Recently, a coworker and I discussed having a friendly competition to see who could drive more traffic to their blog. We are both starting from scratch, essentially, with low, low traffic. Both of us are in marketing, but in different areas. It would be interesting to see what avenues we both took to get to the same destination. It seems like this competition won't be happening, but the question still remains. What is the best way to drive traffic to a blog, or any site, for that matter?
Obviously, content is king, but even if you have a site filled with awesome content, the word still needs to get out. Without visitors, page rank won't increase and without page rank, visitors won't appear. It seems like a real chicken-or-the-egg predicament. This is why it's crucial to take the initiative to drive traffic yourself; not waiting on your favorite search engine to do all the heavy lifting for you.
With ecomm sites, or sites that may show a return, either by sales or by turning traffic into revenue with AdSense, spending money to get traffic is warranted. Chances are, at some point, you will see the investment return. But what happens when you just want traffic for the sake of getting traffic? Maybe revenue isn't the ultimate goal, but promoting/networking yourself is. Yes, one should put a value on promoting/networking them self, but if traffic can be had for little investment, wouldn't that be better?
Create a Foundation
First thing's first. Submit your site map to Google and every other search engine you desire. They should have tools available for you to submit a site map. Google uses 'webmaster tools'. Additionally, optimize your site for search engines. Learn about meta tags and keywords, then put it all into place.
Socialize
There are several ways of attaining free traffic. Posting your site on social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and Twitter are all free, and can provide traffic. Don't forget your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles. The larger the friend list, the more possibility there is of recruiting traffic.
Network
Do your part to be an ambassador for your site. Learn and live your site. Is it about electronics? Join and contribute to electronics forums. Add valuable content by discussing relevant topics with others in the community. Place a link to your site in your signature (if allowed), or reference your site in discussions. In addition, guest blog on other's sites, or have others guest blog on your site. Generally, this will include a link back to your site, which will increase the user base for both parties.
Engage your Readers
Now more than ever, the internet is a community. As a site owner, embrace your site's visitors. Ask questions. Task them with writing product reviews. Create polls. Throw competitions. Create email lists and RSS feeds. Make them feel like a part of your site, not just a inconspicuous passer by. Users should feel as if they have invested in the site; given time to the site and added value to the site.
All of the above solutions are free and are by no means the complete solution to out-trafficking all of your friends, but are a good start before getting into paid advertising. How do you plan to out-traffic your competition?
Labels: Marketing, SEO, Traffic
Being a self taught front-end web guy, there are occasions when I come across an HTML tag that, well, I hadn't heard of. Some of these are more useful than others; there are tags that I could probably go without knowing for the rest of my career and there are a few that I can't imagine doing without.
<pre> (text, inline)
Before I started to blog with the need to show highlighted pre, I had no clue that this tag existed. Use it to specify any type of pre. By default, most browsers will print this in the ugliest font they can find.
<ins> & <del> (text, inline)
Surely the insert and delete tags go back to the beginning of our beloved markup language, as they seem to be best used when using HTML as a word processing language, not necessarily the rich interfaces that are so common today. Obviously, they signify inserted and deleted text. The ins and del tags have two optional attributes; cite and datetime. Cite should specify the location (as a URI) of an explanation of why the insertion was made, while datetime should state the date and time of the change. By default <ins> underlines the text within it and <del> strikes through the text within it.
<caption> (table, block)
Used inside table tags, the caption tag is to be used only once and must appear right after the opening table tag. It's meant to describe the contents of the table and by default displays above the table. Style this element to get the most out of it.
<base> (link, inline)
Defines a base location for links on a page. This can come in handy if every link on your page will have a base link of something different that your base domain.
If you are just getting into HTML, or even if you have been doing it for a while, it may be worth taking a look at the W3C to see if there is anything you just haven't had a use for yet. Chances are, something may come in handy that you were not previously aware of. Additionally, getting to know all of the HTML elements will greatly improve (and simplify) the pre you write.
Labels: (X)HTML, Web Development
Recently, a new feature was implemented to all of my Google Analytics accounts. Advanced Segmenting is still in the beta stage, but it's there, none-the-less, thanks in part to Googles analytics evangelist, Avinash Kaushik. Out of the box, Advanced Segmenting supplies several 'standard' segments, including new and returning visitors, paid and non-paid visitors, search, referral and direct traffic, as well as traffic with conversions. These are great to get you started, but the option is also available to create your own segment, which is where the fun begins.
I've found it handy to do things like divide paid traffic into specific channels, such as paid keywords and CSE traffic, using referral path as a dimension. This seems to work well, as these sites normally wouldn't send traffic to my sites, unless I've hired them to do so. Another idea is correlating specific dimensions to site goals.
The drag and drop Advanced Segment Creator is very simple to use. You're able to select from many dimensions and many metrics and use 'and' and 'or' logic.
Google slates this addition as an "enterprise-class feature". I tend to agree and think that steps like this will bring Google closer and closer to solutions like Omniture. Go Google!
Labels: Analytics, Marketing
About a week ago, I attended
Sitening's AdWords:Seminars for Success in Columbus. These are full day, in person seminars that are devoted purely to, well, Google AdWords. Currently, they offer two different seminars; AdWords 101 and AdWords 102, which are ticketed as beginner and intermediate, respectively. Although I've been using AdWords pretty heavily over the past five months, I thought it best to attend both seminars, just in case there may be some valuable basics that I missed out on.
During day one,
Anastasia Holdren talked mainly about how AdWords works, starting your own AdWords account and different features associated with AdWords. This was great for those who were new to paid advertising, of which there were several. In addition to paid advertising, the seminar focused a decent amount on SEO, which in reality, needs to go hand in hand with an SEM effort. Day one also focused on conversion tracking, developing quality keyword lists and the Google network.
Day one wrapped up with an hour of Q and A with Stasia and the group. It's always neat to talk to others in different industries about how they are using AdWords, structuring accounts and what kind of results they are seeing.
After a short trip to my hotel, a $5 foot long (which quickly turns into a $10 foot long when you opt for double meat and cheese), some family guy and a catch up session on email, I was off to sleep.
I was excited about day two. I had high hopes of learning more advanced AdWords trickery. While we covered some more basic topics: AdWords Editor, location and demographic targeting, dynamic keyword insertion and basic KPIs, there were a few things that I really found helpful. We talked a bit about MCCs (My Client Centers), which I knew a bit about, but didn't know all the details. Also, we discussed all the different types of ads that Google now offers. Of course, text and image ads are common, but Google is also providing an avenue for creating radio, print and TV ads, all through your AdWords account! As a company, we are always looking for ways to make things easier on systems and employees..this is a great example of how Google is on the same page.
Speaking of making things easier, the AdWords API was also brought up. Although it isn't free (and requires you have an MCC), this can be a great way for your backend system to communicate with AdWords, automating tasks like bid management and creating keywords for new products. There were a few programmers there that were using this functionality to the fullest.
The classes are $250 each, come with a bit of Google swag as well as a $50 AdWords credit. For more information, visit
http://sitening.com/google-adwords/. If you hurry, you may be able to get in on the Hawaii seminar!
Labels: AdWords, Paid Advertising, Seminars
