Why I focus most of my blogging attention on RSS subscribers.

• Chasing Google search traffic is a limited business model. What happens if you get a google penalty or you lose rankings?
• It is hard to fool Google with artificial links. In this article – quality of links, I mentioned how ‘easy to get links’ are generally not very valuable. The really valuable links are the natural ones from visitors. My feeling is that these natural links are most likely to come from your subscribers. I don’t try to get subscribers just so I can get links. But, if you have hundreds of subscribers, it is likely you will get a lot more natural links than if you have just one (yourself)
• RSS subscribers will help vote for you on social bookmarking sites.
• RSS subscribers is a sign that people like your blog. This is good for advertisers. It is a sign to Google you are not a spam blog. I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow Google used RSS subscribers in determining rankings. A high subscriber guarantees a certain level of quality. Anyone can try manipulate search rankings but manipulating rss subscribers is much harder.

• RSS subscribers encourages higher quality posting. When I had no RSS subscribers, I would often shoot off short posts with the main motive to get keyword rich titles in the post hoping to get traffic from Google. However, if you have a number of RSS subscribers, you don’t want to post something of inferior quality. You want to maintain a good level of blog posting otherwise you will be doing a disservice to your readers. Ultimately this helps to improve the long term quality of your blog.

• 8 Effective ways to Increase RSS subscribers
• My RSS subscriber numbers – slowly going up!

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

The hard part of building a website, is creating good quality content and getting natural inbound links. With this already in place, there are quite a few things that you can do to easily increase Traffic.

Three Main Sources of Potential Traffic

1. Google Search – Choose the right keywords and you will get much more traffic
2. Social Media – If your content gets picked up on social media there is chance for getting tons of traffic.
3. Building of Loyal Readership through RSS subscriber base

Keyword Analysis.

The title of pages is very important for determining how much search engine referral traffic you get. The key is to use keywords that people search for.

• One example: I had a page if you have a page ‘Yorkshire Dales’ you will get little traffic because that is a very competitive keyword. However, by adding one word ‘Cycling Yorkshire dales’. I got a reasonable amount of traffic from the post. Sometimes I go through sites adding certain words to titles and this can lead to more traffic.
• Look at exisiting traffic statistics. work on keywords that are working. For example, if people come to your site searching ‘new bikes’ try pages like ‘new road bikes’ ‘new time trial bikes’ e.t.c.

Creating New Pages – Top 10s, Best of

Often we don’t need to create new content but merely make better use of existing content. Suppose, we have 1,000s of good photos on our site. We need to organise these photos into targeted, irresistible pages. For example, with 1,000s of photos related to cycling, I would create pages like:

1. Top 10 Cycling Photos
2. Unusual cycling photos
3. Unique Bikes of Oxford
4. How Not to Cycle Through Town
5. Best Photos of Yorkshire Dales

• Here, we are trying to think of titles that people may search, and also create really excellent pages, which will inspire people on social bookmarking sites, forums and hopefully get links to.
• Note, it is good to focus on a particular theme, e.g. the unique and unusual do well. Beautiful nature scenes will appeal to different people.
• Make these pages really stand out then try promote them. Even if they don’t work on social media, you can get steady traffic from google and other search referrals.

• One Example: Recently, I spent a long time creating a page of fascinating old cycling photos. I submitted it to one forum and emailed one blogger who I knew would like it. The post ended up on 5 different forums and received 1,000 visits in 2 days.

Promote Your Content

After creating desirable content, you will need to promote it. Try to find like minded bloggers, who are liable to be receptive to your material. You can try writing to them saying. “I thought you might be interested in this, if you want to use a couple of photos for  your own blog you’re very welcome.”

Also worth submitting blog entries to blog carnivals.

Stumbleupon / Social media

Social Media such as Stumbleupon have the capacity to send 10,000s of visits in a single day. I would suggest stumbleupon is the easiest to break into. To get traffic from Stumbleupon, it needs to receive stumbles from Stumbleupon users who have good accounts. (i.e. you can’t just join, stumble your own site 20 times and expect a lot of traffic.) however, if you can break into stumbleupon an individual post can reach upto 100,000 visits or more. We have experienced this for a few posts on our self improvement blog Other social media like Digg and Delicious can send just as much traffic, but, generally, I’ve found it harder to break in.

Blog RSS Feed

If you have a blog with RSS feed, I feel it is much easier to generate traffic. A blog allows a community feel by encouraging traffic. RSS feed is a way to attract regular visitors who will read your content everyday (even if they don’t actually come to your site)

Generally, blogs are also easier to get links and traffics from other bloggers. Old static sites are often more difficult to catch the imagination of other bloggers.

Increasing traffic through search engines

Grow Your Blog organically

Top 10 Tips

• 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.

• Traffic Benefits are minimal. If you leave a comment on Problogger and get in the top ten you will get a couple of visits, but, it is a relatively minor traffic source.
• I don’t like leaving useless comments. Sometimes I got into the mindset, “I have to leave a comment here to get the 1 or 2 click throughs”, so I was saying something just for the sake of it. But, I really didn’t like this. It seems wrong to leave comment, primarily for the traffic benefit. Now, I only leave a comment if I feel there is something worthwhile to add.

Of course, some people have said they have used comments to great effect in getting a blog going.

Related 

• 10 Tips for Good Commenting Practice 
• 5 Tips for a Post that encourages comments
  
• Appreciating your commentators at Home biz. Why it can be useful to leave comments on right blogs.

However, it is not just the article heading that can bring in traffic. Often I look at statistics and the popular keyword searches are not titles, but subheadings within articles. Therefore, when writing articles I often try to think of several subheadings with  related Keyword searches to maximise traffic from search engines Ironically, this can often be a helpful way to think of relevant things to add to the article.

Example of Increasing Traffic through Use of Subheadings

I was writing an entry on ‘Asymmetric Information‘ for my economics site (I know its not the exactly the most exotic example, but, it will do )

The first thing I do is to use the google search in Firefox; when typing in a search google offer suggestions of  popular and related keyword searches for asymmetric information. Google suggestions included:

• asymmetric information definition
• asymmetric information insurance
• asymmetric information in Financial Markets
• asymmetric information wiki

Therefore, in addition to the title asymmetric information, I have worked these other 4 longer keyword searches into the article. Therefore, the page has increased its capacity for attracting traffic. If I just focused on asymmetric information I would expect traffic to be low. But, by adding relevant subheadings I have increased the usefulness of the page with very little effort.

• Note: Many people search keyword terms and add wiki at the end. Here I have only added the word wiki by linking to wikipedia right at the end. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a subheading, sometimes just adding a keyword in the text is enough to bring in more traffic.

Using Subheadings that Work

In your statistics you may notice that some keyword searches are very popular, even though they are not titles. If this is the case, then it may be worth generating a page specifically for this keyword search. E.g. If I get a ranking of no.7 for asymmetric information insurance when it is a subheading, then making a page with title asymmetric information insurance is likely to give a much higher google ranking.

Other Benefits of Using Subheadings

• Adding subheadings is a good way of experimenting to see which keyword searches are good for bringing in traffic.
• Also, I feel that adding subheadings is good practice for readability. People like to scan articles and subheadings definitely make it easier to write.
• My initial entry for asymmetric information was quite short, but looking at related keywords gave me ideas to make it more informative

Related Articles

• How To Rank highly for a keyword
• Is it necessary to have keywords in title?
• 8 Blogging tips for a good article

How Much Effort is Needed to Get on Digg?

To get on Digg home page you need a way to attract at least 20-25 votes to give the article a chance. If an article is just submitted, it will in all probability disappear without trace.

One article, I wrote received over 50,000 referrals from Stumbleupon (over a 4 week period). From Digg it received 2. There are so many submissions to Digg, that most new submissions just get lost without anybody looking at the article.

To have any chance you need a submission to attract 20-25 votes pretty quick. This means it will then show up in the upcoming section of your chosen category and then at least you have a chance.

To get 25 votes means you will need to ask friends for favours to vote for you. This can be done through either digg shout system or emailing friends asking for votes. Alternatively, you could become a power digg user, who gets loads of friends and so people are more likely to vote for your submissions.

Either method requires a lot of effort. If you are regularly asking people to vote for your articles, you will probably need to spend time voting for their articles.

Even if you get in the upcoming stories section, there is still no guarantee of success. Even if you can get 100 friends to vote for your article there is also no guarantee of success. I’m sure Digg try to discount ‘vote requests’ i.e. people going straight into digg voting for one article and then leaving. To get promoted you will need a lot of organic digg votes from the digg community.

If Digg gives the most benefits it also is the most competitive. With digg it all depends whether you can get promoted to homepage; it is kind of all or nothing and mostly the return is nothing.

Basically, to have a good chance on Digg, you will need to spend time building up a network of friends at Digg, or elsewhere. This is time consuming and if you are not careful, you can spend more time asking for votes than writing content. If you don’t make it, this effort is largely wasted – you would have more to show from writing another blog post.

Reasons to Persevere With Digg.

Digg momentum. Some blogs which get on Digg, are then able to capitalise on this success and get more and more articles promoted. Some blogs have so many loyal digg users subscribed that even if they posted about going to local shop to buy some cabbages, they would probably get 50 diggs. Don’t just think in terms of a one off digg. Think in terms of long running success.

It can make Your Blog.

True, 99% of 50,000 visitors from Digg may leave without clicking on adds or just leaving snarky comments. But, if even 0.1% of visitors subscribe, that is an extra 50 subscribers. Some blogs have made huge progress through Digg. It usually results in natural inbound links which are great for improving search engine positions.

You are in the right niche.

Sometimes I see blogs trying to promote a post on digg such as: ‘how to make money from adsense’ This kind of article has almost no chance – it doesn’t interest the digg community. Think how many times Problogger hits the digg front page.(very rarely) If you are blogging about blogging it is even harder to do well on Digg. If you are blogging about ‘Why ebay is ripping off consumers’ that has a much better chance

You have the right kind of article / pictures

The article has to be good and appeal to the digg voters. It is also worth asking whether this article would be relevant for your blog?

Conclusion

If you are going to try and use Digg. Give it 100% effort. Write really good articles and then make sure you have a way of getting 20-30 votes and then just hope the rest of the Digg community like it. Don’t give up after 1 or 2 failures. If you don’t think it is worth all the hassle of voting and getting others to vote, just forget about Digg, there are many other ways to build a successful blog.

Personally, I don’t really bother with Digg because I don’t really enjoy all the effort involved in voting and becoming a member of Digg. But, I would like all the benefits associated with it.

• Maybe Digg will be more successful when your blog has grown and got a good subscriber base. If you are new to blogging, I would suggest it is even less desirable to spend your time trying to get a digg.
• Don’t forget Digg don’t like people submitting their own content, you will also need to ask people to submit your own article.
• If you try to get on Digg half heartedly it won’t work (unless you are lucky) either make it a priority or leave it.

Related

• Why Stumbleupon is better than digg
• How To Benefit from Digg
• How to Hit Digg home page from eggrage
• Dear Digg please ban my site – perspective from Andy Beard

Content Not Ads above the Fold.

If you really want to maximise the traffic from social media, it is best to sacrifice the optimal ad positions. Sometimes I am stumbling and the only thing I see on the screen is a logo and a 330*300 Google adsense block. Invariably I mark the content thumbs down, without even seeing the article. This is not to say you can’t have ads at the top of the screen, but, if the only thing that is seen by the viewer is ads, what impression does that give? It is helpful to view blog traffic as investment. The small return from short term advertising is worth much less than the potential benefit of attracting long term subscribers who will help grow the blog. If you really want to have ads dominating the top, you could at least remove them from articles that are targetted at high traffic.

Easy to Subscribe.

It is important that it is easy to subscribe. In my opinion this is the most significant benefit of getting traffic from social media. Visitors will not click on ads, most will never return. But, if you can get even 0.5% to subscribe then it’s all worth it. The obvious thing to do is to place an RSS subscriber link in a prominent place. Some people like to make a feature out of it and place it at the top of a blog post. This probably has a good conversion rate, although it does have the drawback that the content is pushed further down. Email subscription is also worth having.

Best Articles

I have found that on a strategically designed blog a stumble visitor can visit an average of 2.3 pages. (this may not sound a lot but, it does disprove a theory that stumble visitors have a high bounce rate. However, to get a low bounce rate requires an effort to keep readers. An excellent way to do that is highlight your most popular articles. You can do this with a plugin or manually add the articles. Recent articles are also good to highlight as long as they are not just average page fillers.

Make the Most of a small success.

Typically traffic surge’s will come to one post in particular. This can count for 80% of your traffic. If you start getting a good return on an article, this is an excellent incentive to make this page as good as possible. Remove any typos, and give people a reason to further explore the blog. For example, at the bottom offer 2-3 suggested links to other articles.

Promote Those That Are Doing Well.

Often the best articles to promote on social bookmarking sites are the ones that have already had some success. This indicates that it is likely to go down well. This is the time to ask for the odd favour from people you might now always ask; you don’t want to be asking friends for votes every single post. But, if a post has already achieved some success, pull out the stops to try and make it really big. It is better to have 1 real success, than 10 posts which get a medium return. Often I feel with social bookmarking sites, it is all or nothing.

Create Anticipation

Try give some impression of Forthcoming articles. If you have a really popular post, you could add at the bottom a note saying more similar articles will be coming soon. If you have a real success on one topic, why not make a series out of it? Future anticipation offers an excellent reason for people to subscribe.

What Does the Design say About the Blog?

I spend alot of time (probably too much) stumbling articles. From my own experience, I tend to give a very high weighting to the overall look of the blog. Maybe it is bad, but, I often vote things up or down without reading the whole article. My vote tends to be dominated, to a large extent by the overall look. This does not mean it has to be anything fancy. I often like quite simple, text based blogs. But, you can’t ignore the power of visual impact. In particular try to declutter as much as possible. Ask yourself how much value all those widgets and links really offer.

Related Posts

• The Stumbleupon Effect
• Why Stumbleupon is better than Digg
• Increasing Traffic through Search Engines
• 3 Ways social bookmarking is broken and how to fix it.

When I first began blogging, I didn’t give much priority to RSS readership (partly because I didn’t know what it was ) but now, increasing RSS readership is one of the main goals for my different blogs. These are some methods that have worked for me; I’ve placed them in a rough order of usefulness. None of them are quick and easy; for them to be effective it is also essential to be able to write good content. If you would like to suggest other methods please add in comments.
Guest Blogging

Probably the most effective way to increase RSS readership is to write guest posts for well established blogs. Recently, I wrote an article for Pick the Brain – 6 characteristics of happiness. With 11,000 subscribers you do get a good return in terms of traffic and boost to RSS subscribers. It is hard work because the articles need to be of a high quality. Also don’t just write 1 guest blog, if you keep guest blogging it creates a cumulative effect and you will become better known within the blogosphere. This personal branding is quite important. – If you keep appearing on top blogs people will want to subscribe to your own. Another benefit of guest blogging is that the article will often rank highly in google, I now get a steady stream of traffic from old guest posts. Therefore, there is a cumulative effect from guest blogging, the more you do it the more powerful it becomes. Zen Habits is an example of a blog which made extraordinary growth in RSS readership through guest blogging.

Commenting on blogs

Commenting on blogs is a slow but steady way to increase your readership. When leaving a comment I try to say something worthwhile because this will make people want to find out more about the commentor. If you just leave ‘nice post’ it is hardly suggests enticing content on your own blog. A good question is whether to leave your URL on a comment. I’m often in two minds about this. For blogs where I regularly comment I don’t put a signature as it might start to irritate people. However, for new blogs, I do often leave a signature or even link to relevant blog post -it helps to create a higher click through rate. Traffic from comments may be low, but the traffic is highly targeted and these are the most likely people to subscribe.

Tips for Commenting

1. Choose Popular and / or relevant blogs and try and get in early.
2. Use Google Blog Search for your keywords, this helps find new blogs. (I often search ‘Economics’ on google blog search for my economic blog.)
3. Say something useful

Make It easy to Subscribe.

Make sure it is easy to subscribe. For example, don’t forget to offer email subscriptions. For example on one blog, Poem of the Day, 90% subscribe through email. (Although you need to make it easy to subscribe, don’t feel obliged to have an RSS button which takes up 25% of the screen though.

Engaging Content

I always feel reluctant to say ‘good content is important’. – It is oft repeated advice and rather obvious. Nevertheless, without engaging content, people will not want to subscribe. Don’t just focus on getting traffic and leaving comments. Get a good balance between the different aspect of blogging. Give people a real reason to have to subscribe. For example, one reason I always check Daily Blog Tips RSS feed is that I don’t want to miss out on any group writing projects.

Generate Traffic.

On most blogs I am always eager to maximise traffic through search engines. This involves choosing good keywords in the title of pages. I feel search engine traffic has only a relatively small chance of subscribing, but if you get enough traffic, the sheer numbers will generate RSS readers over time.

Quantity over Quality.

If you only post once a week I find you do not lose RSS subscribers (unless your blog is all about getting latest news). To increase RSS subscribers why not concentrate on writing 2 or 3 really good posts per week. – the kind of posts that will get stumbled and make people want to subscribe. Don’t worry about posting high quantity.
A good point is that this point may well conflict with the previous point about generating traffic. One thing I do, is to have a flagship blog, but also add pages to other parts of the site. This means you can have the best of both worlds – one blog for generating RSS readers (the best of your site) and another blog for perhaps shorter pieces. At economics help I have 2 blogs – 1 blog for long essays, 1 blog for posting 3-4 times a day – Econ Blog.

• Tip: Work out how you can differentiate your blog and how you can you create a unique selling point.

Communicate With Bloggers.

If you develop relationships with other bloggers and your readers they will want to subscribe to your blog. If you develop networks of like minded bloggers you will be able to help each other with things like the odd stumble e.t.c.

Good Design

Almost so obvious, that I nearly left it out. First impressions count, and if you use an ordinary blog template it doesn’t say much about your content (rightly or wrongly) You can still succeed with a weak design, but, don’t make life difficult for yourself, get a good design.

1. Stumbleupon Rewards the Best Articles

Stumbleupon seems more democratic. You can submit a good article to digg but it can fly off the new section as quickly as you submit it. Generally stumbleupon is better at picking up on good articles. At digg everything counts on the 24 hour window after first submission, and your network of friends. At stumbleupon it seems less important who are your friends and most stumbles I receive are good quality. Spam doesn’t seem a real problem at Stumbleupon.

2. Stumbleupon doesn’t ban the best sites.

Many times I have seen my favourite sites getting ‘banned’ by digg, usually because they are ‘too successful’ Examples that come to mind include Pick The Brain and Copyblogger. (true sites can come off the banned list, but it can take a long time)

3. Stumbleupon has more Positive Pages.

It seems that on Digg stories that do best are the negative ones. See article at We The Change on Digg At times, the negativity can be overwhelming. When browsing the internet, I like to see some positive stories and articles of inspiration.

4. Stumblers Like Stumbleupon

Whenever I goto Digg the top stories seem to be complaining about Digg, which I find completely uninteresting. At Stumbleupon you aren’t bombarded with articles complaining about rigging of Stumbleupon e.t.c.

5. More Diversity of Interests

Stories that do well at Digg tend to be fairly narrowly focused on a small number of aspects. Stumbleupon enables a greater diversity of topics, it is also easier to choose the topics you are interested in. If you like topics like self improvement or minority interests you will find greater coverage at Stumbleupon.

6. Stumbleupon has Beauty

Some stumbleupon blogs are beautiful to visit. e.g. Tutu stumbleupon

7. Stumbleupon gives more traffic.

True digg can give a mad rush, that brings down you server; but overtime I find Stumbleupon gives a bigger traffic boost. Problogger agrees here. Why Stumbleupon sends more traffic than digg

8. Stumbleupon has a better quality of comments.

Stumbleupon comments are usually simple and fairly positive. Reading comments on digg often leave you in a state of despair (Of course, you can go to Digg without reading comments)

9. Stumbleupon seems to attract a greater diversity of web users.

Digg users seem to be focused on young males 18-31. Stumbleupon is more diverse.

10. Stumbleupon is easy to Use

So that’s my experience – Stumbleupon is better than Digg.

Of course, if I get on the home page of Digg I’m quite prepared to completely rewrite this and say what an absolutely marvellous, and inspirational site Digg is…. </sarcasm>

See also:

• Top 10 Tips for Using Stumbleupon

• Often people subscribe to many RSS feeds, but, then it becomes difficult to read them all. I know that I have subscribed to many RSS feeds, but rarely read any blog entries.
• Getting an email, increases the chance they will give the notification there attention and actually go to the blog.
• Just because established bloggers, have worked out what RSS is, and how it works; – it doesn’t mean your average reader has. Email provides an option for those who don’t want to work out another thing. Ask non bloggers if they know how RSS works, I’d be surprised if many do.

Net Writing Subscriptions

• Subscribe via email
• Subscribe via RSS
  

How To Offer Email Subscriptions

1. Set up an account with feedburner. – This makes it easy to manage and track your RSS readership and email subscribers.
2.  Goto your Account and click on Publicise. On the left navigation bar is an option – offer email subscription.
3. Feedburner give you code to paste into your blog. (probably best as a page)