These days I’m getting lots of Email asking how to take my blog to the next level, How to Drive traffic to my blog and I answer them with the same thing Blogging is not only about writing quality content, You need to understand market yourself and making your blog reachable to more audience.
Even if you end up writing best of content but in the end you will be left with nothing but couple of your visitors visiting your blog, or you may be getting few more visitors because of commenting on other blogs.
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This may lead to frustration later on and you might feel like leaving blog or you might slow down the speed at which you publish the blog posts. You can always come out of this dilemma and problem by smart work.
Any blogger who writes a post have something in his mind like getting lots of comments or getting lots of traffic or making money online.
Getting lots of comments is not tough if you write a quality content or if you write a content which is like answering your readers questions.
But getting traffic some time become tough because of simple fact that you never considered search engine optimization. When I moved from virgintech (my blogspot blog ) to shoutmeloud (wordpress self hosted blog) my daily visits was not more then 300 and I was a complete noob in the field of SEO.
I was unaware of the importance of SEO and thought content is the king. Though lately I realize that I was partially true about content is the king, but was wrong that I never targeted social networking website, social bookmarking website and Search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization : Search engine optimization itself is a very big topic and it can’t be covered in single topic. How often you come across the term SEO which is short derivative of search engine optimization. SEO is nothing but in simple words optimizing your content for search engine and making them search engine friendly. If you are on wordpress, it itself is search engine optimized, but you need to understand few basic things here like Permalinks, Keywords and onpage and offpage search engine optimization.
Though at first stage this topics seems to be a rocket science, but if you believe me , they are not. You need to understand the basic and once you are clear with the basic of SEO, things will be better for you.
One important thing you need to understand is difference between your readers and search engine. When you write a post, try to optimize your post for Search engine and for your Blog readers. This include adding meta title, meta description and meta keywords. Is it tough to add another 2-3 lines after writing a long post?
I guess no, with another 1 minute of work, you will be driving lots of traffic from search engine. One very useful post for you in this regard will be :
Optimize your blog post for Search engine and for your readers
You should read my previous article on search engine optimization which might help you to clear your basics. Though this topics are for wordpress users and we will try to cover topic for blogspot users as well in future.
- Optimum Setting guide for All in one SEO wordpress plugin
- Using Alt-tag to drive traffic from search engines
- Use robots.txt to make your post Search engine friendly
- 5 basic Wordpress SEO practice
- Importance of Categories for Better SEO
- Why commenting is very important for your blog
- 20 Useful Blogging tips for Bloggers
You might be writing 5-7 Blog post in a day, but if you optimize your single post for search engine and for your readers, that single post will help you to drive more traffic to your blog post for now and future.
Instead of writing non stop blog posts, take out some time to do your research on SEO and understand the basic of SEO and see the difference after optimizing your blog post for SEO.
Do let us know your experience after optimizing your post for SEO?
Related posts:
- Importance of SEO for blogging and bloggers
- SEO Strategy : Quality or Quantity of Post
- Want More Traffic? Write Compelling Content
- My SEO strategy to make shoutmeloud search engine friendly
- Blog Features : Establishing Quality and Usefulness of Blog
- Wordpress SEO plugin: All in one SEO plugin
- Optimize Post title For Readers and Search Engine
- Google Updated Page Rank October 2009 What’s the news?
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s so true. SEO is more important and a minute woould do the needed thing.
But, I need to quote that most people write crappy content, but focus on good SEO and get tons of traffic.
Lucky them or Poor Us.
.-= Suneel ´s last blog ..I Get Tons of Mail From The Future in Yahoo! Am I a Time Traveller? =-.
I might not agree with this, such post might get traffic but that will not last forever. Along with inpost SEO, backlink plays a major role. This can only be achieved when one will write useful content. Else in a day or two, crappy content will be lost on the deep sea of Google.
Well I tend to disagree, if you write shitty content and try to market it socially or however it will not bring in users the second time around, because they will be well aware of what to expect.
Agreed SEO and social networking of your content is important, however it is absolutely necessary that you retain readers, not every one gets into higher Google Search results without good backlinks and that is a important aspect of SEO which tons of people forget to even consider.
No one will link to you if you write shitty content and Google will consider you unworthy while figuring out where to place you in search results.
Consider this there are around a million blogspot blogs targeting certain keywords, however the results you see on the first page are from reputed blogs who write quality content, enuf said.
.-= Keith Dsouza ´s last blog ..Linux Drop Down Terminals =-.
Well said Keith. But as a Blogger I understand two things : Piller post and Filler post.
Piller posts are something which brings lots of backlinks and that helps you the most to rank high in search engine, where as Filler post are something which you write to keep your blog updated and you optimize them for SEO too since they are useful also….
Regarding Useless content, that’s very true there are million of blogs and fighting for ranking for particular keyword but they will never achieve it because of simple reason that, they are not linked from any reputed blog because such blogs are usually MFA or AFF. sales blog and provide very low or no quality at all…
though this post is dedicated for those blogger, who work a lot and write useful content but for the above mentioned reason, they failed to drive traffic.
.
Optimizing even a single blog post are suppose to drive huge trraffic to your blog.
Also remember ” Quality post in not the only thing“. ( Not the only thing)
Though Keith mentioned the valid point.
I tend to agree with you Harsh. You are right. some posts will be life time traffic and get you lots of visitors and comments and backlinks which are pillar posts and others are filler posts.. that we keep publishing to keep blog updated.
And i think google loves sites which are regularly and frequently updated.
Am i right?
.-= Nihar ´s last blog ..Friday Night Links Party “ 14 August 2009 =-.
It is correct that quality content is not enough for blog promotion but alsso need handsome amount of traffic.Traffic can drive on blog using SEO techniques and PPC advertisements.
.-= Surender Sharma ´s last blog ..How to continue your Blogging while you are on vacations =-.
Quality content is helpful in long term. If you are constantly providing quality content. You blog will surely recognize by Search engines. But One quality article require much more effort then quantity post.
If you optimize shitty post well, you will get instant search results for few months. may be more.
.-= Rahul ´s last blog ..Earn Fast Money Online From Your Blog =-.
I agree with your Rahul, as I mentioned in my above comment, crappy content might be able to drive traffic but this will not last for ever.
SEO is pretty important …Beginners should be aware of it..
.-= sham ´s last blog ..Classic Photoblog Templates For Blogger =-.
That’s true Sham. Thanks for your comment.
Well, this certainly answered a lot of my queries.
.-= Hari ´s last blog ..5 Scripts to Make your Facebook Sexier =-.
Wow, this is a post with a few comments already. SEO for me is like the French/Italian language. I can’t speak it at all, but it sounds so beautiful and the girls love it. (I’m trying to compare girls to SEO). All females have heard French/Italian speaking people, but when there is some cute guy talking then they go all crazy.
If you write good content then search engines will reward you whether it be short or long term. You can say you get what you put in.
.-= George Serradinho ´s last blog ..Essential Blogging Tips “ Part 3 =-.
That’s funny and best comment George. Though George
I might not agree with the point you have given here
“If you write good content then search engines will reward you whether it be short or long term.”
Probably my post is about this, despite of Quality content, someone might not be able to drive traffic, if some1 is avoiding SEO aspect of it.
you are right…if i am writing good content but traffic is low, it is of no use
.-= IndianCashMaker ´s last blog ..BlogSpot Users- Show Post Comment Form Below the Post =-.
I agree with you and with some simple SEO-tweaks you can get a long way. Thanks to Wordpress it’s easier than ever to do the most simple things.
.-= Stefan ´s last blog ..Why You Constantly Fail to Get Things Done =-.
@ Indian Cash Maker.
Well, even if you have quality content. Too many pop-ups, ads will make the visitor lose interest.
.-= Hari ´s last blog ..5 Scripts to Make your Facebook Sexier =-.
Thats absolutely true Harsh. Things actually depend upon the posts you writing. Posts on News,happenings,launches,gossips lasts for a while. Trend changes every now and then. We just need to keep ourself pace up with the right mass on social networks.
I must say your tips work a lot for me and my blog.
.-= Sushant ´s last blog ..Google Caffeine “ Test this Fast and Optimized for Social Search Engine =-.
I’m glad Sushant that this post and my posts are helping you
Welcome to Shoutmeloud.