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There are a lot of bloggers out there that write great content and even if they get a decent amount of traffic, some of them don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with their readers. On top of that, some of them might discover your site from the search engines and never come back again, even if they liked it. Seriously, they could have forgotten your URL or website name.

Your goal is to grow as much as possible with your current traffic. There are many different ways to get more traffic to your blog or website, but why not establish a better connection with your current readers from the start. Master this and then you can work on getting more unique visitors later on. So listed below are some ways to accomplish this and brand your website or blog:

1. Email Optin Newsletter Form

One of my favorite suggestions is to display an email opt in newsletter form on your site. If you’re using a WordPress blog platform, then you can place it in a widget on the side. In order to get an opt in form, you will need to sign up for a email service such as Aweber, Constant Contact, along with multiple others out there.

Another tip is to choose a newsletter form that is eye popping and has a good call to action. Then once you got a large list of email subscribers, you can easily email them about a new post that you made. This is more direct than having them subscribe to an RSS feed because the message is sent straight to their email address. RSS feed subscriptions can also be powerful and should be used along with email newsletters. Also, RSS is free so don’t forget to display a RSS feed on the site as well.

2. Subscribe to Comments Plugin

Another favorite tip is to use a free plugin called “Subscribe to Comments” for WordPress. Quick Online Tips uses this itself as shown on the bottom of the comments section and all they have to do is check the box. This allows readers to get email notifications after they submit a comment. That way they don’t have to keep checking up on the blog to see if someone answered their question.They just get an email that shows any comments placed after them and it gets more exposure to your blog so they are more likely to reply to the conversation. It gets them coming back to your blog.

3. Social Media

This has been discussed before, but you sometimes need to do more than the average person does. Instead of posting to social media sites and expect people to start following you, go out and read other peoples information and leave comments. You should look for targeted and similar subject areas. For an example, in Facebook you can do a search for your topic and register on a fan or group page. Sometimes there are thousands of people registered on one fan page. By interacting with a large fan page and leaving a link to your site in the signature can help get people to notice you.

4. Conversations with Readers

My third tip is to actually interact with your readers on the blog. Write a sentence or two at the end of your blog post telling them how much you would appreciate a comment or tell them to ask a question. Then come and reply to their questions or think of some to ask them. Usually having them ask questions will help lead you to more blog post ideas because some people start to become stuck with new ideas to write about. So this can be a big helper to keep your blog fresh with ideas and the readers will be more eager to come back for the whole post.

I hope this has helped and if you implement these tips you will see your blog grow. With that said, please share your own experiences, or thoughts or any question that you might have. I appreciate any feedback or if you have a tip, leave it in the comments section. Thank you!

About the Author

This is a guest post by writer Eric Woolf from the Pixels and Dots web design team. Please leave him your comments below or on the Pixels and Dots blog.

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There are billions of blogs in the blogosphere. People always say that creating another blog might not be the better thing since almost everything online is saturated. Of course, that’s a complete baloney! Fortunately 60-70% of blogs don’t get traction and just couldn’t seem to make progress. And it’s because of several reasons which I wouldn’t want to talk about here.

Most people fall into this big misconception about blogging. This misconception is about “post and publish”. People think that the key to getting traffic is by creating a killer post, then publishing it. We all know it’s not the case. If no one reads your blog, then no one is even going to notice you created a good post! Obviously the one thing you have to do is to let people know “you” exists in the blogosphere. How? By spreading your content. Today I would like to talk about how you can possibly triple your traffic by spreading your content. Without further “fluff” here they are:

• Social Networking – I don’t understand why a lot of people are so much into the saturated social bookmarking when they have the whole social networking sites to work from! Look, how many of you have accounts in Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, etc? I have, and I have an average of 500 contacts on each of them. If you can let your article reach them without sounding spammy then it can bring you a lot. I have done it with my blog and so far I don’t see any saturation in what I am doing.
• Your Article into Podcast – Seriously I am flabbergasted with podcasts nowadays. I always thought before that it’s lame and doesn’t really make much sense to me. But look how a lot of people are using (and consuming) it now. Now you can use a little service known as Odiogo. What Odiogo does is turn your posts into podcasts and have them downloadable. It also has a nice WordPress plugin that you can easily integrate in your blog.
• Your Article into PDF’s – A lot of people hasn’t used this method and frankly I haven’t yet but I think it worths a mention here. Post2PDF is a little WordPress plugin that turns your posts into PDF formats. And it doesn’t end there. You can then go to some famous forums related to your niche and spread it in the freebies section. Now make no mistake about it, people absolutely LOVE free eBooks and stuffs (just look at the forums). If you’re content is a hit, then prepare for truckloads of traffic and subscribers.
• Your Article into Video Posts – Unfortunately there is no software that can possibly convert an article into a video, but you can always take some time to do it yourself. Do a video on one of your killer posts, then submit it to TubeMogul. TubeMogul basically submits your video to famous video directories like YouTube, Vimeo and a lot more. Signing up for an account is free and it’s a very nice tool to get viral very easy.
• Tweet It! – Since Twitter has been one of the most talked about web application nowadays, I can’t help but talk about it too. Twitterfeed is a very cool plugin that basically posts (automatically) the latest article on your blog. Twitthis is another cool tool which enables your readers to tweet the post for you. Whether you have just 100 followers or 20K+ followers, these tools can really get the job done for you.

You can see that the key to getting traffic is getting viral and spreading yourself in as many places as you possibly can without being annoying. The truth about blogging (in my opinion) is that what you can get is based on how much “smart” effort you exerted on it. By doing the steps above, maybe you can get your blog known for a wider audience and have your traffic increased. What say you?

About the Author

Melvin Dichoso is an 18-year old internet marketer who’s been working in the internet for over a year. He’s currently taking up BS Computer Science and is planning to work in internet full-time sometime in the future. He blogs at Melvin Blog dot com where he shares his personal tack on internet geeky stuffs. If you find the article interesting, do take the time to subscribe to his feed.

Blogsessive is always open to guest posters. If you feel like your articles do match Blogsessive’s line of content and quality, contact me.

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Those of you interested in website rankings and SEO, you’d better check out your sites’ PageRanks. As we speak, a new update is in progress (one that has been rumored about). Over the past few hours I’ve seen pagerank updates on most of the websites I’m working on, going up, and back dow, and up again. Let’s see how and when it will stabilize.

And also, Alexa.com has just updated not only their design, but most probably their ranking system too.

New Alexa Design and Ranking System

One day ago, Blogsessive was still ranking around 70,000, and now the rank has been updated to 49,130.

Could it be the pressure of Compete and Quantcast breathing down Alexa’s neck? Who know. What’s important is that they seem to be taking steps toward perfecting their ranking system and updating their online image. And that’s good as it was about time to do it.

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One of the most common ways to attract attention to your blog is to offer free stuff. Bloggers have used and suggested this technique for a long time, some with better results than other.

Offering freebies on your blog has its advantages, if done right:

• Generates traffic;
• Generates relevant backlinks;
• Creates awareness;
• Increases the readership;
• Improves the subscribers’ count;
• and so on.

Of course, not everyone is looking for all those advantages. Each one has his/her own reasons for putting free stuff on the internet. While some target the profit, others do it simply for the fun of it. I do it for both reasons.

Does it benefit me? It does, but in order to really benefit from this technique, one should really stick religiously to the following rules:

1. Offer useful stuff

The first and most important thing about a freebie is that there should be a real demand for it. If nobody needs it, then your investment in it will be in vain. The more useful it it, the more people will want to share it with their friends and spread the word about it.

2. Offer quality stuff

While there might be a real interest in the type of free stuff that you offer, it’s not enough to make it attractive, even if it’s free. There’s enough competition and if your freebies are not top notch, the buzz (if there will be one) will disappear quickly and people will forget about your stuff.

The first quality inspection you can do is through your eyes. Would you use that freebie for your personal projects? If you won’t, most probably no one else would.

3. Offer unique, original stuff

I’m not talking about creating a round RSS icon, while there are dozens more round RSS icons available online. If you do it right and add your own perspective, it might just succeed.

What I’m talking about is re-sharing.

If it’s not unique, most people have probably seen it already. It’s a fact that the one to benefit most from releasing a freebie would be the original source. Sure, “ultimate lists” have managed to attract a good deal of traffic over time, but in the end, they reflect that traffic upon the original sources.

4. Market it like a paid product

If the free stuff you offer manages to pass all the above expectations, you definitely have a good offer. But, as with any good product, it needs awareness and exposure. In order to maximize the benefits, you need to market it just as if you would with a paid product.

For example, when I released the 2.0 version of Simple Balance, I’ve sent a press release to almost every design magazine and blog, big enough to create awareness for my theme. It proved to be a successful strategy that combined with the quality of Simple Balance attracted a great deal of traffic, backlinks, comments, community involvement and, as of today, 3800 downloads.

This last point is my favorite, and I agree that it requires more time and more attention from your side, but the satisfaction is guaranteed.

The more serious you treat your freebies, the more successful they can become. Sharing free stuff can be a great technique, it done wisely.

Photo credits to Frank Hermers

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One of the best learning methods is from experience, but sometimes, our own experience fails to provide us with what we need to know. That’s the moment when we need to look and learn from other people’s experience.

ReviewMyWeb.com is a fairly new website competitive analysis tool, but one that with a bit attention can turn into a very useful one.

Review My Web let’s you analyze your blog against two competitors and gives you access to a competitive report, covering:

• Traffic Rankings;
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
• Social Media / Blog Coverage;
• Detailed Website Analysis;

As an example, I decided to analyze ProBlogger.net against JohnChow.com and ShoeMoney.com. You can check out the results in the following screenshots.

Competitive Traffic Rankings

One thing that I’d love to know is how are these rankings calculated. It’s not specified in the report, but I have a feeling that Alexa is included, and I, for one, don’t place a lot of trust on Alexa lately.

Competitive Search Engine Analysis

This report focuses on backlinks and the current indexing levels, number of indexed pages and their quality and position. Considering the fact the ProBlogger delivers more (on topic) information, the number of backlinks seems pretty fair, against his 2 competitor, and with it, the “almost 5″ star ranking in this category.

Competitive Social Media Analysis

This report is based on the number of reactions in Google’s Blog Search and Technorati and it also provides a graph to compare your ranking against your two competitors. Again, ProBlogger’s more focused content gives him an edge, hitting a 5 star rating.

Detailed Analysis Results

Based on the about intermediary reports, a detailed analysis is generated, explaining the previous graphs and offering advice on what can be done to improve rankings in each area. Of course, this report can be better and cover more aspects, but I’m sure that with time, the application will be further developed.

Overview

My first impression on this tool is that while the intentions are good and helpful, this is only the first step in its development. There are many more topics and rankings that can be covered in order to generate a truly in depth competitive report, but that’s why I decided to feature it on Blogsessive, so that through exposure, it will get quality feedback that will lead to further improvements.

As an alternative to this tool, you can also check out HubSpot’s Website Grader.

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The internet is filled with websites competing for the same niche, which makes it very difficult to attract visitors to each individual website. Without proper promotion, a website could just sit idle for days, weeks or even years and people wouldn’t notice it.

Website owners know this fact, so they have learned to adjust to the online fast-paced environment and one method of promoting websites they’ve come up with is to use link baits on their sites.

In this article you’ll find out what is a link bait, what types of link baits are there and how to plan and write the perfect link bait blog post.

What is Link Baiting?

The term ‘linkbait’ is used to describe a tool for websites designed to “lure” or generate incoming links to a particular site. It is there for the purpose of attracting web users to visit a website (increasing traffic), and as a result, they generate material which is linked and picked up by other sites.

Link baiting also pushes a site up on the search engine ladder, as a lot of search engines look at how many websites link back to yours, their quality, and measure your site’s value through these links.

Link baits definitely help promote a website, although not all link baits can be considered “good”. There are two basic types of link baits: good and bad link baits, based not on their effectiveness, but on their “attitude”.

Good Link Baits

A good link bait is simply anything that is meaningful, insightful, new, or interesting and also, is acceptable to a majority of web users. It could also give incentives to visitors, like contests.

A great example of “good link baiting” is Daniel Scocco’s post: 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid. It’s a very useful and comprehensive article that managed to attract over 350 comments. Unfortunately, DailyBlogTips.com does not display trackbacks, but, judging by the huge amount of comments, we can imagine how many back links that article received.

Bad Link Baits

Bad link baiting, on the other hand, is publishing controversial or contentious content, which can be highly effective, although some may find it distasteful.

An excellent recent example of “bad link baiting” is Shoemoney’s post – SEO Has No Future – a very controversial topic that not only managed to attract a huge amount of back links (Blogsessive included, twice now), but also an impressive amount of comments.

In order to write a good and effective link baiting blog post, here are some tips on the actions you need to take before getting started.

Brainstorming

Write down all the ideas that you come up with on a certain topic, no matter how weird or far-fetched they are. You don’t need to edit your notes at this time since you would like to build a “database” of all your ideas on the matter.

Filtering

Once you have gathered all the ideas you could think of, the next step is filtering them. Break down the ideas into their Concept and Content components. Separate the format (Concept) of the suggested link bait (quizzes, contests, tools, etc.) and the subject (Content) of the suggested link bait (celebrities, Microsoft, ads, etc.) into two lists.

Evaluation

Critically evaluate all notes under the Content list, ignoring those that are in the Concept list. Check if the ideas are appropriate for the current time setting and if these are the ideas you would like to write about. You might also want to research if there is any related news that complements your link baits.

Matching

Once you’ve prioritized your Contents, you can now match them with your Concepts. If you want your link baits linked to a specific music website, write down the Concepts that would match there, like top ten, awards, contest, etc. By matching the right Content to your Concept, you can make sure that your link bait would reach your targeted audience, meaning what you’re writing about is effective.

Some people believe that good link baiting is a great SEO tool, and they are right. With proper use, link baits would surely increase traffic to any website.

Photo credits to Dale Eurenius

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I know I wanted those visits and I got them! Further more, I kept on getting lots of new visits for a long period of time. Even now, almost 3 months after.

For me, a blog’s design is always a key element (of course, along with content) in deciding whether to come back and read again, or not. I know, I’m a designer and I have an appetite for good looking websites. But then again, would you prefer reading the same content in a unique, beautiful layout or a poor, overused one? This is one thing I’ve already told you in my past blogging tips articles, now let me argument that!

When launching Blogsessive I had to deal with the choice of winning time buy using a free, but customized theme, or creating a new one from scratch. For 2 weeks I used a free template, until I finally managed to find time to develop the one I currently use.

Beautiful easily turns into popular

When I applied the new theme to my blog, I took the time to submit it to almost every important design gallery I’ve found on Google, and went through all of them from the first 2 results pages. Although I’ve submitted to about all of them, the most active was the listing on CSS Mania who sent Blogsessive about 2000 visits in a matter of 3 days.

The total amount of visits from these galleries finally peaked at about 4000 visits, but that’s not all. Every week I keep getting hundreds of visits from those listings or from design blogs that linked here (adding to the Technorati authority).

How many of those visits have been converted to readers? That really depends on your niche. If you have a design blog, you’ll probably convert quite a few of them, but as your topic get further from design, you’ll convert less. Still, it’s a great jump start for a blog that would get little to no traffic at all. In the end, it’s similar to getting a good Stumble Upon reaction.

Before the listings, nobody knew about Blogsessive. The next day I started receiving organic traffic for the “Blogsessive” search.

Where to find a good designer

There are many places where you could find professional help in designing a beautiful, unique theme for your blog. You could post a listing on Elance or Guru, or use Google to look for freelance designers, but remember that most times, high quality comes with high investment. Make sure you take a good look at your future designer’s portfolio and references and see if the investment is equivalent to his job quality.

Daniel Scocco wrote a great ProBlogger guest post a few days back on how to get a professionally designed blog. It’s very informative and you should read it. Also, take a look at the comments too. Some interesting things were mentioned there.

Don’t be shy

If you’ve already found someone but you’re not quite sure about the price-quality balance, I’ll be happy to offer my views on the matter, just drop me an email.

Be inspired!

Photo credits to Zoran Ozetsky.

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If you’re the kind of reader that’s constantly looking for information about blogging, blogging tips and how to build a better blog, then, most certainly, you’ve come across those articles that say: “Comment on other blogs! You will get a lot of traffic from them!”
Even I have suggested that commenting on other blogs in your niche will get you traffic, but let me explain what I think about it, how it works, when it works, DOs and DON’Ts when commenting.

Short-term Traffic vs. Long-term Awareness

Leaving blog comments is known to generate traffic. In some cases, even significant values. Most of the times, the traffic driven back is almost insignificant compared to my other main sources of traffic, like search results or referring blogs and websites. And guess what? I’m OK with that! Why? Because it generates valuable traffic! It’s enough to look at my stats and see that readers referred by my comments spend more time on my blog, read more posts and have a bounce-rate close to ZERO. These are the visitors that eventually subscribe to my RSS feed and come back to read more of my posts each day.

So, if you ask me, I’m not using comments to build traffic, but to increase Blogsessive’s awareness, in the long run. And since Blogsessive is a new blog, I like to call these comments baby steps.

What’s My Commenting Strategy?

When adding comments on other blogs, I take the following as my posting Bible:

1. Comment only when I really feel I have something to add to the topic. If the post is truly a great one, I’ll congratulate the blogger for the result, but never with a 2-3 word comment like “Great post, X”. A short comment like this makes a statement: “I have no clue what to say! I just want to get my comment here for exposure!”
2. I try to generate questions that can further add to the conversation. A smart question indicates that you’re a thinker. Readers love insightful posts, and some will click on your name to find out more about you.
3. I’m trying to be one of the first to comment, not necessarily the first. Trying to be the first can result in a low quality comment, since you’re fighting everyone else that uses this strategy, and time is short. Whenever I see a long list of comment I’m reading the first 4-5 comments and then jump to the end to see how the conversation evolved.

While the third point is not always easy to achieve due to factors like heavy commenting on the other blog, or even time zone differences, the first 2 points should go hand in hand whenever you want to add your comments.

Don’t Become a Blog Spammer

I hate spammers! Everyone does. So why would you want to be one? Do you care about your online image? Then, don’t do anything of the following:

1. Don’t fill you comments with links to your own posts. Add only one, and only when it’s really necessary.
2. Don’t struggle to be the first one to comment on each and every post on that blog.
3. Don’t be aggressive! Don’t start flames with other readers or the blogger.
4. Don’t confuse smart critique with misbehaving. My blog is my house. I’m not coming to your house and start cursing!
5. Don’t make excessive use of emoticons. Some blog have them active. Many users hate seeing a comment filled with smileys.

Final thoughts

Smart commenting is the key. While it probably won’t get you massive traffic, your image will only have to gain from it. Add value to all conversations you take part in and this value will be transferred upon your blog.
Now tell me, what’s your commenting strategy?

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I’m sure that many of you have wondered why some bloggers have thousands of subscribers, why their blogs are called “authority blogs” and why they receive constant or growing traffic. Yes, their writing skills are excellent, they provide good insight on different matters and/or they have a charming personality, but when it comes to blogging, there is one thing capable of deciding your success in only a few weeks: Consistency.

Importance of blogging consistency

Why is consistency important and how much it affects your blog? If you’re a casual blogger, writing about you math class or how your fish did 3 back-flips last evening, it probably won’t affect you too much, since your target would most likely be your classmates or close friends; but if you’re serious about maintaining an online successful blog, than constancy should be a top priority to you.

We’ve all heard that quality is better to have than quantity, but what if you can achieve both? What if you really have what it takes to intrigue you readers, to make them come back for more? And what if your readers keep coming back, only to find no new posts or new comments? Then, all your talent is wasted, and your initial effort was in vain.

These days, when the online environment is full of wonderful tools like StumbleUpon, Digg or del.icio.us, that make our web experience more pleasant and help us find information easier, people tend to get comfortable, do less typing in the address bar of their browser. That’s why you can be certain that your blog gets a lot of traffic from RSS readers. From time to time, I do like to navigate through my favorite blogs, looking for new posts, or reading old posts that I’ve missed, but 90% of the time I use my RSS readers to keep an eye on blog updates. So ask yourselves this: How am I supposed to come to your blog, if you don’t alert me constantly? And how can you alert me? By writing new posts! Further more, if your posts are high quality readings, you’ve got yourselves a loyal subscriber!

How can you insure your blogging consistency?

We all have bad days, less inspiring moments or simply don’t have the time to write even 2 paragraphs on a topic. What can be done to overpass these moments? Take advantage of your less busy days. Write, take notes, read more, get informed and form opinions of your own. Sure you can write a post, publish it and then go back to writing and publishing another one, but wouldn’t it be great if instead of this publishing frenzy you would save a draft of your second post, only to publish later, at a time when you won’t have the same idea-flow you had that day?

From a subscriber-statistic point of view, publishing 2 articles the same day will get you X unique visitors and 2*X pageviews that day, while publishing one the next day will insure your X unique visitors for 2 days in a row, and you’ll still have a respectable pageviews quota. If you’d ask me, I’d go for the uniques!

What do the search engines say?

With a new blog launched every second of the day, who do you think will win the search engines’ blessing? I put my money on those that keep a constant publishing flow, provide relevant results and maintain a high traffic level.

This is why consistency is essential for your blogging success, a huge factor in getting quality traffic, backlinks and reader loyalty.

So, blogsessed friends, how do you overpass your bad days and keep your level of publishing constant?

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