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A new study shows evidence that there is a correlation between lead generation (through inbound traffic) and blogging frequency.
I’ve written about this before, that blogging on a regular basis and as often as you can matters for at least three reasons:
1. Search engines love fresh content. If you’re offering content that is valuable to your audience, it will boost your search rankings.
2.
An article I wrote a while ago, Website Ranking - Basic Metrics (1), got a lot of engagement. Interestingly, the engagement came from both sides of the coin – those who like knowing their ranking numbers and those who don’t.
Down with Rankings
On the ‘con’ side of dealing with website rankings, some appreciated the information the article provided, but don’t hold much weight in the ranking
SEO is an acronym for ‘search engine optimization.’ It’s the marketing strategy that allows the search engines, such as Google, to find your website and its content.
Being aware of these strategies is essential to having the search engines not only find your site, but to also categorize and index your content. This is how your content is made available to online searchers.
This strategy is
One of my email subscribers asked me about Staged. It’s a social media engagement service that gets you Followers. But, unless you have the budget, it can get expensive since there’s a monthly fee.I’ll call the subscriber John Doe for this article.The other part of John’s question was that although the service did get him a lot of Followers on Twitter, how could he monetize them.The first thing
It’ll soon be a new year and with that I’ll be offering a NEW online marketing e-class through WOW! Women on Writing.
As valued readers and visitors to this website, I want to keep you in the loop.
Just like the marketing arena is ever changing, so are my classes. The reason is to keep up with all those changes.
Beginning January 5, 2015, I’m offering a new 4-week e-class:
GET TRAFFIC TO
For a while now I’ve found it a bit pointless to focus on Facebook as part of my social media marketing efforts. It’s been a while since the reigning king of the social media world reduced the visibility results of your postings. Now, they have a new algorithm reducing your posts’ visibility to around 2% of your fanbase, more likely less.
I don’t get it.
Okay, well maybe I do. They want you
The title is not an exaggeration. You have the potential to get millions of views by using some clever and common sense marketing strategies . . . and Slideshare.
I came across this great Slideshare presentation by Board of Innovation. The author gives usable tips on how to market your content to get people to share it. Since having your content shared has lots of benefits, it’s something you
This month-long series of blog posts will explain author websites and offer tips and writing strategies for an effective author website. It alternates between a day of technical information and a day of writing content. By the end of the month, you should have a basic author website up and functioning. The Table of Contents lists the topics, but individual posts will not go live until the date listed. The Author Website Resource Page offers links to tools, services, software and more.
Track the Growth of Your Author Website
You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to set up a website. Don’t you want to know how many visitors the site gets? You can find out this and much more by the use of a statistics and analytical package. And fortunately, WordPress makes this easy with a couple plugins.
Statcounter. Statcounter is a simple, easy to understand statistics and analytics package that records information in real time. You don’t have to wait until tomorrow to see what traffic is like today. I like this one because of its simplicity. First search Plugins/AddNew/Statcounter. Install and activate the plugin. Go to Statcounter.com and set up an account. Follow their instructions for configuring the plugin with your account information. Sit back and watch the numbers roll in!
Besides general numbers, I especially like to look at the Visitor Paths.This tells me what websites a visitor sees in what order. And I love to look at the Recent Visitor Map, which shows the location of your visitors. Or, look at Country/State/City/ISP. Today (the day I wrote this post) 62.5% of my visitors were from the US, and people from 35 different countries visited this site. Notice that there are NO personally identifiable bits of information here, so the Privacy Policy is still accurate.
Note that I have a free account, which means: Each projects comes with lifetime summary stats as well as a free log size of 500, i.e. a detailed analysis of the last 500 pageloads on your website. When your log is full, it continues to operate; the oldest entry is replaced with the newest entry that comes in. So, that number (62.5% of recent visitors are from the US) only refers to the last 500 visitors to my site. Statcounter is real time and as the globe turns, you can see the progress of daylight across the globe by looking at your visitors locations! Cool, huh?a
Location of visitors to Fiction Notes. Click to enlarge.
Google Analytics. Another common option for website statistics is Google Analytics, and it’s a free powerhouse. You should set this up, but it might take a year or two to learn the ins and outs; in fact, I’m still learning. Yes, of course, there are WordPress Plugins for this. Search Plugins/AddNew/Google Analytics to find a couple dozen plugins. Some will only add in the required code, but some add bells and whistles. Try out a couple until you find something you’re comfortable with. Sign up with Google Analytics and follow their directions and tutorials to get everything set up.
Do you need both stat programs? Here’s the dirty little secret about stat programs: they never agree. Your CPanel may be set up with server stats, which will differ from both of these programs. Generally, they will be close, but there are all sorts of reasons why they may not agree. When I set up my account seven years ago, Statcounter was the only program that recorded information in real time; Google Analytics only added that feature recently. I could probably go with just Google Analytics, but it’s so complicated–complete and wonderful, but complicated–that I still stick with Statcounter for simplicity. When I really need to dig into stats, though, to figure out something about my traffic, I rely on Google Analytics. For me, it’s a win-win to use both. But you don’t have to! There are many other stat programs, too, so find what works best for your website and your needs.
The best thing about stats? You can track the growth of your website from just a few visitors the first month to that first exciting day of 100 visitors and onward and upward to 1000 a day or more.
Headlines That Increase Website Traffic and Website Conversion Rates
Marketing research from MarketingExperiements.com shows that headlines are the most important factor if you are striving to increase website traffic and website conversion rates.
Let me pause one moment and explain what conversion rates are.
The conversion rate is the number of visitors to your site in comparison to the number of visitors who say YES to your call-to-action. Your call-to-action may be clicking on your opt-in box; it may be buying your book or product; it may be signing-up to an ecourse you’re offering . . . you get the idea.
An example of a conversion rate: If you had 100 visitors to your site and one of them said YES, you would have a 1% conversion rate.
Okay, back on track.
In an experiment, in which various elements of a website were tweaked to determine which would have the greatest impact on conversion, having an effective headline was more important than changing elements of the landing page or shopping cart process.
In fact, changing a headline generated 29 percent more leads. That’s close to one-third more leads.
While quality and informative content is a must, the headline is kind-of-like the magnet for your website. It’s what will attract the surfer/browser to stop, pay attention, follow what’s going on, and follow the process to opt-in or buy.
As a writer/marketer, you need to have your message focused on what the customer’s interests are. This is especially critical for the headline. You need to craft a headline that will:
1. Quickly grab a surfer or visitor’s attention.
2. Clearly define the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) or the value. If the visitor knows what the benefits are, he’ll be more receptive to ‘following the yellow brick road’ you have in place for conversion, to say YES to your call-to-action.
To increase website traffic and website conversion rates, the most effective headlines are ‘value-centric.’ This relates to number one and two above. You need to ‘hit’ the target customer’s interests and you need to convey the value of opting-in to your mailing list or buying what you’re offering. And, you need to let the visitor know just how significant the benefit/s will be.
An effective title might be: Get Paid to Guest Blog.
In five simple words you’re telling the reader what the benefit is and what’s involved.
“The Value Litmus Test,” an article at ValueCentricSelling.com, explains that along with having the value front and center, you should also provide the ‘timeline.’ This is another factor that will help bring in that traffic.
The timeline is the length of time it will take the customer to achieve the benefits specified or promised. This may not always be applicable to your product or service, but when it is it’s important to include it.
An example of using the timeline strategy is the
7 Day Ebook by Jim Edwards. You immediately know this product is promising that you can write an ebook in seven days. It meets all the qualifications for an effective headline.
Another example of ‘timeline’ is the
Five Minute Writer by Avril Harper. This title also lets the reader know the time element involved. In as little as five minutes a day you can earn money writing. While the title doe
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 Part2Anchor TextAnother 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 TagsNext 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 PostsIf 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.
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 Part1Every 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.
KeywordsIf 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.
As mentioned above, this is Part 1 of two parts. Next Monday, the post goes into anchor text, tags, and promotion. Please be sure to come back!
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Related Articles:Article Content Formatted and Search Engine Ready Part1SEO and Marketing: Basic Tips and DefinitionsHow to Drive Traffic to a Website Using Expert Information Content<
by David Ezra Stein
Putnam 2007
A yearling bear doesn't understand why the leaves are falling off the trees. She tries to help by putting them back where they belong but as the season progresses they fall faster than she can put them back. Finally she gathers them up and takes them back to her lair in a hill just under a tree, lining her cave and stuffing the entrance solid with all the leaves
Great post. Thank you for the information. I've recently started using the share feature to post links to my blog posts on FB and Twitter. What a timesaver!
Hi, Susanne,
I'm so glad you found the information helpful. And, yes the Share button certainly saves time!