10 Productive Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

TRAFFIC

According to Blogpulse, there are more than 165 million blogs on the Net. To attract readers to your blog, you need to do things productively and market your blog and content vigorously.

1. Blog about what you know: Write about things that you are interested in and passionate about. Write on subjects that you are knowledgeable about and good at. This is to develop and build your authority and trust over time as you write more and more articles.

2. Be productive and get ready articles in advance: How many articles do you have right now ready to be posted: one, two or seven? The more articles you have in hand the better it is. The most important thing is that you want to avoid interruption in your posting schedule. When you, as an example, post an article a day, you have to keep to your schedule even when you are not writing when you are on holiday or unwell. Another thing is that you do not want to meet a posting deadline and write your article in a hurry and under stress at the expense of quality. An article needs to be written in a few sessions from gathering ideas, writing the actual article and proofreading it.

3. Use Scoop.it to notify major social networking sites: An effective way to promote your article as soon as it is posted is to use scoop.it to notify major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. According to Alexa, more than 46% of my traffic source is from Facebook (upstream site).

4. Join blog carnivals to get inbound links: When you have a new article posted, another productive thing to do is to submit your post and participate in relevant blog carnivals. You will gain new visitors to your site. Incidentally the more links you get from blog carnivals the higher will be your Technorati Authority Rank.

5. Submit original articles to article directories and do guest posting for more inbound link: There are two more ways to get more traffic to your site. Send you original articles to Ezinearticles with a link in each article to your site. Readers will read your articles and then follow the link and land on your site. The other effective way is to do guest posting on other sites and attract readers who have never been to your site.

6. Comments on other blogs and participate in forums: Constructive comments on other sites are a good way to attract the blog owners’ attention to visit your site. Taking part in forums to offer solutions to problems is also an effective way to get others to notice you and visit your site.

7. Post consistently and regularly to your site: To sustain blog traffic, you need to post articles consistently and regularly like operating a retail outlet. Business must go on in order to keep your customers.

8. Keep on learning about blogging tips: There are always new things to learn in the blogosphere. Keep learning to stay ahead and be ahead. Learn and employ methods that are effective to attract visitors to your sites.

9. Display your Traffic Rank and PageRank widgets: Your Traffic Rank and PageRank are good measurements of your popularity, authority and trust. The higher the ranking of your site, the more influential will be your site and the easier it is to attract visitors.

10. Blog directories: submit your blog to blog directories. It is another way to promote your blogs and get other bloggers to visit your site.

To stay productive, focus on activities that bring you the results.

10 Effective Ways to Create a Positive First Impression of your Blog

According to BlogPulse, there are more than 164 million blogs in the blogosphere. Therefore, a visitor only spends a few seconds to look at your blog and decide to stay or move on. In order to create a good first impression in such a short time and attract the attention of your readers, here are the most important things to create a positive first impression quickly:

1. Know your niche at a glance: A visitor must know at a glance what your blog is all about without thinking. Tell in just a few words what you are blogging about.

2. White background: Avoid dark background to turn people off. Your blog should be aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and use fonts that are easy to read.

3. Allow a visitor to get what he or she wants easily and immediately: Don’t make a visitor think what to do next in order to read one of your posts. It has to be there right in front of the visitor. It is also important that your articles are written in bullets points and with keywords highlighted. Avoid putting ads inside an article. Don’t make a reader scroll to many pages to read one post just for your own purposes. Readers come first.

4. Your “About” and “Contact” pages: It should be above the fold so that a visitor can get to know more about you easily and contact you if necessary. Your photo should be in the “About” page.

5. Fewer ads: When you put ads everywhere, It is an indication that you are more interested in yourself to make money rather than looking after the interest of the readers. In the end, you don’t get what you want because you don’t give the readers what they want.

6. Easy to navigate: Make it very easy for visitors to go about your blog and attract them to stay longer.

7. No pop-ups: Do not interrupt and distract a visitor reading your article by trying to get their e-mail address with a pop-up. Readers will willingly subscribe to your RSS feed or give you their email addresses when they find your site interesting.

8. Provide a list of your popular posts: This is the way to attract a visitor to stay longer with more interesting posts to read.

9. Interact: It is essential to accept comments from visitors so that you can get ideas from them and build rapport.

10. Social media: Are there links to allow readers to connect and communicate with you easily at your Facebook and Twitter pages?

What are the other effective ways to create a positive first impression of your blog to visitors?

To Blog Is To Give and Receive

For it is in giving that we receive. ~ St. Francis of Assisi


Blogging is like banking, there is no withdrawal without deposit and in life, you cannot get what you want without giving others what they want.

Give (Action)

The way to give is to provide a quality site by writing quality and relevant articles for the consumption of readers. Optimize your site and use the right keywords in your articles to facilitate search engines to locate relevant articles of yours:

1. Accurate information: Research the subject well and get the facts right. The key is to provide readers with accurate and precise information.

2. Each article stands by itself: Each article is unique or it provides additional insight into the same topics in addition to previous articles. It is to avoid writing duplicating, overlapping or redundant articles.

3. Meticulous: Take good care of grammar, spelling and punctuation in every article. Make it easy for the readers to read by not inserting ads in the middle of your articles. Use simple language, short paragraphs, simple words and in bullets points.

4. Be original: Write refreshing ideas, look at a subject with a different perspective and give an old subject with a new twist. Be creative.

5. Comprehensive coverage of a subject: Cover a subject in full and if necessary link to other relevant articles to support your story for the benefits of your readers.

6. Provide valuable tips and solutions to problems: Provide useful tips that readers can implement right away and make their life easier. The reader will also appreciate when you can supply workable solutions to their problems.

7. Consistent and persistent: Write regularly and write within your niche to build trust from readers and gain authority on the subject that you are writing about over time.


Receive (Results)

When you give quality content from your site, you will receive more traffic to your site and achieve popularity. You will also get more following, trust, authority and earnings:

1. PageRank: Having or getting higher PageRank is an indication of the relevance and value of your pages. Advertisers pay you according to the PageRank on your site. The higher the PageRank, the more you will be paid.

2. Traffic Rank: In the blogosphere, there is a viral effect when you get noticed. There will be more and more visitors coming to your site. Your traffic Rank will go up.

3. Technorati Authority Rank: When you keep your blog active and current, your site will attract more inward links and you will gain Technorati Authority.

4. Subscribers and followers: When your content is good, there will be more RSS and email subscribers of your articles. You will also get more Twitter and site followers

5. Positive comments: When you write and touch people’s heart, they will be compelled to share their views with you. You will also receive valuable ideas from your readers.

6. Positive reviews: When people are impressed by what you have written, they will write favorable reviews of your site. Positive reviews excite more visitors to your site. What others have said is more impactful than your own words.

7. AdSense and other income: It is more likely for you to generate a lucrative income when your blog is in demand and popular.

Give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you. ~ Madelin Bridges

7 Productive Things to Do Online

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn`t think they could learn before, and so in a sense, it is all about potential. ~ Steve Ballmer

There are many things to do online which you can’t do offline.

1. Blogging: Start a blog and post your unique articles and be heard by more people than you can imagine. It is assumed that your site is search engine optimized. There is no other way to reach such a wide audience.

2. Looking for information and doing research: The fastest and the easiest way to learn new things is to search the Net. Just type in the keywords of the things that you are looking for and you will get pages and pages of related articles.

3. Banking: There is no need to go to the bank to transfer funds or sending money to loved ones far away. On the Net, you can check your account balances, print your statements and there are many more financial transactions that you can do.

4. Networking: Getting to know others and getting connected are the things that you can do easily on the Net. When you get connected with the right people, you are presented with ample opportunities.

5. Instant communication: By using Skype you can talk or make video calls to people far away instantly. Most of the time email is the most effective way to communicate, like sending instructions and homework to students.

6. Breaking news: The fastest way to know about the latest news, such as the earthquake in Japan recently, is to go online. Precious lives can be saved by an early warning system in case of a natural disaster.

7. Getting things done: Nowadays, the processing of an application is done online and the fees are to be paid online by credit card as well. There is no other way to do it. You can make travel arrangements and hotel bookings instantly and securely online. Doing business and marketing on the net is the norm.

What are the things that you do online?

Are You Blogging Productively?

Are you making progress as a blogger? Are you getting what you want from your blog? Answer the following questions to find out how productive you are in blogging:

1.       Are you posting articles regularly and consistently within your niche?

 What is your posting schedule? Do you post an article a day, three times a week or once a week? Be consistent so that readers are not turned off.  Are your articles written within your niche? Readers expect to read what you have promised to them.  

2.       Are you getting more traffic?

 Is your site getting more visitors directly, from referring links and keywords of your articles?  Are you getting more page views and unique visitors? An upward trend of your site visitors means you are doing something right.

3.       Are you getting more subscribers?

 More RSS and email subscribers of your articles mean what you have written are what they are looking for. 

4.       Are you getting more Twitter followers?

 More followers mean they are interested in what you do. They follow and see what you do next.

5.       Are you getting more “Like” and “+1” for your articles?

Do you have “Like” and “+1” buttons at the end of each article? ” Likes” and “+1” mean people find your articles interesting and stimulating. 

6.       Are you getting more Technorati Authority?

To get Technorati Authority, your blog needs to stay active and current because only fresh links to your blog are counted. The moment when your blog is without new links your authority will drop.   

7.       Are you getting PageRank?

You do not find PageRank on all popular blogs. It’s good to have it because it means your pages are valuable to Google and it is more than just relevant links to your site or pages.   

8.       Are you getting more blog followers?

Blog followers, like Twitter followers, “Like” and “+1”, enjoy what you blog about and they are taking an interest in what you are going to write about. 

9.       Are you getting more comments?

Comments mean readers are keen to interact with you and share their views. You get to know the readers’ thoughts and reaction. They find your articles thought-provoking.     

10.   Are you getting more earnings?

Are you making decent money from AdSense?  The more page views you can get for your site, the more money you will earn.

11.   Are you getting a positive blog review? 

A positive review is like getting thumbs up for your blog. The writer appreciates what you do and he or she recommend your blog to others.

Are you happy and satisfied with the performance of your blog? Are you getting what you have expected and hope for? What can you do to be more productive?

7 Effective Blogging Tools

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user. ~Bill Gates


What tools do you use for blogging, such as writing articles, getting images, copywriting attractive headlines, notifying others of your new blog posts and measuring the performance, competitiveness and authority of your site? These are the usual tools that I use every day:

1. Microsoft Word: This is the software that I use to input, arrange ideas and put them into a proper blog post. A tool is a tool and, it is up to the user to create words which are good for human consumption. It is able to check some of your errors but not all of your errors. A human being is still required to edit, proofread an article before it goes live. It is still a useful and effective tool to write articles.

2. Stock.xchng: Where do you get a constant supply of images to complement each and every article of yours without cost? Look no further and go to stock.xchng. When you are there, the easiest thing to do is to type the keywords of your article into the Advanced search space; you will be thrilled to find many images to suit your particular requirements. Just make your choice.

3. Google Analytics and Statcounter: These are the tools I use to measure the performance of my site. I get to know page views, unique visitors and returning visitors of my blog. I also get to know what my most popular articles are, where my visitors are coming from and what keywords they are using to reach my site. I can check my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly data easily and many more things for free.

4. Headline Analyzer: How do I know my headline is impactful? Just go to Headline analyzer to find the Emotional Marketing Value of your title. The higher the value, the more attractive is the headline to attract the reader to read your article. By the way, it is free.

5. Ping.fm: How do you notify your social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more all at once when you have posted a new article on your site? Let Ping.fm do the job for you for free instantly.

6. Alexa Traffic Rank: This is the tool I use to measure the competitiveness of my website. According to BlogPulse, there are more than 163 million blogs in the blogosphere and I am happy to be among the top 0.3% (rank around 400,000) sites on the Net.

7. Technorati Authority Rank This is to measure the authority of your site according to relevant sites linking to you currently. It fluctuates according to the prevailing status of your blog by the number of links you have got. When there are no new links, your authority drops immediately.

What tools do you use for blogging? Share with us.

10 Ways to Prepare for a Job Interview

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it. ~Denzel Washington


Here are 10 steps to take and be ready for an interview:


1. Research the company: Go online and check the company‘s website. Find out how long the company has been established. What is the nature of their business? What are its products or services? Is the company a trusted brand? What is their business philosophy? Your keen interest to work in the company is shown by how much you know about the company.

2. Research the job: Get to know what the job entails and make sure that your skills and qualifications match the post that you are applying for.

3. Research the salary ranch of the post: Get online and check the current rate of the post that you are applying for. The knowledge is important for you to negotiate for a fair wage. Be willing to accept lower pay for a start.

4. Identify the location: Find out in advance the location of the interview and estimate the time to be taken to reach there on time. You don’t want to look for it on the day itself and be late for the interview. You will be creating a bad first impression.

5. Prepared the frequently asked questions: Get to know the usual questions and get ready the answers:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Why did you apply for this job?
• Are you qualified for this post?
• What can you do for the company?
• What is your career plan?
• Why should we hire you?

6. Dress: The night before getting ready what you want to wear for the occasion. It should be suitable for the post that you are applying for. Dress smartly to show that you care about yourself and it implies to others how you treat your work

7. Documents: Put all your documents in a plastic folder which opens on two sides so that you can easily retrieve an item. Get ready on the day before and arrange them in proper order.

8. Arrive early: To avoid rushing about, get there early so that you are composed upon arrival.

9. Be observant: Upon arrival, take a seat and look around the office. Pay attention to what you see, such as the mission statement, vision statement, organization chart, and posters. These things tell a lot about the company and the information is useful for you during the interview to answer relevant questions.

10. Be polite, cool, and calm: It goes without saying that you have to acknowledge all the people in the office and be polite. Behave confidently, sit still and walk with your head up.


The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes. ~Benjamin Disraeli

15 Tips to Write Effective Articles

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. ~Benjamin Franklin


Articles are the life and soul of your blog. Without articles and without posting articles regularly and consistently, there will be no visitors.


1. Write title first: Your title is the question and your content supplies the answers. Your title is also the goal and the content is the way to reach your goals. Always write the title first so that you will write content to match it.

2. Ideas: The first thing to do is to generate ideas according to the article title. Ideas can come all of a sudden; the most important thing is to write them down quickly.

3. Actual writing: After gathering ideas, the next stage is to do the proper writing of the article. Arrange the ideas sequentially, neatly and avoid repetition of ideas.

4. Critical review: Getting ideas and writing an article is to be done at different time, so is the critical review of your article. You look at what you have written objectively to see whether the content is relevant to the article title. Is it written in a continuous flow cohesively?

Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~From the movie Finding Forrester

5. Editing: It is better to get someone else to do the editing and proofreading. You alone may not be able to spot all errors.

6. Opening: The introduction of the article should be powerful, short, and sharp to attract the attention of your readers and to capture their curiosity to read further. A meaningful quotation is an effective way to begin your article.

7. Body: On the Net readers don’t read word by word, they scan your articles so it is necessary to write scannable text by using bullet points and numbering, and highlight keywords

8. Closing: The end of a story is just as important as the beginning. It is to call for action and it should evoke soul-searching thoughts.

9. Grammar: When you master grammar, you master the language. Correct grammar has far-reaching consequences and legal implications. The story in a local newspaper illustrates the importance of grammar.

10. Spelling: You need more than a spelling checker to check your spelling; the software will not detect all your spelling errors. Spend time to check spelling carefully.

11. Punctuation: The proper use of punctuation is to assist your readers to understand a sentence. The wrong use of punctuation can cause readers to misunderstand your meaning.

12. Use the right words: Beware of near-identical words such as outdoor and outdoors, effect and affect, compliment and complement, foreword and forward, beside and besides, forceful and forcible. They look almost similar but each with a totally different meaning.

13. Keywords and your articles: In order for search engines to find one of your articles, you have to use keywords in your article title and in your content. Keywords are the words used by readers to look for things on the Net. If the search words match your article title, your page will be presented to the searcher. However, it is better to write naturally and meaningfully for your readers instead of writing for search engines.

14. Emotional Marketing Value of your headline: Your headline or title is the No.1 thing in an article because readers will base on your title to decide whether to read your content or not. Write a captivating and seductive title to attract the attention of your readers. The title of this article carries an EMV of 50% and it is appealing to others intellectually, spiritually, and empathetically.

15. Niche: Write within your niche so that you will develop over time as an expert and authority in what you write best,


The first goal of writing is to have one's words read successfully. ~Robert Brault

Do You Know Your Subscribers?

Subscribers are the foundation and strong supporters of your site. They voluntarily decide and choose your blog and subscribe to read your articles regularly.  The articles that you have written are what they want to consume. They can subscribe to your articles by RSS feeds or by email. Do you know that there are subtle differences between the two types of subscribers?

RSS subscribers

1.      Instant gratification: They read one of your articles and they like it and they subscribe to your feed instantly expecting to read the same substance every day.

2.      Unsubscribe instantly: When they read the next article on their feeds and do not find the same subject that they like, they immediately unsubscribe. It is the main reason that your RSS subscribers are like riding a roller coaster. It goes up in big numbers in one day and they come down in just as big numbers in the following day.  

3.      Privacy: They want privacy and they do not wish to disclose their communication channel to you. They choose RSS

4.      More subscribers: More people choose RSS feeds because they can read everything in one place and you will find that you have more subscribers in this category. Do not be surprised when you find the numbers going up and down drastically. 

Email subscribers

1.      Get to know your site well: They take a good hard look at your site to know more about what you can offer them. They are careful people.

2.      Trust: After the survey, when they know it is a site that can be trusted, they will go ahead and subscribe to your articles via emails. 

                  
Trust is won not given. ~Tobsha Learner

3.      Stay with you: When they subscribe to read your articles they stay with you and they don’t go away quickly. Your subscribers increase slowly but surely. 

4.      Fewer subscribers: Not many people want to share their email addresses, so there are fewer email subscribers as compared to RSS subscribers.

I have a few subscribers but I have learnt a lot of the psychological make-up of the two types of subscribers. What is your view?    

What can article writing do for you?

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. ~ Enrique Jardiel Poncela

I have found that the more you write the more creative you will be in your writing. You can spot writing ideas easily because you are actively looking for them.   You can also improve your writing by writing constantly. What can you get out of writing?

1. Expression: Writing is an expression of your inner self. It is your deep thoughts, emotions, and feelings and you express it in your own style freely.

The best style is the style you don't notice. ~ Somerset Maugham

2. Creation: Your writing is your own unique creation. You see things from a different perspective and you write it your way. Be innovative and be original.   

Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing. ~ Heather Sellers

3. Authority: The more you write about what you are interested in, the better your writing will be. It is not for you to say how good you are, it is for others to evaluate. The more favorable comments you receive, the more authority you will have on the subject that you are writing about.   

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.
Ray Bradbury

4. Impart ideas: Write to provide solutions to other people’s problems.  Show others the most effective ways to get things done and write to inspire and motivate readers to make changes for the better in their life.  

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. ~E.L. Doctorow

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
Matthew Arnold

5. Satisfaction: It is satisfying to know that you are able to write a better article with each passing day because you write every day. The fact that you are getting more and more subscribers to your articles on your blog  is evidenced by your improvement in your  writing skills  

6. Sharpen the saw: To be more skillful in your output, read and learn from other writers what they have written and improved upon yourself.  The more you write the more confident and competent  you will be able to express yourself

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. ~ Stephen King

Like most—maybe all— writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books. ~ Francine Prose

7. Passive income: One good thing about writing, especially on your blog, is that you can receive earnings from AdSense. Ads will be placed on your blog and are relevant to the subject that you are writing about. While you are working or sleeping, you are generating an income.

The only way to learn to write is to write. ~Peggy Teeters

Effective Ways to Be Productive Online

To be productive online is to be effective and efficient doing less and getting more done. Here are the ways to harness internet technology to get more traffic to your site and be noticed

1. Content: If you have time for only one thing to do online, what would you do? The obvious thing is to write articles on your blog simply because people visit your blog to find out what’s for them from what you have posted.  Without articles, there is nothing to offer to your readers. You will notice that your articles are more than just good for solving people’s problems.  Read on.

2. Keywords: Keywords are words used by people who search for things online. When one of your pages contains matching words, it is shown among other pages with similar keywords. You can use a keyword tool such as Google AdWords to find out what words people use to find content. The best thing to do is to write useful articles with relevant keywords in your titles, headlines and in the body of your articles. Keywords are used to optimize your web site for search engines. However, the most important thing is to write naturally for readers.   

3. Titles: Use this tool, Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer, to write effective titles. According to the site, this free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. As you know, reaching your customers in a deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects.

4.      Search: According to the latest article by Google, Finding more high-quality sites in search, they are looking for quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. Write unique and original articles which are beneficial for the readers and get noticed by search engines. Don’t send your articles to article directory sites to avoid duplication.

5. Technorati: How do you build trust and authority online? Build and establish your authority through Technorati. As you have already had so many useful articles at your site, just use your articles to join relevant blog carnivals at http://blogcarnival.com/. Whenever an article is accepted by a carnival host, there will be a link to your site. Technorati will pick up the link to your site. The more links you have from authoritative sites, the more authority you will gain from Technorati.  

6. Subscribers: The wonderful articles that you have written are your life and soul of your site. Install Feedburner at your site to facilitate readers to subscribe and read your future posts by RSS feed and email. Your success and effectiveness of your blog are measured by the number of subscribers you have.

7. Social media: Invite people to connect you at Facebook by including a Like box at your site. Insert a button to get more followers to your Twitter account. These two sites are the most popular networking sites you can find on the Net. You can also Join LinkedIn for more online exposure.  

8. Google Analytics: Monitor the performance of your site and make changes accordingly to optimize the performance of your site.  Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better

9. Blog Followers: Having many blog followers is a great way to achieve a viral effect to generate more traffic to your site. Add this feature and promote your site effectively.

10. Business cards:  According to Wikipedia, a QR Code is a specific matrix (or two-dimensional code, readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. You can print unique business cards incorporating QR code to attract the attention of others. Be different, be smart and get noticed. Go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/  to generate your QR code.

    

    QR Code

Take advantage of advancements of technology to promote your site productively.