5 Killer Tactics to Increase Your Blog Traffic 

We’ve all been there. We’ve hit publish on our latest blog post and expected the comments and shares to start rolling in. But instead we get… nothing. It seems that no one has even seen our beautiful article, let alone read it. A piece of tumbleweed seems to blow across the screen and it feels so lonely out there on the World Wide Web…

SEO Tips

I see this phenomenon happening all the time with company blogs, and it’s not hard to see why. In most niches you’ll be competing with hundreds of other blogs for the attention of the same few readers, and to stand out you’ll often need to produce something truly exceptional. Making great content can require serious time and money, but as Rand Fishkin shows in this Whiteboard Friday there are many tactics out there that anyone can use to improve their blog readership.

Today I want to follow on from that post by sharing five more of the smartest tactics I’ve read recently around the web. None are hard to implement and all could have a significant effect on your traffic, links and shares. So let’s get started!

1. Share More Than Once

This first tip comes from Garrett Moon, who suggests in a post on KISSmetrics that companies aren’t sharing their blog content nearly as much as they ought to. Many of us have the mentality of “share once and forget”. We publish something on our blog and distribute it across all our social media channels once. But what about all those people who missed that initial communication?

A much better solution is to share each blog post multiple times, depending on the platform, in a timely fashion. For example, you might tweet, Facebook share and Google+ you article as soon as you hit publish. Then a day later you might want to tweet it again. Perhaps the following week it’s time for another Google+ share, and so on.

In his post Garrett shows how you can easily double your traffic from social media in this way. Check out the handy visual they put together:

seo tips

Some marketers would call this spamming your audience, but I would say it’s more like giving them the value you’ve promised them. Even Rand in his Whiteboard Friday mentions how he will tweet a post he wrote months if not years ago, just to remind people that “this still matters”. No one notices every little thing you do online, and by sharing more than once you’re just making sure no one misses anything.

However, you should definitely make sure not to publish the same message on social media more than once, as this does comes across as spammy. Instead, deploy a range of different tactics to catch your reader’s attention. For example, if you wanted to tweet this blog post you could try…

Tweeting the title:

Posing a question:

Quoting the author:

Or citing a fact:

Happy sharing!

2. Get Influencers to Write for You

SEO Tips

This is an excellent tactic from Matthew Barby. If you really want to grow your audience, the key is to get influencers to write for you. This means reaching out to the bloggers in your niche with the largest social followings and the ability to write consistently excellent stuff, asking them to become contributors.

By getting these guys and girls involved, you’ll not only be getting exceptional content for your blog (content that will hopefully earn you links and shares); you’ll also be getting access to a powerful distribution channel in the form of the influencer’s social network.

Of course, unless your blog is super prestigious you will probably need to pay these bloggers to write for you, and you should definitely specify as part of the arrangement that they share the posts on social media. That being said, I think this option makes so much more sense than hiring a “general purpose” content creator.

As well as payment, you could also offer bloggers the following perks:

• Offer to share content on their own site (but only if you have a large social following)
• A link back to their website from every post they write for you
• Give them free use of your products or services

Working with influencers is a fantastic way to improve blog readership. A nice bonus is that often these guys write for other big media sites as well, so they may be able to link to something they have written for your blog from a third party site in the future.

For more information, check out Matt’s comprehensive guide to finding influencers using Social Crawlytics, BuzzSumo and Followerwonk: The Power of Authors and Content for Link Building.

3. Feed the Hummingbird

Increase your blog traffic

Out to Razvan Gavrilas of cognitiveSEO for this one. In the Hummingbird era, there are opportunities to optimise your content for synonyms that many bloggers are missing. For years now Google has been ranking synonyms in its search results. So, for example, if I search for “SEO agency” I will also see results for “SEO company” and “SEO services” highlighted in bold:

What is interesting is that since the Hummingbird update, a page optimised for “SEO company” can rank for “SEO agency” even if the keyword “SEO agency” doesn’t appear anywhere on that page (i.e. in the source code) or off the page (i.e. in anchor text, co-citation or co-occurrence). See Razvan’s original post for more detail.

However, the page optimised for “SEO company” would rank a whole lot better for “SEO agency” if it also actually contained the keyword “SEO agency” somewhere. What this means for marketers is that we can get some quick and dirty wins by making sure our content is optimised for important synonyms as well as for the main keyword.

For example, if I were to write about “New York coffee shops”, I might also make sure to include the synonym “NYC cafes” in the text. I’m sure I would rank for “NYC cafes” anyway thanks to Hummingbird, but by explicitly including this keyword I could give myself a cheeky ranking boost.

The simple process is as follows: find the synonyms of your targeted keyword (using Thesaurus.com if necessary); identify the ones with high search volume using Keyword Planner; finally, make sure to include them in your content. This isn’t keyword stuffing. It’s about helping people find our content who are searching using similar but not quite exactly the same keywords.

There will come a time when Hummingbird understands what we have written and there will be no influencing rankings. But it’s not quite there yet and for now we can help the algorithm learn to be more accurate by creating the correct semantic relations in our writing.

4. Get Your Tweet Text Right

Hat tip to Ross Hudgens for this one. It’s really important to make sure you have your default tweet text optimised to encourage users to click on the link and follow you on Twitter. A survey by Siege Media found that a massive 73% of company blogs weren’t taking advantage of this technique.

So what does optimised tweet text look like? A simple best practice solution would be to include the post title, URL and your Twitter handle like this:

Among the common mistakes people were making were including the entire title tag instead of just the post title, which takes up valuable space and dilutes the message:

Using a generic message like “Currently reading on the @VerveSearch blog”, which doesn’t give the reader any information as to what the post is about and doesn’t encourage them to click:

And mentioning a Twitter handle that isn’t relevant to the article, meaning that people probably won’t follow your account:

So optimise your default tweet text so it includes the post title, URL and your Twitter handle, and watch your Twitter referrals roll in!

5. Repurpose Your Content

seo tips

In the Hummingbird era, I’m a firm believer in writing fewer longer posts rather than frequent shorter ones. I definitely think this is a better use of one’s time (in terms of getting links, traffic and shares) than blogging daily and simply regurgitating in 600 words what’s already out there. 

In the SEO industry, for example, stand out content tends to involve case studies, new experiments, research and opinion pieces (take a look at what I’ve been linking to in this article). But how do you generate traffic while you’re researching your next big piece?  

The answer is to repurpose your existing content by transforming blog posts into other content formats. Each of these new pieces could then be uploaded to its own separate channel, where it would be seen by a new audience and help to generate more traffic. For example, you could turn a blog post into:

• a podcast: record yourself reading your post aloud and upload to iTunes 
• a screencast: record yourself doing something on-screen, add a voiceover and upload to YouTube
• a slide presentation: create a slide show out of your post and upload to SlideShare
• a ebook: turn a series of posts into an ebook, which is available to download as a PDF for a tweet
  

This is just scratching the surface. There are many other ways to re-skin your content and you will also find a host of niche-specific content formats. For example, in the travel space Jauntful helps users to create their own personalised maps containing their favourite things to do in an area and can be uploaded to its own dedicated platform.

It makes perfect sense to want to repurpose your content after all the effort you’ve put into creating it in the first place. Just remember to always add value by making each piece more digestible and easier to understand than its predecessor.

Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content by Kevan Lee

Summary

Obviously there’s no substitute for producing great content (yawn) but I hope this post has shown that there are many other ways to increase blog traffic independent of the content itself.

Most of these tactics are simply about squeezing the most out of what you have already. So in terms of sharing, you can make sure you post more than once and optimise your tweet text. In terms of SEO, you can ensure that you’re Hummingbird-friendly (in a natural and non-spammy way, of course). And in terms of strategy you can make sure that influencers write for you and that you come up with smart ways to repurpose this material.

If you’re currently running a company blog that no one cares about, I hope these tips can help put a smile on your boss’s face. But most of all, I hope you never have to see the tumbleweed or feel that lonely again.

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9 KILLER SEO TIPS AND TRICKS WORTH $2K OR MORE

best seo tips and tricks

The world’s best online businesses do two things really well:

First, they put huge amounts of time and effort into dominating search engine results.

Second, they offer unique, convincing sales pitches to their new visitors.

But you’re probably thinking:

“How do I dominate search engine results?”

If you’re a small fish in a big pond, it can seem impossible – but don’t despair.

I’m going to share with you the 9 SEO tips and tricks use every day to rank small businesses at the top of their industries. And I’m also going to include the estimated lifetime value of these tweaks.

What Is Jump Break And How To Add Jump Break In A Blog Post ?

Hint: you might be surprised how much money you can make from a small change.

1. Get a Google Plus page.

Estimated Lifetime Worth: $20,000 

Google+ isn’t a very popular social network in comparison to Facebook – but that doesn’t matter.

It has incredible SEO value – and for just one reason:

When you connect your Google+ page to your website, your face is shown next to all of your search engine results.

33% of people click on the top result of Google. Why? Because it’s the easiest to click on. It shows up first, and likely has a catchy enough headline to be interesting. Why not give it a click?

But when you add faces into the mix, that all changes. Take a look at this:

Moz.com might be ranked 3rd, but look at that face! That’s a clickable result.

Here’s how you can make that happen:

Step 1. You need a Google+ account. If you don’t yet have one, get one now.

Step 2. Go to your Google+ profile, and click About->Links->Edit

SEO Tips And Tricks

Step 3. Go to the “Contributor to” section, and add a link to your website. This tells Google that you write articles for that website, which will allow them to include your face in search results.

Step 4. Make sure you have a Google+ profile picture – and make sure that it is a photo of your face. Only face pictures are allowed, and Google can tell what is/isn’t a face (they’re very wise).

Step 5. – Verification. In order to prove to Google that you’re the real owner of your site, you need to put a link to your Google+ profile somewhere on your website. Hint: you should add this to the bottom of all of your pages (ex. “Join us on Google+”).

And that’s it! Within a few weeks, you should see your face popping up in search results.

2. Get a Google Places page.

Estimated Lifetime Worth: $10,000

If you’ve read a little bit about SEO, you’ve probably heard one word over and over:

Local, local, local.

Google is moving more and more towards local search, and most people don’t know how local SEO works: that means you have a huge opportunity.

And the best part is: this SEO trick will work even if your main business site ranks terribly in search engines.

Here’s an example:

Local results show above most regular results – regardless of how good the actual website is.

So how do your improve your Google Places ranking? It’s actually pretty simple:

1. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE MORE POSITIVE REVIEWS THAN YOUR COMPETITORS DO

Any time you have a chance at a testimonial, make sure it gets posted to your page. Most businesses have no idea about this, and have NO reviews. Even 5-6 good-star reviews may be enough to secure a top spot

2. MAKE SURE YOUR ADDRESS IS POSTED ON YOUR WEBSITE, AND ON AS MANY SOCIAL MEDIA SITES AS POSSIBLE

Each time Google can pair your business name with your business address, it means you’re more likely to be located at that address (these are called “citations”).

The best way to get more citations is to sign up for social media accounts like Yelp, Angie’s List, and any other site that will allow you to list your address. It’s that simple!

Pretty easy, right?

And since the Google+ page is unrelated to how your site is ranked – you can get top rankings fast, even if your site isn’t doing so well.

QUICK PIT STOP: How are we getting these estimated value numbers?

We’re guesstimating, a bit – but these are very close to profit numbers we see for all of the businesses we work with. How?

A well-performing SEO page can bring in several new customers each week. Doesn’t sound like much, right? When you add it all up, it’s pretty impressive.

With a $100 product, if a page brings you 1 sale a week, that’s $5,200 a year. When you start crafting several pages at a time, you’ve got an impressive income stream on your hands. That’s the power of search, and that’s why SEO tips and tricks like these can be so valuable.

3. Check your internal link structure.

Estimated Lifetime Worth: $10,000

Backlinks from other websites are a big part of any SEO strategy – but that’s not the only type of link that makes a difference.

Links on your own pages make a difference, too – and a small shift can do wonders for improving your rankings.

1. Choose a poorly performing page on your site
2. Drive more links to it on your other pages

Also, Google rewards pages that are what they say they are. Each page’s content should match its title and keywords as well as possible (this is especially important for eCommerce stores like Shopify).

4. Make sure you’re speaking Google’s language

Here’s a quick checklist to make sure all of your pages are Google-friendly.

1. Are your main headings in <H1> tags?
2. Are your subheadings in <H2> and <H3> tags?
3. Does the title of your page contain your keywords?
4. Does the main heading on the page contain your keywords?

5. Do competitive research, and don’t be afraid to steal.

Est. Lifetime Value: $15,000+

Most business owners make one huge SEO mistake when they’re first starting out:

They try to do everything from scratch.

But why reinvent the wheel when you have an excellent model for how to rank highly in your niche: your top competitors.

I’m going to show you how to profitably spy on their SEO habits, and you won’t believe how easy it can be.

Note: this is only for websites that are ranking poorly in search engines.

STEP #1:

Do me a favor. Type in a popular keyword phrase for your niche, and see who the top three or four results are.

Click on one of their websites, and look at it closely.

Take note of the structure of the page. What does their headline say? How long is their text? Do they have lots of links in the text of the page?

Now comes the important part: we copy what they’re doing. Not the text of their site, of course, but the structure.

Make sure your page has approximately the same word count (preferably longer), contains the same keywords, has a very similar heading, and a similar title tag, too.

Important: Do NOT steal the text/content from their pages. Google knows all and will penalize your site!

Find the most successful of your competitors, and take notes on everything. What is their text like? What is the tone like? How about their layout? Title tags? What makes the site good? What about their color scheme?

Don’t be afraid to copy. Some of the biggest websites you see are probably there because someone knew how to copy someone else.

By the time you are starting to see some more traffic, you should have a better idea of how to really make it yours.

Within a few weeks, you should see an improvement in your rankings. It’s not a permanent strategy, but it’s a great way to launch your site and start getting real traffic.

10 Elements of Perfect Blog Post

5. Make a few videos and put them on YouTube.

Est Lifetime Value: $1,000

Google loves to rank YouTube videos highly.

In fact, videos are 50x more likely to show up on the 1st page of Google vs. traditional text pages.

Even if your website isn’t hitting the front page, your YouTube video just might.

So how do you get your video to rank on the first page of Google?

1. The more views, comments and likes the better
2. A video title that matches the keywords you’re looking to rank for
3. A reasonably long video (usually 5 minutes or longer)

Make something entertaining, interesting, or really useful – something sharable.

There’s more on that here (https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-video-seo/) and here (http://backlinko.com/how-to-rank-youtube-videos).

6. Write ‘definitive guides’ to things.

Estimated lifetime value: $5k per effective guide (that is not an exaggeration, either)

Want to know a secret that SEO professionals discovered a long time ago?

The secret to getting a lot of back-links to your site is: Make your site irresistibly informative.

And almost nothing is as informative as a how-to guide. Especially one that’s authoritative, and easy to use as a reference.

If you can manage to write something truly useful, people will share your guide. Write a “Bible to…” something, or “The Encyclopedia of…”. Make it sound authoritative.

If you can manage to offer something that’s not found anywhere else, then your chances are even better of getting some shares and thus traffic.

7. Claim your free back-links.

Estimated lifetime value: $1,000

Some SEO tips and tricks are tough to wrap your head around, this one’s a no-brainier.

SoundCloud and various other web platforms allow you to link to your website from a profile, and yes, these do count toward your back-links.

Not as much as, say, a link from Harvard or Sony, but any little bit counts. Sometimes a few little back-links like that can push you up a page on Google’s search results.

8. Steal back-links from your competitors.

Estimated lifetime value: $2,000

Open Site Explorer will be really helpful, because you can check where your competitors are getting their back-links, among other things.

It’s not a bad idea to try to get to know the owners of those websites linking to your competitors.

Sometimes a little interest in what someone else is doing can go a long way. Introduce yourself to website owners.

Tell them how much you like their new articles about selecting a lawnmower or about how Facebook is ruining civilization as we know it, or whatever. A little praise can go a long way. Then ask for a link.

You might hear no or nothing at all a few times before you hear yes, but don’t get discouraged.

9. Connect with bloggers in your niche on social media.

ESTIMATED LIFETIME VALUE: $1K PER SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP

Building on the last tip, reach out to bloggers who would find you relevant. Introduce yourself.

Give them some commentary on what they do. Once again, show interest.

If you can manage to get some people writing about you, it can be a huge asset to your business.

The catch is that this is probably the most time-consuming and difficult step. It can take weeks or months to get some bloggers to care. Reserve this one for after you’ve done the other 8.

Wrapping up…

Ranking highly in search engines equals more money for you. The sooner you employ these tips, the sooner you’ll see rewards.

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When i first started blogging i really didn't know what a jump break is and how to use it in my blog post. There are some small things that are not noticed by begineer blogger but are really important, jump break is one of them. Even pro blogger don't take time to write about this. If you know this then its cool but if you don't then you must learn to add jump break to your blog post. Adding jump break is like giving small summary or introduction of your post on the homepage. So in today's tutorial i will talk about jump break, its important and how to add jump break in a blog post. Its really important that you add jump break in each and every post or article you publish on your blog.

9 KILLER SEO TIPS AND TRICKS WORTH $2K OR MORE

What Is Jump Break ?

Jump break is a simple feature in blogger. When ever you add Jump break in your blog post the paragraph or text before the jump break is shown on home page of your blog or website. Its like showing introduction of your tutorial or article on the homepage of your website. So in order to view the complete post users have to click on read more link. This keep your home page clean and helps to generate more page views.

Importance Of Jump Break

• Keeps the Homepage more cleaner  and gives user friendly look.
• Helps to generate more page views
• Allow you to fit more post on the homepage of your blog.
• Gives the users snak peak of your blog post.

How To Add Jump Break In Blog Post ?

Before learning to add jump break in your blog post always keep few things in mind. Add Jump break after writing a small introduction paragraph on what your post is about and add relevant image to it as you can see on my homepage. Adding jump break is really easy just follow simple steps listed below.

10 Elements of Perfect Blog Post

1. Write your blog post and keep your cursor where you want to add jump break. Then click on Insert Jump Break as shown below.

2. After adding the jump break a dotted line will appear (shown in below picture). The text and images above this dotted line will be displayed on your homepage.

3. Done! So wasn't that so simple ?

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10 Elements of Perfect Blog Post

So, the excellent blog post consists of 10 elements listed below. Follow them to write a perfect post for your blog.

1. Title

It has to be creative, eye-catching, as well as clear and containing the key phrase. Try to fit it all in less than 15 words.

2. Social sharing

Giving readers opportunity sharing interesting posts with their friends is important. Do not "drag out" with the placement of the buttons of social networks somewhere at the end of the article — add them directly to the title. Now, by the way, you can meet the implementation when the buttons are moved along with scrolling the page to the left of the blog post.

9 KILLER SEO TIPS AND TRICKS WORTH $2K OR MORE

3. Illustrations

For better perception you can add an image in the upper left corner of the post. Do not forget to prescribe it the title and alt tag for search engine optimization. Of course, the ideal image should be unique, but it is not so simple to realize. I usually just looking for them in Google, but there are other sources — special services which abound with unique illustrations.

4. The first introductory paragraph

It should be explicitly told the main goal and promise of the article. Advising you to include the keyword / phrase in the first sentence and its variation in a single step further.

5. The main text

Here you need to consider in detail the question / problem, not forgetting natural fits with keywords. Being honest, since high school I remember the works of the structure which I use all the time: the introduction - central part - conclusions. At the same time before writing the post, I often write a simple plan of the article in Write! — the most important points. It is easier to create a complete and logically structured publication indeed.

6. List

In principle, this option can be considered as part of the basic text. So, if you have the opportunity to create some list for greater emphasis on various points that should do this — do it. For example, to write the main advantages of the service, if you write a review, etc. It can highlight the name of the list header (H2).

Many bloggers and writers recommend the use of the divided into paragraphs with subtitles structure. It can be useful not only to attract attention but also helpful for the page optimizing.

7. Conclusion

What I said above, try to complete somehow logically the post. Summarize all that has been said above. By the way, since we are talking about the post on your blog, you can at the end of the article ask the readers some questions or ask them to share their opinion on the particular subjects.

What Is Jump Break And How To Add Jump Break In A Blog Post ?

8. Related posts

Allow your blog readers to suggest some other blog materials that might interest them. To implement this functionality, you can find plugins thumbnail that looks quite impressively. There is a popular plugin "Yet Another Related Posts Plugin" —as for many authors, it is the most functional solution to advise you choose to focus on the most popular articles from the same column.

9. Comment section

What kind of blog can be without a couple of comments? Despite the fact that many are now engaged in spam activity, and commentators are not particularly significant — leave this block. If you are missing primary commenting system — Discus service may help. As the authors of the "ideal post", recommend you to respond to each user account — it will develop the conversation and show that you are reading comments.

10. Additional accents

Let me add a couple of details:

• The general article can and should be diluted with illustrations and videos if it is possible. This format of presenting the information is much more vivid and exciting than a text.
• Do not forget about advertising. Context usually placed after the header. Also, it can be next to or instead of the illustration, a text, or directly after that.
• At the end of the article, I prefer to display the list of tags and categories. In fact, that is one option relink. You can also add a suggestion to subscribe to the RSS blog or twitter.

According to these rules, it is possible to create a perfect blog post. Perhaps, you have your secrets in the light of writing or any other experience. You may share your thoughts and opinions here on this topic, or make some suggestions. Thank you.

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