traffic

Talking about other people is the most powerful way to get more traffic

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Content about other people drives traffic. Photo by Kevin N. Murphy

"How do I get more traffic?" Every blogger and marketer out there goes to great lengths to bring visitors (drive traffic) to their blog or site using content. But very few people are succeeding, and there are good reasons for this.

First of all, the cold hard reality of business and marketing blogging is that there is so much content being created that not everyone will succeed.

The vast majority of traffic is sucked up by the big blog, news and social media sites, which leaves a small share of the pie for the vast majority of bloggers and businesses.

PageRank, traffic and Google search results

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Organic google search traffic peak

Google's PageRank algorithm is what Google uses to determine where in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) any given page should appear. In other words, it is an expression of the relative importance of a webpage in comparison to the rest of the Web.

One of the most important business objectives for any blog or website should be to feature as highly as possible on search engines.

To do this, you need a good PageRank. However, that doesn't mean you should specifically implement techniques to increase your PageRank - that's not how it works.

Link strategy: Internal links vs. backlinks

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Internal links and backlinks generate a flow of traffic. Photo by Matti Mattila

One of the biggest goals of any startup, blogger or webmaster is to drive traffic to their blog or site.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is arguably the most commonly used method for increasing the flow of traffic through a site.

However, on-site SEO (read more about the difference between on-site SEO and off-site SEO in the article "On-site SEO vs. off-site SEO") only really helps to increase the amount of organic search traffic. It doesn't say anything about how to channel that traffic, or how to get traffic via alternative methods.

How to build traffic with backlinks

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Build traffic by creating a web of backlinks. Photo by puliarf

Creating great content is arguably the most important thing any entrepreneur, blogger, startup or online business owner can do to organically drive qualified traffic and potential revenue to their site. But having a site full of great content is only one side of the coin.

At least to begin with, any new blog or site simply won't have enough people visiting it to make much impact. What's required is a way to drive traffic to that content in the first place.

Drive traffic with effective blogging

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Quality blogging is marketing at its best. Photo by Will lion

The most effective bloggers, the ones who get paid by businesses to write their content, drive traffic, and the ones who people listen to aren't necessarily the best writers.

In fact, more often than not they aren't even the most knowledgable about their topic. What they are good at, is being creative about what they blog about and how they present that information in an exciting and engaging way. There's an art to it, without a doubt.

Viral content using "reach bait"

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Writing reach bait instead of link bait. Image by RBerteig

Writing great content can be really frustrating if you aren't generating the kind of buzz or hype your posts deserve. If you've ever looked at articles that go viral and wondered what it is they have got that your articles don't, the answer (content quality aside) is more than likely reach.

Producing content without an audience is a tough, lonely job. But it doesn't have to be that way because there are plenty of people out there who do have an audience. You just have to find a way to put the two together.

Google analytics misrepresenting its own search traffic numbers: Part II

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Google analytics showing traffic sources and keywords

In my previous post, I showed how Google analytics was reporting a first page search result as an actual visit in analytics. The visit was credited to the searcher's service provider - regardless of whether they actually clicked through to the website or not.

Google analytics misrepresenting its own search traffic numbers

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Google analytics showing traffic sources and keywords

I came across a curious issue with Google analytics the other day. I had just posted a blog entitled Online marketing explained with reference to cows.

I could see that the post was generating a lot of traffic and wanted to know where it was coming from, so I went to google.com and typed in "online marketing explained" to see if the post had already been indexed and if it was ranking highly for that keyphrase.

How to get bloggers to promote and market your stuff

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Coverage from influential bloggers can mean viral and social marketing SEO juice

Blogger outreach and PR is difficult - I've read a lot of How to articles and guides that say stuff like "Get bloggers to review your site or product", or, "Get as many backlinks from other bloggers as possible".

So everyone knows what to do, but no-one's talking about how to do it. In fact, gathering backlinks is often time consuming, ineffective and infuriating.

Hands up anyone who has spent several hours emailing other bloggers asking them to take a second to look over your new [blog/site/product/service/article/video] and gotten almost no response. It happens all the time.

How making predictions can build traffic and generate revenue

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topulo.us predictions leveraging social marketing, SEO and traffic building

One of the fundamental goals of having a website is getting people to visit it - in other words, building traffic. The best way to do this is to provide plenty of unique, interesting and engaging content that establishes you as an expert, trustworthy or someone worth listening to in general.

That's not easy to do because everyone else out there is trying to do exactly the same thing. This gives rise to the current Internet predicament: