Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Most newbies who start a WordPress blog don’t know much about search engine optimization. In fact, most of them don’t even know how they’re going to get any traffic. They just figure once they start posting content the people will come.
The sad truth is… they won’t. If you want lots of blog traffic, you need to drive it.
There’s social media, video marketing and a whole bunch of other strategies. However if you want a sure-fire strategy that’s guaranteed to generate long term traffic – SEO is the answer.
I’ve tried and tested many SEO strategies and if you’re running a WordPress blog, this strategy is for you:
1. Identify And Set Home Page Keywords
The first thing you should do is find a group of high competition keywords for your home page. Your home page will always have more authority than any other page on your blog. So therefore it can rank for the most competitive keywords that get the most searches.
Over time as you post content and build links to your internal pages, your home page will acquire authority. So the more authority it obtains the easier it will rank for high competition keywords. That’s why you should identify and set a group of 3-6 keywords for your blog’s home page.
If you have a blog about Acne, they could be “acne”, “acne cure” and “acne treatment”. Whatever high competition keywords you want, shoot for the stars as long term you will rank for them. Once you find your dream keywords, incorporate them into your blog’s homepage title and description.
2. Post 1-3 Times A Day Targeting Long Tail Keywords
This is where the fast traffic kicks in. You can use your blog posts to target long tail keywords that are easy to rank for and low in competition. By long tail I just mean keywords with low competition and little searches. For my blog posts I always target keywords with over 500 searches a month, but 300 searches are acceptable if they are highly targeted.
The best thing to do is to compile a list of 50 starter keywords. Then over the next month or so you can write 50 blog posts targeting each one. Now because the keywords will have little competition you’ll rank for them quickly and generate fast traffic. You’ll also build up a nice flow of “residual search engine traffic” as long as your rankings remain.
3. Syndicate Your Blog Posts
Syndicating your blog posts is the best way to announce them to world, drive a little traffic and get those rankings you need. By syndicating I mean taking your posts and sharing them on social networks, bookmarking and other social sites. The best way to do this is by using Ping.fm. Ping.fm is a completely free service that allows you to syndicate your blog posts onto 30+ different social networks.
You need to join, create accounts on all of the 30+ social networks and connect them. Once done you can go to the dashboard, enter the title and URL of your blog posts and syndicate them. It’s a really simple way of announcing your new posts, getting some initial backlinks and rankings.
4. Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is the easiest form of link building. You just have to find relevant blogs similar to your own, read their posts and leave comments. Nearly every blog allows their readers to comment and leave a link back to their own blogs.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →You just have to find a few different blogs in your niche, read their new posts and comment dropping a link back to your blog. Blog comment backlinks are quite worthless but they are great initial links. Also when other readers see your comments they might be tempted to checkout your blog.
5. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is the next step to promoting your blog, driving traffic and building super high quality backlinks. Guest blogging is just writing for other blogs in your niche. Usually you write a high quality post for their readers and in return get 1 or 2 links back to your blog.
Depending on what niche you’re in, you may or may not find other blogs that accept guest posts. If you can’t find relevant blogs in your niche that have a “guest post” or “write for us” page, just email them and make a proposal. Before you email anyone write your guest post.
Put a lot of effort into it as it can easily be rejected. Once you have a blog post you think will fit on your potential guest post blogs, email them. Just attach the post, explain who you are and that they can publish your post as long as you get a small author resource box with a link back to your blog.
It works very well. Guest blogging is the best way to get authority backlinks from your competitors and it’s also excellent for driving traffic.
6. Link Building
There are many other ways to build links, but the 1 strategy I recommend that’s highly effective post panda is using blog networks. Blog networks seem to currently be the most effective link building strategy. They involve writing, spinning and submitting articles to networks of blogs.
It’s really simple stuff and you can read about the top 3 free blog networks here.
7. Study Your Traffic Via Analytics
Step 7 is by far the more important. Pay close attention to your analytics account! Look at where your traffic is coming from and which keywords are sending you the most visitors. Once you identify the sites and keywords that are sending you most traffic, you can focus on them to maximize your promotional efforts.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
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Fifty blog posts in a month targeting terms with three hundred searches is a city-sized plan. My whole town is four thousand people and everyone who’d search for anything I sell already has my number. The syndicate-to-thirty-networks step assumes an audience of strangers finding strangers, which is the opposite of my situation. Some of this would translate. Most of it wouldn’t.
Lonnie, step seven still applies regardless of town size though, watching where actual traffic comes from. I’ll grant the home page keyword step to you outright, that one’s clearly built for strangers finding strangers, not people who already know your number.
‘Syndicate your blog posts’ just means post the same thing on thirty different sites and hope one of them sticks. That’s the whole tip, dressed up.
Lonnie’s point resonates with someone starting again at sixty-one, for a related reason. The post assumes a writer producing one article daily for fifty days straight, plus managing accounts across dozens of networks. That is a young person’s schedule, or at least someone with considerably more spare hours than I currently have. The guest blogging suggestion suits my position better, since it trades volume for one carefully considered piece placed somewhere it will actually be read.