Written on October 14th, 2008 at 12:10 am by Darren Rowse
How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog
“What is the best way to get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog?”
Last week I spoke at a Search Engine Marketing conference in Sydney about my experience of blogging. As part of the presentation I was asked to talk about my tips on getting traffic from search engines. I thought I’d share a few of the points I made here:
1. Search Traffic has been an important part of my blogging
The amount of traffic that the blogs I’ve worked on get from Search Engines varies considerably from blog to blog but on my two current blogs I get 25-35% of my traffic from Search Engines (largely Google).
Here’s a chart showing how Search Traffic fits into the mix of my photography blog traffic (from a couple of months back):
You can see that Search Engine Traffic is not the biggest source of traffic (social media takes that award) but it is significant considering the site gets over a million visits a month.
2. Search Traffic isn’t Everything
Looking at the above chart you see that if I was to only ever focus upon Search Engine Traffic that I could potentially be loosing up to 67% of my blog’s traffic.
One of the main points I made yesterday is that people shouldn’t become obsessed by Search. While it has amazing potential – I find that sites grow best when they have a variety of sources of traffic (including from Search Engines).
Here is another chart from the presentation which shows the four main areas that I put effort into when thinking about driving traffic – Search, Social Media, Community and Content.
Search Engine Optimization, participating in social media, building community and producing content are four important elements of building a site that gets (and keeps) high levels of traffic. When a blogger becomes obsessed by any one of them (to the detriment of others) the site can suffer (or at least not realize its potential). When the four elements come together a blog can grow quite rapidly.
3. SEO is Important
Learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization is important as a blogger. While most blog platforms these days come fairly well optimized for Google there are always tweaks that can be made. For example on WordPress the title tags that are served up by default can be tweaked to not show your blog’s name on each post on your blog (or at least to put it after the post name).
There are also a lot of easy ways to optimize a post for search engine traffic while writing posts. For example formatting images well with SEO in mind and using good keywords in titles.
SEO really does make a difference and bloggers who learn the basics can see significant increases in traffic. It is well worth investing time into learning it.
Learn more SEO techniques in previous posts on ProBlogger:
- Search Engine Optimization for Blogs
- How to Herd Organic Search Traffic to Your Blog
- Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit on Your Blog
Highly Recommended – Also check out Aaron Wall’s SEObook for some excellent training on SEO. Consider it an investment in learning how to drive traffic to your blog.
4. Great Content is More Important than SEO
I felt strange saying this at a conference where SEO companies were pitching for clients and talking about the importance of building links to a site – but in my experience the most important thing you can do to build your blog’s search engine traffic is to write the most amazing, useful, authoritative and inspiring content possible.
Here’s the question you need to be asking while writing each post:
How can I make this the type of post that people will want to share with others?
Search Engine authority has a habit of coming to those blogs who consistently produce content that enhances peoples lives, meets needs and solves problems. If you create something that does some of these things it is quite likely that the all important links that your blog needs to build search engine authority will come as people link up on their blogs, share the link on social messaging and bookmarking sites, email their friends etc
While great content doesn’t automatically equal lots of traffic – if you produce it consistently over time and actively participate in social media and within your blog’s niche it has a habit of building your traffic and search engine authority.
I’m not anti using link building strategies (ie asking people for links) but I’ve never really done it (I may have once or twice in the early days of my blogging). I know some bloggers who spend many hours each month ‘building links’ but wonder what would happen if instead they concentrated on using that time to build linkable content?
Perhaps I’m a little naive – but Google is in the business of ranking the best sites highest. They want to rank great content in the #1 position – so, my aim as a blogger is to write that kind of content.
Further Reading on Writing Great Blog Posts – How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
How do you Get Search Engine Traffic To Your Blog?
There you have it my philosophy and approach to getting search engine traffic on blogs. What would you add?
Do you do much Search Engine Optimization? Is it something you put much time into or just let look after itself? What SEO techniques have been most effective for you?
Tags: , Search Engine Optimization, search engine traffic, SEO
118 Responses to “How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog” - Add Yours
Louis Liem
October 14th, 2008 12:22 am
Publish the best content and connect with other bloggers, big names in the niche. If they like your stuff and spread it, your SEO is halfway done :)
Don’t you think so?
Roy Scribner
October 14th, 2008 12:28 am
It is definitely something that I think about when I am writing titles and proof-reading posts, prior to submission. It does not weight-in on what I write about, though.
United Voices
October 14th, 2008 12:29 am
Well, I use wordpress for my blog which I know is the best blog platform and top it all over with All in one SEO pluggin. I refer this plugin to every other blogger who uses wordpress. This is the best SEO pluging i’ve ever found.
Also I try to put in relevant content so that those who search get into my articles. That is, talking about recent events so that users search for the right keywords and land in my blog.
I agree with you regarding “Great Content is More Important than SEO”. Sure if u don’t have good content than, just SEO won’t work.
Thomas
October 14th, 2008 12:37 am
In a nutshell… Google Sitemaps, and pinging. This gets me most of my non-social traffic.
Young
October 14th, 2008 12:43 am
I think every thing is good for your reader is good for Google too.
Andrew Hansen
October 14th, 2008 12:50 am
Darren,
Great post.
One distinction that I teach is to make the 4 circles that you mention above reflect the market that you’re trying to target.
For example, there are certain niches where the vast majority of it’s online presence exists on social networks, so of course you should focus more on that area of your marketing.
But at the same time there are other niches, where they don’t seek their information from social networks for the most part, but they get answers from the search engines, in which case, SEO has to be a more important part of your marketing than social media.
Of course then there’s every level in between, but the point is that basing your level of focus on any area of your promotion has to come from an understanding of your market first and foremost :)
Thanks for a great post!
Andrew
Tim Bowden
October 14th, 2008 12:50 am
My traffic is 18% referals, 54% search, 26% direct and 2% social. I am very much from the school of ‘build it and they will come’. Great content gets me every time, but I did find that I got an increase in traffic after spending time thinking about what I called my posts.
Potato Chef
October 14th, 2008 12:52 am
Without Google I am dead in the water…
Franklin Bishop
October 14th, 2008 12:56 am
It really just depends on what kind of traffic you are trying to get. Some people make their blog where all they are trying to get is traffic from search engines and not anything else. This really works well you are going for different keywords that there is not a lot of competition for but a lot of people search for that keyword. Then there are people that just use social media for most of the traffic also. It is hard to really have a balance between all the different places you can get traffic from.
izzat
October 14th, 2008 12:57 am
i also get pretty good number of visitor from search engine, and they really benefit me by adsense, because people that
come from search engine i believe more likely to click the ads,
but disadvantage is they rarely leave comment or come back to my blog, i dont how to make them stay, you talk about good content, and i dont know what people want to read because some people not like some other people.. i cant make both happy.
Saurabh
October 14th, 2008 1:00 am
The best thing you have published in a while. Great tips.
Michael Martine - Remarkablogger
October 14th, 2008 1:00 am
If you think of your post as the answer to a question in the mind of a searcher, you will write a good post with natural SEO. With some keyword research and a little empathy, this gets pretty easy to do.
John
October 14th, 2008 1:01 am
Thomas (above) pretty much nailed it when it comes to blogging, sitemaps and pinging will do most of the work for you, I’ve written a couple of articles on what and how to ping with wordpress (link on my name ^ ).
SEOmoz is also a great resource when it comes to deciding on title tags etc – well worth looking at.
Darren – I’m glad that you gave an overview in this post rather than more specific examples (which weren’t completely accurate) in ‘how to herd organic search traffic’ – I think it’s more relevant to bloggers in this format.
Tiffany Monhollon
October 14th, 2008 1:05 am
Love the 4-way balance model. SEO does seem to flow best from great content. I’ve had many an accidental SEO success through things I’ve written well and reached the first page of Google without even trying at times.
ITrush
October 14th, 2008 1:08 am
Another useful tips, thanks for sharing.
shamess
October 14th, 2008 1:27 am
The main thing I tell all my blogging customers who hire me to do an SEO report on then websites is that they should be making their post title’s look something like a potential reader would search for in Google. Like you’ve done with this post! I’m sure you’ll now get a lot of traffic for people search for the exact words of the title.
NewWrldYankee
October 14th, 2008 1:28 am
I also use the All in One SEO plug in for wordpress, and I also downloaded and use the Zemanta program, which suggest Tags, Keywords, links, and pictures.
CoolProducts
October 14th, 2008 1:29 am
I do have to agree that having the best content on your blog/site will (in the long-run) be one of the best SEO tools one can have.
John
October 14th, 2008 1:29 am
Great, thanks for the graphics as well!
Jim Connolly
October 14th, 2008 1:36 am
Nice post and a superb blog too!
I wrote about the importance of ‘other’ forms of Internet traffic recently – as it seems many blogs are becoming ‘machines that write for Google.’
Google is great – but ANY blogger that writes it’s copy and headlines for a search engine – is going to produce copy that is far less appealing to humans.
Kok Choon
October 14th, 2008 1:38 am
I use SEO to jump start my blog, and with my low page rank at start, I use the social media + SEO to get search engine traffic.
I believe no matter what is our blog current main traffic source, blogger should eventually diversify their effort to drive more traffic with different methods, and Darren suggestion is the best proven method!
Once the traffic is building up, we should shift our focus more on building quality content, it will spread even faster if there are quality content on it!
Mike
October 14th, 2008 1:54 am
What a timley article This past weekend I went through through my Blog (template, widgets and previous posts) then modified them for what I hope will provide better seach results (revamped some titles, changed opening paragraphs, added alt tags for all images and added title attributes for links)
Now I will need to see if any of this works to improve my google traffic
SEO UK
October 14th, 2008 2:03 am
I tend to build links through social media sites and other various marketing methods. I tend to try and concentrate on writing good content as well as building links my self.
axel g
October 14th, 2008 2:10 am
I agree with you Darren!
Learn basic SEO and spend most of your time writing quality posts.
In my experience, the search engines come and go like sun and rain – you never quite know where you got them…
Amber
October 14th, 2008 2:24 am
I agree with writing good content in order to get better ranking in google. I also try to write for a certain target audience and promote it on certain social networking sites that attract that target audience. I find large sites like digg are not helpful when you are writing for female 20 somethings. They just don’t visit or even know about digg. Know your audience and figure out new ways to get your voice heard by them specifically.
Eric
October 14th, 2008 2:30 am
Great post! I am in need to beef up my understanding of SEO… Your Venn Diagram is golden advice for any new blogger.
Thank you for posting this! I was just looking for advice on this.
Shae
October 14th, 2008 2:40 am
Thanks so much for this post. I’ve been reading SEO for Dummies and trying to figure this all out. I’ve had a really good response to my blog, but search engine traffic has so far been…well let’s just say it needs work!
Nathan
October 14th, 2008 2:43 am
I use SEO wisely on my blog, but I refuse to write for keywords and I’m not a fan of ppc for blogging. I use the basics and just hope my good content and hard work over time will pay off.
Dan Patterson
October 14th, 2008 3:01 am
I admit that I tend to focus too much on just one or two areas and need to take a more holistic approach. Thanks for the reminder and helping me to get back on track! BTW, I was a social media visitor for this one, found out about it on Twitter.
Ben
October 14th, 2008 3:04 am
My blog has about 75-80% from search engines and I like the balance idea that Darren proposes. Guess it is about time to explore the use of social media.
Kevin Fleming
October 14th, 2008 3:10 am
I have found that doing keyword research and giving your posts proper titles is an extremely important part of doing well in the search engines.
What I mean by this is giving your blog posts titles that mimic phrases people will type into Google gives your blog a distinct advantage over people that may have titles that are more cleaver but less friendly from an SEO perspective.
the famous nemo
October 14th, 2008 3:14 am
Theres just to much stuff to do with a blog, its all to overwhelming.
jennine
October 14th, 2008 4:36 am
ooh… i have 25% search engine traffic. 55% referring, 18% direct… i think that’s well balanced. although, i dont’ know how to translate this into your graph up top.
as far as SEO, i use the site map, and the SEO plug-in on wordpress… tag all my images, and check up on what key words apply to my site every now and then.
i probably should be more diligent with this.
Shafar
October 14th, 2008 5:09 am
I get 75% traffic from social media. But I think traffic from social media won’t be regular. So I’m trying my best for a good SEO.
Matthew Clark
October 14th, 2008 5:10 am
Great tips on the SEO. I have had great success on my website SEO and have now just been able to start to get good search results on my blog site.
Neeshes
October 14th, 2008 6:10 am
If you build the greatest store in the world and there are no roads to it, you’re nowhere. As with everything, balance is the key. Create great content and it’s much easier to convince people to link to you, but you still have to make the effort to get the word out, especially early on.
Himanshu
October 14th, 2008 6:45 am
Had never thought that so much of stuff can be done with a blog. Very valuable post. The various links you have mentioned from your previous posts are also great…!
Thanks!
Himanshu
Lifemojo
Living on Adsense Blog
October 14th, 2008 6:52 am
I think I am in the same school as Tim Bowden above, The Kevin Costner Field of Dreams blogging philosophy, build it and they will come. That combined with izzat’s comment is where I stand. Most of my blogs are about monetizing with adsense, so the search traffic is the best.
If I am going for comments and community building, like my LOA blog, then I focus on the social aspect.
I firmly believe that the type of traffic you need, is based on the type of blog and the type of people you are writing for. It’s all about testing, learning and using what you have learned to know whats best for your blog.
MLRebecca
October 14th, 2008 7:41 am
Awesome advice, Darren. Search engines can bring traffic to your blog, but great content is what makes readers stay. You can attempt to master SEO, and that will definitely help to increase traffic. However, with your attention to SEO must come a focus on content. Thanks for posting!
Derek
October 14th, 2008 7:44 am
After pursuing search engines for blogs pretty actively I have come to realize that sometimes its just not worth it. You’re better off writing great content and promoting it correctly.
William
October 14th, 2008 7:45 am
Ok, so I understand what everyone is saying about the blogs and how to get more traffic. But, bloggers care about one thing and that is hits (not necessarily turning hits into business). I took advice from some well know (at least thats what they tell me) people and we had our site rebuilt and completely turned into a blog. We are getting 4000 more hits a month than we ever had, but we have lost 95% revenue. In short, we get a lot more traffic, and make 95% less money. We no longer convert visitors into leads….SAD SAD THING
Mat Packer
October 14th, 2008 8:10 am
Darren, I think this might be my new reference article when clients throw SEO SEO SEO at me. For the majority of my client base it’s really not massively important, content and social networking generate much more valuable traffic than the hit n run search traffic some of them seem to get.
Thanks
Mat
AW
October 14th, 2008 8:29 am
Quality post, Darren. I agree with the concept – be balanced. Andrew Hansen has touched on an important extension of your concept too, and that’s understand our target market (the people) first and then make those 4 circles relevant to their current online presence. Very much like the POST (people, objective, strategy, and technology) concept mentioned in the book Groundswell.
Ryan McLean
October 14th, 2008 9:27 am
Glad you are willing to stand out from the crowd at an SEO convention and tell people how it REALLY is. I respect you for that
Swisher Sweetie (Wendy)
October 14th, 2008 10:15 am
I have the opposite problem – I get all search engine results and no traffic from other sites. I need the links from relevant sites. I am still trying to figure out to get that since this site is in a small niche.
Dimitri
October 14th, 2008 10:43 am
Thank you for great SEO tips. We get most of our traffic from Google and some from our Squidoo pages. Not much traffic for other sources though, I need to work on it.
oliviaharis
October 14th, 2008 12:14 pm
Getting more traffic is the major determining factor over whether your blog is going to be successful or not, after all it doesn’t matter how useful and informative your writing is, if no-one visits you’ll never know how popular your blog will be.
——————–
oliviaharis
consumer generated media
Evelyn Lim
October 14th, 2008 12:19 pm
Very useful advice on not to neglect other components of generating traffic. I’ve been relying more on one strategy lately. I thought that having some initial focus is key but I guess I’d better think about the rest for some balance soon. Thanks for the reminder!
Ajith Edassery
October 14th, 2008 12:25 pm
I am not doing too much SEO but use the All-in-one-SEO plugin along with some reasonable titles (I don;t do keyword research) for my posts.
I have 40-45% of my visitors coming in from search engines.
Ajith
arjun
October 14th, 2008 1:07 pm
Very useful information. I am having my blog for past 1 year and no comment yet. This is helpful information to align my blog. Thanks.
toboss
October 14th, 2008 3:30 pm
I dont know exactly what is SEO, but I agree to get more traffic is improve our post quality.
but, if ony an ordinary amateur photograper like me, how to do that ? :)
Tommy Silva
October 14th, 2008 4:44 pm
What I find most interesting about the article is the amount of traffic you find that comes from Social Media sites. In my experience most traffic comes from the search engines. However, the majority of our marketing efforts have been focused on link building and content enhancement.
Andrei Buiu
October 14th, 2008 5:01 pm
I get most of my traffic from Social Media and other referring sites. I should optimize more, since I don’t get more than 10 visits per day from search engines.
Lightning Fast
October 14th, 2008 9:23 pm
Blogging usually needs some interaction with the people. Hence, Social media is an good target. However, if it comes to tutorial based Web site search engines will be the key role. You may get a targeted audience and hence preventing the bounce rate.
Debajyoti Das
October 14th, 2008 11:15 pm
Its, No Doubt that the Real traffic comes through Social Media , which according to me is largely a part of traffic generated from Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites…and mainly contributed by friends and their friends…
But Somehow, I feel that even if “Content is King” … It has been seen how Sometimes a Great Writer can result a poorly visited blog due to lack of SEO. whereas a Poor Writer turns His/Her Blog into a Huge Success, thanks to SEO stuff and plugins.
So I would always want people to Care more about SEO & Content , rather that Social Media.
Coz I think Once someone Gets a High Search Ranking Blog people won’t bother if the content is Weak…
Dr. Ariffaizal
October 15th, 2008 12:00 am
What tool do you use to get pie chart for digital-photography-school?
I want to know for my blog too.
Thank you.
Bloggeries
October 15th, 2008 12:09 am
Wow! I had no clue you got that much from Social media. 40% is huge. I think the key is balance. You never want to rely to heavily on anyone place to send you your traffic.
Ovidiu - LayoutGarden.com
October 15th, 2008 12:09 am
Good point, indeed. Too many people worry about SEO when they speak about their blog and blogging is not about SEO. I smiled when I have seen your post, I had my post today exactly about why people should not stress too much about SEO for blogging, http://www.layoutgarden.com/200810/should-you-really-bother-with-seo-for-your-blog
Anyway, you receive a very good percentage of traffic from search engines, I thought you have the most from social media and direct traffic.
any-usa
October 15th, 2008 1:08 am
Nice Article Bro…i like that about this image ..ist very2 simple
charles
October 15th, 2008 1:13 am
one more thing is that everytime you right:
1. Bring a dictionary beside you
2. Use keyword tools specially Adwords keyword tool
Use every possible word you can use from your dictionary.
charles
October 15th, 2008 1:13 am
Typo.. “right” to “write”
Katheen
October 15th, 2008 1:22 am
What a refreshing article! Finally someone has spoken these words:
“One of the main points I made yesterday is that people shouldn’t become obsessed by Search. While it has amazing potential – I find that sites grow best when they have a variety of sources of traffic (including from Search Engines”.
I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. When I look at the stats on my blog, almost every visit is from a Social Networking site, usually Facebook.
Good content + a little networking = results.
Kathleen
Ravi
October 15th, 2008 1:30 am
It is not important to have lot of back links to your site but important is content.
Site should be optimizing for search engine but you should not always focus on search engine optimization rather you should focus on good content.
Google will place your site on top if your content is what people are searching for.
David B Katague
October 15th, 2008 3:15 am
I am a new blogger and the above article in indeed very helpful.
How can I increase traffic via social network?
michaelkpoh
October 15th, 2008 3:46 am
Darren; re-iterating your phrase ‘build linkable content’.
In a nutshell I think that is the ’silver bullet’ for traffic generation!
Yes knowledge and utilization of SEO is important, as is linking to other sites and active participation and leveraging of social media. However none of these will rival ‘Great Content’.
Great content is the ‘Golden Fleece’ of blogs and all content-related or driven sites. There must be a house first, before tenancy.
For a new blogger like myself, the importance of great and relevant content cannot be over-emphasized.
Scott Fox, Author of Internet Riches
October 15th, 2008 3:57 am
Nice, thorough analysis, as usual, Darren. I especially like the diagrams.
As you suggest, taking care of the basics of SEO is important. But it’s really the content that is going to attract rankings and traffic in the long run.
I explored the “Death of SEO” today on my blog, in fact.
I think there’s a shift away from SEO technical tweaking toward better content that is soon going to start putting many put SEO consultants out of business.
Angel Cuala
October 15th, 2008 4:01 am
I think this is one of your few posts that you discussed about SEO. I must admit that what I only understand about this thing is keyword optimization and choosing the most appropriate post title in order for search engine to crawl it faster and more efficient.
It feels funny that while I am browsing on top forums, I discovered that SEO seem to be like a religion. There are many interpretations that may confuse bloggers.
Upon checking my stats some minutes ago, only 15.64% came from search engines while 65.63% came from referring sites and 18.83% came from direct traffic.
This only shows SEO does not help me a lot.
Based on what I understand, SEO is only a big help to blog topics that are really popularly being search. The last Beijing Olympics is a classic example that helped a lot of bloggers who blog about it. Afterward, nothing follows, nada, zero, whatever.
Although there is a tool where we can check what keywords are mostly being searched, it is quite impractical to follow the trend as our readers will be confused about our chosen topic.
In the end, I think there’s no harm in applying a bit of SEO by analyzing the words being used. But we must remember, our readers are humans and search engines are only helping out.
Thanks and please bear with my long comment.
Mert Erkal
October 15th, 2008 4:13 am
These days I have seen quite a lot of bloggers who are trying to dominate popular search phrases to pull traffic to their blogs. Frankly speaking, most bloggers will never dominate popular search phrases. Top five blogs dominated those keywords already. Thus, you should not expect your blog to rank on the first page of search engine results for those specific keywords.
Yet, the game is not over for the small and mid-sized bloggers. Thanks to a concept called the Long Tail, we can still drive good traffic from search engines without dominating the top keywords.
Hittail.com lets you keep track of long tail phrases that bring traffic from search engine results. It is a very powerful free tool where you can keep track of what your readers are interested in.
TechnoBlog
October 15th, 2008 4:15 am
Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn’t wonder how to get more traffic to their site.
This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.
Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.
However, rather than thinking “complicated equals better” in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources rate extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.
Fact: “Good Traffic” equals “Targeted Traffic!”
wordpress
October 15th, 2008 4:25 am
Amen to #4
Ted Murphy
October 15th, 2008 4:56 am
I think its particularly hard for a commercial enterprise to dominate a keyword or phrase. For example, the links found from “deliver pizza” include only 2 commercial enterprises out of 10 results. Of course, there were the six paid links up top and on the sides…
saleel
October 15th, 2008 5:40 am
really amazing post. excited to know that soical media has got this much impact in terms of bringing traffic.
Clark Mackey
October 15th, 2008 6:44 am
I totally agree about #4, but I also see real search traffic differences among both clients and friends. I know that some of these differences are attributable to time and effort spent on goal setting and SEO. In particular, I see standalone wordpress installs, when optimized, performing really well.
We recently gave away a blog marketing and SEO checklist in honor of local bloggers in our North Carolina area; its free for anyone to use and linked from the home page of our site.
Thanks for the great article.
Wendy
October 15th, 2008 9:08 am
Great info for the seasoned blogger, but for those getting started, and not yet found…..
Reading and more reading is helping me.
thanks
Ray Wallace
October 15th, 2008 10:12 am
Great article. Pretty much sums up SEO traffic to a tee. You have a great website. Keep it up, I get a lot of my information and ideas from here.
suresh
October 15th, 2008 1:16 pm
In spite of having a good content and implemented possible SEO(yes there is no end for making a blog a better seo fit and no sort of satisfaction in terms of seo that i have done the best) ,we have to wait for at least six months for a new blog to start attracting good traffic by any means like search engine and social media .
itouchguy
October 15th, 2008 2:37 pm
I’m with you on spreading it all over, I also use some of the SEO wordpress plugins and ping each post. I’m huge on social media sites, I tie my blogs into my Facebook page as well as twitter and use a bunch of social bookmarking sites. But my favorite site for a huge bump on traffic is Stumbleupon. If I want a few 100 hits in an hour or so, I just stumble the site. As always content is king, and posting on fourms and other blogs is beneficial.
http://www.ireviewiphoneapps.com
http://www.ireviewtechnology4biz.com
Bad Credit
October 15th, 2008 5:29 pm
Eventually the guy with content takes over. If the content is rich and useful it will beat many flaws of a blog. I keep this in mind on our blog that deals with stock market and how to make money from various techniques. There is tons of good content.
http://www.indexoptionstrading.alliancemtg.com
I hardly use keyword rich posts and the blog still gets a steady stream of people digging each tip and tool out of it. they keep coming back and back.
Joel Drapper
October 15th, 2008 5:38 pm
Just earlier on this week I was thinking to my self:
“I wonder how long it will be before my time will be better spent writing content then building links because whenever I write content, my readers build links (more then I could have done in the time that I was writing)”
I would love to get to this point with my blog, but untill then since it is still the early days link building is important.
The Strategy Web
October 15th, 2008 7:50 pm
Sometimes it’s just great to touch the right topics and get good feedback/comments to it.
AMiRU
October 16th, 2008 12:54 am
Indeed, a very useful post. Thank you for your tips, I always wants more traffic from search engine as well as social media.
Jason
October 16th, 2008 5:05 am
Great information! I’m just getting started and was surprised to see so much traffic from social media…something I’ll have to look into
Work At Home Dad
October 16th, 2008 1:19 pm
As John Chow once said “Live by Google, Die by Google”. I give SEO due attention, but always try to remember that search engines are finnicky. One little tweak in their algorithms can mean your site goes missing for months! That has happened to me before.
There ARE days when I wished I never started making money online, because now that I’m in it, it’s a constant race to keep up with what’s happening – not so much to be the top dog, but because you don’t want to get buried because you didn’t notice a change.
But then, when you get that nice payout at the end of the month I say to yourself “Heck… this is great” and dig myself deeper into SEO. I figure right now, I’ve dug myself about halfway to China.
SEO Preston
October 17th, 2008 2:00 am
Hey Darren,
Another great article… I think that a balanced combination of SEO and high quality content is needed at the start of a new website, however, after the initial setup it is content that simultates site loyalty. With a set SEO structure in place you would simply update new posts by adapting:
-Your Permalink/Url Structure
-The Title/Description Tags
-The strategic placement of your keywords, i.e. headings, symantic markup, alt tags, links etc…
Content is KIIIIIING!
Regards,
Nick
Digit-8
October 17th, 2008 4:31 am
You will get everything if you have quality content. Content is king.
Social Media Marketing Blog
October 17th, 2008 12:46 pm
I don’t know but I do get more traffic from live.com instead of google on my blog
Zhuno!
October 17th, 2008 7:12 pm
Well I am relatively new to blogging so I am just learning the ropes at the moment. It is true that content is import though because that’s what gets people coming back to your blog. It is also what is going to get you special mention.
If someone has a good blog then I will most likely put a link to it on my own blog. If a blog is just rubbish plr crap then I am hardly going to show any association with that blog regardless of how seemingly popular it is to Google. I would not want to be tarred with the same brush. I suppose that does depend on how good the plr content is though lol.
Keral Patel
October 18th, 2008 6:41 pm
Agreed great content is bigger then anything like SEO or other tactics. Sooner or later the word gets out and a good content site is bound to be successful.
mansi
October 19th, 2008 3:13 pm
I agree that content is king and one should never customise content to make money or just to drive empty traffic.
Instead focus on content, write becuase you want to share and then work on making your blog popular.
TechBlog
October 19th, 2008 9:46 pm
Hi dareen,
You this post is too much valuable for all the Webmasters & Bloggers.Because if we want more traffic then we have to follow these steps.More traffic more money.You can visit my blog by clicking on TechBlog which is increasing day by day & only 15 days old.
atlanta wedding photographer
October 21st, 2008 9:35 am
It won’t matter if what you say is great if no one reads it. you have to connect and build a network of people who you respect and who respect what you have to say. BTY, please write comments that make sense. I have had people say something like, “Hey, liked your post. Don’t for get to stop by.” This does nothing more than annoy people and let everyone know that you are trying to buy your love. Don’t be that person.
brisbane printers
October 22nd, 2008 8:13 pm
I agree content will govern SEO rankings in SERP. Bare in mind search engines are ultimately looking to find quality links, you can do this by writing quality content! people seem to forgot this and just try and ‘optimise’ what they have, it can be about trail and error and find out which pages rank better with different body copy on them, try it for yourself its can yeild very interesting results!
naruto
October 23rd, 2008 10:09 am
my blog is very – very low traffic from search engine, please help to give suggestion to increase traffic in my blog
seoadvicedude
October 25th, 2008 12:49 am
Hi. Content is absolutely king and vital in regards to SE traffic, useability, converting visitors, making your site sticky, etc. This site is an example of that! Great content… In any case, though I do agree with the SEOs that say links are important. In reality, if your site is about a service or a small business though you can use links to boost rankings instead, especially if you are targeting very specific phrases. I have done seo projects for service oriented websites that simply have no content and won’t ever have any content. In those cases, your only way to increase rankings significantly is through link building. :-)
Brian
October 30th, 2008 12:45 am
Another great post Darren. I absolutely agree that content is king, and that applies to every aspect of building a blog.
All the other techniques seem important, but what’s the point if you’re not producing great content? Isn’t that the reason we blog in the first place?
oh yeah… the money thing ; )
uwak
October 30th, 2008 6:49 pm
thanks, I really need information about how to manage traffic…your posting really support me. no progess in my web traffic…by inspiration from your articles above….I will start agaion to buid the traffic for my web….
Green Voice Daily
October 31st, 2008 7:47 am
Great post! My question is how do you speed up the process? I know it’s a process, but are there any shortcuts?
uwak
November 13th, 2008 7:37 pm
I am back….you create 33% traffic from searchengine…..very great, my traffic really low…I already use little ppc….do you have some advice…thanks
Frank J
November 22nd, 2008 4:49 am
I agree 100% – Quality content is king and much more important than SEO itself.
Jules
November 30th, 2008 11:09 am
I think the comment about knowing your target market is important. My blog is about a niche in enterprise software, a good percentage of my traffic comes from commercial sites who reference what I have said about their company in their ‘in the news’ sections.
seobro
December 11th, 2008 2:29 am
Posting a video on Youtube is a great way to get traffic and exposure. Make sure to add a link so that people can click back to your blog.
Refinancing
December 17th, 2008 8:09 pm
I totally aggree that quality content is king if you have unique and qulity content you obviously get the ranking in search engine
Stiletto Sports Jen
December 18th, 2008 5:24 pm
Thank you guys so much for all the ideas! I’ve been hopelessly lost about all of this for months now even though I have a helper. I find when he tells me things to try it goes way over my head. It was really helpful to have it broken down for me.
Rob
January 27th, 2009 7:47 am
Where does great content come from? Ideas. Where do ideas come from? Inspiration. This is what’s true for me. I have to be inspired to write content.
buzzirk bryan
January 29th, 2009 4:17 pm
Thanks,i will now think in tems of social media traffic. HECK with the changin’ algorithm stuff. cheers b
Dan
January 31st, 2009 4:05 pm
Truth be told, fully agree with the article.
But, i must say being an avid SEO fanatic, It’s still a good idea to glance at the Google Keyword Tool or the Google Insights for search before you post. Nothing wrong with being on topic on something people want to hear about.
If you’re publishing something online, at least people will find it that way.
Abs
February 18th, 2009 8:00 pm
I have only been concentrating on improving traffic via Search engines now since I have fully exploited other sources. Very difficult for me to generate traffic from this source though!
christian
March 4th, 2009 3:42 am
So there is no site you can submit your link and BAM, instant google traffic? Well, until then I will just have to keep creating quality posts, tweet, and wait….
jonykay
March 15th, 2009 12:05 am
Thank you guys so much for all the ideas! totally aggree that quality content is king if you have unique.I would love to get to this point with my blog, but untill then since it is still the early days link building is important.
It’s useful.
KeegsMom
March 20th, 2009 6:58 am
It’s a Catch 22: yes, good content should be king, but Google will only rate a blog HIGH if there are many LINKS TO IT. Am I wrong on that? Linking is essential?
I’m very frustrated… my blog (7mos old) is growing slowly, but since the content is all about KIDS’ MOVIES, you’d think that searching “kids movies” in Google would get me a BIT of traffic, but it doesn’t. My search traffic comes from searches that relate specifically to titles or things I’ve posted about. I even started a Weekly Classic Kids’ Movie post, but I’ve not yet seen results from it.
Anyone have any ideas I’m overlooking? Many thanks!
THERE’S MORE TO KIDS’ MOVIES THAN DISNEY!
KIDSFLIX dot blogspot dot com
PracticalGuy
March 29th, 2009 10:40 pm
Thanks, Darren Rowse!
That’s wonderful. I like your idea about community. That’s what I look for. Thanks.
Dave
April 6th, 2009 2:45 am
Thanks a lot Darren, I have taken your advice and incorporated it into our blog plans. Knowing all of this before we get started will really be a big help.
thanks
Uttam Pegu
April 8th, 2009 8:43 pm
I think, type of visitor is also important. Search engine Visitors normally look for some answer, solutions, while visitors from referral sites visit for further reading or just for curiosity. So I feel Search Engine traffic are more important. May be it depends on the type of blog too.
Finance Guy
April 17th, 2009 1:02 am
Yes.Social bookmark is very important.Once shared by many people, you can get tons of traffic.
BTW,thanks for other ways.
RV Insurance
April 26th, 2009 12:48 pm
We tried to start a blog a while ago but I kept on forgetting to update it, writing is not my strong suit. Are there writers who will do a blog freelance?
Justin Cyrus
April 27th, 2009 7:54 pm
SEO is not magic, it is not science, there is no secret and yes everyone can do SEO in theory (Like everyone can become a marketer, physician, cook or whatever by studying and developping the relevant skills).
Concerning Blog optimization there is not much to say for the technical part, as blog structures are quite standardized, well built and most of time well coded (use of semantic markup, dense network of links…)
There are 3 axes to SEO : structure, content, and popularity. The structure is OK for blog, so SEO for blogs consist mainly in working on the 2 others : content and popularity. But it is not easy to write, it must be learnt. And it is not easy to develop popularity. In fact SEO is not about tricks, it is about quality and accessibility. Quality of structure, quality of content, and popularity.
bolerochwazi
April 28th, 2009 11:47 pm
I have tried almost any and everything including google friends connect, but nothing seem to be working. I am going to try what you say and see what happen.
National Credit Claims
May 11th, 2009 10:36 am
Hey Darren,
I was just wondering if you find link bait to be a worthwhile technique? and whether you have had any success with it in the past? I know you are an authority figure within the ol’ blogosphere and was wondering whether you had any opinions on the matter. I know mr will reynolds over at Seer is a firm believer in attracting links through giveaways etc.
I would be interested to know your opinion,
Tom
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