Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog with Old Content [video]

Do you ever think about your older blog posts, wondering if you get any value from them after they've slipped out of sight, replaced by new content?

Do you ever check your analytics to see what kind of traffic you're getting to older content? 

I confess, I am sporadic at best, at taking a backward look at my content and seeing how I can squeeze more traffic out of it. Then, this video was brought to my attention by David Newby, a member of my LinkedIn group, Online Visibility Boost for Entrepreneurs (it's on open group, you're invited to join!). I was intrigued and watched the video by Jonathan at BloggingYourPassion.com.

 

A couple of things to note.

1. You need to have Google Analytics set up and linked to your blog.

2. Identify posts that do a good job of demonstrating your expertise, show how you serve your clients and have a strong call to action.

3. Use the tutorial in the video to re-optimize the posts for keywords prospects are really searching on.  

Use your time and energy to focus on your most powerful posts that will bring you the targeted readers you want and make sure your content compels to take action to subscribe, get your free report, register for a webinar, etc.

Do you re-optimize older posts? What kind of results have you seen when you do?

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• Why a blog is an essential foundation for your online business
• 10 key steps you must take before you create your business blog
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• How to boost your visibility and create a powerful online presence
• How to use social networking to drive more people back to your blog
• 14 Attention-Grabbing Tactics for Launching a New Business Blog

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Should my blog have an opt-in form?

Recently I got this question via my "Ask Denise" form that I thought may be helpful for many people who are wondering the best way to use an opt-in form: 

I'm new to blogging. I have a blogsite but NOT a website. As far as driving more traffic to my website could/should I apply an OPT IN form to my blogsite or get a website with an OPT IN form to drive the traffic to my blog?

First, your blog may be and can serve as your website. So, you want to add an opt-in form to your blog. This is one a very important element to any blog. Always give your audience a way to get updates via email. Then, when you post new content, your subscribers are notified by email and they are prompted to visit your blog which of course, creates traffic. If your content is useful and you have social sharing buttons, then your reader, will [hopefully] share your content with their networks as well, thus driving more traffic.

It's not necessary to build a new site simply to drive traffic to your blog. There are many, many ways to drive traffic from your exisiting networks. The key is making sure you have that opt-in form ON YOUR BLOG so you're converting readers to subscribers...

7 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog from LinkedIn

If the audience for your blog are primarily business people, then there's a good bet they spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, the business to business networking site. I've been spending more time there myself and as I've been optimizing my profile and participating in groups more, I've discovered there are quite a few ways to get your business blog content in front of your contacts and compelling them to click through to your site.

Here are 7 ways I've discovered to drive LinkedIn contacts to your blog:

1. A link in your profile - at the very minimum. Make sure to customize the label of the link rather than using the default label "my blog."

2. Auto-post your blog updates to your status. You can use a social media management tool like Hootsuite. If you use Feedblitz to deliver your blog updates, enable the option to automatically post to LinkedIn as well. You can do a search for Wordpress plugins to auto post as well. There are quite a few.

Google +1 Button Gives Your Blog Posts More Visibility

Have you heard the news? In online marketing circles it was hard to avoid news about the Google +1 button finally being available to add to websites and blogs. By way of introduction, here's Google's video introducing the +1 Button:

 

There have been dozens of detailed blog posts written about how to install Google's +1 Button on your site so I'm not going to go into that here. I'll link to a couple posts that are well worth your time to read and study.

What I will say is that this is an important element to add to the social sharing options on your blog. You're giving your audience a way to tell Google that your content is worth recommending and the more recommendations you have the better Google likes it. It's like a peer review of your content. 

The +1 Button is Google's answer to Facebook's Like button. Both are forms of word of mouth recommendations and social proof. The more likes and pluses, the better the content must be and the more likely that others will click through to check it out, right? More targeted traffic...got to love that!

On the other side of the visibility coin, the more you use the +1 button to recommend blog posts and websites you like, the more your image and name appears on Google's search results pages when your friends are doing searches. You do have to have a public Google profile (which I've been recommending for a long time) in order to use +1 and have your name, image and link to your profile show up.

Back to adding the +1 button on your blog...

Reel in Blog Readers by Name-Dropping

This guest post is by Heather Green.

One of the simplest ways to attract readers to any blog post goes by the same logic on which countless magazines—like Us Weekly, People, and Vanity Fair—thrive: people love celebrities.

Celebrities have the leg-up on most bloggers because they already have household names. All a blogger has to do to steal some of the spotlight, however, is drop the said name.

Take this post on Balanced WorkLife, for instance, called “Charlie Sheen’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence” or CopyBlogger’s “5 Things Depeche Mode Can Teach You About Effective Online Marketing.” Both bloggers take two seemingly irrelevant topics and tie the ends to make eye-catching and compelling posts. Even individuals out of touch with Hollywood gossip can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the pairing of Charlie Sheen and emotional intelligence. Who would have thought the YouTube sensation’s philosophy would have anything constructive to add to personal development? (Winning).

5 Sources for Getting Ideas

1. If you (or one of your friends) don’t already guiltily subscribe to one of the aforementioned publications, check out the latest gossip on stars and starlets online. Don’t forget the royal couple, political celebrities, and the latest goings-on in the music industry.

What is the best way to increase subscribers to your blog?

I've been asked this question twice in the last two days... what is the best way to increase subscribers to your blog?

You probably already know that having great content with compelling headlines, published frequently will help you increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog.

And there's a lot more you can do.

In my previous post on List Building for Bloggers, you learned that using email in conjunction with your blog is one of the best ways to get people to come back to your blog over and over again. If they love what you're writing about and it solves their problems, they'll subscribe to your updates and return to read your articles. The biggest challenge though, is moving readers to become subscribers.

Do You Know Which Social Networking Site Sends You the Most Traffic?

A few years ago I started noticing a trend in my traffic stats...after organic traffic, Twitter was driving about 50% of the traffic to my blog. But things have changed.

A poll on SmartBrief on Social Media asked: Which social network has generated the most viral traffic for your content? The results are congruent with what I've noticed in the last year...

Facebook is dominating as a referral source, no doubt due to the phenomenal number of users (I recently heard they number nearly 700 million users now!). What's interesting to note about this poll (not scientific) is how little traffic is generated by the "traditional" bookmarking/share sites like Digg and Stumbleupon. Again, this could be skewed by the audience who subscribes to SmartBrief and participate in social media. This audience may not use or care about Digg or Stumbleupon.

Blogging In A Niche - Increase Relevancy to Increase Traffic

This is a guest post by Isabella York of BalsamHill.com

Working for an Artificial Christmas tree company for years now, I know how easy it is to get pigeonholed into your niche. Your market can really narrow with certain demographics like age and budget, and without creativity, will constrict the number of people who get to see your business.

The Internet is a company's best bet for inexpensive and global promotion of business. It is a worldwide audience for companies that is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Engaging the market and  expanding your customer base using the Internet can be as easy as 1-2-3. Here are a couple of things to get any business out there and talked about, and most importantly, create a customer base:

   1. Make It Simple.

 It's not enough to create a website then leaving it to dry, without thinking about how people will be able to get through it. Entrebankph.com shares that a website needs to be interesting, engaging and most of all, interactive. Make a website easy to navigate by creating a simple user interface that will allow customers of all ages to easily get through the site. Have others look at the website with a fresh eye and note their comments regarding the navigation. If possible, test the interface of the website from young to old, the merchant creates one that can be viewed and read by customers of all ages.

Blog Updates by Email Wins By a Big Margin

The recent poll on email vs. RSS for blog update delivery generated quite a few votes and comments. As I mentioned in my previous post, I like to test the waters every year or so as Internet users become more sophisticated. Yet, with this sampling of savvy Web users, the results barely budged.

Email wins again with 75% of the vote. RSS follows with 23% and a new entry in the poll - audio (podcasts) garnered 2% of the vote. (Note: this is not a scientic poll by any means, but does give a good picture of how people are consuming blog content.)

You'll notice the poll looks rather odd with numerous individual entries. Something to note when you run your own Facebook polls is that you have the option of allowing or not allowing people to add more options for folks to select. I left it open and what happened is people put their comments in the options section instead of selecting one of my three options and then posting a comment in the actual comment area.

How to Get Backlinks - 3 Easy Ways That Will Boost Your Search Engine Rankings

Easy Backlinks That Will Boost Your Search Engine Rankings
Guest post by Susanne Myers

Ranking high in Google is mostly a matter of two things. A good title tag for your page and quality incoming links that have your keyword in the anchor text. Tweaking your titles is easy, but where do you get some easy backlinks that will boost your search engine rankings? Here are a couple of places to start.

1. Social Bookmarking

An easy way to make sure all your best content is quickly indexed and gets a few decent backlinks is to bookmarking via a few strong social bookmarking sites. As an added bonus, doing this regularly will also result in quite a bit of traffic.

For one of my niche sites, StumbeUpon is one of the top referring sites, right after Google and Yahoo, sending me thousands of qualified visitors each month.

You can start by submitting your pages to sites like Delicious, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Mixx, NewsVine, Digg, and Yahoo Buzz.

Whenever possible I also like to find a few niche specific bookmarking sites. For example, if you have a site in the finance niche, take a look at Tip'd.

2. Asking For A Link

Another great strategy to use is to simply ask for a link. Create a "link to me" page that explains to your readers that it is ok to link to your content and that in fact you appreciate it. If you have an article section, you may want to let them know that they are welcome to reprint your articles.

I also like plugins like "Sociable" that allow readers to bookmark, tweet and email your content with the click of a button. If you are using WordPress to manage your website, this is as easy as installing and activating the plugin.

3. Blog Commenting On Do-Follow Blogs

Another simple backlinking strategy is to find various blogs that do-follow the links in their comments. Blog commenting is always a good idea to gain traffic, expertise and a great way to connect with bloggers in your market. By intentionally looking for do-follow blogs, you have the added benefit of building a backlink with each comment you leave.

You can search for "do-follow blog" plus a main keyword for your market and will likely find lists of those sites for your niche.

Another option is to search for popular blogs in your market and then find one of their posts with comments on it and look at the source code. If the link back to the commenter's site includes "rel=nofollow", the link does not count as a backlink. If the "nofollow" attribute isn't in there the link does count.

Find a few do-follow blogs and make it a habit to comment on them a few times per week.

By implementing all three of these strategies, you can quickly build up quite a few backlinks without spending a lot of time, effort or money.

About the Author:
Susanne Myers is an affiliate marketer who has been exploring various niches and marketing to them for over 5 years. She has been making a fulltime living doing this for over 3 of those and has gotten pretty good at picking profitable niche markets.

Looking for a link building program?

Go get information at http://www.EasyLinkLove.com

Related Post:
How to Get Incoming One Way Backlinks to Your Blog

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