WELCOME to the final station of 2011! Amidst all the excitement, it’s also a time to pause for a bit of reflection and re-evaluation before embarking on new goals and new heights. And it’s one of the best ways to gear up for the fresh promise that the New Year can bring. Nothing is off-limits, and this is a blog for “Next Generation Blogging”, so let’s take some lessons learned and start 2012 with an action plan!

Nothing sets off the start of the year like a well-thought out gameplan for your goals. Have you started yours?

First off: Brainstorming, and specifically for me, this means Mind Mapping. It’s a tried-and-true method that involves creating a map of your ideas and plans, with ‘branches’ organized around a central key word or topic.

For those list-makers out there, let’s put the steps in a linear format.

1. Start in the center with an image or a central topic.
2. Use images, symbols, and key words
3. Each word/image should be connected starting from the central topic.
4. You can start with thicker lines in the center, and thinner lines as you radiate outwards — much like tree branches.
5. Use colors for distinguishing, emphasis and highlighting.

There can be many ways that a mind map can be visualized, and Alex has shown his before:

But mine would look like this:

You could grab a pencil and paper, or use the stinky whiteboard, but I created my mind map by using MindMaple.  It’s a mind mapping software that makes task management intuitive and easy to do. You just type away your game plan, and all the other principles of classical mind mapping are already pre-programmed for you.

MindMaple is also highly customizable wherein you can insert photos, art, links, and attachments. The number of topics can be expanded indefinitely, and when things get too crowded you can collapse subtopics with a click without losing any data. In fact, you can just click and drag any detail of your plan to organize it accordingly, creating appropriate relationship lines if it cycles back around.

Creating a mind map is much easier with the right tools. In my case, I used a user-friendly software that allows me to be playful and creative with my task organization.

It’s pretty much like drawing your plans on your trusty whiteboard, only without the mess and ink fumes. Better yet, you can save your map so you can export it in number of formats to share with co-workers, friends, or even use in a presentation.

Using MindMaple is eye-catching and engaging, and for me, it’s a comfortably fun tool that motivates me to think creatively while staying on point.

So for your 2012 blog, what will your mind map look like?

Here’s to a more productive and rewarding 2012, fellow bloggers!

Photo credits: lisakramerartlifestyle.blogspot.com, www.macreportmedia.com

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Google Analytics is a monster tool for tracking traffic patterns, sources, trends and more. It’s so extensive that it can easily help jack up your web site visitors from 100 a month to 10,000. IF you know how to use it right.

This is a real-life story which was inspired by some SEO work I recently did for one of my clients. In the past few months it has become increasingly obvious that Google cares about more than just links, and my hope is that this story will give you some ideas about how to make your own sites better and more popular.

Successful link bulding isn’t just about slapping on the most popular keywords, but about understanding which keywords work for you.

A quick background

My client had originally come to me with about 2 or 3 keyword ideas which they were pretty much set on ranking for, whatever it took. Now many SEOs would have been rubbing their hands in glee, but before we went full throttle I convinced the client to let me do a little research for them.

If you launch into a campaign without doing your research first you could make your life a lot harder and eventually shoot yourself in the foot. So here’s what I did and found:

The research process

I always look at a selection of key areas for clues about what is going on. Here are the main points of interest for this client in particular:

In the last 3 months (Jan – March)

1. Only 13% of traffic arrives via the home page.
2. Approximately 1,000 keywords account for 80% of the traffic.
3. There were 5 particularly high traffic pages with very high bounce rates.

So What?

The next question then is what to actually do with this info, and how does it help with your SEO?

Well, the first lesson is that for this particular site, the home page isn’t that important as compared to the site as a whole. There are dozens of smaller pages which are collectively bringing in tons of highly targeted traffic, so my first move is to work on improving these pages and their rankings.

Spending all of their SEO budget on 3 key phrases wasn’t a good idea either — those 1,000 keywords or so that bring the majority of their traffic are where the money is at. You obviously can’t build decent quality links to target that many keywords, but with the right site architecture and a campaign of quality link building to build authority you can certainly help things along.

Finally, those all important user metrics were letting the site down — the 5 pages I had picked out needed improving, because if we could lower the bounce rate and improve the content the client would keep more traffic and probably find that their rankings improved too.

The plan of attack

Step 1: Fix the holes in the bucket so to speak, starting with the weaker pages.

Step 2: See if there is any way we can improve the site in general, navigation, layout, content etc.

Step 3: Split test! We tried a few different ideas and recorded the results, eventually finding a winning combination which resulted in the bounce rate being lowered by circa 11% overall.

Step 4: Look at what keywords people are using to reach each of those 5 weak pages, decide whether the existing content is a good fit for those queries and consider changes which could keep more users on the page and on the site. The key here; call to action.

Step 5: Link building — we weren’t interested in building keyword links through brute force; we wanted a selection of very high quality, natural-looking links, to the home page and to some deep pages. We wanted to make the site more authoritative, and allow those 1,000 or so keywords to rank even higher, not to mention gaining a few more.

The results

Those 5 pages have gradually improved and now they have much lower bounce rates and tend to get more organic traffic too — which is probably not a coincidence.

They are now getting their traffic from around 1400 keywords, and traffic has increased. Plus, by lowering bounce rates all round they are retaining more traffic too.

We are continually building lots of links that actually drive traffic, so they are also getting an extra little bonus from that, and their organic traffic has clearly grown overall.

Conclusion

This just goes to show that SEO isn’t just about links or rankings, it is about understanding where your traffic comes from and enhancing what you already have. Using Analytics this way is very powerful — it takes time to get your head around it, but it pays off in dividends.

If you work hard to improve your site, make the most of whatever traffic you get and back that up with quality link building, and you will see the results for yourself.

About The Author

Hi, my name is Mark. I am a freelance SEO consultant and link builder, I help small business owners (and bloggers) to get more natural search traffic and to build a more successful blog. Please check out my website ToMakeALiving.com and get in touch to find out how I can help you.

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3. 4 Easy Ways To Increase Readership On Your Blog

Wait, what?

I know what you’re thinking, there’s no way that writing poorly equals to blogging well. That’s just absurd! Hear me out though, because poor writing CAN help you write well.  The thing about writing a blog is that it doesn’t take a professional expert to write one. All you need is an email address and a name for your blog, then you can write posts to your heart’s content about your melodramatic life events. Unfortunately, the people that write just to vomit up a post about their feelings give those bloggers out there that actually care about well-written content bad names, but we  can learn from them.

• Don’t let your focus fade

So many people go into writing a post without any clear direction. They show up and throw up and suddenly there are words on a page and they call that writing. So what can you take away from such an awful attempt at writing? Make sure your own posts have clear definition. Make sure that you have a point and you’re not just tossing words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and hitting “submit”.

• Identify their pitfalls and learn from them

One of the biggest indicators of poor writing comes from numerous spelling and grammatical errors. There is a VERY easy solution to ensure that you don’t fall into this trap. That little tool called “spell-checker” is there for a reason – USE IT. There’s not a reason in the world why a good writer should have poor spelling and punctuation.

• They have something you don’t

The wealth of poor writers with large audiences out there should be raising all sorts of red flags and warning bells that you’re doing something wrong, that they’ve gotten right. In all likelihood it’s probably SEO and marketing tactics. ANYONE can do this. There are countless resources online to teach you the basics of marketing your blog in a more efficient way to reach a larger audience – so take advantage of them. Spend an hour Googling SEO tactics and put them into practice. If bad writers can do it, so can you.

• Offer improvement

Being a great writer gives you a unique opportunity to offer your services to others, whether it’s writing for them or coaching them into better writing. Take advantage of your talents and maximize them. This way you can label yourself an ‘expert’ and make a little money off of your talent.

You, as a genuinely good writer, have the opportunity to offer something that is becoming a lost art. Don’t let yourself become discouraged by the plethora of bad writing out there, but instead use it as leverage to catapult yourself into a whole different playing field of writing. People value good writing, but they have to read the bad to appreciate the good.

Author Bio
Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.

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Blogging or using a blog as a part of your business strategy is an emerging trend. Most businesses are advised by the marketing teams to include a blog as an important publicity and sales tool. For writers, too, blogs are an easy way to get their writing out to the public without having to go through the publishing and distribution channels. With technology becoming more users friendly and blogging platforms and tools becoming easier to use, blogging is rapidly gaining the edge as everyone wants to be a blogger. Here is a look at what you will need to start your own blog.

The first thing a blog needs is a purpose

A few things need to be done as part of the planning stage of a blog. Getting these basics will save you a lot of hard work after you set your blog up. Many blogs are successful because they focus on a particular purpose, a reason, or a niche. If you are blogging for a business, it will make sense to adopt a specific aspect of your business as your niche. For writers too, you will need to find a reason that you can offer your readers for visiting your blog. For business blogs, a common way of creating a niche is to provide comprehensive, trustworthy, and broad-based information about the particular industry segment that the business is focused on. For writers, you may want to focus on reviews of books, music, or cinema. Just having a blog for the sake of having a blog will not translate into success. The bottom line is that you must be able to define the purpose of your blog in terms of value that it will generate for the reader.

Choose a blogging platform

You will need a blogging application to blog with. This is what you will use to upload and publish the content on your blog. The more popular platforms out there include Blogger, WordPress and TypePad. There are a host of other platforms too that offer robust features and designing capabilities to the users. Browse through the features that each of them offers to get a feel for what you find most suitable. Keep in mind what you are trying to achieve with your blog in terms of user features, functionalities, widgets, etc., and choose a platform that will meet your needs.

Start uploading quality content out

Now that you have decided on your purpose, and your platform, the next thing to do is to start publishing high quality content on your blog. Always keep in mind that it is the quality of what you put out and not the quantity of it that will determine whether people will keep coming back to read your blog, and whether they will share or recommend your blog to their friends. When creating a blog post, keep in mind what the reader is going to get out of it. It could be new information about a business strategy or an innovation in the industry. It could be a music review that makes him want to listen to the artist or an article that makes him think afresh about some aspect of life.

Start promoting your blog

A blog out there by itself will attract very few readers no matter how earnestly you create good content. You have to get the word out. You can do this in a number of ways. You can use your online social networks to let them know about your blog. You can include the blog in your company stationery and in your email signatures. You can create attractive banners or pop-ups on your company website to let people know that there is a blog up. Many bloggers have found that community-bookmarking sites can generate large amounts of quality traffic. As you study the art and science of blogging further, you will want to familiarize yourself with the concepts of SEO, various ways of improving your page rank, URL optimization, use of keywords and other technical tweaks that can lead to higher traffic.

Network with other bloggers in your niche

As you start adding content to your blog and promoting it, you will want to know what the standards for blogging are in your particular niche. You can do this by linking up with other bloggers who are doing something similar to your blog. Study their blogs, and see how they are using the tricks of internet marketing to attract people to their blog. Start a dialog with them by commenting on their posts. Do not fall into the trap of doing this for the sake of a link back to your blog, but to exchange ideas and add to the value of the post. As your opinions are noticed, you will find people automatically coming to your blog to see what you have to say about things.

Blogging is an extremely useful tool for small businesses and writers to get word out to people about their products, thoughts, and opinions. It costs little more than the time that you spend creating classy content, but it can bring in huge rewards. Building up a dedicated readership of a blog takes time and persistence. Do not expect to find your sales zooming once you put a blog out. A blog is only a referral or a lead generating tool, and one that can only be built with time. Be patient and enjoy the process of learning about the latest techniques and tips and tricks of blogging. As you build up a significant body of work, and a sizable number of repeat visitors, your blog will slowly turn into an important part of your marketing strategy.

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About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger who is a fashion buff and very passionate about learning new things. Her latest interest these days is in learning about architecture. She recently shared an article on green design.

*picture from google images.

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Blogussion: Miss Manners

Manners are not only important in everyday physical life but increasingly important with your online interactions as well. Here are some  rules  I’ve learned.

Some tips:

• Don’t hesitate to give credit where credit is due. If the content you have written about has been inspired by someone else then don’t forget to give them credit. You can do this by both mentioning them by name and providing a link to their content.
• ·         Respond to your comments. Many of us (even myself) have made the mistake of thinking that the comments on the blog don’t need a response, but now I have learned that it’s really just bad manners to ignore your comments, because you’re pretty much ignoring your own readers. Think about it this way, if I were giving a presentation in front of the audience, and someone recognized how hard I worked on it, I would most definitely recognize and thank them, so I should be doing the same with my comments as well.
• ·         Don’t comment just to advertise, make it count! When commenting on other people’s blogs, contribute to the conversation, don’t use it as an advertising board. Leaving just a ‘me too’ as a comment in order to get your link noticed is very rude, and if you are doing this repeatedly across the board, that’s called ‘Spamming’ No doubt, that commenting other’s blogs is one of the nice ways to get yours noticed, but remember that most of the bloggers and their readers are going to be able to differentiate between a genuine comment vs. spamming.
• ·         Be humble. Remember that every blogger has to start somewhere, and it might be nice to occasionally give a ”shout out” to some bloggers out there who are working hard and posting interesting content.

Hey this is my first post – how did I do?

Edit: Thank you for the positive comments for my very first post here on Blogussion. Now I will endeavor to make a commitment to write more, post more often, and of course respond to my audience!

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Taglines have been around ever since we were creating something for others to view or buy with competition present. Then, people and businesses turned more to their marketing plan and brand personality when designing or redesigning their taglines. How does your tagline match up in this huge blogosphere? It’s crucial to let your voice be heard and “stand out from the crowd“.

“Stand out from the crowd” is a five word tagline, but says more than just those five words. Yes, not all of those words really help the mission and focus of the message to people, but they all work together to deliver one powerful voice.

Many of us treat a tagline as a way to describe our blog. We either say what our content is going to deliver or we simply just explain the name of our blog.

You want to be boring, unoriginal, and just clutter the blogosphere?

Center every aspect of your blog around your tagline

I hope not. I push for bloggers and people in general online to truly be who they are and replicate that through all of their online actions and the ultimate beginning it having a tagline that’s powerful and speaks your voice. My tagline describes my energy, desire, and push for people to be happy and be noticed online. I push myself to do the same and it shows I do just that inside my content.

Surely, there’s a secret to creating the ultimate tagline for your blog. It’s you, your message, and ultimately how you want you are your blog to be memorable.

Delivering Your Message with Power

Taglines are important. Without them we would have to write a very long blog name or there would be many blogs named, “Read My Content and Hear My Voice”. Yes, that might be extreme but the point is is that if your tagline is weak it’s almost like you have no tagline at all.

We want to make our message clear, but not too clear (obvious). Does your blog have a tagline such as:

• An Entrepreneur Blog
• Making Money Online
• Blogging About Technology

If so, consider changing it. You’re not delivering your message with power. You are delivering the message that simply would say, “received your message” in a text message or email inbox.

Be creative and James Chartrand, in her post on CopyBlogger says to think about the benefits that anyone coming to your blog will gain. Along with being creative, clear, and powerful at the same time you need to think about your voice.

Listening to Your Own Voice

Your voice is ultimately the number one thing that makes a blogger truly and always stick out and be known. Their style of writing. Their focus. Their relationship with the content.

But, so many bloggers feel that by just them putting their name on a post or blog shows their voice. Well, this might be true if you have a community that talks about you and their chatter is essentially your voice.

Problem is that while you still might have this, there is still new community members. How are they going to truly know your mission and voice. Everyone first goes to the tagline to get a general sense and that is when they determine whether to stay or not. Surely an active and high quality community does help to attract them, but no tagline and your community then has every right and power to redefine you and your blog. Be careful!

It’s about you helping them and being yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What do you truly believe in?
• What is a problem you currently see and how can you make a difference?
• You have hidden talents, now how are you going to make people notice them?
• What’s your true devotion and desire at the end of the day?

These are just some. The point is that your tagline has to be original and you have to stand by it 101% in your content and community engagement in order for it to be powerful.

Make and Leave Your Mark

It could also be, building your true influence with people. Just look at the 30 most influential people online. Each of them have a distinct place on the web. When digging through the origin of how they got this far it would come down to their very own personal mission statement. That mission statement is a tagline.

Stick to It or Rebrand

Once you’ve taken another look at your tagline and find your content and voice to not match up, rebranding is a must. Why?

• You’ve gotten people to read and join something you don’t have a strong voice in anymore
• Your true supporters and community will thank you later
• You will be happier and more successful!

There is never a good time to really rebrand, except the sooner the better. If this is you, get to work, and hustle!

Your tagline is your engine

If not, stick to your tagline and center all aspects of your blog around that tagline.

Want more? I offer my voice at my very own blog called UniqueBlog and since it’s launch two weeks ago its been getting nothing short of a positive response.

Please know its NOT a blog teaching you how to blog or any blogging tips. It’s merely a place, community, and resource for you to discover your hidden talent and stand out from the crowd online.

I only promote UniqueBlog, because I strongly believe it to be the next blog you should all be apart of. You can even see how I got started and why I’m writing how I write today in my personal story.

How are you transforming or practicing your current tagline today?

Photo by atomicshark

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Everyone has their personal story of how they got to where they are right now. But, what if I asked you if you’ve formed your network of “weak ties” or what others may call an alliance or even an inner circle. These “weak ties” I want to talk about are people you have many casual talks with, but when it comes time to press forward they are there for you and will introduce you to their very own.

Weak ties are relationships that can always be brought together but strive to be as casual as possible.

First things first. We need to form our very own network of these so called “weak ties”. Now, I formed mine by establishing a connection with someone, then they knew someone, and then I met another person who happened to be Rob Rammuny. Rob and I really connected and he would be my first “weak tie”. From then on I began to build this network. This could happen to you. It’s all about the right action, amount of effort, and what you’re willing to put on the line for others.

The Choice is Yours

Like with everything you have to decide and in this case you have to decide whether forming a network of “weak ties” is what you want. Believe it or not I know many bloggers or people on the web that continue to do great things because they have formed this kind of network. You might notice whenever someone endorses or promotes a product on their blog, more than likely that person is apart of that person’s “inner circle“.

This is no membership kind of status, its merely a knowing of great people that you have trust in and want to carry out a casual conversation.

Importance of this Network

When deciding to adapt to something like this and start putting it into practice you want to know the benefits. Here are some and really will all depend on the chemistry of your specific network:

• Talking about any blog expansions before you test it out in your community.
• A start of getting something to go viral and getting yourself to truly stand out.
• People will start to see your network and appreciate you and everyone else in the network. Support goes up!

Time, Effort, and Many Conversations

Everything, if you want it to be done right in your personal way, takes time and effort but many people still don’t get this.

Think about your true friendships. They just didn’t happen overnight and there is no such thing as an overnight success. It’s about time and using the time to your personal fullest with as much effort as possible.

This kind of network of people takes that along with many conversations. These conversations could consist of the following:

• Seeing something you’ve done, here’s my input.
• What you do in the free time and how’s your day going?
• I came across this and thought you’d be interested.

These are of course just some of so many ways to get conversations started with people that you would like in your network. Just refrain from too much self promotion and the possibility of annoying them.

Also strive to brings these conversations offline over a good and comfortable amount of time.

Who to Look For

Now, who should you be looking for to join your network?

It’s really all up to you, but think about who is at your or around your level and who is higher than you or really who influences you. For example, I think Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Darren Rowse, and Matt Cheuvront are higher than me. I determine this by overall community response.

It’s all a matter of you pushing them and them pushing you

Then, I look at who is around my level. This is everyone else. Most people know who is higher than them and they look up to them for advice. But, many of us don’t know who we should talk to that is not in this “higher level” group deemed by the general audience.

This is where you have to decide the following:

• What’s their mission, vision, and purpose?
• What do they really care about?
• What drives them?

All of us need to think about:

• How will this person benefit me if I make good conversation with them?

Who knows the people you begin to network with might have their own network and then many more doors open up for you.

The First Steps to Formation

• Know who you’re looking for and that you can help them and they can help you.
• Treat your conversations as if you were standing next to them, striving to get somewhere in a healthy manner, but as casually as possible. (No sales pitches here)
• Start building the relationship without becoming annoying. Make them your friend. Begin achieving success together.

Do you have this kind of network? If not, why?

Photo by Daniel Zedda

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Are you drowning in a sea of bloggers who are blogging about the very same topic you are? Is your voice getting lost in the crowd? Are you tired of being non-existent among search engine results pages? If so, it's time to get with the program and start "Cornering the Market!"

Like many others out there, I thought I should blog about my passion. Which I certainly would encourage everyone to do. However, what do you do if your passion is a popular one? Are you up for the challenge of competing in a saturated market? In this post, I will explain why you may want to consider blogging about a topic somewhat "off the beaten path" in an effort to run a successful blog and perhaps even start making money.

See The Beaten Path and Avoid It

People tend to think alike

In my experience, I have found that most people tend to think alike. As a website developer, I’m often being presented with proposals for starting blogs, usually fashion, celebrity gossip, or finance. I think starting a blog is a great idea for many reasons, but my advice to these people is, "you had better be one heck of a salesman, writer, and personality." Otherwise, be ready to hustle.

Me, I’m into the development of internet culture, application websites in particular, and how people are using them. A little over a year ago, I decided I was going to start my own blog about web culture. Nearly every day I myself read several popular blogs on the subject. Clearly there is a demand! How could I go wrong?

Then it occurred to me, the internet is flooded with bloggers and teams of bloggers like TechCrunch practically shoveling first-rate content at us on a daily basis! How was I supposed to compete with that level of content flow? So much for being the Web culture guru!

Recognize The Opportunity & Do Your Research

Eight months later, a friend approached me about developing a craft beer blog. He was an avid fan of craft beer, very knowledgeable, and seemed enthusiastic about starting the venture, so I told him I would consider it. Craft beer wasn't exactly my passion, nor did I have what I felt was the required knowledge to be an authority on the subject. Nonetheless, I did some research on the beer industry and took a look around the Blogosphere to see what sites were covering craft beer.

I was pleased to discover that few beer bloggers appeared to possess the skills or resources I have as a website developer and video editor. Furthermore, it didn't seem as though they fully understood many of the aspects of blogging that we discuss here at Blogussion, things like proper internet marketing strategies.

After doing my research, I felt the niche was ripe for the taking.

As I worked on the design of our blog, I continued to study other successful bloggers and learn the tricks of the trade. I decided our site would approach craft beer from a different angle. It would be more about entertainment than information, since many blogs were already covering that area of the industry. This turned out to be a good decision.

Enjoy The Success & Build On It

In what felt like no time (half a year to be exact), our traffic is doubling from month to month, our brand is becoming widely recognized within the beer community, and we are now in the process of developing advertising relationships. Not to mention, nearly half of our traffic is Google organic!

Of course building the blog and community has been and continues to be a lot of hard work. There is still lots to do if we are to be as big as I hope we can be, but in a relatively short amount of time we were able to start building what I see as a promising community of dedicated viewers, and I believe that’s because I (along with my partner) recognized a need and sought to fill it.

Look beyond the obvious

There are so many needs out there not being met. Unfortunately, most bloggers are supplying ones that already are. My advice is to look beyond the obvious. Why attempt to grow your blog on land that is already being tilled? I’m finding running a promising blog with an active and growing community to be exciting and a lot of fun. Who wants to run a blog where no one comments? Perhaps providing a useful resource for like-minded individuals was my passion!

If you see an opportunity, but don’t possess the knowledge on a subject, find someone who does and team up. Let your job be managing the blog and promoting it. That’s plenty. Take it from me.

What do you think?

Is "Cornering the Market" a valid approach to running a blog or should we stick to our passions no matter how popular or competitive they may be?

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1. What are the best methods for marketing blog articles? – Wired Weekend

2. How to Market Articles Without Leaving Your Blog

3. Stop Blogging About Blogging Already

If you’re a blogger, it isn’t hard to figure out what you visitors came to your website for: content. And as a webmaster, it’s your job to give your visitors what they’re looking for. There are many ways to do this, especially under the world’s best and most expandable blogging platform, WordPress.

Why is Giving Important?

Giving your visitors more gives your visitors a reason to stay on and come back to your website later. If you’re blogging for income, this means more ad-clicks, more affiliate sales, and most importantly, more subscribers. You easily can appear to have tons of content on your website to both users and content-hungry search engines, which you actually already do, but the visitor doesn’t usually see this. All of these benefits without writing a single word of extra content. Internet browsers are constantly looking for and sharing content.

By using the techniques outlined below, you can lead them to your content using nothing more than your own blog.

Use “Related” Plugins

The WordPress plugins that tell visitors which content on your website  they’d likely find interesting are amazing. These addons use special algorithms to know what your visitors are looking for with accuracy. But these plugins don’t stop at helping visitors find new content. They also help search engines find and index more of it and, using internal linking, they add to your website’s link popularity.

How?

These kind of plugins create networks of links in seconds for every page of content you write. Content links to more content. This is an internal linking wonderland, and internal linking does pass PageRank. There is no reason, especially if you use WordPress, to implement a “Related Posts/Content” to your blog, preferably after each post.

Use “Popular Content” Widgets

As we already know, it is very important to give your visitors more content. A good way to do this is to highlight the best parts of your website. And in blogging, that is your content. But more specifically, which content? Your most popular content. Your most popular content is content that your readers have signaled to you to be the best on your website by commenting and sharing.

But why is it important to make this content even more popular?

Don’t overdue what’s popular, just make them aware

You know because it’s popular that this content is good and well-liked. If a visitor gets pulled into an article like this, they may feel inclined to share, read more, or even subscribe to your blog and buy a product. Many people disagree and say that you shouldn’t work on making your popular content more popular, but rather do the same for your unpopular content. Although this is true in a way, it is false in many more ways. Still, do not overdo this, your popular content should only be featured on a widget on your sidebar or footer, and nothing more.

Use “Random Content” Plugins

A new nearly-unlimited source of new con­tent

The major flaw of the “Popular Content” plugins is that they only show a top few of your posts, and they don’t change too much. Random content plugins fix all of this. They show your user a few posts on your blog, picked at random – when you refresh your browser, a few new posts will be shown. This creates an effective solution for easily giving your readers a new nearly-unlimited source of new content right from your sidebar. Plus, these plugins are easy to set up and you can get them running in seconds, whilst popular content plugins may take a few days to setup as they gather post traffic data.

Have an Internal Structure, and Not Just Within Your Posts

Another way to give your visitors more of your content is to make it easier for them to read it.

The problem with most blogs is a lack of internal structure. This mistake has the power to anchor a website’s search engine rankings. But by internal structure, I don’t mean the structure of your content – that’s a completely different post. I mean how your website as a whole is structured. With blogging systems evolving quickly, it is becoming easier and easier to forget about this.

So what should you do about this?

Simply structure your site in an easy to understand way. Make sure that a visitor can easily find what they’re looking for, and be sure to use categories and tags effectively. Also add nofollow links to archives and categories within your blog sidebar/footer. This minimizes what the user has to go through to get more from your blog, and therefore increases your conversion rates, whether they are for RSS or ad clicks.

“3 Clicks Rule”

One related rule I try to follow myself is the “3 Clicks Rule”. The rule states that no page should be more than 3 (link) clicks from your homepage. This makes sure that no page on your website is too weak in terms of link popularity and that each page can be reached with little effort from the visitor. A great way to implement this on your website is to use a Sitemap and link to it within your footer so each page is only 2 clicks away from any other page.

First Sights

Always give your readers more

Your blog is a home to tons of quality content. But what does the visitor see? Only the first page of your posts. It’s important to put some of your blog (sidebar/footer) to use giving visitors more content. The tips above are some great methods you can use to help visitors get more from your website. They also provide a way for you to build your active community  - the more content a reader sees, the more comments they make. Finally, giving your users more also gives search engines more to index and builds the link popularity of all of your posts automatically.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, be sure to retweet and share! It won’t promote itself!

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1. Want Massive Exposure? I Don’t Think You’re Ready For It

2. 4 Easy Ways To Increase Readership On Your Blog

3. Blog Design: Making the most out of your footer space