Affordable Website Promotion

30 Jul

You may have heard of RSS feeds, but what exactly are they and how do they work? And can they really drive more traffic to your website?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds are a quick and easy way of sharing information on your website. But, how do they work and how can they create more traffic to your website? Well, there are 2 ways of using RSS feeds and each one gives slightly different traffic generation, so I'll look at them separately.

Existing Readers
If you are visiting another website that you find really interesting, you might want to make sure that you can keep going back to find the latest information. For example, it might be your favourite news website or a blog with really great information.

But how do you quickly and easily check a few websites for the latest updates, especially news sites that maybe do not always have the latest item as the lead item? Well this is where RSS feeds come in - you can subscribe to the feed in whatever feed reader you want. For example, in Firefox you would just drag the feed item to the tool bar and a new feed is create. By clicking on the feed the latest entries are shown. If any take your interest you click on them to read them.

So for existing readers, RSS feeds are a way of getting the latest information off websites that they like to visit quickly and easily. So by having an obvious RSS feed that they can subscribe to, you are making sure that people can keep coming back to your website every time you post an interesting new piece of information. You are driving traffic direct to your new pages - traffic that has already visited your website and built confidence in you.

RSS Feeds For Websites
But this is only getting existing visitors back. Whilst vital and high quality traffic, you also want to generate new traffic to your website and RSS feeds can also do this. Some website owners are looking for content and so they will also use the RSS feeds to grab your latest work and place the articles on their websites, usually with links back to your website. This means that people visiting these other websites and reading your posts there can then pop over to your website if they find something interesting.

Obviously, this works best when you allow the RSS feed to syndicate the full content of the post. Some people like to only syndicate a summary for protection of their content, in fear of having it stolen, but others are happy to share it in the hope of increased traffic. It is your website and really it is up to you, and your experiences, whether you allow it.

So that is what RSS Feeds are about - building more traffic to your website quickly and easily by sharing the content that you are creating with readers and other websites. Make sure that your RSS Feed is easy to find so that people can use yours and start to build your traffic with them today!

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22 Jul

I've moved the RSS Feeds on this site to Feedburner and the process was fairly easy and a pleasant surprise!

Considering it was the first of 4 blogs to be moved, it was easy. No problems, it just worked first time. The shame was that the following day when I moved the other three, not one of them worked first time.

Beginner's luck!

But anyway, all 4 blogs are now using Feedburner and it is good to see that there are actually people using the RSS feeds and popping over to read what I am writing! Thank you one and all there! Do feel free to leave a comment and say hello once in a while. And if there is anything that you would like me to write about, let me know.

If you are, like I have been all morning, struggling to get Feedburner to work, then the answer it seems is simple. On WordPress, the new feed does not activate until a new post has been published. So, burn the feed, install the plugin, tell it your feed's name and then welcome the world with a new post.

It only took me 2 hours to discover that the new post was the key to the whole change over process!

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6 Jul

So you have a blog, with a great Page Rank, lots of content, but no traffic. What exactly can you do!

Having plenty of your own unique writing on a blog and building its Google Page Rank are good starting points, but neither actually guarantees that you will get a lot of traffic. You might have an impressive Page Rank that advertisers will pay a fortune to get a share of, but if used improperly, you might still not be getting traffic.

So, if you are struggling, take a look at these points to make sure that you are getting more traffic.

Research popular keywords.
You can write all day long and build dozens of links to those posts for as long as you like, but if you are writing posts that do not cover well researched terms then you are limiting your search engine visitors to long search terms that just happen to crop up in your writing.

Instead, use tools such as Google's Keyword Selector Tool to uncover keyword phrases that are relevant to your blog. Then build these keywords into the titles of your future posts and work the link building of your blog around these same terms. It is a two pronged approach - write content around the keyword and build links around them as well.

Guest blog!
By writing some high quality content, again keyword researched, and then offering it up to other bloggers as guest posts on their high traffic blogs, you might be able to get a share of their traffic. If your writing is good then a portion of the readers on that blog might click on the links in your biography and visit your own blog. The same does happen with the better article directories as well/

Get commenting
Placing comments on other peoples' blogs is a good way of increasing blog traffic, when it is done correctly. Look around for blogs that are related to your blog theme, that have high traffic levels and are written to often. Then read their latest posts and if you have something to add to the post leave a comment.

But, make sure that the comment adds to the writing. Comments such as 'Nice post, excellent writing.' might be flattering, but do not add to the post and are likely to be deleted. But comments giving a different view or telling a story that adds to the post are likely to be approved. Once the comment is approved other bloggers might notice your comment and a lot of them, if they find your comment interesting, might call into your own blog.

Go to forums
Posting comments on forums can also be a good way to traffic. Either general forums where you are just chatting, or better still in support forums. Especially in support forums, you do not even need to keep name dropping your blog. Just make sure that you are showing your picture against each post and that your profile links to your website and this way I find that a lot of new visitors find their way to my blogs.

That is a few simple tips to promote a blog for increased traffic, I hope you find them useful!

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17 Jun

It has taken I do not know how long, it feels like months. But after forgetting Technorati for over 3 weeks, suddenly I have an Authority on all 4 of my blogs!

I have absolutely no idea what made it happen, but as witnessed by the screen print on the right, a Technorati Authority has finally appeared for all of my blogs.

And the best news - this screen print was taken a few days ago and the three established blogs - those that did not at first successfully list - have increased since then as well!

So I am pleased that my efforts have finally paid off. Why they suddenly started to list I do not know for certain - the only sure thing I do know is that about the time I stopped checking them finally 'influential reactions' started to record on all three (looking back at them) and also at that time I implemented a tighter control on what posts are displayed in the RSS feed.

Whether there were too many posts with outbound links and suddenly reducing that and keeping more on topic has persuaded Technorati to take note of the blogs, I can only wonder. Maybe I should try another new blog or two and see if that makes a difference!

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29 May

Guest blogging could be the new way of link building, but what is it for and more significantly, what are the pitfalls to stay away from? We take a quick look here.

First, when it all goes well, it is a possibility for you to expose your best work to potentially thousands of new readers on on someone else's weblog. Assuming you are picking a good website that deals with the same general topics as you do, these can be ripe to pop more than to your blog and join your RSS readership.

Of course, for the publishing website, it is a free source of alternative thoughts and ideas. We always say that content is king - through having a load of original article you generate more opportunities of the search engines sending your traffic. And at times it could be difficult finding new material to write about. Plus, as the publisher, you might only learn something new as well or be inspired to write about a new thought from what you read.

Also, guest blogging is spreading your writing not merely on other people's websites, but also onto whatever social media they use, which can be different to yours. For instance, a lot of bloggers will automatically post the new posts to blogger, facebook or their favourite social media network. So your posts are being exposed to these networks of followers. Not only this, but you are getting links from other web-sites, for free! And this is a wonderful search engine benefit that you will want to take advantage of!

So guest blogging sounds tremendous! Are there any problems with it?

Yes, you have to plan and submit your very best of writing when you are asking someone else to publish it for you. It has to be outstanding! If must be interesting enough to tempt the other blogger to allow you to guest on their website whilst also interesting and saying something new so that their readers take note of what you are writing and then take an interest in your blog and visit it.

This means that there might be a couple of iterations of writing each post, as the site owner asks you to make improvements. It can take quite a while to actually go from first writing the post to seeing it live. Plus, during this time you are being subjected to a few what could feel to be quite harsh comments around your writing, either the style of the writing or the article or the way that you handle the subject. I have seen site owners on forums complaining and naming guest bloggers that have written something that they do not agree with 100%.

And then, obviously, there is always the chance of the blogger doing the dirty on you by rewriting it, taking away your links and publishing it to other sources, without your links. Or even just removing your links after a couple of days or weeks and you never seeing the search engine benefits nor the extra traffic.

It is well worth guest blogging, only be certain that that you select your sites carefully.

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