Increase Site Traffic With Blogs!

I was getting ready to write a great article on how to use a Blog to increase your sites traffic…

Then, as I was catching up on some of my blog reading (my wife had a baby last week, so I have been a little busy lately!) I found that someone else had already beaten me to the punch!

Now, it really doesn’t surprise me that someone else wrote about increasing a blogs traffic… It’s was just kind of eerie to come across an article that was so close to the one in my head… It’s sort of like my own article, but without all the hard work!

And so, instead of spending the time rewriting what has already been written, I have decided to pass on an abridgment of an article by Rand Fishkin that I read on SEOmoz.org.

Rand is CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz.org, which provides companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services from their home offices in Seattle, WA. SEOmoz provides great content in their daily SEO blog, and I definately recommend it to anyone who wants to read or learn more about SEO.

And so without further adieu…

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
Posted by Rand on his SEO Blog, August 31, 2006.

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optimization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided.

So, rather than charging an hourly rate to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Tag Your Content
Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
Don’t Jump on the Bandwagon
Link Intelligently
Invite Guest Bloggers
Eschew Advertising (Until You’re Popular)
Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Cover Topics that Need Attention
Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Use a Human Voice
Archive Effectively
Implement Smart URLs
Reveal as Much as Possible
Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
Build a Brand

My Thanks to Rand for writing yet another great article (and saving me the trouble )!

You can read the full article here!

Michael Valiant

- Ambatchdotcom SEOContest Update -

For anyone following our efforts in the Ambatchdotcom seocontest, we are currently holding steady in fourth place! For more information, click here!

SEO/SEM & Blogging 08 Sep 2006 09:12 pm

Subscribe to this article |

5 Responses

jasmine Says:
September 13th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
The grey print is booring to read!!! Those who wear glasses, like me find difficult to read that font colour.
Michael Valiant Says:
November 8th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Hi Jasmine,

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I have talked to our designer and we will be looking into changing the font colour we use (look for an upcoming blog post regarding this!)

Michael
Lisa Solomon Says:
November 26th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I was hoping your post would address a burning question I have as I am in the process of setting up the website that will incorporate 1shoppingcart: whether ecommerce can successfully be incorporated into a website based on a blogging platform (specifically WordPress, which allows you to create “static” pages as well as posts). If so, do you have any tips on how to successfully integrate the two?
Michael Valiant Says:
November 27th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Lisa,

Using a blog as an eCommerce platform is uncommon, but I HAVE seen it done before, both successfully and not.

Generally, Business Blogs are used mainly for PR, positioning or Education purposes; as a tool to connect with customers, suppliers etc. in order to share company news, or share a companies expertise in their particular field.

If you do go ahead and setup your eCommerce site using Wordpress please let me know, I’d love to see it when it is running!

In the meantime, here are some thoughts, hope they help:

Pros

Wordpress makes it a possible to manage an eCommerce site with the availability of static Pages and the sheer flexibility it allows in regards to templates; as long as you, or your webmaster is able to modify those templates.

If I was going to setup an eCommerce site using Wordpress, I ‘d probably use the static pages to create ‘catalogue’ pages and use posts to promote the store, and chat on the niche topic.

I think it likely that using Wordpress to power an eCommerce site would prove to be MORE work upfront, especially in order to ensure your navigation is friendly and easy to use and follow, but possibly easier for a non-techie person to manage over the long run.

I think that Wordpress would make a great eCommerce platform for sites selling unique, limited quantity items, like an online art gallery for example or for information marketers (interlinked, one letter sales pages.) which is actually becoming more common.

Cons

I don’t think Wordpress is the right platform to use for just any eCommerce site.

For example, I wouldn’t use it if there were too many products to manage effectively (imaging trying to manage 10-20 products per page, 5-10+ pages per category and 5-10 categories, all from the Wordpress ‘Mange Pages’ interface!)

Any blog software is limited to some degree. You simply don’t have the same functionality possible with a regular, non-blog driven website.
Jill Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 9:09 am
Maybe you will visit my site - this is a very useful article…
thanks
Jill