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Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days

Posted By Darren Rowse 30th of December 2005 Blog Promotion 0 Comments

The following post on how to increase website traffic was submitted by Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes.

Get more tips on increasing website and blog traffic by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

I started the PC Doctor blog in May of 2005 and for the first few months my traffic was really low – down in the few hundreds of visitors a day. It was pretty depressing I can tell you and there were times when I thought about quitting.  I knew that the site was in the Google ‘sandbox’ and so I either had to keep on plugging at it until it was out or I had to give up.

Fortunately, I decided to keep on posting but in the interim I decided that I was also going to do my utmost to drive traffic to my site manually until Google kicked in. I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month.

  1. First, I made the most of Technorati tags.  I tagged every key word in each of my posts. Initially I did this manually but them I discovered a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags that made the job a whole lot easier. I found that by tagging my post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site!
  2. I leveraged my existing website.  I’ve been running my business website for a few years and that was getting modest levels of traffic that was relevant to my blog – so why not try to drive some of that to my new blog! I placed a few FeedBurner headline animator blocks on some of my most popular pages and after a day or so I noticed a significant increase in traffic for 5 minutes worth of work on my part.
  3. Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Using these three simple techniques, I took The PC Doctor blog from a few hundred hits a day into the thousands in less than 30 days. This kept my interest in the site until it came out of the Google sandbox and I started to receiver some serious traffic. However, I’m convinced that these actions I took at the early stages have helped me create a loyal and targeted readership that continues to benefit my blog today.

Further Reading: If finding new traffic for your blog is what you’re interested in – check out 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – a month long set of exercises to help you develop content but also build a well read blog.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days: Blog Tips at ProBlogger (tags: blogs traffic seo tagging wordpress) Kategorie: del.icio.us Kommentare: […]

  2. what’s with ppl repeating the saem comments b/w […]?

    I don’t understand.

  3. They are not repeating they sent trackbacks from their blog. The trackbacks appear as comments and the text is the link from their blog :)

  4. You might want to add a little disclaimer to your title – sort of a your mileage may vary kind of thing.

    I’ve been “tagging” or adding keywords or categorizing my sites for ages – little if any traffic ever comes from technorati and technorati seldom shows accurate activity on any of my blogs.

    While you may have had great success due to the topics you cover obviously not everyone will have the same success.

  5. […] Also mal los und auf Problogger ein paar Tipps holen. Da ich WordPress einsetze nutze ich natürlich das bei Problogger verlinkte Plugin. Und schon habe ich Technorati-Tags unter meinen Artikeln. Mal sehen ob das was bringt… […]

  6. I’m pretty technologically/blogging intelligent, but I don’t understand trackbacks — does anyone know of a good link explaining it?

    Thanks!
    Alec

  7. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days? Trackback popular sites is one. Isn’t that what a spammer would also do? […]

  8. Thanks Razvan for the info. :)

    Alec > here’s a good link that explains trackbacks. A simple google query would do it ;)

    http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/beginners/

  9. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days: Blog Tips at ProBlogger (tags: blogging article reference wordpress) […]

  10. […] Link collection: 2006-01-04 13:47:59 Vitaly Friedman | Blog: 25 Sites You Shouldn’t Have Missed in 2005 first created at: 2006-01-01 in tag: internet Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days: Blog Tips at ProBlogger first created at: 2005-12-29 in tag: seo Quick Online Tips: 50 Best Firefox Extensions for Power Surfing first created at: 2005-12-30 in tag: internet AJAX Translator first created at: 2005-12-26 in tag: internet retrievr first created at: 2005-12-24 in tag: internet […]

  11. How do you tag words in Drupal ?

  12. In response to Dawn’s question:

    How do you do trackbacks?

    There is a WordPress Trackback Tutorial (could be helpful for other blogging platforms, but geared toward WordPress users).

    I also have to agree with Clark – mileage may vary. There have been many complaints on Technorati not properly indexing sites or displaying accurate links.

    While I can’t say I have any complaints about Technorati, I have noticed that some sites receive quite a bit of traffic from them while others seem to be missing completely.

    And, for those who want to make their technorati tags disappear, wrap them in a specific <div> element and apply a bit of CSS ingenuity.

    example:
    <div class=”tech-tags”>Add Technorati Tags</div>
    in CSS file:
    .tech-tags {display: none;}

    Hope that helps someone out :)

  13. […] on 1/10/2006 1:08 AM (report abuse) Para un art�culo sobre aumentar las visitas en el blog Email this | Reply function DoComment() { if( document.getElementById(“ctitle”).value == “”) {document.getElementById(“titleError”).style.display=”inline”; return false; } document.forms[0].action = “http://www.shadows.com/PostBackHelper.aspx&#8221;; document.forms[0].method = “POST”; document.getElementById(“__VIEWSTATE”).value=””; document.getElementById(“redirectURL”).value = document.location; document.getElementById(“ShadowAction”).value = “Comment”; document.getElementById(“uri”).value = “http://www.shadows.com/comment/60580ee4-4686-4f4b-8339-749e3a8a6ecd/&#8221;; return true; } Comment Title: *required […]

  14. […] […]

  15. […] Blobpocket, Antonio, que adem�s de ser un veterano mantiene (o supera) el nivel de frescura, calidad y entusiasmo que se requiere para mantener el tipo en esto de la blogoidiosincracia, nos remite a un buen art�culo sobre algunas herramientas indispensables para estar presentes en la conversaci�n. Algo que, traducido a t�rminos de pura econom�a estad�stica, repercutir� sin duda en la mejora de tu nivel de hits, visitas y usuarios �nicos. Nada nuevo, recursos que ya conocemos, pero, que bien combinados, resultan ciertamente explosivos: tags de Technorati, feeds de FeedBurner y trackbacks a todo lo que se mueve. Se lee en 0’24 minutos | PDF Enviar Imprimir Technorati tags: […]

  16. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days New interest in software products How to Interview a Programmer Chapters from latest Tech books for free The Daily Brad […]

  17. I am the web designer for a property company based in Bangkok. At the beginning of the year I implemented the strategy you so rightly put forward above, using WordPress and including the Technorati tags. The site now has five times the number of hits! I would like to thank you for the advice given. It has been so successful I have also implemented a similar programme for a consultancy company in the UK who outsource all of their their SEO work to us. Their site was only put live yesterday so I cannot gauge its success as yet, but we are both highly confident that this is the way to deliver SEO strategies to our clients. We have abandoned our link building strategies since the Jagger update and now concentrate on content augmentation and article writing, with great results. Once again, thanks.

  18. thats great news John Sylvester! Your site looks pretty nice too.

  19. I couldn’t sleep and browsed the web for some weblog tips. Especially about getting more traffic. Those 15 visitors of my weblog aren’t enough. That’s how I came on your website.

    Thanx for the tip on technorati tags. I installed the plugin right away.

    Maybe a little late ;) but hé who knows.

    I must say I don’t understand your 3rd tip?? How do you use trackback links to popular sites?

  20. I find the steps quite reasonable.
    Do you fight spam using trackbacks? I mean do they bother you?

  21. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days: Blog Tips at ProBlogger (tags: Marketing reference SEO tips WebDesign webdev website web) […]

  22. […] While searching for help on increasing my traffic on this site I came across this article at ProBlogger.net. He gave 3 suggestions and I have implimented 2 of them in this very post. Here’s what he says” […]

  23. […]   What do I do now? So you’ve been inspired to start a blog, you believe the ROI messages from Part 2, Part 3 has helped you choose a platform, but now what?  This section gives you some guidance on the key things you need to do to make this a success, and points you to plenty of resources that will help. First, you’ve got to get the purpose of this new blog clear in your mind.  You might be selling something specific, or you might be taking an indirect approach and promoting your expertise in a particular area so that potential clients like what they hear, want to work with you and check out your company.  You might be sharing expertise around your organisation, or you might be using the medium to connect directly with your customers.  Whichever it is, get that vision clear in your mind. Next, give the blog a theme.  It might include your musings and rants, but give it an identity around something that you’re passionate about.  There is an enormous amount of content out there, and you need to make yours worthy of people’s attention.  That will happen if yours gets mixed with your enthusiasm and passion.  Get a domain name of your own.  Blogger and TypePad domain names are OK, but you wouldn’t start your company site on Geocities would you?  In any case, you will almost certainly want to switch platforms at some point, and this will be easier if you’ve got your own address.  Get in to the habit of writing and set aside some time every day, or week.  If you want your site to get noticed, you need to feed it, so it can feed the audience and the their news aggregators.  Cross post and comment on as many sites as you can.  Make sure your site is easy to access, with RSS feeds, Atom, or a subscription option, or all of these.  Have a blogroll of blogs you read and people you like.  There is an interesting rule in blogging – the more you send them away, the more they’ll come back.  So the more you connect with other bloggers, the more they’ll connect with you, and that will improve your ranking.  And the topic that seems to be missed by so many bloggers – apply the rules of Search Engine Optimisation.  In simple terms you want to get noticed by the search engines.  That is more likely to happen if your blog titles aren’t esoteric or clever, but say what the topic is about with the appropriate keywords.  Your post should have those key words peppered around in prominent places.  That, combined with the links you’ll manage to get from those other bloggers who are wiser and more popular than you will enhance your page rank in Google, and bring more traffic to your site.  The good news is that there are plenty of advisers out there to help you.  Here are some: Dennis Howlett’s take on the do’s and don’ts for an accounting practice.  Darren Rowse is the problogger from Australia.  He writes half a dozen successful blogs, and has plenty of advice for the more directly commercial blogger.   Here’s a selection from him: 18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed Search Engine Optimization Articles and Resources   Take a look at Aaron Brazzell’s “The Blogger’s Primer“. Thirty Stories up has their “7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging“. This is Jakob Nielsen’s “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes“. And here is Mary Hodder’s “A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work“. Presentation Zen asks “Where can you find good images?“. You need to do enough preliminary research to get the feel of what style and level of detail is going to work, but then just jump in and join the Global conversation. If you missed them, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  Technorati Tags : Blogging, blogs, marketing, SEO, problogger, AccManPro, Cluetrain Powered By Qumana […]

  24. Try the technorati tag generator

  25. […] I started the PC Doctor blog in May of 2005 and for the first few months my traffic was really low – down in the few hundreds of visitors a day. It was pretty depressing I can tell you and there were times when I thought about quitting. I knew that the site was in the Google ’sandbox’ and so I either had to keep on plugging at it until it was out or I had to give up….. Link: https://problogger.com/three-simple-actions-that-doubled-my-website-traffic-in-30-days/ […]

  26. Tags definatly seem hard to grasp, least the part about where to put them on the page. I have 3 questions then;
    1. Is it better to have one word tags or is 2 words acceptible
    2. Does the tag have to appear in the RSS feed?
    3. Does it affect you to have tags that do NOT point to technorati? Like for example, a tag that points to your own categories on your blog (using the rel=”tag”)?
    john

  27. Like I stated before: categories in WordPress are exactly the same as tags. Technorati has updated their information about this recently:
    http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

    In WordPress 2 it’s possible to add categories on the fly while creating a new post. I think this is a better system than any plugin I have seen. Because categories can not be redundant and can be renamed, it’s cleaner than specifying tags per post.

    I don’t understand the confusion myself but it’s probably because categories and tags are different words :)

  28. In WordPress [sic] 2 it’s possible to add categories on the fly while creating a new post. I think this is a better system than any plugin I have seen. Because categories can not be redundant and can be renamed, it’s cleaner than specifying tags per post.

    Yes, Technorati will use the category name as a tag in WordPress, but tags and categories are two different things.

    What happens when you only create a single entry on a specific subject? Or if your entry covers a number of subjects that may not warrant having a completely new category created (on the fly or otherwise) for it?

    Think of tags as meta filing without needing to clutter your sidebar with unnecessary categories.

    Lorelle has a nice run down of what the difference between tags and categories are for anyone interested.

  29. also i just want to add you can register for free your website in a blog directory llistings like
    http://www.blogexplosion.

  30. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month. […]

  31. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days: ProBlogger Blog Tips (tags: blogging howto marketing reference seo tips traffic web2.0 blog blogs) […]

  32. I think that the fastest and best ways to increase a web site’s traffic is to make full use of the advertisement campaigns available currently. And most of all, provide quality and useful informations on your website.

  33. […] A couple of other articles that are also well worth a peek: Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days and How to: Boost Your Blog Traffic […]

  34. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month. […]

  35. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days Abdul Aziz s Journal Blog Archive Double your website/blog traffic Says: Website Traffic Media Resource Blog Archive Website Traffic – Increase […]

  36. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days … I think that the fastest and best ways to increase a web site s traffic is to make full use of the advertisement campaigns available currently. … […]

  37. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days […]

  38. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days. […]

  39. I would like to thank the author. Of all the advice I have read this is the most valuable to me.

    I came in late for the FIFA World Cup only updating my site a week before the events with almost me as the visitor. I followed these three steps and I ended up the month of june with an average of around 500 – 600 readers and some it even went up to 1500 depending on which post I trackback to.

    Cool man… I have read this post way way back but only got the time to put the plugin, find sites that have great traffic to trackback to.

    Come to think of it, I have not done the feedburner tip yet coz I only signed up a week ago for that service and I will hook up in one of my decent traffic sites and I would expect more readers coming in.

    Thank you so much…

    http://fifaworldcup.sporati.com

  40. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days I think that the fastest and best ways to increase a web site s traffic is to make full use of the advertisement campaigns available currently. [ ] … […]

  41. I thank the author for his wonderful timely advice.I had almost given up hope on my blog http://freakyvids.blogspot.com after having worked hard on it for months.
    This site is an entertainment video blog (vlog) which is still a somewhat new idea. Still I was hardly getting an odd 300 page views a month. After having implemented some of the three steps, my traffic has gone up to nearly 500% in 3 weeks!
    Thanks a lot again.
    http://freakyvids.blogspot.com

  42. […] Problogger – Three Simple actions that doubled my website traffic. […]

  43. Tried this on http://www.review-hddvds.com .Works great thanks for tips

  44. I’ve been running a quality article based content management site for about a year now and regretfully my pagerank, and traffic, remains at fairly low levels. I could understand this if the site was sub standard but it’s not bad – at least from a search engine perspective. Any help greatly appreciated!!!

  45. Very good points. For an immediate jump in your traffic stats try submitting your post to Digg or Reddit.

  46. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days. […]

  47. Hi,

    I have just completed my product and it can be viewed at http://www.searchenginetrafficsecrets.com/index-b.html

    I am wondering whether you’ll review it and do a joint venture with me.

    Sam

  48. […] Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days I think that the fastest and best ways to increase a web site s traffic is to … Increase Web Site Traffic Now Blog Archive Three simple actions that … […]

  49. As someone who is always on the look for more traffic to my blog, I have to agree that technorati and trackbacks can generate an amazing amount of traffic to a site.

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