Blog Traffic – Web 2.0 traffic tactics
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Blogging integrates perfectly into the second generation of web services known as Web 2.0 simply because this is the most convenient platform for all Internet updates. So what is there for bloggers with Web 2.0?
First of all, the whole aim of the new web-technology is to facilitate the collaboration and sharing of information between users, and secondly to increase the usage rate, i.e. visitors to your Internet site.
So that raises the next legitimate question, what are the best ways to attract traffic? A blog is a source of highly dynamic content for which search engines have a large appetite.
Combining your blog with Social Media sites, another significant component of the Web 2.0 presence, means you can have access to an almost unlimited supply of traffic. Of course the market leader is Facebook, but there are many others, Twitter, Google+, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and the list goes on.
Establishing a presence on any of these sites is going to be beneficial to a blog, but don’t think that it is possible to interact to the required level on all of them. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day, a better strategy is to post to the vast majority, ideally using submission software that allows you to place your links on multiple social media sites through a single interface, and then to select one or two sites that fit with your subject choice the best and where you will find like minded people. These are the sites where you should seek to establish relationships and build trust with your Internet friends. It will require a little experimentation to find the social media sites that are your best fit, but it is worth that effort in order to establish a significant presence on that site and then interact in a way that you can actually enjoy.
Before that, we need to say that, with blogs, web information is no longer centralized in terms of authority, and also that the facility to use and re-use material is limitless, bearing in mind that recently views on duplicate content have changed significantly and search engines actively discourage you from now posting the exact same content in multiple locations on the Internet .
From certain perspectives blogs have become the real source of the original information and content is the transaction environment. In other words your view, perspective and opinion on a subject is what gives content a unique quality. Hence, Web 2.0 traffic tactics mainly gravitate around the optimization and highlighting of your blog articles so that they can be found by the search engines, i.e. a significant proportion of traffic comes from search engines finding and valuing your content. The latest algorithms that perform that function now put much more emphasis on how much your content is being discussed and shared on social media sites and also how much authority you, as an author and writer, can command. This is most widely known as the impact social signals have on a blog’s Google ranking.
Though it may be very tempting, don’t aim too high from the very beginning, it is almost impossible to get large numbers of visitors at the early stages of blogging. The way this process works, most naturally, is to start small and then gradually build momentum over time, there is very rarely a situation where someone goes from a virtual unknown to a mayor player in the blogging world overnight, that simply doesn’t happen.
The key to getting good traffic is perseverance and service quality. Content has to be accurate, up to date and relevant for it to be of any value. There will be some topics that remain up to date and relevant over a period of time, this type of content is considered to be evergreen, but most content does not fit into this category, so it must be revisited and updated as and when required. The amount of time and effort you put into that process will obviously depend on the topic and how much things have changed. You may even find that occasionally you may need to retire an article completely as it no longer carries any value. Better to do that and write a new article than have contradictory out of date content.
As you build your blog you will find that you are creating many posts touching on many different topics so navigation to your articles may become less intuitive. For this reason, you should also place a Google search box directly on the site, so that any user will find it easier to perform a search directly from your blog page for the content you have produced. What’s in it for you? You make the user spend more time on the site potentially they will find content they may otherwise have missed and, consequently, you increase the chances of him or her returning to the blog in the future.
People are now more interested in blogs that have RSS feeds; so it is a good idea to let Internet users know that the facility exists as simply and easily as you can! Initially, graphics were the best means to indicate the presence of an RSS feed; the great advantage now is that you can adjust the colors used for this to the theme or topic specific to the blog itself. The system has been evolved to provide an easy to use way for accessing the RSS link, now all you have to do is insert the text and the color scheme and then a graphic pattern is generated automatically. Another recent alternative is to use a plugin or widget, depending on blog type, that places a RSS symbol in the address box of the browser. WordPress is particularly well suited to adding these types of features, with many options being made available through a huge support network of developers.
I use Feedburner for my RSS feeds and like that I can track my stats with them. Never thought about adding a Google search box to my blog – good info.
I use Google search on all my blogs and websites, just provides your visitors with another option if they can’t find what they are looking for on your sites and can help keep them on the site a little longer so they may just spot what they are looking for.
Aside from perseverance and service quality, i’d like to add that content is also the key to increase site traffic. From readers standpoint, they visit your site depending on your content. If they find it valuable and useful, more likely than not they will visit your site over and over again. They might even post your site into their Facbook’s wall and invite friends to check your blog thus increasing your site traffic. Thanks!
Hi Chris, content has always ultimately been king with respect to getting traffic. It doesn’t matter what tricks and techniques you use to get people to your site in the first instance, when they arrive they will only stay if they find what they arrived for and if it is presented in an interesting and communicative way. In other words never fail to deliver on the promise, whatever it is, products, services or simply information.