Make Money

In the third of our series of informative articles on the different ways to make money online, we look at generating and keeping quality traffic for your blog.

03. GENERATE AND KEEP TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOGSITE

Following on from the first blog entry about how to make money from your blog by generating targeted traffic, I decided to write this article to expand on the ways in which you can generate that traffic and, more importantly, how to make your site popular in order to keep that traffic coming back for more and spreading the word about your great blog, or if you have your blog as your homepage, then it's a "Blogsite"!

But first, there is an important step you need to take when setting up your new blog. That is to make sure it is properly Search Engine Optimized (SEO’d). Like any website, your blog will have a better chance of reaching the top pages in the search engines if it is properly optimized. So as with a website, there are certain on-site changes and tweaks you need to perform.

The first is to edit your header and add some meta tags. Wordpress blogs are easy to edit from the Presentation / Theme Editor panel, but if you have another form of blog you'll need to work out how to edit that header. This is vital if you want the search engines to index your blog correctly.

In your header, you must add meta tags for description and keywords just as you would for a website. If you already have a website, then simply copy and paste these meta tags into your blog header and make sure your keywords are relevant to the theme or topic of your blog. The description is pretty self explanatory!

To really SEO your blog up to the hilt and give it the best chance of success in the search engine wars, there is a really useful ebook written by the author of this blog called The Secrets of SEO Revealed, which will teach you everything you need to know about pushing your blog up to the top of the search engine pages for the best exposure to your blog.

Then you should edit other parts of the blog to personalise things like colours and layout, but that is really up to you. You should add a plug-in for Digg which puts a small icon at the top of each post (just like this one), so that visitors who have enjoyed reading your post and want to share it with others can simply click the icon to "Digg it!"

You can also add social bookmarking tags like those you see below each post here, so again, visitors can easily click their favourite social bookmarking site to boost your post.

The whole reason for all of this is to get your blog known to the outside world and the way to do that is to tell people about it – as many as you can! People search for interesting sites via search engines, so you need to be near the top of them for your topic, or niche. People also look for interesting articles to read on sites like Digg and Reddit. They also look for interesting sites on Stumbleupon and del.icio.us, technorati and all the other popular social bookmarking sites. Other bloggers use social networking sites like MyBlogLog.com to interact with other bloggers. Remember, bloggers are people too! And when they find other blogs they like, don't you think they'll call back to those blogs often to see what's new? Of course they will!

But the absolute most important thing you have to do without fail – or your blog WILL FAIL, is to write good, informative, interesting and entertaining posts. And often! When you are starting up a blog, you should aim to add a new post every other day at least – every day is better if you can think of that much to write about, that is.

The reason?

Well, look at it from the perspective of a visitor. Put yourself in their place. Say you stumble upon a new blog that is going to cover a topic that you are interested in. Let's say you are interested in how to make money with your blog (for want of a better example!) and you find a new blog with just a few posts on that very subject. You read them all and are impressed by not only the informative and knowledgeable posts but also because they entertained you and made you want to read more. So you bookmark the blog and decide to call back in a couple of days.

Now let's take one scenario: when you call back and there are another two great posts waiting for you to read with relish – how glad are you that you found that little goldmine of entertaining information?

Let's take a second scenario: When you call back, there are no new posts, but a sidebar full of flashing ads begging you to click them. You might think, "Ok, I'll come back in another couple of days" and give the blogger the benefit of the doubt. You call back and there is another post waiting for you to read. Great, you'll come back again, but will leave it a few days between visits.

See where this is going?

Now let's take a third scenario. When you call back the first time, there are no posts and a sidebar full of ads, the same as the above scenario. So you call back in another couple of days but this time there are no new posts, but even more flashing ads. What is the chance you'll ever call back again?

Thought so.

Most internet surfers are creatures of habit. Once they find a site they like and they know will be updated often, they will call back to it every day to see what's new. If their interest is satisfied and they are impressed with the quality of the content, they will not only become a loyal reader but will also tell their friends about it. So by keeping that interest going by writing regular posts and articles about your topic, or niche, and making them interesting as well as informative, you'll not only keep the visitors you already have, but by them spreading the word, you'll increase that readership over time making your blog popular and high traffic – attributes that paying advertisers will not fail to notice. But that's a topic for another article!

Author: Terry Didcott

Word Count: 1038

Date Submitted: 12th August 2007

PS: If you enjoyed this article and want to share it with others, please click on one or more of your favourite social bookmarking icons below and let the world know about it! Thanks.

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03. GENERATE AND KEEP TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOGSITE

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