4 Simple Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog

How do I get more traffic?

Probably the most asked question on the blogoshere.
If you are a beginner blogger, you’ve probably written a few posts
and then you think….umm…where’s the traffic?

Traffic doesn’t just magically appear, you have to actively find them.
We all know the benefits more traffic can bring – more sales, more revenue, higher opt-rate, good ranking and so on…

Imagine being in a crowded place and you are attempting to push a product,
your method of approach isn’t working and no one is paying you any attention.
At that moment, wouldn’t it be nice if someone handed you a megaphone?
Using one would get your voice out there – loud and clear.
It would certainly grab people’s attention and eyeballs.

Let’s look at 4 Megaphone equivalents on your blog.

Good Content

You’ve probably heard this a million times before, and it’s so true – Your stuff has to be good and useful.
People value their time, and would only invest in what brings them good returns.
Using our megaphone analogy, if the message being conveyed is anything but useful, then person is simply ignored.

Identify Your Customers and Discover Where They Hang Out

In order to have useful content, you need to identify the group of people you’re trying to serve and where to find them.
Find out which market they are in and stick with them. By doing so, you have the opportunity to know them better and understand their needs.
Depending on what this is, you can decide to offer a solution product/ service to them – achieve this and you’ll become their hero.

Position Yourself

This is essentially putting yourself on their radar.
If your customers or readers are on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Youtube – be there as well.
Let them see you as a new discovery – one that they will bookmark and keep coming back to for reference.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Be unique in your delivery. Be unafraid to go against the grain, and more importantly be yourself.
Chances are, thousands of other people are doing what you do, but only you can deliver it in your own unique way.

Have these 4 elements in place and you’ll truly have a megaphone in your hands to draw attention.

Once again, If you are new to blogging or are in the process of starting a blog there are some essentials WordPress tools and services you need to have in place,

(1) Get the All in One SEO plugin. This would handle all your search engines optimisations.
(2) You will also need Google XML Sitemaps. A plugin that alerts search engines of changes to your blog by generating XML sitemaps
(3) Sign up to Google Webmaster Tool. A free service by Google that allows you to monitor and improve your site’s visibility in Google search results.

5 Smart AutoPilot Tools For Your Blog

The perfect webmaster’s dream is to have a blog running on AutoPilot – with smart tools making things ticking away nicely in the background. Leaving a blogger with just the job of churning out posts – Perfect world.

Let’s face it, the WordPress back-end is an interesting place to be.
There is so much to fiddle with, Comments to moderate, Stats to check, Plugins to update, Source code to tweak and so on. But these things eat into your time.

Don’t get me wrong these tasks are essential, but wouldn’t it be better if most of it were automated? That is why I love Askimet spam blocker – one less admin task to do and more time to provide value to my readers.

Blog Tools

Saving valuable time as led me to list 5 of my favorite AutoPilot tools.

WordPress Database Backup

This backup plugin automatically backs up data on a regular basis.

Available options

• Ability to specify back-up frequency

• Option to choose where to save back up file

• Select and choose tables to backup.

• Get it here

Posts

Yes, the actual WordPress post functionality.
Generally, I tend to write a number of posts in one go, so I have them sitting in a queue waiting to be published at my specified time.

Available options

• Schedule a publish date and time.

Update services

Update services is a feature within WordPress that automatically notifies submission directories of my new blog post. – It saves me a lot of time.

To locate,  go to Settings – Writing – Updates Services

Aweber

Aweber automatically handles all my email distributions, campaigns and subscriptions on YourBlogTools.com

XML Sitemaps

This cool plugin automatically notifies Google wherever there’s a new post on YourBlogTools.com Get it here

Which auto-pilot tools are you using?

Do you have any questions about these tools?

Does Your New Blog Have Traits of A Loner

Imagine starting a new blog with no plan of making friends – It’s a bit like drafting a post but never hitting the publish button.
Visitors and potential friends don’t just magically appear, we have to actively find them.

Let’s Interact

Let’s check out some tools that would brag about your blog as well as interact with others.

To continue with our series on “Essentials tools for a new blog“,  Engaging your blog with community is a good thing.

Your blog is always going to be in a world of its own without communication channels or means of reaching out.

There are several ways to create these channels,
however, in this post I shall focus on four social media ones. Some of which have been applied to this very blog.

Twitter (widget)

Let’s face it, as of the time of me writing this post Twitter is the biggest thing out there.  A social networking service that enables you to send and read messages – also known as tweets.
If don’t already have an account – get involved here
And of course there are several third party Twitter applications that would give you a nice tweeting experience.
You can also decide to incorporate your Twitter conversation on your blog in a form of a widget. On this blog I am using Twitter for WordPress

Benefits:

• Freedom of self expression in 140 characters.
• Ability to build a group of targeted followers.
• Ability to update your followers with new activities on your blog.
• Incorporate your Twitter conversation on your blog

Twitter Feed

With Twitter Feed, you can auto-schedule your blog post to distribute to Twitter.
Meaning your followers on Twitter would instantly know when you have a new post.

Benefits:

• Easy way to notify the Twitter world of your blog postings.
• One-time setup

Tweetmeme Button

The TweetMeme retweet button is designed to encourage visitors to tweet your blog post.
This would actually be my first time using this widget.
I am keen to see the effectiveness of it.

Benefits:

• Re-tweeting a post
• Displays the number of tweets

Share Button

It essentially does what it says.
The Share This or Share/Save button encourages visitors to add your posts to social bookmarking sites.
There are tonnes of share this application around. The Share button used here is by Add to Any.

Which tools do you use?

5 Essential Plugins For A New WordPress Blog

These are exciting times guys…
As we enter the beginning stages of YourBlogTools.com, I will be documenting series of action steps taken to get this blog up and running. If you are just starting out on WordPress then you are not alone – just follow on.

Listed below are some of the plugins I first installed

1. All-in-one-seo-pack
   Optimize your blog for search engines. Be sure to enter in your blog’s tagline, description and keywords.

2. Google-analytics-for-wordpress
   Begin to track the volume of visitors to your site, your visitor’s location, how they arrived at your site and more.

3. Google Site Map generator
   Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site. This generator tool would automatically notify Google each time a page is created on your blog.
   
4. Wp-recentcomments
   Use a section of your blog to display recent comments. I am currently using a plugin by mg12 which has been tailored to my current WordPress theme.
5. Recent-posts-plugin
   Prompt your readers with other related information within your blog.

Have you recently started a blog? Can you remember the plugins you first installed?