Improve Blog traffic in 5 steps!

1. Post regularly... I've noticed that total visits go up when content is kept fresh. I'm trying to post once a week at the moment and one thing I've noticed is that I'd rather spend a few hours writing a couple of articles at a time. I've found this works well for me, because I get really busy (like everyone else). So once I have a few nearly finished SEO articles in my drafts folder, I know a new post is probably just a little bit of work away. Get a few draft posts going and you'll find you can start a good post with a few notes and come back to it at a later date and make sure it is well done.

2. Get Stumbleupon... I'm getting quite a bit of referred traffic from other website at the moment and to increase this even more I told you a easy tactic in my traffic generating tips article. You want traffic from a high traffic blog or story, whatever. Stumbleupon simply allows users to add any webpage they think is good to Stumbleupon. Once added, other users will be able to find the webpage via the Stumbleupon toolbar and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down or nothing at all. The more users that find and click the "Thumbs Up" to show they like the Stumbled site, the more traffic Stumble will drive to the webpage. This tends to drive a lot of traffic to content that is genuinely good. Because users judge sites themselves, spam/low quality sites won't really get anywhere. To benefit, download Stumble find a blog using Stumble that is suitable and add a decent comment to the blog, making sure you add a URL. Some of the substantial traffic from these pages can rub off onto your own blog/website. Be careful not to spam for the sake of it though and watch out Stumbleupon will waste days of your life!

3. Give users the chance to feedback... Give your users the opportunity to add comments or feedback to your blog. I've seen articles on seomoz that say not to switch on comments till you have enough traffic to actually get comments, cos your site may look like a ghost blog... But I'd switch it on all the time and see what happens. Put Digg and Delicious buttons on each post and promote your RSS xml feed too. This should keep people coming back!

4. Internal linking... I get more search engine traffic to one particular SEO article than any other. So I'm in the process of going back through all my old articles and making sure they link to other relevant articles I 've made. So an article on "link building" might link to an article on "paid links". It helps the user find your other relevant posts, so if one post gets a lot of attention users can easily find more of your excellent content!

5.Check the basics... Make sure you spell everything correct and the post is easy to understand (Include diagrams if needed). Take a look at your blog settings and make sure you have unique title tags and descriptions. This is something I am doing right now, I don't know how to switch on unique titles and descriptions on blogspot... But I will let you know if I find out how...

Stealing competitors traffic & controlling your brand online

SEO: Stealing competitors traffic with brand comparison pages

Creating a brand comparison page is easy in theory. Put together a page of info about one of your competitors and you will get traffic into your site from searchers looking for your competition.

To make a good comparison page is a bit more difficult. An easy example would be a page comparing rival credit cards to your own credit card product. This would show a user why your product is good (APR, 0% balance transfer etc) in comparison with your competition (this could be done in a nice neat table).

This way of making a comparison page is good because it offers the user info on what makes your product better than the competition and you will be able to steal some brand term searches from your competition. Although this sounds great, most pages constructed with this in mind are very low quality and offer a user very little other than a load of content seemingly stolen from another site. As long as the idea of the page is good, you will be able to steal traffic from your rivals and keep the user interested in whatever it is you are selling. The key to this is to have a useful page anything else will not captivate a user.

SEO: Protecting your brand online

I found a nasty looking search engine result page recently, this example of a search engine result page (SERP) is for the brand search term "starbucks". Although it was worse not so long ago, the results still feature some sites that Starbucks won't like. This got me thinking, how hard could it be for Starbucks to get a load of new domains pointing to different pages about Starbucks? Set up a few subdomains too, and load it with content about the good things Starbucks do (can they really be that bad?), this along with some good link building (internal and external) will allow all these new domains and sites to rank for the keyword "starbucks", and because of the links from actual Starbucks websites, these pages should move up the rankings and push out the results you don't want people to see!

Green Light Webinar

I've been listening to a few of the Green Light Webinars. The last was on link building. Entitled "Link Building, the good bad and ugly" the webinar focused on link building issues and brought up a few interesting ideas including link networks and link building velocity.

The webinar was well put together and very informative, although initially delayed because of a technical hitch, I'm glad I waited around as the content was very good and very current. The main points I took away from this, were the following:

Link building
1. Speed of link accruel, so instead of considering the total number of links, look at how many links you get over a given period and try to increase this rate.

Controlling and maximising Links
2. Look for intelligent ways to boost the power of your links. Use "No follow" tags on links that go to pages like terms and conditions and privacy pages. These are not going to generate relevant traffic to your site, so why waste link power to these pages? Instead channel the power to all your primary traffic generating pages and nofollow any others.
Look at current inbound links, like those from affiliates. Instead of having their links go through third party sites and losing any link power, track referrals yourself and benefit from more in links. This will require trust with your affiliates and accurate tracking software, but is worth considering.

Natural anchor text
3. Try to keep the anchor text of any bought links looking natural and not the same keyword repeated over and over eg"Bankloans".

Link building widgets
4. Look at making "widgets" (a useful web based application) to allow others to add functionality to their blog. This widget will need to be relevant to your business area, and include a link to your site.

I hope you can benefit from this information as much as I have, I found the webinar a very good use of time!

The Dark Art of Link Building

Why Link build?
Link building is an essential part of the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) process. Search engines value a site with links pointing to it more than a site with no links pointing to it.

An inbound link (a link pointing to a page on your site) is seen as a “vote” for the page that it points to.An outbound link (a link from a page on your site pointing to a page on another site) is seen as a “vote” for the page that it points to.A page with more links pointing to it will often rank higher for a search term than a competing page. Having multiple links pointing to a page on your site will help the page rank for a highly competitive key phrase.

Also the “anchor text” of a link will be considered. The anchor text is the linked text, so for a link going to http://www.onlinebikeshop.co.uk/ you could have the link text say “Click here”. This would be a wasted opportunity though, far better would be “buy bikes online” this will help your page/site rank for the term “buy bikes online”.

It would be easy to make pages of links pointing to your own pages to boost the number of links to your site/page, but search engines also take into account the quality of the link. A page filled with links pointing to the same destination would be viewed as a page of poor quality links. I stick to the rule of one link to one destination per page, occasionally duplicating important links (home etc) is ok, but it can be confusing for a user if there are ten links pointing to the same destination.

As well as the amount and quality of links, relevance is also a factor. For example, a page on diet and fitness linking to a zoo website would not really benefit the zoo website. It is unlikely that someone browsing a diet and fitness page will want to view a zoo website, so the zoo website will not benefit from referred visitors and the link will appear out of place (or inappropriate) to a search engine.

In summary, links are needed to generate referred visits and to help a page rank.

Want to know how to Link Build?
Link building is a fairly normal process in SEO. There are a number of ways to go about it and I have put together an easy to follow guide.

Make a list of your businesses online competitors; do not list businesses that you compete with offline but do not turn up in a search for key phrases your business needs to rank for. Find an example of a business in your area that is highly successful at ranking for suitable keyphrases.

Find the URL for each business. Using Google or Yahoo, type in the search box “link:” followed by the URL of the business. This will bring up a list of all the links pointing to pages on that URL. You can then look at the pages that link to the site and email them asking for a link to your site if you feel that:

a. there is some benefit for them
b. It is a suitable site to link from (in a similar area)
c. They do not compete with your business (this will save your time because competing sites will just say no)
(This is mostly common sense)

The fruit of link building
By using various linking strategies I have improved my clients websites performance. In one case my client was in a very niche area. Their income was more or less directly relative to the number of registrations made on the site, the more registrations the more profit.

Because my client was in a very niche area I had to research longer than normal and find targeted, relevant sites where the users would already be interested in my clients services. I suggested several links/adverts on certain relevant forums and they now benefit from 30 visits per month from the adverts/links I suggested. This may not sound a lot, but the visitors were already interested in my clients’ service because of the topic of the forum. These are effectively pre-qualified customers and a higher percentage of these visitors registered than the normal search engine traffic. This makes the 30 targeted visits worth equal to 90 normal visits because of the higher registration rate.

Good luck link building!

SEO and Online Marketing Services

I have over 8 years experience in website design, SEO and Online Marketing with FTSE 100 companies and small start ups. I can analyse your business website and recommend changes to improve the key performance indicators you specify. I am UK based and have several high profile clients, from the travel industry to audio electronics.

If you want:

• An increase in the quality and overall traffic to your site


• Better conversion rate on landing pages


• An increase in search engine visibility


• An assessment of your current online marketing


• Advice on how to improve your site

I can help and advise.

I have built up key online marketing skills from my experience and success with a range of different clients. Some of my online marketing skills include (but are not limited to):

Targeted link building

Social media optimisation

Landing page design and optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation for E-Commerce websites

Strategic online marketing advice

Please Email me direct for a free website assessment. I charge £25 per hour for all freelance work.