Entries Tagged 'blogging' ↓

In our previous post, we looked at what a beginner blogger should spend his time on. In this post, we will look at some suggestions for the experienced blogger who has done the hard work of getting a blog established.

1. Look at Statistics.

Find pages which give most traffic and optimise them. They may be posts you wrote a long time ago and had forgotten about. 80% of your traffic could be coming from 10-20% of your posts. If one posts is getting a lot of traffic, improve it – impress all these visitors. Make sure there are links to other related posts and try to encourage the visitors to explore more aspects of the blog.

2. Exploit successful keywords

In your statistics you will see some  keywords that are bringing you lots of traffic. Try variations on these keywords. If you do well for ‘Blogging tips’ You will probably do well for ‘Blogging tips for begginers’ ‘Top 10 Blogging tips’
If a keyword is very profitable, it is also worth trying to get higher rankings for this keyword. If you are number 5 for one profitable keyword. Try getting links with this keyword in anchor text; if you can go from number 5 to number 1 on google, you will see a 200-300% increase in traffic.

3. Create more bookmarkable content.

When I was a new blogger I spent a lot of time writing quantity. However, I know feel you make more progress from writing memorable content which might do well on social bookmarking sites and attract links.

It is better to have 1 post that gets 2-3 links than 5 posts that sink into mediocrity.

4. Increase RSS readership.

Work hard at building an RSS readership. Try to develop a consistent posting schedule of 2-7 posts a week. This is a good volume

5. Try different things.

Don’t keep churning out the same kind of articles. Try something different like:

• A video post
• Interview with someone outside the blogosphere.
• Collection of interesting photos.
• Inspiration from past archives.
• Think like a journalist rather than blogger.

Related

• Finding topics to write about

A newbie blogger is liable to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of different aspects that go into blogging. It is hard to know where to spend your time and energies.

This is what I suggest in terms of priorities.

Write.

You have to write good articles. It is advisable to write 5-7 really good articles. These articles should set the tone of the blog. They are the kind of articles that you would be happy to put in a selection – ‘Recommended Reading’. You can highlight these excellent articles, so that people who come across your blog will read them and want to bookmark it. Without good content everything else is a waste of time.

Links.

You can write 1,000 excellent articles, but, if you have no inbound links, if you don’t tell anyone about your blog you should expect 0 traffic. You may get the odd short burst of traffic from blog posts, but, these will soon tail off (google, give new blog posts high rankings for about a week before dropping there rankings.) Getting links is an art. The most important is to have some good content. View – How to get links to your blog

• Note: Links should be natural. You want to slowly build up the number of links that you get. Don’t wait 6 months and then think – I’ll get a 100 links this week. It doesn’t work like that. Google want to see a steady progression of links. The sooner you start the better. If you don’t get any links you will be demoralised by the lack of traffic.
• Note: I will be writing more advice about links soon.
• Not every article has to be very indepth. It is good to offer a mix of long and short posts.

Encourage Subscribers.

This is similar to point number 2. Subscribers are the best way to build your blog and gain natural links over time. See: How To increase RSS subscribers. You should look to start building RSS subscribers soon after writing your first 10 articles.

Good Design

A new blogger should get a good design. This is essential for attracting new subscribers and links. However, you don’t want to spend too much time because there is a lot to learn in this area. I advise using a free template and pay for a really great logo. People don’t expect perfection in design. Something clean and simple will keep you going until you make the big time. But, you want to stand out from the crowd.

Things For New Bloggers To Avoid

Looking for affiliate programs.

There is no point trying affiliate programs when your trafffic is small. Get traffic first before worrying about advertising.

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I am amazed at the difference between traffic for blog pages and static pages. On my economics site by google blogger blog has 423 posts and gets on average 4,000 daily page impressions by Google Analytics. A static section of my site has 130 pages and gets on average 35 page impressions by Google analytics. A post on a blog gives a ratio of 10 page views per post. A static page gives an average of 0.3 pages.

It would be interesting to understand the disparity between blog pages and static html pages.

1. One potential reason is that the static pages are generally shorter.
2. Maybe their keywords are not so good. Although I tried on both sections to choose ‘keyword friendly’ titles.
3. Maybe google give higher rankings to blogs, especially with a reasonable RSS susbcriber count?

But, it gives a clear incentive to add blog pages rather than static pages. In fact, I ended up adding a second blog, because I didn’t want to overwhelm the first blog with too many posts.

Another issue worth mentioning is that blog posts often give ‘temporary traffic’ For example, I have a few pages such as Euro 2008 forecasts, which is giving good traffic during 2008, but, will obviously drop off next year. Even blog posts without dates often give diminishing returns over time. I think what is happening is that Google, give a higher weighting to recent blog posts because this is often what people are searching – recent posts.

It may also depend on the niche of the Blog Website. On another site www.biographyonline.net , the results are less conclusive. Here the static pages get a similar level of traffic to the blog pages (although here the blog has only 123 pages). The difference here might be that the static part of the section is actually a higher quality than the blog. In depth biographies are given static pages. Blog entries are shorter snippets. Also biographies don’t lend themselves to blogging. I mean dead people are more suited to a static site than a constantly updating blog. So in this niche, people don’t want blog entries, but, in economic, recent events are more important.

I would be interested if  anyone else have evidence of traffic volumes for blog posts vs static pages?

Tips on getting more traffic to a site

Yesterday, I mentioned the importance of getting a good logo. A good logo does several things including helping to build your blog brand.

Importance of Branding Your Blog

• Helps you to stand out from the crowd
• Makes your blog memorable, rather than another statistic
• A strong brand will make people take more notice. For example, if Problogger writes a post about linking it has more authority than if some unknown blogger wrote the same thing on a .blogspot domain.
• Helps to tell readers what your blog is about. – Too many blogs fail to do that. You can there and you have to work out what it’s all about.

How To Develop Your Blog Brand

• Pick a catchy and memorable title and tagline.
• Have a distinctive blog design. At least get a custom designed logo.
• Have a clear purpose for the blog. (note don’t feel obliged to get that purpose straight off, sometimes it becomes clearer after first few weeks blogging)
• Stick to certain topics / style.
• Write in a consistent way.
• Quality is preferable to quantity when writing posts. Many high RSS subscriber blogs have a weekly output of 2-3 posts.
• Give it a Personal Perspective. Writing from experience or with real life examples helps to make the blog more interesting and memorable.
• Look at Professional companies and how they build brand loyalty and brand differentiation. Visit Bonbrand for ideas.

There is no doubt technology can help vastly increase our productivity, but, many are now realising that as well as being a help, modern technology can be a hindrance.

How Technology has Harmed Our Productivity

• Text messages going off distract us from work. It estimated text messages took 0.5% off GDP in the US.
• Writing text messages can reduce your IQ more than smoking cannabis. [link]
• Always on call. Mobile phone, instant chat.
• Multitasking. Modern technology means we try to do several things at once. Two computers open at once.
• Emails create a proliferation of messages – additional problems.
• Reduced attention span. The internet has given us quantity rather than quality. The analogy is a getting a glass of water from Niagara falls. Because there is so much more information, we try to skim through 100s of pages, rather than read 1 carefully – See Has Google made us stupid? article in Atlantic about reduced attention spans of the modern reader.

Of course, this ignores how technology has improved our productivity. It is as unbalanced view. But, the important thing is that just because modern technology can improve productivity doesn’t mean it always will. We have to manage modern technology so we control it, rather than the other way round.

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Recently I have been examining my webstats to examine the average number of pages visited by a visitor. On many of my smaller blogs, the average number of pages is very low. The average number of pages is as low as 1.1. This suggests people come have a quick look at the page and then leave.

However, on some of my other blogs (usually the ones with more traffic and more pages) the average number of page views is closer to 2. On one site, the average number of page views is 4.

From my own admissions, the ratio of page views to visitors is a very rough guide to the quality of the site. Generally, the sites with a higher average number of page views have more in depth quality pages. Sites with a very low number of page views suggest there is little depth. I wonder whether Google take this like this into account when ranking sites. It would make sense if they did. A high average of page views per visitor is a recommendation that they find the site interesting an want to explore further.

How To Increase Average Page Views.

1. Split up articles into different sections
2. Alwasy add internal links at the bottom of a page. When they have finished reading an article, give them a link to the next most relevant page. – Give them a reason to stay on your site rather than leave.
3. Show off Your best Articles on the sidebar. Not every page is of equal value. Make sure your best articles are highly visible and encourage them to see that.
4. Don’t just cover your sites with advertising. Keep it to a reasonable level. Think long term growth rather than short term profit maximisation.

• Tips for getting more links
• The importance of gaining momentum in blogging

Recently, I have been blogging alot on recent developments in Economics. With blog entries on news, I notice Google initially give quite high rankings and good traffic, but, after a couple of months, these rankings fall and traffic drops off. In a way this shows that Google is doing a good job. When we search topical issues, we want to read the lastest blog entry, not blog entries from 3-4 years ago.

However, as a blogger, it raises the question – which is better writing timeless content or writing news items?

The problem with writing news items, is that your efforts will mainly last for a short time. If we write timeless content, then it remains valuable for many years. This is the great thing about blogging. Once you have written a timeless post, you will get traffic for ever and can earn without working. However, if we are blogging on news and latest development. It means we have to work harder and keep writing to gain new traffic.

• However, the advantage of news items is that it gives us new things to write about. There is a limit to how much ‘timeless content’ we can write in our niche.
• Our readers will enjoy reading about the latest trends and news.
• Writing about recent events helps to attract new readers to subscribe to our blog.
• Clearly there is room for both types of blogging; to some extent it depends what your prefer. Both types of blogging can be successful.

However, if your resources are limited and you want to get the best return on your efforts I would suggest focusing your efforts on creating timeless content. Write on topics that people will be interested in searching for many years. Limit the amount of posts you write which are specific to a couple of months.

I went through a period of low posting frequency on Net Writing. Ironically, at this time, I was being much more prolific with commenting on other blogs. I guess leaving a comment is less intimidating because it can be much shorter than a blog post; a blog post involves a bigger psychological effort. However, these are the reasons why I have largely stopped commenting on other blogs.

• If I have something interesting to say, I will post it on my own blog, rather than leave a comment on someone else’s blog. Leaving a comment on other blog, gives much less benefit than creating a post on your own blog.
• People give more importance to a blog post than a comment. On some blogs, the standard of comments is pretty high, like Copyblogger. However, people instinctively give a higher authority to a blog post than a comment. I usually read blog posts, but, don’t get round to reading the comments.
• I don’t read that many blogs anymore. I used to read many blogs to get ideas for posts, but, I find that reading many feeds, doesn’t actually give you that many new perspectives. Generally, I prefer to just use my own ideas.
• Opportunity Cost of Time. Leaving comments is time consuming. You have to find blog posts, think of something to say and then fill on all the captcha’s e.t.c. (BTW: Blogger blogs are the worst) If you spend an hour leaving comments, that is an hour you can’t be spending on your own blog or getting away from the computer. I’m not saying commenting is a complete waste of time; it just ranks fairly low compared to other things you could be doing.

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Why I Don’t Use Twitter

I noticed recently one of my blogs getting a good amount of referrals from Twitter. I started to feel slightly guilty for not jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and making the most of this potential traffic source. Problogger has been talking a lot about Twitter recently, so it must be giving some people benefits. However, I don’t use Twitter because:

• I doubt I would have much to say apart from: “please come and visit my blogs”
• I don’t particularly want to invest the time in growing a network of followers. (Interestingly I gained 6 followers, despite not adding any thing since I set up the account 4 months ago)
• My principle is that it is always better to spend time creating blog posts on your own blog, rather than working on third party products. This is a similar reason as to why I reduced the amount of comments I leave on other blogs.
• Many people say Twitter can become a bit of a time waster and you get distracted from doing other things.
• Note:
• Just because Twitter doesn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it can’t work for you. I have several blogs, so there are always blog posts to do. If you only had one flagship blog, it would make more sense to work on promoting the blog through things like Twitter.

Why I Don’t Use Twitter Very Much

Well I couldn’t resist testing what I was criticising, this is my first ‘twit’ in the past 6 months. Tejvan Twitter Profile

Q. What is the plural for people who use Twitter? A bunch of twits? (sorry, poor joke alert)

Recently, I have had a few problems with my blogs / websites being down and inaccessible. Now that the sites generate a decent sized income, I can’t afford to have this kind of unreliability and am moving towards getting a VPS, virtual private server (A virtual private sever guarantees a certain amount of disc usage e.t.c and means you are not completely at the mercy of your shared server)

The one thing I noticed about the recent downtime, is that it relied on me, manually seeing that the site is down and inaccessible. It made me wonder how many times my sites were down, but I was not aware of it.

Checking When Your Site is Working

I am going to check out this service at site 24* 7. They offer a free basic account, with the option of upgrading to premium accounts. I will let you know how it progresses and whether it is worth joining.

If anyone has any other suggestions for monitoring uptime rates I would be interested to hear.