5 steps to a profitable blog - posting tips and traffic generation. - Columbia Internet Business

This is part two of a two part topic. Today, we are covering posting tips and traffic generation.

When you decided on your niche you did keyword research. This research will now come into play. You will want to start by posting for your long tail (multiple word) phrases first.

Keep each post to a single phrase and use that phrase and any of the included keywords as tags.

The next item when posting will be the title tag. You have set up your blog to use the title of the post in both your url and as the title tag. That is the default when using the All-In-One-SEO plugin.

Finally, the order that you post in will definitely make a difference in how fast your blog ranks. It is much easier to rank for very long term keywords such as those with four or more words in them than it is for a two word term. If you are ranking for those four term words, though you will eventually start to rank for the primary keyword term that is in your foreword terms.

Traffic Generation

Traffic generation is extremely important part of having a profitable blog.

There are a few easy ways to drive traffic to your blog. None by themselves will generate huge traffic but lots of little trickles soon lead to an unstoppable flood.

Each of these is easy and most can be done in a few minutes each day. Getting in the habit of doing at least one of these each day will soon create the traffic you need to be profitable.

Here is a quick list of some of the things that will help your blog traffic increase.

Comment on a related blog with a thoughtful comment and a link back to your blog
Post a video with your link to You Tube, My Space, etc.
Add a podcast and submit it
Bookmark your content and others at Stumble Upon, Digg, etc.
Comment on others pages at MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, etc.
Post on Twitter about your latest post
Use Facebook and add your RSS feed
Add your RSS feed to a Squidoo lens, Hub page, etc.
Write an article that links back to your blog and submitt it to various article directories

Commenting on other blogs

Commenting on blogs has two benefits. If the blog is set up with do follow you get a back link to your blog. Even if it is not you can and will get traffic from people reading the comments if...

You are taking part in the conversation and adding value to the other blog. This also builds up your name recognition in whatever niche you are operating in and helps to build your credibility.

Posting Video

Adding a video on your topic to sites like YouTube, or any of the many other video sites can also add backlinks and new visitors.

Make sure that you start your description with the full url of you blog - http://yourdomain.com

Adding a Podcast

Audio is easy to use and you can create an mp3 file with free tools like Audacity from SourceForge. If you hold teleseminars most services record them for you and you can use that in mp3 format as a podcast.

Add these to your blog using appropriate and then you submit that feed to all of the various podcast services.

Bookmarking

Using social bookmarking services such as Stumble Upon will also increase the amount of traffic that you receive. Remember though that these are communities and you should not be just bookmarking your own sites but other sites that have value.

Bookmarking posts that you have commented on is a great way to indirectly bring more traffic to your site and will increase the number of bookmarks of other sites you have on your account.

I have found it best if 20% or less of all your bookmarks are your own.

Twitter

Twitter is a mini blogging platform and can really help you get visitors if you are posting regularly, have a decent amount of followers and add a tweet when you add a new post.

Like commenting you must take part in the conversation and add value not just tweet your urls.

Facebook

Another great social site and you need to make sure that you have added your RSS feed to your profile so that your visitors there will see your latest updates to your blog.

Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc

Squidoo and Hub Pages along with others are like blogs on steroids. Because there are lots of people constantly adding content to their networks, the search engines like them and rank them well.

Article Submission

Writing quality articles and submitting them to the various article directories is another way to generate back links and visitors.

Ezine and web site owners can use your content but have to link back to you through the resource box and this creates the additional back links and visitors you are seeking.

Testing and tweaking

This is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when they are trying to create a profitable blog.

They don't track what is going on and consequently can't make improvements to their blog.

You need to know the following to improve.

? Where do your visitors come from

? What do they click on

? How long do they stay

There are many different services to find out what is happening on your blog. I use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

This is free service from Google and allows you to see the following

? How many visitors

? How long the average visitor stays

? How many unique visitors

? Which page they leave from

The good thing with Google Analytics is that it is easy to add to your blog and there is a plugin that will do it for you. You do not need to understand the techie things to add this using the plugin.

Sign up for an account and add the unique id you get to the plugin and you are done. There is a delay of one day in seeing your stats.

What Now?

Keep track of which links get clicked and how people get to you will allow you to do more of what is working and stop posting what is not.

This will save you much more time than checking the stats will and allow you to continue to add value that works to your blog.

These posts have outlined the basics about blogging for your business. Get started today! I’d love to hear your results and experience with setting up your blog so please leave me a comment.

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