Getting organic traffic - part 6

Yes Part six!!! who would have thought it?
Well I am pretty sure that this is the last of my traffic-building tactics, and it is one that is fairly obvious since the whole point of these services is that they drive traffic to your site. I am, of course, talking about 'digg it', 'stumble upon' and all those services that are just waiting to promote your stories and posts.
Personally I use these services sparingly, but if I think I have written a particularly topical, poignant or pithy post, I will blatantly plug it by submitting to these types of sites. After all, I would wait an age for someone to randomly do it for me, I am merely speeding up the process...
Timing is of the essence, it's like trying to catch a wave when surfing - you may find yourself uncovering hundreds of visitors, just a few or barely any at all. Nevertheless it takes a few seconds to submit, and at least half the time I find a well-written report on the post I have just written, will bring in a significant amount of traffic even if just briefly.
These services are being constantly updated of course, and you are only 'current' for a very small window, so the impact is often swift and impressive - a day later, any effects will have all but disappeared..
I use them equally for website stuff as well as for blog posts. I have some web pages which I feel provide decent information that I want to get 'out there'. These services work for us in two ways, firstly by providing a platform to submit our own stuff to get initial visitors, secondly (if you provide a 'submit' widget in the page) for visitors to 'vote' for our content and thus promote it once more in the community. For the website pages, I expect to see the votes grow to a decent level over time, whereas for the blog posts, I am just looking for an 'instant' return...
This concludes the latest mini-series on Munny4Hunny, if you have any comments, please leave them and I promise to respond...

Others in this series:
Part One - Introduction 'what NOT to do...'
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Five - Seeking out traffic

Getting organic traffic - part 5

I am mildly surprised that I have managed five posts in this series, I guess there was more to this than I thought at first....and I haven't finished yet!
This post concerns the tactics that I usually think of as the traditional ways to build blog traffic although these tactics are my no means limited to blog promotion.

1. Reciprocal visits: This is a kind of hard foot-slogging way of getting traffic (which is maybe why I have left it 'til the last installment..), but effective nonetheless. Visiting blog that are within the same broad topic as your own blog or website, and leaving relevant comments (and your URL) are effective ways of attracting visits from a like-minded audience. First off - only do this if commenting allows you to leave your URL in the comment or as part of your 'signature'. Secondly, don't ever spam! Leave concise well-thought out comments that might inspire readers to click on the link and find out more. You are probably wasting your time if you comment on older posts, the more recent they are, the more effective your commenting will be. At the very least, the post-writer will visit your blog (I know I always do...) and you may even attract other commenters to visit your blog/site too.
2. Forums: There are forums for every topic under the sun, it should not take too long to uncover a forum that deals with topics close to your own. Join the forum, and like the commenting above, make good suggestions and leave your URL in your signature. You should find that even idle curiosity will force some visitors to come to your site if nothing else...

I have one last installment to add to this series, and this is probably the most effective method that I have discovered for sending decent amounts of traffic.

Others in this series:
Part One - Introduction 'what NOT to do...'
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites

Getting organic traffic - part 4

In this day and age, it is a serious mistake to underestimate the power of twitter, facebook and the like for driving traffic to your site, however harnessing all these different resources takes a little thought.
Using RSS feeds between sites such as your blog, twitter and Facebook would be a good way of linking the three together to make sense of the relationship. One way would be to start a 'page' in FB (rather than a personal entry) and use the feeds from twitter and a blog to populate the page with content. This way, you are using twitter and a blog independently, yet using them to create more content on a third platform (FB). Added to this, you could have a widget on your blog which gives a read-out of your last (for example) 6 twitter messages. It is possible to link these all up and have two sites updated from one feed - whatever tactics you decide on, you must come up with a strategy that best suits your needs. Whatever you do, you are missing a trick if you are not using these or similar resources to drive traffic to your site.
Having said that I have not yet finalised my own strategy for promotion for a site that I have been working on for a while (amongst other projects), but rest-assured all future projects will be built with social networking sites in mind- the issue should never be 'shall I use Facebook/twitter/Friends reunited etc...' but HOW shall I use them...

Others in this series:
Part One - Introduction 'what NOT to do...'
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Five - Seeking out traffic
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites

Getting organic traffic - part 3

Moving on from 'on-page' work such as content, all other traffic building ideas as strictly 'off-page' and so will demand some of your time to get browsing around the 'net.
As promised in the previous installment, this post will address RSS feeds. Really Simple Syndication is a way of getting your blog posts or site 'feed' automatically sent to any number of sources across the world wide web. Individuals may sign up so that they get your latest content as it comes online, or services that you are affiliated with may use this feed to publicly display your content - the best example I can think of is 'Zimbio', a service that publishes your content and will even automatically categorise it for you.
RSS can even carry advertising along with regular content and therefore can be used as a monetising tool. I happily admit that I was not a first-adopter when it came to RSS as I didn't understand how it could help me. I now understand it and can see that I seriously under-estimated it's uses. If you are not sure how to get started with RSS, you can access 'feedburner' directly from your Google account (you HAVE a Google account - right??), fill in a form and feedburner will provide you with a URL that contains your RSS feed, use this URL place your feed in to 'Zimbio' or any other place you can find that will take it!
One tactic that I have used is to take a 'twitter' RSS feed and have it displayed on the front page of an associated website. As long as you are regularly updating on twitter, this provides some interactive and current content on a page that otherwise may be fairly static. The same may be done with a feed from a blog or even facebook.
This brings me nicely on to the next topic that will be the theme of the very next installment...

Others in this series:
Part One - Introduction 'what NOT to do...'
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Five - Seeking out traffic
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites

Getting organic traffic - part 2

First off - I have to say that there is no way to keep your traffic unless your content is compelling. There is no point working away at getting visitors to visit your site if there is very little for them to look at.
So my first piece of advice is to say you need to make sure that you have good original content, regularly updated and ideally that it is laid our in a way that is easy to follow and easy on the eye. Whilst you may think that this is not a traffic building hint - it has at least two functions:

• It keeps your visitors coming back - If the valuable traffic that arrives on your site finds your style and your content appealing, there is a good chance that they will bookmark it, sign up for your RSS feed and come back to read again.
• It will help you to get search results - Applying SEO tactics such as regular updates and good use of keywords using niche/topical keywords will bring you organic search results. Using a service such as Google 'Webmaster tools' and 'Analytics' will help you understand the search terms that people are using to arrive at your site.

If at this point, you are wondering what RSS is, then keep reading this series and we will address RSS in the next installment...

Others in this series:
Part One - Introduction 'what NOT to do...'
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Five - Seeking out traffic
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites

Getting organic traffic - part 1

A question I often see posted in forums is 'how can I drive traffic to my site'. This is a very valid question, but the answer will vary depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve.
If visitor 'stats' is what you need regardless of 'quality' or a targeted 'audience' then you can do traffic exchanges or even 'buy' traffic via a 'pay to click' service. However, if you are looking for visitors who will read your content or interact with your site on a longer-term basis, then 'organic' is the only way to go, there is no quick fix, but there are short-cuts. I should also add that if you are hosting Google contextual adverts (Adsense) on your site, then any non-organic form of gaining traffic is likely to result in your Adsense account being disabled.

I 'innocently' tried traffic exchanging once until Google warned me that my account was in danger of termination - I quickly stopped the traffic exchange, and although Google wouldn't tell me exactly what I had done to contravene the TOS, stopping the traffic exchange seemed to do the trick. Fortunately I had only done it for a few days so no further action was taken. If you are wondering why this would be the case, some ads on adsense are actually paid per 100 or 1000 displays etc... therefore in theory, using a traffic exchange program or 'buying' traffic would result in payments being triggered for these ads even though the traffic was not completely legitimate (organic) traffic.

That's the introduction done, you will have to follow the series to get all my thoughts on getting traffic to your site. I have to admit right at the start that I have never devoted myself to driving huge amounts of traffic to my sites, but nonetheless, over the years I have built up some ideas on things that can bring traffic, and have even occasionally had the odd success here and there...

Others in this series:
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Five - Seeking out traffic
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites