Use Keywords to Label Your Images for Increased Traffic
When I wrote for a music blog, I went from receiving a few hundred visitors a day to a few thousands visitors a day overnight. Did I hit it big on Digg? Get major Stumblage? No. I brought in thousands of readers through Google Image Search.
I know many bloggers and web writers label their images haphazardly or with little thought as to whether or not they’ll bring in search engine traffic. A picture labeled “snow122208″ probably won’t bring in as many search results as one labeled “snow conditions”, “snow boots”, “snow tires” or “snow boarding.”
In addition to saving your images using keywords, use keywords in your image descriptions and, if you can do it without looking spammy, your image captions. Start doing this and within a week or two your traffic numbers will rise.
Labeling your images properly is one small thing you can do to bring in big results!
Snag some extra October Blog Traffic
If you’re looking for a great way to get some extra traffic in October, and simultaneously voice your opinion on an important topic, you should sign up for Blog Action Day 2008.
Blog Action Day is a new blogosphere event (started last year). The goal of Blog Action Day is to gather voices in the blogosphere on a single day to discuss an important issue. Last year the topic was the environment - this year it’s poverty.
Anyone with a blog, podcast, or so fourth can sign on to participate. All you have to do is register at Blog Action Day 2008, and then commit to blogging about poverty on October 15th.
Blog Action Day was loads of fun last year. Tons of blogs participated and it was cool to see how everyone covered green issues from their blog’s unique perspective. It was also way neat to see how the blogosphere managed to come together on a single day - this event is a great way to get involved with the blogging community and find new blogs to read and adore.
The other benefit, as noted above, is increased traffic. Once you sign on, your blog is listed along with all the other blogs participating on the Blog Action Day website. Additionally, on the big event day, plenty of people linked to each other which also boosted traffic. Last year about five of my blogs participated and all but one had big traffic increases during the event.
Currently 4,599 sites have signed on, and because Blog Action Day gathers RSS info they’re estimating about 9,387,391 readers for this event so far.
Some of the blogs involved so far: TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker, Mashable, Smashing, VentureBeat, ProBlogger, Inhabitat, ZenHabits, Stepcase LifeHack, MentalFloss, DailyBlogTips, and oodles more.
As for me: I’m signed on this year with Tree Hugging Family and Offbeat Homes - I may add more. If you sign on for Blog Action Day, let me know in the comments, so I can try to stop by to read your thoughts on poverty.
[image via Blog Action Day]
How Blogging is Like Dieting
So after writing yesterday’s post about the woman who wanted to make it as a blogger so quick, she resorted to spamming me with fake testimonials of how great she is, I began to think of the best way to describe what it takes to build up a blog. If you blog for a network, you have a couple of advantages. For instance, the pay is already coming in and you have your network’s good reputation to back you up. Still, to build up traffic, respect and loyalty takes time. For me, blogging is like dieting.
Ups and Downs
If anyone knows about dieting, it’s me. I’ve been battling weight issues for about 20 years now. One thing learned is if you want to lose weight, you have to take it slow and do it right. There’s not quick fix, there’s no cheating, and tactics to lose weight rapidly backfire. It’s the same with blogging. Traffic is best built up on a slow, steady basis. You can have your ups and downs depending on what you wrote that day, but for the most part it’s a slow, steady rise to the top.
You can use linkbait to get your numbers up, but it’s sort of like crash dieting. You have several great days of heavy traffic but pretty soon you’re back down to your average, hungry for more. Hopefully you’ll have a a few more readers (or a few less pounds) to show for it but for the most part this is a quick fix, not a permanent solution.
Taking the Time to Do it Right
The dieters who are successful in their weight loss are the ones who change their habits and steer away from the quick fix. They learn the proper portion size and eat healthier foods. Bloggers who want to build up a good traffic base also know they they have to have good, healthy habits.
Instead of going for the linkbait crowd, or writing for Digg, write good, authoritative content. Get to the top of the search engines by providing the content people want to read. The best way to keep weight off is eat properly and get enough exercise. The best way to keep the traffic flowing and rising is to provide good content and great advice.
Blogging, like dieting, takes time. Do look for ways to provide the most satisfaction, but the quick fix will soon have you back at square one. If you want people to come back everyday, if you want to pounds to come off, you have to have the right portion size, the right balance and the right attitude.
Image: Morguefile
Self Promotion Doesn’t Mean Spam
I’m not going to name names or point fingers but once upon a time, I did a Q&A with a web 2.0 up and comer. You see, I kept receiving email telling me how spectacular this person was. So I decided to investigate. She was a joy to interview and I posted her profile on one of my blogs and the testimonials and positive comments rolled in. And by rolled in I mean they kept coming…and coming…and coming. After a while it occurred to me they were all basically saying the same thing. I looked a little deeper and saw they all came from the same IP. I dug even further and realized all the letters sent to me about this great person were sent by that same IP as well. I had been had.
When I decided to pull the interview the self promoting diva confronted me. How could I do that? Look at all the nice things people were saying about her. Was there a problem? I told her of my findings and that I felt kind of stupid. She got angry and told me it was my own fault. I’m always telling bloggers to get involved in a little “shameless self promotion.” She was only taking my advice. Well yes, I do say that. But there’s a big difference between promoting a blog or a product and spam.
To promote my blog I have contests and polls, I put my URL in signature lines in comments and forum post, and I might even Tweet out a title now and then. Do I send email upon email to a high profile blogger asking her to check me out while pretending not to be me? No. That’s not shameless self promotion, that’s deceit and spam and it’s not what I mean at all.
People in the blogosphere are kind. They’re always willing to help out other bloggers. They don’t take too kindly to others trying to pull the wool over their eyes. When you promote do so in a way that’s not going to annoy or upset your fellow bloggers. You’ll find your traffic may happen slower, but you have a good honest fan base. Besides I’d much rather know people came to my blog because they liked what I had to say and not because of a bunch of false testimonials.
Some Basic Rules for Running A Blog Contest
Blog contests can bring in some good traffic, but you need to run them correctly, or they can be a total pain. I’ve run countless blog contests, some more successful than others. When I first started holding contests at my blogs I made some pretty dumb mistakes. The good news is that I can tell give you some tips about what you should and shouldn’t do if you decide to hold a blog contest.
Make the rules simple. SIMPLE. I just had a blog contest at one blog. We had 215 or so entries. At least 80 of those entries were disqualified because the people didn’t follow the very basic rules. And believe me, they were really simple. If you get too tricky with your rules, you’ll end up with about five decent entries.
Make readers work a little. While I don’t think you should make things too tricky, it can be hard work to snap up cool prizes for contests, so I’m not normally a fan of having readers simply “leave a comment” to win. If I don’t have a good simple plan, I’ll use an old standby, like, “Visit our prize sponsors website, and tell me an item you like.” NOTE: This is way too tricky for some people, but seriously now, if they can’t read and follow something this easy, well, maybe they don’t really want to win.
You don’t have to pay shipping. I always ask sponsors if they’ll send prizes to my readers, vs. the sponsor sending me a prize then me having to pay shipping to send one or more prizes off. I’ve never had a sponsor refuse. If you have a prize yourself to send, and work for a network, you can always ask if they’ll pay shipping. One network I work for will do this.
Always ask your sponsors where they’ll ship to. I used to forget this little step (back in newbie days), and I could have gotten into a lot of trouble. I didn’t, but that’s just luck. If you don’t ask, you won’t know to note something akin to, “Sorry folks, but this contest is only open to U.S. residents.” Then when someone from Australia wins, and the sponsor has to pay loads of shipping they didn’t count on, that’s trouble. If you’re paying shipping yourself, make a decision about where you can afford to ship as well.
ALWAYS have a notification disclaimer. Note somewhere in your post, “I will draw winners names on June 5th. I will email the winners for their addresses. If you don’t email me back in 5 days, I’ll draw a new winner.” If you don’t put a disclaimer in, you may wait, and wait, and then most likely wait some more. This means you’re tied up with a contest that should have been over ages ago. Also, contest sponsors expect a somewhat timely response. It’s not cool to make them or the winners who respond wait.
Send a quick thank you to your sponsors. Nothing fancy, but it’s nice, and it keeps you in their head should they feel like offering another prize at some point. I always send off a quick email thank you, along with links to any posts I did about their product / company. Often times this works in your favor too, because a company will add you to their press page, giving you an instant link.
There are many more ways to make a contest a success, but these tips above can help you avoid a lot of the obnoxious stuff that tends to come along with a contest.
Also check out: Where To Get Blog Contest Prizes
Are You & Your Readers On the Same Page?
It’s my one year anniversary at one of my favorite blogs. Because of that, I’m doing this whole week long celebration deal; going back over the year, thanking people who link me, and covering the best posts of the year. This is not the first time I’ve done posts at a blog of mine that features the best posts of the year - and by best I mean the posts that get the most traffic.
Whenever I do a best of the blog type post, I’m always surprised, because the posts I actually like best almost never make it into the best posts category. What I adore, and what my readers adore is often very different. What I think will get tons of pages views, often won’t. Most ironically, it’s often the posts I don’t research or spend all sorts of time on, that get the most traffic.
Why!? It’s frustrating, no doubt. Am I that lost about the blogs I write for, or do readers just love to shock me? Honestly, I don’t know. However, recently at one of my blogs, we posted a poll asking readers what they want to see more of, and then proceeded to write more on those topics. Sure enough, traffic has increased. Supply and demand works. Or I suppose that would be demand and supply.
Now, if readers wanted to see stuff that doesn’t relate to my blog, I won’t go that far, but I will adjust to make folks happy. Will you? When was the last time you checked to see which posts are doing the best at your blogs? Can you name the five last posts that bombed? Have you asked readers lately what they want to read?
How willing are you to adjust your blog (or blogs) to meet your readers needs and wants?
No Link Love For Blogging Bloggers Today
I was going to link to some good blogging posts today, but decided not to. Deb did on Sunday anyhow, and we read a lot of the same stuff.
I like blogs in the niches I blog best; probably because I (thankfully) get to blog what I enjoy. I love architect bloggers, and also really like blogging and green bloggers. These are the topics I write about most, and likewise the blogs I visit most.
However, breaking out of your niche is cool. I think bloggers should have a good handful of blogs, that don’t relate to their own topic, that they visit on a regular basis. There are payoffs for visiting outside of niche blogs. The biggest is you have no idea what other people read. If folks see you around, making comments, they might click your name and like what they see. Sometimes you get the oddest, most seemingly out of character readers.
Example: For the longest time, at Offbeat Homes, I got a ton of page views from one guy. I went to investigate. Turns out he didn’t even have a blog, he was on one of the social network sites - MySpace or something like it, where we had one friend in common. All this kid (he was young) talked about was beer. How to get it, drink it, and beer based shenanigans; typical kid just found beer behavior. He did however, like my blog. He’d link to it, and this kid had oodles of pals, who also only talked about beer, but they liked beer guy, so they’d click on his links. End result, me with lots of page views (and some odd comments - but I can live with that). You never know who might like you.
Another benefit is it keeps you from wearing out. Maybe five of my blogs are green, or have a heavy eco slant. I love green, really, but sometimes I’m just so tired of thinking about it all the time. Reading outside of my niche probably saves me from complete and total saturation; my brain gets a rest. You can also get some quirky ideas. You’ll find stuff you don’t normally blog about, that you can perhaps slant to your topic. All in all it keeps things fresh.
So today, forget reading all the blogging blogs, forget blogs in your niche, go find something new. If you have no clue where to start, here are five random ‘out of my niche’ blogs I visit.
Now tell me five out of your niche blogs you like. I need some nice new reading.
Try Adding A Current Event Link To Your Posts
Over at Tree Hugging Family, co-blogger Peggy and I have been trying some different blog traffic building techniques out. If they work out, I may be sharing some here so that you can give them a shot at your blog. The first new trick we tried in May was a current event link.
A major issue at THF is that we post a lot, always have some sort of feature and poll going on, and we often have contests too. Who can keep up? We were trying to keep readers up to date with links before, but it got super annoying to end each post like this:
“Don’t forget to enter our contest, oh and this contest, and check in at the poll. We’re also running some special features this month like blah feature and blah feature, AND hey, are you signed up for our current green challenge?”
That’s like six links and it’s obnoxious. Plus, although we have a contact us page, it seems that people can’t find it, because we’d get comments like, “How do I contact you?”
We decided to try a current event link. Here’s what we did:
At the start of May we wrote one post and titled it current events. We made one basic link back that says, “Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in May 2008” Now, if you click on it, you’ll see that we have all our contests, features, and events, posted in link form in this post, plus we included easy to find contact information.
We’ve been updating this one current event post all month, and then we’ve been simply inserting this link at the end of each and every post we write.
Has it worked?:
So far on our end, it’s been much simpler than a massive reminder link at the end of posts. This also fits our main goal of having THF be a reader friendly experience. We want folks to find what they need without much work. Also, both page views and links to our blog have increased this month. It’s tough to tell if the master link is helping there, but it seems like it. We’ll know better after doing this a few months in a row.
Why not give a master current event link a try at your blog, and see how it works for you? If you do try it out let me know if your traffic goes up, or tell me what sort of response you get to it.
10 Ways to Let Your Competition Be Your Guide
I’m always hesitant to use the word "competition" to describe other bloggers in my niche. I always like to look at them as colleagues in which to share ideas and community rather than the person whose traffic I should be stealing. For the purpose of today’s blog post, we’ll allow it just this one time.
If there’s one thing I learned with Freelance Writing Jobs is that if you have a popular blog, others will want to do the same exact thing. It used to frustrate me, but I decided to use this to my advantage. Rather get frustrated with all the other job listings blogs, I look to them to see how I can do things better or different.
Some of my network blogs are in competitive niches as well, my blogs on saving money or beauty tips certainly aren’t the only ones out there. How do I stand out among the rest?
Here are 10 ways I let my competition be my guide.
- I participate in their communities - It would be silly to expect no one else to have the same type of blog, wouldn’t it? My philosophy is, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The great thing about the blogosphere is that there’s room for everyone. If I’m not going to be the only blog re-listing freelance writing jobs or offering tips for finding said jobs, I’m going to welcome the others into the neighborhood. By participating in the other blog communities I’m offering my insight, learning and gathering new ideas from others, and maybe even gaining a reader or two.
- I look to see what they’re missing - When I look at another blog like mine I wonder what they’re missing. What do their readers have questions about and what topics aren’t they discussing? Offer something your competition doesn’t have and people will respond.
- I define my niches. When I visit other blogs in the same niche I wonder how I can do things differently. For instance, with Freelance Writing Jobs I became more than a "relisting" blog. I began offering advice for finding and getting jobs. At this blog, Jennifer and I target bloggers who work for others rather than the usual make money online blogging blogs. At the List Maven, my beauty blog, I offer all tips and product reviews in list form, and at Simply Thrifty I offer stories from my youth and updates on home DIY projects. Even my celebrity blogs are different - I have one featuring celebrity role models and one featuring celebrity lists. Now when people visit me it won’t be the same old thing they see on other blogs.
- I continue to evolve - This holds hands with point number 3, by continuing to evolve I don’t get stuck in a rut. I don’t have to talk about or do the same things over and over. It’s ok to change your blog’s focus now and then to adapt to your readers’ tastes. Sometimes that’s by widening a narrow niche, other times it’s by changing a blog’s design.
- I look to see what my competitors do right - When I see other blogs in my niche, I want to know what they’re doing right. I’m not going to copy them, but I am going to use them for ideas for bettering myself and my blog.
- I investigate the most and least popular articles - What topics do their communities respond to most and least? This will give you a good indication of what your readers might like to learn about. Don’t copy, but do add your own point of view.
- I investigate their traffic - Knowing how the competition is faring can be a great kick in the ass. How many comments do they get? What is their Alexa, Technorati or Google ranking? Are they at the top of the search engines? Where does a lot of their traffic seem to be coming from? Do they get lots of track backs from other blogs?
- I investigate to see who is linking to them and why - Other other blogs and communities responding to my competitors’ posts? If so why? What makes one post more popular than another? Is controversy or negativity such a good thing? Knowing which posts get the backlinks might give you some good ideas of your own -and might also give you an idea of other communities to target.
- I offer to trade guest posts - By trading guest blogger posts with your competitors or fellow niche bloggers you’ll be sharing ideas and traffic.
- I keep them on my radar - Even the bloggers with the most popular blogs keep their competitors close. Even if you only visit the blogs or feeds once a week, know what others in your niche are talking about as well as the reaction of their readers. This way if they start to all of a sudden gain a lot of traffic or comments you’ll know why…and know what to do to use it to your advantage.
Twitter - Not Quitting Anytime Soon
This week I’ve been talking about time wasters. So far I’ve covered personal time wasters, email time savers, and my editorial calender.
Today Twitter.
This post will be real short. Twitter does waste some of my time. Some tweets on twitter are totally useless. Will this be a time waster I cut?
No.
Twitter sends a fair amount of blog traffic my way. Also I stay current on many of the blogs I enjoy via Twitter, which translates into less time spent clicking around, visiting my favorite blogs to see what’s new. Overall it’s a positive service with some time wasting qualities, but it gives enough back so that I feel it’s justified.
What do you think of your Twitter time?
