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Last Monday Part1 on this topic was posted here. It talked about website traffic statistics in regard to two of my sites. Today, we go into the rest of the 'blog posting' promotional elements: anchor text, tags, and promotion.

Blog Posting, Keywords, Anchor Text, Tags, and Website Statistics Part2

Anchor Text

Another interesting fact in regard to the statistics’ referring sites is that the KCWM site itself is listed as a source. This is accomplished by creating anchor text within the post content and/or at the bottom of the post as “Additional articles to read.” The anchor text leads the reader to another page/post within your site.

According to Wikipedia, “anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in the search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page.”

Is there a difference between an anchor text leading to another post and simply putting the url itself? YES.

Anchor text allows search engines to easily find and index your content and they value this strategy, the url address doesn’t have the same ‘word power.’ Wikipedia says, “The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps.” This is part of SEO.

Blog Tags

Next on my ‘to do’ list when posting an article on my site is to put relevant tags.

In the article “Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog” on
ProBlogger.net, it explains that tags should be thought of “as the colorful little page markers you might use to flick back to your favorite pages in a book. The tags don’t describe the book as a whole, instead they describe individual sections of the book.”

Two important 'tags' factors to consider:

•    Tags complement categories. If you use Wordpress you’ll be able to and should use categories. Blogger does not offer this feature, so it’s even more important to use tags.

•    Tags should be focused and use the same ones for each specific topic. This means if you are writing about book marketing, use one specific tag: book marketing. Don’t switch it up with ‘book promotion’ or ‘marketing.’ Be consistent because it is this consistency that search engines will use to index your site and establish you as an authority on that keyword. This means a higher ranking in the search engines.

Going into this a bit further, when writing on the topic of writing, whether it’s on characterization, setting, or plot, you should always include the keyword ‘writing’ or ‘writing advice,’ or other relevant writing keyword you use consistently. You can also include the more specific keywords, like ‘setting’, ‘writing goals,’ or whatever the content warrants to give more indexing information, but it’s important to use your main ‘writing’ tag for all your posts on writing.

Promote your Blog Posts

If you want to enhance your visibility, you need to SHARE each article/post. Wordpress and Blogger both have plugins or gadgets to provide easy ‘sharing’  to Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Linkedin. Make use of the ‘sharing’ feature.

Then of course there are your other social networks, your groups. Don’t forget to post a message in your groups letting them know you have a new post up.

Use these three blog posting elements for each of your posts and your traffic/views are sure to increase.
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This is another two-parter, being over 900 words, so please stop by next week for Part2.

Blog Posting, Keywords, Anchor Text, Tags, and Website Statistics Part1

Every marketer knows the importance of article marketing – it’s an effective visibility tool and increases the user’s expert status. For individual websites, this is in the form of blog posting.

But, you can write an article that’s properly formatted, has a great title and amazing information and if you don’t use keywords, include tags, SHARE and Promote that article, you won’t get optimized traffic to your site. This can’t be stressed enough.

I did an analysis of two of my sites. Both are focused on writing and marketing. My individual site, Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing (KCWM) usually has three posts per week. My group site, The Writers on the Move (WOTM), usually has at least one article per day – a few days there are two articles per day.

Take note though that when getting website statistics, numbers will vary significantly depending on the source of the information. Blogger’s Stats tool was used for this analysis.

According to the Blogger Stats, which site do you think gets more traffic?

Since the marketing philosophy is’ content is king,’ you’d think the WOTM site would get tons more traffic, because it provides quality information on a daily basis.

Well, if that’s the site you chose, you’d be wrong. The KCWM site gets double the traffic WOTM does.

Another interesting tidbit is that the majority of traffic from both sites comes from:

Google searches
Yahoo searches and yahoo mail
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Twitter

Google is by far the leader of the traffic sources with Twitter holding up the rear.

So, the question to ask is WHY does the KCWM site get so much more traffic than the WOTM site?

The answer has to be keywords, anchor text, tags, and promotion. We’ll now take a look at each factor.

Keywords

If you notice above, the leader of the traffic sources is Google searches, which is driven by keywords.

Every post on my site is keyword focused. What this means is that I do a keyword search before posting the article. I start with a focused word, say “blog posts.” If the article focus words don’t pull their search weight, I change them to more effective keywords.

And, as it has been stated before in other articles, your keywords should be in your title,  subtitle (if you have one), and within the content of your article. Be sure to add the keyword in the first paragraph and last paragraph, and here and there throughout. Just be careful not to overdo it.


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Related Articles:


Article Content Formatted and Search Engine Ready Part1
SEO and Marketing: Basic Tips and Definitions
How to Drive Traffic to a Website Using Expert Information Content<

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