One of the major problems many people face is getting traffic to a blog, and the truth in the online world is that traffic is very essential to any online business you do; it is traffic that brings about people that buy.

This post will be talking about 5 ways you can significantly increase your website traffic.

1. Blog Commenting

I just began to realize the power of blog commenting. Blog commenting is a powerful way to get traffic to your website especially if done wisely and on a large scale.

One major thing about blog commenting is that it also helps you build a great brand when people begin to see your comments every here and there.

It is very important to make use of avatars when trying to get traffic to your blog through blog commenting because this will help people take note of you when they begin to see you everywhere every now and then. Being the first person to comment also helps a lot because most people are likely to visit the websites of a few of the first commenters and they rarely visit the rest.

When commenting to get traffic, quality is better than quantity because a lot of bloggers will delete your comment if you write generic comments and readers tend to click on valuable comments more than any other comments because they believe someone with this type of great comment will also have something similar on his blog.

2. Guest Posting

7 of the top ten referrers in my analytics data are from my guest posts and all of them sent me over 150 unique visitors. Guest posting is really effective and the power of a guest post should never be underestimated.

One thing I have come to notice with guest posts is that people prefer quality over quantity; if your guest post is a great one then you will get more visitors from it than just writing anything.

Many people tend to write just any guest post because they believe since the blog is not theirs then their best post should be on their blog, this is not supposed to be because of several reasons. One major advantage of submitting quality guest posts is that it helps you build a relationship with the blogger and his readers but if you just write anything there is a probability of the blogger declining your post, and if he doesn’t his readers will not visit your blog. The better your guest post, the better your result.

3. Blogging Communities

This is one underutilized traffic generation strategy many bloggers don’t use, many bloggers tend to give excuses that they are busy, If you are busy then you might want to be submitting your guest posts to blogging communities every weekend.

Some of the best blogging communities are MMO Social Network and Blog Engage; these two networks have sent me hundreds of visitors over time.

One major thing to consider when trying to get the best from blogging communities is that you have to have high quality posts and you also have to build relationship because people tend to vote up people they know and if you have an high quality post people will be more inclined to visit your blog.

4.  Forum Marketing

There was a time I signed up to the warrior forums and with only 50 posts I had already gotten over 70 visitors to my blog, I didn’t post a link to my blog in my posts, it was in the signature.

You can get great results from forum marketing if it is done properly, one great thing to consider when trying to market your blog through forums is that it is very important to try as much as possible to help others and not just spam people for your benefit.

If your aim is to go to forums to go and spam then within a short period of time you will be banned but if you focus on helping as many people as possible the end result will be you lasting longer in the forum, having more friends and building more stronger relationship and you will also have more traffic and authority.

Some great forums to get started are the Warrior Forum and Digitalpoint Forum.

5. Mailing List

I wouldn’t have put this on this list but it is also a very effective way to get traffic to your blog. I was checking my overall stats today and I discovered that my mailing list has sent me hundreds of visitors, this is a good number because I only sent my posts to them a few times.

One of the major benefits of a mailing list is the instant result it provides, people tend to respond faster because they are closer to their email than any other thing.

I have also observed mails I sent and I discovered that your titles matter, I have had sent emails have as low as 15% open rate and I have also had emails have over 35% open rate but what matters most is the title. If you have a cool and attractive title then you will get more results than having generic titles.

Getting traffic to blogs used to be a difficult task and I started noticing a difference over time. It is the tips in this post that is helping me get thousands of visitors to my 3 months old blog every week, use them to your advantage and you will be amazed at how they work.

It is also important to know that getting traffic takes time and requires constant effort, if you are dedicated to making the effective use of the above tips then in no time you will be getting a lot of traffic on autopilot.

Related posts:

1. Blog Promotion: 169 New Ways to Build Traffic like a Ninja

2. 6 Simple Ways to Build Traffic!

3. 4 Unusual (And Long Term) Ways to Promote Your Blog Using Forums

What makes your established community, committed readers, or frequent visitors leave some sort of response to your blog? It’s because of our quality content, our inviting community, or that we interact with our readers. It’s not because we simply ask for their comments or thoughts. Why not? This gets our community to respond, but it’s not really an urge. Here’s how we can change this.

Please know and understand that I’m trying to allow for you (as a blogger) not to always worry about getting responses on your blog.

What “Urge” I’m Talking About

Surely we bloggers or site owners can tell people to leave a comment, their input, or participate in some discussion. We can still do this by all means, but what if we could do more by asking less?

A community response does not just have to be a comment left on the blog. Remember that

This is what I’m calling the “urge” .

If we can create some sort or type of urge within our frequent, new, or dedicated visitors/readers we’ll get this response naturally. So, I’ve thought about how I could instill some urge in my future community for my blog, instead of just always asking, “what do you think?”

Content Transparency

On our blogs we all talk about a certain topic or niche. Many if not all posts we write and publish for our readers/visitors are to help them to do what will benefit them. Well, many of these posts originate from what we have personally found out or personally believe.

Stand by your content at all times

What if we aren’t doing what we tell others? Questions arise.

Whatever we are telling or talking about in our blogs to our community we all need to be transparent within our own blog (in and out). Now, I know many things we say on our blogs are to help others and since the blogosphere is so huge and diverse they might not actually be for us as the blogger. What we do need to do as the blogger is stand by what we have said, offer reason, and insure the content we produce is of great quality to you and the community.

Remember content is king, but its not pristine with any transparency by us.

Gaining Knowledge or Thought

While having a conversation with a few different people who rarely visit blogs, I gained some useful information on why they would even leave a response on a blog.

The reasons centered around them wanting to leave a response were:

• Adding their own twist because they are passionate about that certain subject
• Providing a case study or story
• Pointing out why they could be missing something again because they are passionate about the subject

These reasons are people that rarely visit a blog and might rarely know who the blogger actually is. Think about it. They probably did a Google Search and found your blog/article.

Building that Influence

Influence is defined as “the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others”.

We know that many bloggers are talking about the importance to have this influence for you and your community. They are right. Specifically, this importance comes down to your community having the urge to leave their response.

Think about the blogs we visit and seem to always offer our response. We might personally know them. Chances are though that we know of them. And we leave our response because we look up to them, take their content to heart, and want to show our continued support or gratitude.

If we all strive to build this influence that urges us to leave our response, this could just all have a trickle down effect. You being influential, other seeing that, your community urges to respond. The cycle goes on.

What’s Your Attraction / Drive?

I’ve highlighted how we can all instill this “urge” for community response by being:

• Being transparent with our own content
• Offering the purpose to gain knowledge or thought
• Building your own personal influence

With all of this taken into consideration we must all know what our attraction and drive is for each of our communities.

If we don’t know this then we can’t effectively instill this urge I’ve been talking about. Yes, this will be you trying to really figure out your passion. It will also be you striving to really stand out in your niche, area of interest, and the blogosphere.

I still want you to know that none and I mean none of this can be done if your content or even design for your blog is not of great quality in your own eyes.

Related posts:

1. Creating a Trend to Effectively Stand Out

2. How to Build a Community Around Your Blog

3. How to Connect Better With Your Community and See Results

Every webmaster wants traffic. They want it in huge amounts. But little do they realize that sudden bursts of traffic are just the thing they don’t want coming to their websites.

Confused? Let me explain.

First of all, by “ready for it,” I mean “ready to take advantage of it.”

As a blogger, your goal is to get your website and your name out there. You want to be known. You want more ad-clicks, and more sales. And part of that is getting traffic. Those are all common, realistic goals.

But the part of blogging that makes it a unique opportunity is that giving up will get you nowhere.

First of all, if you’re prone to throwing up a red flag when something goes wrong or something becomes difficult, reconsider blogging.

Seriously.

Because you’ll never learn how to use your traffic effectively by slacking off. It’s that easy.

If you’re like most other bloggers, (lazy) all of your hard work in getting that massive traffic you were always dreaming of will mean nothing. Why? Because your traffic won’t help you.

Traffic by itself is worthless. However, if you know how to use it the right way, we have a completely different story. With a proper strategy for taking advantage of your traffic, success becomes within reach. After that, all you have to do is get traffic, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

The problem with blogging is that it’s so easy for your visitors to take advantage of YOU. A visitor will have no problem going to your blog, getting the information they need, and leaving without another thought. A typical scenario. After all, that’s the idea behind the World Wide Web. It’s a quick way to find the information you need. But what did you get from all of your hard work writing content? Nothing. Just a new visitor in your statistics.

But as I said before, that visit and that visitor are completely worthless to you.

That same visitor will probably never stumble across your site again. You didn’t even get an ad-click from that guy. So an important question rises: As a blogger, how do you properly take advantage of your readers so that they aren’t the only ones benefiting from your content?

Make Them Want More

Remember, your visitors came to your website looking for something. Probably content. So you’re going to need to make your content amazing. You may argue that this will only let your readers take advantage of you even more, but trust me: it won’t.

Making your writing amazing helps you the most in the end. More subscribers, more dedicated readers, and more people to click on your ads.

Do you think some of the top bloggers today made it to where they are by writing garbage content? They did it by writing content that’s so useful that it makes readers want more.

If a visitor likes your content enough to stay on your blog and look for more, here’s another opportunity to make something of them:

Help Them Find Exactly What They Want

Your blog can easily confuse a visitor. Because as bloggers, we have more knowledge on relevant topics, than our readers. It can be easy to turn a satisfied reader into a confused one.

To avoid this, you’re going to need to make your blog design as simple and inviting as possible for potential new visitors.

To make it easier for visitors to navigate your site, make sure you have a search form available. Luckily, if you’re using WordPress, this is already done for you. But you can also make the search form easier to find (like putting it above the fold) so that your readers won’t have to waste time looking for it.

This should go without saying, but your navigation bar should highlight pages on your website that would help a new visitor. For example, links to your blog categories are a great thing to put in your navigation bar. So is a link to a contact form, just in case your new readers have any questions or comments on your content.

Now what happens if a visitor wants to subscribe to your blog? You’ll have to make a link to that pretty visible, or your “massive traffic” will be a massive fail.

Remember this old post on Blogussion on how 2 guest posts got them 200 new subscribers? Want to know Blogussion’s secret? They were… ready (surprise surprise!) for the massive traffic that comes with a guest post.

They converted traffic into subscribers, which later have a higher chance of becoming customers. If you want to gain that many subscribers with only a couple simple guest posts, you’ll have to be ready.

Here’s something that is overlooked by most bloggers: (yes, even me, until a few days ago) their 404 page. Often, when a reader is looking for something, they end up on a 404 page. Whether they were referred from a search engine or a a backlink from another site, they didn’t find what they were looking for. There’s been a mistake. But you can fix that mistake.

Because this post isn’t about 404 pages (but this one is), I’ll stop here.

The point I’m trying to make is make your blog as easy to use as possible and as accessible as possible. If people can’t find their way around your blog, what’s the point of them even coming to your blog in the first place? They’ll just be another one of those worthless visitors.

What’s Traffic Without Conversions?
I hope it’s obvious now that the traffic to your blog isn’t everything. You can have all of the traffic in the world and still fail to get a single product sale. Instead of pure quantity of website traffic, measuring your success as a blogger is more about how you take advantage of it.

Related posts:

1. #1 Traffic Tip You Are Not Ready For

2. The Easy Blogging Life: Are you Ready for it?

3. 6 Plugins You Should Always Have Ready For Blog Emergencies

When I began my blog about blogging, I decided to not make the same mistakes I had in creating previous blogs. I decided to have a concrete marketing plan, one that I would stick to no matter what. After all, most Internet marketing plans are not flawed intrinsically but flawed in the way they are carried out.

Today, I’d like to reveal some of the key concepts of my particular marketing campaign and where I am in that plan. I can honestly say that after 3 months I am right where I intended to be, no where near the top of my niche but slowly gaining ground.

Below is a brief overview of my plan. I’m giving away just enough information as to not show my hand to any would-be copycats.

The Battle Plan

Phase 1: Foundational Content Building

Since I’ve started my blog about blogging in February, I’ve written over 70 posts, which amounts to something like 3 to 5 posts per week. Some weeks, the information just flies out of my brain like a jet stream of free-flowing consciousness. Other weeks, I just can’t get motivated and need to rely on things like Alex’s official “Get Your Ass in Gear or Bad Things Will Happen” list, which is really all the inspiration I need sometimes.

The importance of having a vast archive of information is essential to any blog marketing campaign. Not because people like to crawl your archives (you are the only person who does that) but because your archives serve as a catalyst for permanent, ever-flowing search engine traffic.

Once you have a substantial archive of original information, you can afford credibility from Google. I’ve developed websites for years and, in accordance with what the gurus say, Google uses original content quantity as a primary factor in determining rankings. That means that if you set out to target an individual keyword for Google traffic, you are much more likely to be successful if your landing page is found on a site with a vast number of other pages.

This may seem obvious but many web entrepreneurs set out to sell a product online through a single page site (sometimes called a mini or micro site) and driving traffic solely on the merit of strong link building campaigns.

Mini-sites can be great for selling products through referral and affiliate traffic (traffic from other sites) or for social media campaigns (e.g.: Matt Inman’s army of comic mini sites including Things Bears Love) but are comparatively less effective than content rich sites for attracting organic search engine traffic. Because of the nature of blogging, my guess is that most bloggers are looking to get traffic by building content-rich sites.

The definition of a content-rich site

At what point is a blog considered content-rich in the eyes of search engines? That’s a matter that is very much up for debate among web developers. Some gurus say 100 pages is enough. I’ve decided half that number, primarily because a majority of my first few dozen posts are long (over 600 words).

Phase 2: Short-tail Keyword Targeting

After about 50 posts or so, I decided to move into phase two and target short-tail keywords (logical search terms) to establish credibility with Google and get that initial flow of traffic. I use all ree methods of link-building which includes but is not limited to: commenting on do-follow blogs, link exchanges and article marketing.

Manual link-building is a tedious task and the fruits of your labor are not seen until many months later, if ever seen at all. The best and most powerful links are natural links or those that come from other websites voluntarily. Ironically, you can’t get natural links until you first have unnatural links – or links created as a direct result of your efforts.

If you think people like Chris Brogan still spend time manually building links by submitting to article directories, commenting on other blogs and asking for reciprocal links, think again.

Chris Brogan has put his time into manual link building, and is now enjoying the benefits of a constant stream of natural links. All Brogan has to do is provide the content. Now, the quantity of natural links Brogan receives is only variable to the quality of his content. That’s where I want to be in three years. First I’ve got to put my hard time in.

You can replace the name “Chris Brogan” with the name of any big-time blogger. All big-time bloggers have one thing in common: they worked extremely hard to get to where they are now. If you thought Internet marketing was going to be easy money, get out now.

So far, I’ve successfully targeted two major keywords in my niche and ranked 1st in Google for both of them. Along with passively targeted long-tail keyword traffic, the two targeted short-tail keywords have given me roughly 200 daily visitors and an Alexa ranking close to 200K. That’s quite an achievement for me. Soon I will be moving on to phase three, which I will briefly explain below.

Phase 3: Extroverted Marketing

The two previous phases in my plan were somewhat introverted. I needed to build an enormous stockpile of content for MY site. I needed to build links to MY site. Phase three involves something a bit counter-intuitive: building quality content for OTHER PEOPLE’S sites.

Rather than only offering something of value on my own site, I will soon focus my marketing efforts on bringing value to other sites in my niche. On the Internet, very few things are accomplished alone; through the use of guest blogging, I can grow my blog by providing a service to other bloggers.

Guest posting is not for everyone. It requires strong copyediting skills and a tenacity that will not dimmer when posts are rejected or never looked at. Writing is my forte so I am very excited to soon be moving into phase 3 of my plan.

There is a large base of make money on the Internet, blog tips and SEO blogs authored by non-English speakers that have found enormous success by relying on marketing tactics that require no writing ability whatsoever. This is because search engines don’t know the difference between good copy and bad. People do know the difference. If you plan on guest posting you really ought to learn how to use a semi-colon first.

That’s MY Plan…

Now that I have given a brief outline of my blog marketing plan and where I am in it, I’d like to hear what some of the Blogussion readers have as a plan and where they are in it.

Do you even have a marketing plan? Do you consider yourself on track with it? What parts of your marketing campaign need to be amended?

Related posts:

1. Blog Optimization Series: Search Engine Marketing (2/3)

2. The Field of Dreams Myth

3. Blog Optimization Series: Search Engine Optimzation (1/3)

Guest posts are life savers to many bloggers. I know I would stress out about writing five blog posts a week if it weren’t for guest writers. So for everyone who has generously submitted a post to Blogussion: thank you. You make it easier for me, and everyone else you write for.

I am usually very excited to open my admin panel and find a new guest post in queue. It actually makes me a lot more motivated to start working for the day. But upon opening a guest post and seeing what some people submit, my happiness goes just as fast as it came.

Some people just don’t really care what they submit to a blog.

Now, not every guest post I have ever received is bad. Most of them are great, and I can’t wait to publish them out onto Blogussion. Just look at a few of the great posts I have received from others in the past:

• How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections
• Capturing Readers With Creative Leads
• King’s Ultimate Guide to Design Perfection
• Refresh your blogging process in 4 simple steps
• 9 ways to treat your blog more like a brick and mortar business

The problem that I have with some of the guest posts that are submitted here, is that some people just don’t care. They don’t care about the blogger, they just want to gain traffic to their site. I don’t think some people understand rejection, so they don’t take guest blogging seriously.

But it is important, and it’s not something you can just mess around with. It’s a fundamental aspect of marketing, and some people just f**k it up with a lack of care.

I have been blogging for almost a year and a half now, so let me tell you that I have seen some horrible guest post submissions here. Things like:

• Terrible grammar and spelling.
• ZERO formatting, all one giant block of text.
• Duplicate/ripped articles.
• A giant plug for their site.
• Completely off-topic articles.

I just don’t know what it is with a guest post that makes some people stop caring. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

What you should do with EVERY guest post you write

I am trying to get more into guest posting myself as I don’t really do it. I just recently submitted an article to a high-profile blog, and I spent more time than I usually do on posts just to make sure everything sounds great. Wish me luck!

But while writing that post, I came up with a list of rules in my head to follow. I figured I would write them down here so you can refer back to them when you’re writing your own guest posts, or going through submissions on your own blog.

1. Take it Seriously

An article you submit elsewhere needs to be take more seriously than one you put on your own blog. Since you’re not calling the shots, you don’t have room for messing up (usually you get chances to make revisions, but the quicker the better).

A guest post can bring in a ton of traffic to your blog, and even bring new readers into your community. That is HUGE for all of us, and it’s worth spending the extra time getting right. Readership is step one to a successful blog. Don’t mess around!

2. Do some research

Before you even begin writing that article, do some research on the blog you want to write for. This is the #1 thing I tell people who submit those guest posts that look like they were done in ten minutes:

Look around the blog, compare your article to an article of mine, or another guest writer’s article.

If some people actually take the time to do research of the blog they want to write for and try to write in a style that matches the other articles on the blog, then there won’t be any problems for either parties.

3. Format!

I reject articles on the spot that have no spacing between paragraphs. I will not even dare to add spacing myself, and I shouldn’t have to. It should already be done for me, and I have to assume that if the writer didn’t take the time to add even this most basic type of formatting to their article, they also didn’t take the time to write quality. That’s just how I look at things.

If you don’t want to add headlines, no problem. If you don’t want lists – no problem. I don’t even ask that you use basic styling like bold or italics. All I ask is that you add spacing between paragraphs, everything else can be added by me. And I’m not the only blogger who is that lenient either, so many of you are in luck!

4. Go the extra mile

I always love when I see that a blogger has taken the time to add images into a post. Even though the way we add images to posts here at Blogussion is completely whack, I always appreciate the effort very heavily.

No one will deny your guest post if you don’t add an image into your submission, but it never hurts to make your post as beautiful and as enticing as possible.

5. Stay Professional

This is what I absolutely hate seeing when I chat with people who want to write for me. In the email they send me to tell me about their guest post, they use improper grammar. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone makes spelling mistakes. I’d be lying to say I didn’t, and even Copyblogger isn’t perfect.

But it is just unreal how some people can’t even take time to formulate proper sentences in their request to write for me.

When you go to send your proposition to another blogger, please do both of you a favor and follow these guidelines in your email:

• Use spell check, and write complete sentences.
• Address the blogger by their name. Don’t spell that wrong either.
• Get straight to the point, don’t even waste time telling your life story. Let your article do all the talking.
• Never consider writing for someone else if you can’t give it your all.

You don’t have to suck-up to anyone you want to write for. It is actually a privilege for anyone to receive an article you have written. But it’s not an obligation for anyone to actually use it, so don’t be hurt if you’re rejected.

What’s Your Experience?
Do you have any bad experiences with guest posts? What made that particular post so bad that you just couldn’t approve it? Share them all here, I’m sure you have some to tell.

Related posts:

1. Things You Can Do With A Guest Post Rather Than Reject It

2. How to Properly Prepare a Guest Post in 5 Simple Steps

3. Successful Guest Posting Strategy in One, Two, Three

What do all successful internet marketers and online business owners have in common? They have a loyal list of subscribers, or a mailing list, that they can use to draw REPEAT visitors back to their website over, and over, and over (okay, you get the picture) again. But first…

Jonathan Beebe from the Online Income Blog shares how he achieved blogging success and made money from having repeat visitors on his blog.

Why Should You Care About Repeat Visitors?

It’s been proven time and time again that most of the people who visit your website DON’T follow through with your intended course of action. Even worse, they NEVER return to your website. Don’t believe me? Take a look at your stats.

It’s not necessarily that you have bad content, or that they are uninterested in what you have to offer. There are a lot of scenarios that could cause a would-be client/customer to click off of your website and never return.

For example, what if they came across your blog, thought it was interesting but had to get ready for work right away? Sure, maybe they planned on returning later, but that’s easy for anyone to forget — no matter how remarkable your blog was.

However, if you were to encourage them to either subscribe to your feed, or to enter their email address, YOU could then remind them about your website by sending them quality content on a regular basis (what you’re already doing on your blog, right?!).

For that reason, along with the fact that it’s been proven most people need to see what you have to offer before they do anything, should be more than enough reason for you to CARE about attracting repeat visitors to your blog or website.

What Repeat Visitors Did For My Business

When I first started online, I didn’t really care too much about attracting repeat visitors. Sure, I’ve always heard “the money is in the list,” but I wasn’t willing to pay monthly fees for an autoresponder since I really didn’t know what to do with my list once I started building it.

Needless to say, my “online business” (if you could call it that back then) was making close to nothing because I was relying on “hit and run” traffic to make my money online (or lack thereof). Hit-and-run traffic are the people who come to your site and never return.

Long story short, I found a way to encourage my readers to give me their name and email address, built my list, and a relatively short time after I accomplished two of my main goals:

1. I quit my job to work full-time online.
2. I can fully support my family with the income I make online (so my wife wouldn’t have to work either).

Start Building Your Readers’ Trust

Like I said, one of the main reasons I avoided “building my list” was that I had no idea what to do with my list once I got one. I didn’t want to be like the “gurus” and send promotion after promotion – I knew that would just cause people to unsubscribe (since I’m not a “guru” myself).

So instead, I decided to do everything I could to increase the chances of people trusting me. After all, if people trust me, then they will also be more willing to purchase what I recommend to them (affiliate sales, and my own products), as well as take the advice I was posting on my blog.

So here’s what I did, and what you should do to start retaining your visitors right away:

• Create a short, free report related to your niche (could be as long or short as you want, just make sure it’s useful).
• Put an opt-in form on your blog that will give your report away to your visitors in exchange for their first name and email address (your autoresponder will give you the code you need for this).
• Now, every six days or so, send them your latest useful blog post, except every THIRD mailer…
• On every THIRD mailer, send them a link to a product that you recommend, or a review for a product that you are affiliated with. Make sure it’s a high quality product though or people will unsubscribe!

What’s Supposed to Happen Next?

If you follow that schedule above every single week as you continue to post to your blog regularly, you’ll start noticing a few positive things happening.

1. First, your traffic will increase on a regular basis without any extra effort on your part… and it’ll be the best type of traffic: repeat visitors.
2. Also, your profit will always increase as your list grows. With the 6-day schedule I just described, you’ll have an average of 1-2 promotional mailers go out every month (with high quality article mailers going out way more often than that). I guarantee that the days your “promo” mailers go out, they will be your most profitable days… especially as your list grows.
3. You’ll also notice that your “unsubscribe rate” will be very low, and your “open rate” will be very high because your subscribers will be used to getting high quality information from you.

If you don’t want to promote to your mailing list, that’s fine too, just use your list as a way to drive traffic to your blog. Whenever I post a good article to my blog and announce it to my list, I always get a huge spike in traffic that day. And guess what? Most of them are repeat visitors (once again, very valuable).

Start Retaining Your Visitors Now

So if that’s not enough to convince you that repeat visitors are what you should be striving for, then I don’t know what will! However, a business (whether online or offline), is about testing and seeing what really works well for you.

So don’t take my word for it – try it out for yourself! Build your list in the manner I described above for six months to a year, and tell me if it doesn’t improve your “making money online” and/or blogging efforts ten-fold!

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging V2.0

2. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

3. Blogging Resources Improve Search Engine Traffic

Not every post you publish on your blog turns into a smashing success. In fact, quite the opposite is true for more posts than we think – they flop. People’s interests in the different topics you talk about in your niche are all different, and with some articles you publish, that interest just won’t be there for some.

So without that interest, a post you publish today won’t be as successful as the post you published yesterday. That’s not a bad thing, I mean, you should always cater to different types of readers on your blog. But what should you do if you write a post that doesn’t perform well, statistically speaking? As in, few comments, little traffic and not many retweets.

There’s a difference between a post that doesn’t work because of the topic and a post that doesn’t work because it just flat-out sucks.

Diagnosing a “Flopper”

I’m going to refer to these posts that have not lived up to any expectations in one way or another as “floppers.” It kind of sounds funny, so hopefully you will remember it!

So below are some of the symptoms of what a “flopper post” would have:

• The lessons you teach in your post not beneficial

How to test for this: Your post receives low amounts of comments, tweets and any other kind of reaction a post can get.

• There’s no buzz

How to test for this: The post doesn’t bring any traffic and new readers to your blog. Really, it’s just sitting there to make your blog look like you keep it updated consistently.

• It’s not a post worth quoting

How to test for this: If you cannot figure out a way to include that article in a new post (interlinking), then it is probably very irrelevant to something you write. This goes for both your blog and someone else’s blog.

What are other symptoms you can think of that would define a “flopper?”

Work for a Cure: 4 Steps to take

So after publishing a post, it has become apparent to you that it just isn’t doing what it should. Hey, it happens! Not every post we put out here takes our blog to the next level, that’s for sure.

1. Keep Marketing it just like any other post

Treat this post like any other post on your blog. Keep marketing it! Tweet it two to three times a day, post it on forums, use it as your “Site URL” when you comment on other blogs. Of course, those are trivial forms of marketing, but they are also the best for bringing comments and discussion into the post.

Some tips for marketing posts:

2. Call on others for help

Don’t be afraid to get other to try and help you. If you have friends on Twitter (which you should), ask them for favors. You can get a lot of out them. Ask for feedback, ask them to share the post, ask for comments, offer to trade a retweet for a retweet, etc. The possibilities are endless! Just don’t go crazy and ask all of these things from one person.

3. Revise, Revise, Revise

It’s the little things that count, and if you see something you can do to the post that will make it better in any way, freakin’ do it!

If you don’t think the article is as interesting as it could be, or it’s just incomplete, well, now you have a basis to revise it on. Try adding content, try removing content, change up the formatting, reword the heading so it’s more catch, and add some images. It’s the little things that count, and if you see something you can do to the post that will make it better in any way, freakin’ do it!

4. Republish it later

This is an interesting idea I thought, and it’s to wait a few months and then to republish it. As in, move it back to the frontpage of your blog.

I talked about this on Blogussion before; the idea of recycling and reusing blog posts. In a nutshell, your community may accept your content that flopped months ago now because of all the growth your community hopefully went through since then. Your audience should be bigger, and you should have a few readers who take time to comment on all of your posts.

Definitely read that article for more ideas, there’s a lot of great concepts listed in it.

Preventing Future Mishaps

It’s important to do your best to make sure that as few articles as possible flop on your blog. So, when you do have that flopper come up, learn as much as possible from it. Honestly, one flopper can lead to another and it’s important to know why these posts flop and how to prevent them from happening.

Here are a few steps you can take to avoiding future flops:

1. Review your posting process

The process in which you write your post is very important to how well your post will turn out. If you can’t come up with a solid posting process, from planning to publishing, you will have these floppers come out a lot more than you want.

2. Review your flopped post

Actually READ the post you wrote and try to figure out why it didn’t do so well. It can be a number of things really – an uninteresting topic, poorly formatted post, not enough information, too much information, etc. Whatever it is, find it. This goes back to the diagnosing stage I talked about earlier.

3. Apply your new knowledge

Now that you have found out (or have a pretty good idea) what is wrong, you can use the information I taught you today to try and fix the post and of course, prevent as many posts from “flopping” in the future.

How do you deal with floppers?

Everyone has to have a post on their blog that just didn’t live up to their expectations. What have you done to try and make the post add more value to your blog? What were the results, and how do you keep as many posts as possible from not flopping?

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but not once in the article have I used the word “fail.” That word is a really bad word to me and I don’t like to use it too much in my writings. Hence, “flopper.” You can basically sum this article up into one simple quote from one of the funniest comedians alive, Christopher Titus:

I don’t fail. I just succeed at finding what doesn’t work.

What do you think of this quote in the world of blogging?

Related posts:

1. Creating more appealing posts in 4 simple steps

2. Tips for making a mark in the community with guest posts

3. How to Setup a “Favorite Posts” Section to Bring Old Posts Back to Life

Today, Henri Junttila shares his 21 day experience of blog marketing that resulted in the Pagerank increase from zero to four in only 21 days. Want to write for us too?

It’s amazing at what you can accomplish when you work hard. My blog is around 3 weeks old and it has gone from PageRank 0 to 4, from 0 subscribers to 155 and from no one commenting to being almost like a community.

I know 155 subscribers doesn’t sound like much, but if I kept this rate up for a year, I would have well over 2,000 subscribers and that’s not bad now is it? You also have to consider that after a while you reach a breaking point where your blog starts to grow on its own, which means that you most likely will have close to 3,000 subscribers or a lot more in a year if you do things right.

I’ve never have a problem with working extremely hard, especially when I am passionate about something. I’ve been making a living online for a long time and I’ve discovered that working for yourself is a lot tougher than working for someone else.

Nobody tells you what to do. You have to figure everything out yourself. On top of it all, you have to manage your time and use the right tactics. In my opinion, I have come a long way in just three weeks and it is largely because I chose to focus on a few main points in building my audience and getting my name out there.

1. Blog Commenting

When I had my launch content ready – which consisted of 4-5 good posts and 5-day e-mail series – I started looking for blogs with good content that were somewhat related to what I was talking about. I currently have almost 100 blogs in my feedreader that I enjoy reading and try to comment on regularly.

Yes, commenting will take up a lot of your time (learn how to become a more productive commentator). It may not bring you huge amounts of traffic or link juice, but that isn’t the purpose. Getting traffic from commenting is a side-benefit. The main benefit is putting your face out there. Oh, before I forget, definitely make sure you have a good and friendly gravatar .

In just three weeks I’ve gotten people telling me that they’ve seen me everywhere. I didn’t even realize that it had such an impact. It seems to work like advertising. When you see 100 Kellogg’s commercials and you go to the store and see 5 unknown brands and Kellogg’s there’s a very high chance that you’ll pick Kellogg’s because it’s familiar. Commenting works the same way. That is, if you provide value in your comments.

2. Guest Posting

Guest posting is the number one tactic if you want to grow your readership and increase your authority in Google’s eyes. Take Blogussion for example – in two posts they earned 200 extra subscribers . I know you might be shy about asking bloggers about guest posting, but it isn’t that hard. Three weeks ago I didn’t know anyone in the blogosphere, and I mean by anyone I mean anyone, I didn’t even know the resident dust rat at Blogussion.

I’ve made a lot of good friends in a short amount of time because I started commenting, connecting and letting people know I appreciate what they are doing. It’s the law of reciprocity at work, which basically means that if you provide value for others, they will be more likely to provide value for you. Leave a mark on the other persons blog, and you will see some benefits.

This doesn’t mean that you should go into the whole thing with the mindset of getting something. On the contrary, I was so happy to be blogging about the subject I love that I enjoyed connecting with people and when I asked for a guest post pretty much everyone said yes.

If you really want to grow your blog, you have to guest post. I know that it can be scary. It is scary for me each time I submit a guest post, but fear is a part of life, it will always be there. The circumstances for guest posting will never be perfect, so start now.

The worst thing that can happen is that nothing changes. If you get rejected, ask them why, politely, so you can learn from the interaction and improve. Start with smaller blogs first and work your way up as you gain more and more momentum.

I have written around 10-15 guest posts during these 21 days and that is all it takes to really gain traction and go from PageRank 0 to 4. Aim for as authoritative blogs as possible, but don’t be afraid of connecting with the smaller ones.

3. Connecting and Helping

You have to care. If you don’t care about people and aren’t passionate about the subject you’re blogging about, chances are that people will notice and not want to stick around. Passion is contagious, because passion exudes positive, addictive energy and being around someone who is passionate feels awesome, even if it is in text.

So how do you connect with a blogging community?

There are many ways. The tools I use almost exclusively are Twitter and e-mail. I try to use as few tools as possible so I don’t overwhelm myself. Talk with people on twitter. Don’t tell them to visit your blog and sign-up, just talk and have fun.

People will naturally visit your blog and link to you if you are interesting and fun. Haven’t you noticed this yourself? If someone is making you laugh and in general helping you, aren’t you compelled to learn more about them?

The way I use e-mail is to let people know that I appreciate what they are doing. If I sincerely like something they are doing I want to tell them that. I’m not going to sell them anything or try to get them to link to me. How would you react if someone did that to you? You would probably delete the e-mail and make a note that the guy or girl sucks.

Be friendly, always provide value and help people. Give before you take. If someone e-mails you, make sure you reply as soon as possible. You want to engage your audience. One person may not seem to matter, but think about it. If you make one person happy and they tell five people, you then make those five happy, they tell five people. Do you see the potential?

What you put out there will come back to you many times over.

What works for you?

With all that said, I challenge you to share at least one blogging tip that worked for growing traffic and readership to your blog!

Related posts:

1. Conquering those days where you don’t “feel” like writing by facing these 5 realizations

2. ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project – Sign Up Now!

3. A day full of guest posting

The rate at which you publish blog posts is a very important factor towards building a solid readership. Believe it or not, adding a post a random day of the week and not sticking to a consistent schedule can really have an impact on the reaction it gets from your community.

Just recently, we changed our post schedule here. That would be the third time in under a year we did that, and we have found new benefits each time we switched.

We realized that our content may not always be getting maximum visibility if we continued with our former posting frequencies, so after some analyzing and discussion – we came to the conclusion that we could achieve best results with our posts if we switched.

For new bloggers especially, determining how many times a week they want to post on their blog can be tricky as there isn’t much statistical information to work off of. But even those of us who have been publishing for months – are we on the right track when it comes to getting our posts out to the public? Could our blog be performing better if we made a simple adjustment to our post schedule?

Ever since we changed our post schedule for the third time, we have seen great results. It really got me thinking too: it took us ten months to come up with the smartest post frequency for our blog, what about others? So I want to help you guys out and share with you my ideas about choosing the ideal posting schedule for your blog.

The 3 Most Common Frequencies

I read about 20-30 blogs and I can pretty much tell when a blog is going to update because of how frequent they post. On all of the blogs I read, these are the three most common ones I see:

1. Every day publishers - People who update their blog at least one time a day.
2. Second day publishers - People who update their blog every other (second) day.
3. Day Schedulers - People who update their blog on set days (not the most creative name for them!)

So which is the best? Unfortunately there is no straight answer because there are just too many factors to consider. However, the one factor the remains the same in each of the frequencies above is consistency.

The frequency that has more posts published isn’t necessarily the most useful if it’s not consistent. So does that mean that only posting on your blog on Monday and Wednesday is bad? Not at all! As long as you can post every single Monday and Wednesday, then you have a consistent, working posting frequency.

So that brings me to my next point: is posting more times a week better than posting less? Posting more isn’t necessarily better than posting less (and vice-versa) just because you put more content out onto your blog. And maybe in some niches, quality isn’t better than quantity.

It’s up to you to decide what sounds best for your blog – posting more or posting less. Of course, you can figure things out by experimenting like we have here. But, there are even more crucial variables that you should analyze. The thing that is extremely important in measuring your success – numbers.

There are four very important numbers you need to be aware of at all times when you publish an article. Just remember to embrace these numbers and do not let them harm you.

1. Traffic sent to your blog

Use a web app like Google Analytics or a plugin like WordPress.com Stats (or just use both) to track the amount of traffic coming in to your blog from these posts.

It’s really important to track the number of pageviews a single post brings in, because if you track posts for a few weeks you can determine quite a few things that will aid you in picking a posting frequency:

• You can find out your busiest day(s) of the week: If you find out your busiest day of the week is Monday, publish your best article for the entire week on that day. More people will see it as more people are visiting your blog that day, and may be encouraged to stick around since you wrote such a great article.
• Learn what topics are the most well received by visitors: Maybe posts about SEO do better than posts about your newborn kittens. Compare a few posts in one category to a few posts in another category and see which brought more traffic.
• Discover traffic trends: For example, maybe on some days Twitter traffic is greater than other days. This is very valuable information to know, and if you can take advantage of any kind of traffic source by just knowing when it’s at its highest, you can really bring in some high numbers.

As I mentioned above, there is a great tool for tracking traffic sent to your blog. Google Analytics provides many detailed graphs and charts about your sites and it’s a tool that every blogger should use.

More on Analytics:

• Google Analytics Reveals the Importance of Branding and Content
• Google Analytics: Metrics Worth Tracking

2. Comment averages per post

The amount of comments your posts get shows how your community reacts to what you wrote. Your rate of posting really can have a big impact on how many comments your posts get.

We have found here that if you post at least once a day, you may not get as many comments as you could if you published every second day, or took a break for the weekend. This is because when you post more there is more content for a reader to analyze that there is less of a chance you will get consistent comment averages on your posts.

If you want to encourage more discussion within your community, then break down the following things about your post schedule:

• Number of posts per week - Consider the age of your blog and how many times a week you are publishing. If you are starting out, I always recommended posting about three good articles a week, then over time expanding to 5 or more.
• Length of posts - Do you write massive 1,000+ word posts like this one, or shorter, maybe 500-700 words? Compare the comment averages of short and long posts and see which has more.
• Comments per post - I would make a chart of some kind and take all of the posts in a week and find the average of comments per post. This can be a great way to look back and see how you are improving the discussion in your community.
• Quality of discussion - Do your posts get comments like “nice post” or “good work,” or do you see debates forming and questions being asked? If the discussion in your comments section isn’t anything special, you may need to make your posts more user friendly.

More on Engaging Conversation

• How to connect with your community
• 16 Plugins to Start more conversations
• How to increase commenting productivity on your blog
• Addressing those who comment: the right ways
• Addressing those who comment: the wrong ways

3. Social Media Reactions

Sharing content on sites like Twitter, Digg, or Delicious is one of the best ways to get new information. Every blogger should be active on at least two of the three links I just mentioned, not just to get new information but to share your own.

If you use a plugin like the Tweetmeme button, you can track how many times an article is shared on Twitter by other people. Learning how many times an article has been shared on a site like Twitter is important because it shows how a community outside your blog likes your post.

From the Tweetmeme button alone, we really have learned some important things that helped us improve the posts we schedule each week here.

• We learned that the best posts to get retweeted are articles about Twitter.
• We discovered that the shorter and catchier your headline is, the better it spreads on Twitter.
• If we tweet about a recent post, it will always get tweeted again if we ask people to do it.
• The more tweets a post gets, the more appealing it looks to retweet and even read.

So with this information in mind, we really do our best to make the best of Twitter. As a result, Twitter is one of our highest sources of traffic.

What’s your rate?

So, there is really a lot of information here about picking your rate of posting. I hope you guys understand the importance of how often you publish and have learned enough from this post to discover the best way of figuring it out.

Tell me – how often do you post?

I really wish our poll worked, but I am curious as to how many times a week you update your blog? And, what is your frequency of posting?

Here at Blogussion, we post five times a week Monday-Friday and skip Saturday and Sunday. Previously, we published seven times a week with a post every day, then we changed it to posting every second day with 3-4 posts a week.

Photo by CgDesign

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to find post inspiration without even leaving your blog

2. 5 quick and clever ways to publicize a blog post by commenting on other blogs

3. Debate: Posting by Obligation or Free Will? 10 Arguments

As much time as it takes to write a great post on your blog and get some attention from it – it disappears. That amazing post that was so well off just moves on from the front page and goes off to page two…three….and sooner or later it is buried so far no one remembers it!

That is a major problem for all blogs, and one that is not always given much attention to. Keeping old posts alive and in the loop can really bring a lot more traffic to your blog than you think. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it can’t still bring in traffic to your blog!

There are a lot of posts here on Blogussion that are buried pages back that I would love to still have on the front page of the blog. I can’t just do that, because the newer posts on the blog wouldn’t get noticed this way. So, I came up with a few ideas of my own that can hopefully solve this issue and get older posts viewed by my readers again. Ideas that are going to be implemented here very shortly!

Numbered Page Navigation

Okay, so I included this as part of my 5 Improvements, 5 minutes post and a lot of you seemed to react the same towards it. Basically, if you look at the bottom of the homepage here on Blogussion – you will see a a numbered list of all of our pages of posts, opposed to the standard “previous” and “next post” links.

Not only is this useful for better page navigation, and some have even argued for SEO benefits – but it will make getting to older content easier. With a numbered navigation, a lot more possibilities open up as to where someone might end up reading on your blog.

The plugin I use on my blogs to display the numbered pages is called WP Page Numbers. In the comments of “5 Improvements, 5 minutes,” a reader pointed out an alternative to the plugin called WP-Pagenavi. Do you guys have any preference between the two plugins?

Keep your Popular Posts Popular

Do you list the most popular posts on your blog? If you do, then great work! If not, I advise you get a list of your popular posts up on your blog as soon as possible!

I like to have a list of the top posts on my blogs because it gives newer visitors a taste of some of my best content. If you notice in the sidebar here I have done that, and any other blog I have designed does the same.

You have to make sure your popular posts are very visible on your page. My best advice to keep them “above the fold.” In web design, “the fold” is what the user sees before they have to start scrolling down the page. Because it is so hard to impress visitors at first glance, you have to put your best content above that fold.

A popular place to show the most popular posts on blogs is in the sidebar. I keep them there, and thousands of others do too. Place them as high up in sidebar as you can so when someone visits your site, the first thing they see is your best content.

If you have banner ads high up in your sidebar, I strongly advice you push them down or remove them from your sidebar and replace them with your popular posts list. That is exactly what I did when I talked about the negative effects of banner ads on my community, and I do not regret it at all.

Try this at home: If you do have poor performing banner ads on your blog, try removing them and in place of them put your list of most popular posts. Leave it there for about a week and check to see if you see any changes in pageviews on the posts listed. I almost guarantee you that they will get viewed more.

“Stick” posts to the front page

WordPress has a new feature which I believe was released in version 2.7 called Sticky Posts. Basically, it’s an option you select in your posts panel and for whatever post you activate it for – that post will always be on top of your blog and never be pushed down the page by newer posts.

This is a truly great option as you can get a post from months back that may be extremely valuable and have it hanging out on your homepage for all of your newer visitors to check out.

I find that the sticky posts option and the teasers option in Thesis work great together. Since you can fit more posts on a single page with teasers, you can make multiple posts sticky and still keep new posts visible.

I’m not going to lie here, I actually got this idea from the marketing genius Marko Saric who uses this technique to keep his older, but extremely informative articles up top for his newer audiences to see. Don’t think it’s a smart move? This, and some other techniques contributed to Marko getting 200,000 visitors in his first year of blogging. Way to go man!

Create a list of YOUR favorite articles

Just like listing the most popular posts on your blog, a section where you pick out your favorite articles can work very well for getting older posts read.

Some of my best, most well received posts are sitting in the archives of this blog collecting dust. I hate the idea of that, so later this week (coming along with the design refresh…yes you heard it here first folks) there will be a big change to that and my older articles will get read.

If you’re unsure of what I am suggesting here, check out the homepage of ProBlogger. He picked out his favorite posts on his blog and he organized them into a little list on his blog. I’m sure those posts do very well on his blog now, and of course are buried back dozens and dozens of pages.

Quickfire tips

I always love this little section! I have already broken 1,000 words in this article and don’t want to explain each and every idea I had in full depth, so here are some more quick tips for you:

• Internal Linking – I linked to a couple of my past posts in this article. If you are reading this blog for the first time, chances are you never read those articles. Hopefully with the anchor text I used to show the link, you got interested and maybe opened the link in a new tab to read right after this post!
• Link to similar posts – At the end of each post, in your post footer, add a list of posts that are similar. You can do it inside your article, or you can put all of your trust into a plugin and have that generate similar posts for you.
• Add a search bar – Search bars are probably more valuable then you think. All people need to do is type in a keyword, and can automatically get linked to dozens of posts with that keyword in it.
• Archives page – Most bloggers have an archive page already. If your blog in particular doesn’t have one, think about adding one. When you really think about it, your archives page is really the best gateway to your older posts.
• Create a sneeze page – A sneeze page is a page you create and list your favorite posts, or posts you think are very valuable. Darren Rowse explains it great as a challenge in his 31 Days to Better Blogging challenge.

  We have a sneeze page if you would like to see a great example of what one might be. It’s part of our From Planning to Earning guide, and we have created our sneeze page in our blogging guide section of the guide.

Just trying to keep your blog tidy

I hope you guys enjoyed this article. What are your tips for keeping old posts in the loop? Is there anything you would add on to anything I mentioned in this post? Let me hear all about them in the comments!

Photo by .pst

Related posts:

1. The Signifigance of “Link Loving” Your Own Blog

2. The Power of Recycling Posts

3. Methods for Effectively Announcing Changes on your Blog