingTips.com has 3 rewards. Total value of the 3 rewards is $380. But the cost to BloggingTips.com to give away the rewards is estimated to be less than $100.
For the total cost of less than $100 - BloggingTips.com has got 31 blogs to link to them already (stats from technorati.com). And many people from those blogs have visited their website!
Success Formula for Contests
There are just 5 factors that lead to the success of contests. Work on them and you’ll generate a lot of traffic:
- How easy is it to enter the contest
- How fun is it to participate in the contest
- What rewards and incentives can be won
- How to generate the first few participants for the contest
- How easy is it to spread the word about the contest
Action Summary:
- Organize a contest to promote your blog. Give people a reward to perform an action.
- Action could be: linking to your blog from their blog or website. Or commenting on your blog. Or forwarding your blog to their friends.
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 14 May 2007
Comments (4)
In the Top 5 Free Ways to a_?Starta_? Generating Traffic to Your Blog, one of the five ways is:
Convert your blog posts into articles and submit them to article directories.
After reading that post, a reader who calls himself stocktube asked a very good question.
“Does it still work? I read from somewhere that google might penalise or give lower weightage for duplicate contenta_?”
The question warrants an answer.
1. Google does not penalize duplicate content. It just hides it. If 2 websites have the same content, ita_Tll just show one of the websites in its search results.
2. When your blog is not so famous, Google won’t rank it high on the search results as it is.
3. But if you syndicate your post and add it to ezinearticles.com - your article has a good chance to show up on Google search (because ezinearticles.com is already highly ranked).
4. And that article on ezinearticles.com can drive traffic to your blog and making it more famous.
Action Summary:
- Convert your blog posts into articles and syndicate them when your blog is not so highly ranked on Google.
- Drop the technique over time when your site grows and more people start linking to it and its search engine rankings improve.
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 11 May 2007
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The statistics are back. From May 2 to May 9. This blog saw 511 unique visitors. Out of 511 people - can you guess how many came from digg.com? A grand total of
“4″
Which leads me to remove the “Add to Digg” buttons from this blog. It just took a lot of space. And added to distraction.
Why Digg.com is Not a Good Idea
Digg.com is a great site for making your blog posts wildly famous… if your blog is already slightly famous. If you can get a 100 diggs from your own website traffic, then adding digg.com buttons makes sense. And they can help you go from 100 to 1000 diggs. But if you don’t have the ability or the pull to get those initial 100 diggs for your blog posts - digg is useless. Your blog posts will remain buried on their website.
Alternative Real Estate Usage
So what else can you show on your blogs instead of wasting the valuable real estate on digg buttons? The answer is…
Add Stumble Upon Buttons!
The Might of StumbleUpon.com
As I write this post - 2,315,617 people have installed stumbleupon.com toolbars on their computers. Whenever these people have free time, they click on the “stumble” button on their browser toolbars - and stumbleupon.com will take them to a random website based on what they like. These people can vote on whether they liked that website or not. And based on those ratings, stumbleupon.com shows them similar websites.
The twist is: the more people that give a positive vote to a particular website, the more stumbleupon users will get to see it.
By adding a “Stumble This” stumbleupon button to your blog posts - you allow your blog visitors to give your post a positive vote.
StumbleUpon Statistics
In the last one week - I voted positive for 3 of my blog posts through the stumbleupon.com browser. And a few people voted positive using the “share this” button on this blog - which already has a stumble this button on it. That seems to have created a stumbleupon.com whirlwindy roll over effect.
Out of the total 511 visitors - a whole 362 people came from stumbleupon.com!
(Statistics provided by Google Analytics.)
(This week, I’m going to test having stumbleupon button on this website along with the “share this” button.)
Action Summary:
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic, Blog Setup on 10 May 2007
Comments (35)
“Be a painkiller. Not a vitamin.” - Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg is one of the co-founders of the Wordpress script that uses this blog. I recently stumbled upon his audio and found it fantastic. You should listen to it. (Its educational as well as entertaining!)
Matt gives you his 13 points that will help you to grow from 1 user to 100,000 users!
Some of the things he talks about are:
- Being passionate
- Doing your own support
- Having metrics for everything you do
- Being a painkiller - not a vitamin
The first 100k users are always the hardest
(scroll down to listen to the audio online or download it to listen at your own convenience)
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 09 May 2007
Comments (0)
1. Syndication.
Convert your blog posts into articles and submit them to article directories.
2. PR.
Write press releases and distribute them.
3. StumbleUpon.
Add a “stumbleupon” button to all your blog posts. When your readers click on the buttons, more people will start visiting your website through stumbleupon.com toolbars.
4. Hug another blogger.
Send them thank you notes. Comment on their blogs. (Read more…)
5. Co-Exchange Posts.
Contact a blogger and ask him to write a guest post for your blog and you can write a guest post for his.
(Written in response to Darren Rowse’s group writing project. Re-visit this blog frequently and you’ll find more blog traffic generating tips and tricks. And most of them will be more detailed and comprehensive.)
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 08 May 2007
Comments (34)
Index card taken from the files of the hugely talented Jessica Hagy (Hug somebody today!)
One of the easiest way to generate more traffic to your blog is by networking with other bloggers.
- Send thank you notes to other bloggers in your industry
- Comment on other blogs
Total time to send one thank you note and comment on one blog everyday is 10 minutes a day. But the response will be phenomenal.
- People will read comments on other blogs and come visit your blog
- The bloggers themselves will appreciate your commenting on their posts
- And most of them will visit your blog
- Many of them will link back to your posts and comment on your blog too
- A few of them will add you to their Blog Rolls
- Search engines may find your link on other blogs and improve your rankings
As you can see - the benefits are many. So are you going to be persistent and hug a new blogger everyday?
Tools:
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Traffic on 08 May 2007
Comments (4)
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