Blogging to Fame!

Do you blog for traffic?
Or do you blog for some defined goals. Have you decided on as to what is your motive behind blogging. Even if you are yet to think about it, I would still recommend you to read this article carefully, because whatever the case may be we there is one thing common all of us, we need Traffic. Traffic is the base of all online business.

As bloggers for what-so-ever reason why we belong to blogosphere they can still be divided in two categories:

1. Those who blog for their business, or improve their business online visibility. They have a motive to fulfill and a company to support. These blogs are basically meant for better communication, building relationship, providing updates or attracting prospects for their business. They are much focused on quality traffic rather than sheer volume of traffic.

2. And those who have professional or personal blogs, but no business model behind them. They are either casual bloggers or even they might be experts in their niches and enjoy blogging. These blogs might not have any specific goals behind, but being interesting many times attract many repeat visitors. Their income source mostly depends upon ad revenue generated through their blogs.

We all traffic and want traffic which is interested in our stuff. The idea popped into my mind while I was doing research about blogging strategies, that there has to be a definitive strategy for traffic. Most of the times traffic should be effortless, and I am more than assured that a strategic approach for developing traffic would always lead to a continuous focused stream of traffic.

So while you begin with your strategies for traffic it is highly advisable to monitor your traffic that by increased traffic is not effecting entrance bounce rate. Sometimes traffic stats can be too overwhelming which may not be true in real terms. Increasing traffic should rather decrease your entrance bounce rate. Just for an example, while you get huge traffic from few social network sites doesn't mean too much in terms of building reputation , than just a boost in your Alexa ranking. And many times few social networking sites appropriately provide you with a continuous stream of traffic.

Getting visitors interested in your stuff should be the priority rather then general traffic. Many times being in a niche is too good for a blog success, which not only helps in gaining volume of search engine traffic quickly but helps in getting more loyal visitors.

Evaluating traffic:

Though this has already discussed previously it is necessary to mention it here, your traffic just have defined ways of reaching your blog.

• Organic Traffic, takes time to build, though efforts are well paid back with time. It is only when search engines have approved your blog and found it sincere enough will it send you traffic on the keywords you have optimized your blog/posts for. Once you are white listed you will often get much traffic from them.

• Another source of traffic is Social Networks which require lots of constant effort. Point to be noted here is that the traffic, which you gain, is not yours. This belongs to the social media site it’s coming from. You need to work a lot for that social media site before you get any traffic from there. I keep researching on such projects and I reached the conclusion that the traffic coming from here needs efforts and many times your efforts are a lot more than overall result. Here I am not talking about repeat traffic but the overall stature of your blog remains the same and if you are not a casual blogger but a professional blogger, I would suggest we have better things to do, if you actually no ideas how to convert them into your fans. Many times people putting efforts in these media sites get banned as soon as their sites their stories touch the homepage. (In Digg and Netscape few times as an experiment, when I stopped putting stories, the traffic faded away with time. Now being a professional blogger I cannot give my 3-4 hours daily to be popular there or to submit stories from over the web, slowly gaining the momentum, so I would be able to get continuous stream of traffic.)

• Referral Traffic: Referral traffic includes link traffic from inbound links and also traffic from few social media sites like MyBlogLog, LinkedIn or even from bookmarking sites like Technorati, Del.icio.us. This type of traffic is really good for every type of blogger. It is even better in terms of repeat visits and getting more referrals, as well as building reputation of your blog. Therefore inbound links are not only profitable for SEO point of view but also referral traffic, which most of the times is focused and interested in your stuff.

• Traffic coming from your marketing efforts, which include Search Engine Marketing, Viral Marketing and successful business model. This make people rush to your blog for updates, make people link you without you, asking for links. This is very important for blogger with long term success.

Most of the traffic building tactics should be done strategically for the long term, exponentially proportionate with your efforts and should not be of one on one types in context of your efforts.

And which one is the best traffic, you can trust?

This is the most important question you need to answer while you blog and blog for results. It would be in appropriate for many of us, If I say you should not consider traffic from the sources which demand high efforts with very limited success. Many do argue and write that it’s well worth putting your energies even for small results as every visitor counts, and I did believe this till few days back. But now I believe in efforts and time given in return of traffic and quality as well. So many times I was able to get traffic and good incoming links from few social media sites which in return require tedious job of being involved and active participation. But was that solving the main motive of my blogging. For me it was not.
Anything, which is not providing long-term solutions for traffic, and where you are not able to leverage your efforts, shouldn’t be considered as traffic source.

Precisely if you optimize your blog for search engines, with time, and some good efforts will help you build your traffic from search engines and this will be a permanent as well as regular, as long as you don’t do something to disturb your results.
And similarly a successful linkbating or viral marketing project would be able to provide you a great stream of laser focused traffic, without you putting your efforts on regular basis. Now this is what we can say successful blogging. And blogging should be a enjoyable affair than just quest for building traffic, but a source of Eternal FAME.

I just got this interesting read from Yuva's blog on "ROI of a Blog".

So what you think your traffic say?

Till next time,

Happy Blogging,

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Strategies, Blog Traffic, Blog ROI

Labels: Blog Traffic, Blogging Fame, Web Analytics

Blogging which measurable is Blogging more profitable. Assessing your blog helps you increase unique traffic and repeat visits. We have so many sites coming up with free Web Analytics which had made it is easier to assess your Blog’s performance, and enhance its reach. We have already discussed about Google Analytics and FeedBurner, two free services that can form a part of your daily routine check. There are a few assessments that can be done with common logic and others with the help of services.

1. How fast does your Blog load?

Not only for blog but for any website the first impression to make depends on how fast it loads. While if your blog is quick enough, it may happen that nobody notices the time gap or find anything extra special but if its vice versa it may put a negative impact on the visitor. In this era when everybody has high speed internet connections or broadband, visitors have become all the more restless. “Give me more, and make is fast” is the present anthem. Your website or blog has dynamic content, JavaScript page tags, nested cascading style sheets and background-loading Web 2.0 pop-outs and flyovers. If your website takes an additional, unnecessary second to load, you may be chasing visitors away.

A faster loading page not only improves User-experience, but also the Usability factor. Many new developments have taken place in this field and this core issue is the base of AJAX. For further details you may like to go through Optimizing Page Load Time. So how fast is your blog? Are you monitoring it?

2. What’s your traffic count?

A point to be pondered about is the reach of your content to your expected audience. The numbers provided be the Web Analytic sites might not be accurate, as it depends upon cache files, proxy servers and cookie deletion. It may also differ slightly from each other if you are using more than two services. Even then you should keep a track of these approx. number of visitors, are they on increase, which post or which action of yours(like getting on the Digg frontpage) brought in more traffic.

The more people visit your site, the more it increases your popularity and brand awareness. This forms the first step in Web Analytics. It would guide you through the peek times your incoming traffic so that you can update just before that. Note the graph of your high and low traffic and you yourself would realize what to do of the information.

3. What is their motive to visit your blog and the length of their visit?

When people visit your site their search isn’t over. They want to find the search terms they are searching for and want to gain from the information you have provided them on the topic. They got to your site because Google or any other search engine thought that your content is relevant or simply followed a link. People who are visiting your site using which keyword search will help you optimize your blog accordingly. Length of their stay and no. of pages viewed will help you monitor whether they were appeased by your content or not.

4. How did they get there?

Direct, Organic and Referral are the only three free ways through which a visitor can stumble upon your blog. Rest of traffic will come through paid banners and ads. We are always in a hope that people would click their way to our blog. You need to know what is your source of traffic? Where is it people find your blog and pay a visit? If this information is there with you, you can increase free visitors by knowing keywords they search for and optimizing for them or increase the number of referral sources. Direct visitors are repeat visitors, once the new ones like their information they would start turning up without any help.

5. What are your Hot Spots?

How do you earn from your blog? Are you earning through adsense or by affiliate marketing? Where is it that visitors click at more? What are the hot zones of your blog or site? Are they clicking what you want them to click? Answer these questions and you would get what I am talking about. When you decide the hot places you can place your ads accordingly. You might think that people click on links useful to them or contained within an article. Once you are aware of the information they are searching for you can offer similar products or can place the adsense in between the content which is matching to your formatting. You’ll get what you need after this.

6. Where did they go?

Some blogs may have great traffic but also a high entrance bounce rate. Visitors who instantly click back button are of no use. Follow your visitors around your blog, see which was the second page they visited, the third and so on… While shopping online people generally follow the same trend. Compare products and their pricing, and finally making a purchase. Improve the user experience while surfing, make it easier and faster, you may earn a good-will for life.

7. What are your most effective Articles?

You would need to figure out which articles are doing the best and why, then follow your own trend, in a more optimized way. You need to know which content people are most hungry for and make it easier for them to find it. Place most discussed article section or Interesting Read on the front page. When you provide information about why your blog is popular and the best read articles you are gaining trust and keep on providing more, people will come back to you.

8. Look out for Broken or dead Links.

The worst thing that can happen to a visitor is to land up on a page-not-found, a broken or a dead link. That automatically would be the end of their visit. Nobody has time to refresh pages or find their way through. Remove dead and broken links or fix them.

9. Did you get a Feed Back for your post in terms of links or comments and repeat visits?

Are your visitors interacting with you? Are they giving you feedback of what they like and what they don’t? You should encourage them to do so. Ask for comments. Make your blog interactive and fun. Organize contests and quizzes. It will not only improve your blog but also make it more sought after. This will also get you incoming links and increasing referral traffic. New visitors are welcomed but repeat visitors are treasured. Is easy to cater an already pleased audience than to start fresh. Give them reasons for repeat visits.

10. Are you Blogging to Fame?

Blogs that contain buzz tend to grow famous and get increased number of subscribers. We have already discussed this in What’s the Buzz in your Blog? Call them and keep them is your motto.

Get a bigger, better, faster, stronger blog. Keep on tracking and improving results.

Happy Blogging to Fame,
Divya Uttam


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Technorati Tags:- Web Usability,Web Analytics,Blog Traffic

Labels: Blog Traffic, Web Analytics, Web Usability

If you want to track your blog/site but find Google Analytics scary and do not want to get into all that Statistical based Web Analytics, a few days ago FeedBurner came up with Site Stats option, which is very easy to use and would tell you

1.The number of unique visitors to your site and Page views

2. Detailed 'by visitor' statistics

3.Traffic source through which they came including search query referrals and site link referrals

4.Where they outgoing link which they clicked to go elsewhere.

Dummies Guide to Use Site Stats

Step 1: Site stats is very easy to install. All you need to do is log in to your account and go to Analyze Tab. You will find a teaser, click on it.


Step 2: This window will appear and you will see an option to add the site stats to track visitors, page views, referrers, searches, outgoing links and various other stuff.
Tick the check box and click the save button.

Step 3: You will find these two new lines appearing where you can enter your tim ye zone andou need to chose your blogging platform. After which you will receive a JavaScript which you will have to paste in your template and how is well explained in the window that will appear.

Now you are full equipped with to view your data, and your side bar will have all the options to check which are the basics of all traffic statistics.

Well now as easy as it was, it also gives you live statistics, which is not available with Google Analytics. It also provides recent visitor details and where they came from.
It is great to find your feed stats and your blog stats at one place.

This service is a part of Blogbeat, which was acquired by FeedBurner last summer. There is one short coming with this service, and that is it does not exclude your own visits, and because it is a simple and sweet service it also does not provide the length of visit, and various other in-depth analysis that Google Analysis does.


FeedBurner also provide this with the script. It encourages your visitors to Digg you, at Netscape and use various to make you popular.vote you Read the post 11 ways to increase blog traffic using FeedBurner to find more ways using FeedBurner to help you.

In all, have fun with this useful little service along with the very important site stats, thanks to FeedBurner.

Till then Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

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Technorati Tags:- Business Blogging,Web Anallytics,FeedBurner

Labels: Blog Traffic, RSS/Feeds, Web Analytics

In the post Analytics for Better Optimization I told you that you can use Feedburner is a free service which also offers Feed Analytics, where you can track your traffic and other useful stuff. It would not create a feed from you from a scratch but would modify it and add it own services with it. One important point that I missed to mention was you can even use it to increase traffic to your blog, apart from just keeping an eye on it.

After you start using Feedburner you will yourself find the difference. People have almost doubled their traffic. Mr. Gary of Phoenix Realm SEO increased his traffic from 650 unique visitors per day to 1000+ unique visitors per day with doubling his RSS feed subscribers.

So now lets get to optimizing and publicizing your RSS feed to increase your Blog traffic.

Here are 11 easy and most useful ways of doing it.

1. Make you feed compatible- Some people or platforms have older version of RSS or Atom feed enabled, users of Blogger like me will be aware of this, where RSS is used more often. Don’t panic. Make your feed compatible with all feed subscription services using SmartFeed. Go to the optimize tab in FeedBurner, you’ll find a tool known as SmartFeed that will ensure maximum compatibility, and will convert it to any version the end user’s tool is asking for.

2. Explain what RSS feed is- Though it would sound odd but even today only a percentage of people who surf net know what RSS feed is, and how to use it. So, when new people click on your feed, without having one single idea about it, will know how to use it. Believe me a raw XML file is not very appealing to look at, if you are not a programming geek that is. FeedBurner knows that. All you need to do is to link the FeedBurner version of your feed rather than default. Use Browser Friendly option under Optimize tab to do it. You can even choose one of the different languages it provides and it is quite self explanatory.

3. What if your audience sends you more traffic- Nothing better than that I would say. Get your visitors spread a word about you using FeedFlare. Within the optimize tab, you will find this option. It will help you to create a community of your own around your content, and you’ll not have to touch a single line of code. Using it you will be able to provide your subscribers a way to act on your content. Now they will be able to Digg it, Del.icio.us it, email it and number of other things. Go on start spreading your content.

4.Notify all RSS and Blog tracking automatically with PingShot- Under Publicize tab, you’ll find the PingShot Service, which will save your time by automating the process and will ping all the top blog notification sites. This will be very helpful if your blog platform won’t let you to customize what services to get pinged.

5. Display your Headlines on other parts of your blog or other sites- Under Publicize tab you will find yet another cool feature, with the name of Buzz Boost. This will show part of your feed content on other parts of your site by posting a little JavaScript. This will be very useful if your blog is in a sub-directory of your site, and you want to put headlines on your Home page.

6. Catch the attention with your Headline Animator-This can again be found under Publicize tab. It is a Little Hypnotic button and it rotates headline which could be placed on your site or the forums you often visit. Clicking on the Headline will take you to the post. Something like this.



7. Get the RSS buttons for the sites of your choice- Chicklet Chooser under Publicize Tab is the way to do it. Provide your readers Feeds their way. You can find yours in my sidebar and subscribe for this blog’s feeds and be on the way of Blogging to Fame.

8. Feed Analytics- Though I already dedicated the last post about it but as I am talking about FeedBurner it would be hard to miss this point. Analyze your daily subscribers and daily click-through. This would help you know the time of the maximum visits of your audience to your blog and you can post accordingly.

9. Brand yourself through your feeds- Use Feed Image Burner under Optimize tab for this. Branding is so very important now a days and it is indeed fruitful to build your brand through your feeds. Include a smaller version of your logo, or even a special version just for your feed.

10. Include Media RSS Information for Yahoo Podcasts- Podcasting is the in thing today, and ofcourse if you are providing feeds for it you need to convert them to 2.0 instead, in order for the SmartCast option to work instead of the SmartFeed we talked before about. FeedBurner wi;; remind you which to pick.

11. Provide Summaries of your feed so that your subscribers visit your site to read more- Providing either full-feeds or a summary is totally upon your discretion. Providing just a summary sure will drive subscribers to your site to read the rest. You would ask that they may not- leave a teaser at the end of this summary so that they are bound to come to get the whole story and yes the first 200 words of your posts should be hypnotizing enough to drive them curious.

FeedBurner has lot more options, so go sign-up and explore them to bring traffic to your Blog.

Till then Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

Related Posts-
Optimize your blogging and blog for more traffic and profit
Give the power of RSS to your Blog

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Technorati Tags:- Web Analytics,Blog Traffic,Blogging,Better Blogging, Feed Optimization, Blog Optimization,FeedBurner

Labels: Blog Traffic, Blogging Fame, RSS/Feeds, Web Analytics

After we had all the talk about how the blogging technology is evolving, content overload and getting traffic to your blogs/websites, it was inevitable to tell you that you have to track your conversion rate, your most efficient traffic source and keywords that are clicking with your audience. Remember, you cannot improve what you cannot measure and blogging is no different. This is about how to let others in the blogosphere find you and promote your content with you keeping a track of it.

Analytics have its own real advantages. Good practitioners always go for establish business models and this comes only from experience and a proper testing of different methodologies and business appeal. For business is becoming more of becoming type of open source, where improvements come from interaction and others experience, web analytics can surely boost your business than imagined if information available there is used as your business education and just not just mere facts.

You have two kinds of audience, your online readers/visitors and your subscribers. In order to measure analytics, you have to keep a track of both. A software that allows you to keep a track of your audience and analyze them is called an “Analytics” package.

Web analytics implementation strategy-

• Improving Keyword optimization.
• Developing keyword specific landing pages. Identify those keywords, and which appeal of your business goes with which keyword.
• Track repeat visitor information and look for keyword or places, which provide maximum repeat visitors.
• Getting visitors may not be the problem over web. Its getting targeted visitors which will improve conversions. Tracking the information will help you in getting information which source is providing you targeted traffic and which just chucks your bandwidth.

There are different packages for both websites/blogs and your feeds. It is very easy to find these on internet. You can find one dedicated to either of the above not both. A few company’s offer paid services, but not everyone can afford them. Fortunately, Google Analytics is a good tool for web analytics is a free service and Feedburner also offers a free service for feeds analytics, which can be upgraded by paying a nominal cost if needed. Alternatively many other sites offer free and upgradeable versions of such software.

Google Analytics-
It is free and very easy to implement. Sign up for your account and you will get a JavaScript to insert in your website or blog coding. After this you’ll need to click on the “Check Status” button to see if the JavaScript is installed properly and Congratulations! You are done with integrating your website/blog with Google Analytics. It helps you track:-

1. Daily Number of visitors and page views- In the graph you will easily able to figure how many visitors came to your website as well as the number of pages they saw, within the given time frame. It will not only help you find the traffic but also the page views will help you to know there how much content they consumed from your blog/website.
2. Geographical positioning- In what parts of the world are your visitors situated.
3. Returning/New Visits- That’s quite self explanatory.
4. Visits by source- Now that’s very important, the source of your traffic.

Google Analytics also helps you to know the bounce rates, conversion and the content summary. On which keywords did visitors searched for and came to your site/blog. You can know the placing of your site in the search engines this way. It gives you option to view as an executive, a marketer or a webmaster and has detailed options as per your choice. It also gives option to know the top entrances, top exit points and top content consumed. You will know about the sources, campaigns and last but not the least keywords, that make your blog visible to people. You can also do Goal tracking and watch your conversion rate.

Feedburner-
It is also as easy to implement. Don’t believe me? Go to Feedburner.com and tell them I have sent you. No they don’t have any idea who I am, and guess it does not matter till you benefit and be sure you will do. You can find:-

1. Total no. of feeds- In given time the total no. of feeds consumed by the readers. This can be found in the dashboard option.
2. Subscribers are using which aggregator to subscribe your feed.
3. Live hits will tell you last 25 visitors visited your site in how many hours, with their location, time of visit and user agent.

In my upcoming posts I’ll soon be taking up how to increase your traffic using Feedburner. Apart from the above you can also find how many email subscribers you have.

These software will together help you know the major metrics you need to measure to analyze your blog’s exposure. It is important to check daily trends and create reports to optimize overall campaigns.

There could be a trend you can probably check like you are getting traffic even from free SERP but they are not converting well, instead those keywords which are getting fewer placements converts well. Therefore testing is important. This could help in identifying keyword that convert well and it will help in your pay per click campaigns.

Testing is always a winner’s tool and web analytics makes all this a lot easier. With such powerful tools in hand you will always have competitive edge

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam

Related Posts-
Optimizing Blog by Developing Keyword Relevance
Optimizing Blog by Developing Keyword Relevance-II


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Technorati Tags:- Web Analytics,Blogging,Better Blogging, Business blogs, Blogging Optimization,Optimize Blogging

Labels: Blog Optimization, Web Analytics