Saturday

How to grow and build your website hits

I have been blogging since the Sep of 2007 when I created my own blog, however I never did worry about seo at that time and I was content with creating a blog website of my own. I was very happy. Advertisement and add revenue were last on my mind at that time. I did not worry much about hits as I was content with my friends hit on my own blog posts. Concepts like driving website traffic, hit counter, facebook marketing, website builders, affiliate marketing, email marketing, google apps and tools for seo optimization were alien to me. Primarily you see it was self satisfaction that I was seeking and not add revenue. However one day while managing my blog on blogger.com it appeared to me an option of monetizing the blog. It was then that I actually came to be introduced to the world of seo and content marketing or ad revenue generation whatever one may call it.

Even after that I did not bother to do much about this stream as I was pretty much busy in my job as a IT Consultant, blogging as just a get-away or more to say a very interesting and creative hobby where I would like to just unleash my thoughts or record my varied experiences during the course of my journey of software development. I would record my events and also post some challenging technical problems that I might happen to solve. When people would have a look at it, or benefit on it, comment and appreciate that was what my real payment (and still is till today).

However in recent times, I realized that to become a professional in any field you should be effectively be able to generate revenue out of that otherwise it remains a discreet amateur hobby. It is only when one becomes a pro in something then he/she can give value to its consumer or audience.

Anyways, philosophy apart, coming back to topic of discussion here, I actually came across a lot of good content and links which might help anybody in increasing the ranking and effectiveness of his/her website. With the advent of social media it has now become a mandatory factor for any business which is inherently online in nature or relies heavily on online world to be part of the social media space and have a significant presence as well.

So here I would like to definitely discuss a few very excellent tips and tricks for developing your content and also effectively increasing your webpresence as web hits per se.


Keyword Research – the right way
Each Keyword has an intrinsic value of its own. To properly value a keyword’s potential for your business, first ask yourself how relevant your pages would be to the user searching for that keyword.
Look for keywords that your users would type in that would make them delighted and thankful to find your site. Examples might include “golf clubs for women” or “flights to Paris under $1,000”.
This delicate balance between generic versus specific is the sweet spot for keyword research.

Test Your Keyword
Once you have your ideal keywords chosen, it’s time to see if your visitors feel the same way. Type in your keywords in Google and notice both the top and sidebar paid ads:




Utilize some Keyword Research Tools
There are a few free and paid keyword tools that can help you with the research process. Each one offers varying amounts of data for a price, but give more than Google Keyword Suggestion tool to provide tracking trends, related keywords that may refer to brand names or product names
These tools can also help you mark ever-changing value of specific keywords due to changes in the economy or on social networks, some even let you spy on the keywords your competitors are using.

 You can get some wonderful tips on this link of Neil Patel’s website http://www.quicksprout.com/double-your-traffic-in-30-days/

Coming back to my personal experiences of blogging, although lot of tools tips and support can be found online, but it come downs to one thing which is passion. Passion and high interest drives any line of work and so does this. If you are committed to increase the hit and traffic of your website then you might as well do it, with or without help. However, if you are doing it just for the sake of doing it without your heart into it then probably the fire might die down mid-way. The best way is the right way. Your website is what you know best, it’s content and material is what will actually drive the traffic.
A few interesting concepts that I came through in my quest for right approaches landed me into below gems

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

“When I talk with most marketers today about how they generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel, most say trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising.  I call these methods "outbound marketing" where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack.

I think outbound marketing techniques are getting less and less effective over time for two reasons.  First, your average human today is inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out, including caller ID, spam filtering, Tivo, and Sirius satellite radio.  Second, the cost of coordination around learning about something new or shopping for something new using the internet (search engines, blogs, and social media) is now much lower than going to a seminar at the Marriott or flying to a trade show in Las Vegas.

It's Time to Transform Your Marketing” 



            12 Things You Should Be Using Your Blog For (Besides Blogging)

1) Solicit Content From High-Profile Sites

2) Work on Increasing Subscribers

3) Optimize Past Post Titles

4) Optimize Your Calls-to-Action

5) Update the CTAs on Old Posts

6) Update the Content of Popular Old Posts

7) Conduct a Topic Analysis

8) Make it Social

9) Optimize the Pages Blog Visitors Click the Most

10) Use Your Blog to Test New Offers

11) Use Your Blog as a Source of Content

12) Leverage Your Blog as a Sales Tool



Apart from above links which I posted, there are a few other links which I liked very much and worthy of mention here. What I most liked is the question answer format adding to authenticity of the post.

“Growth. One of the most important factors for any online business. Increasing relevant traffic often correlates with an increased bottom line.”

“The problem is that people immediately try to focus on rankings; and that's where the massive link building campaigns come in. But if you focus only on increasing your overall search traffic, and not battle for any specific keyword, your traffic just grows and grows. Over time, your increasing social network takes over and multiplies the impact of your writing.

ES: What were the important steps that got you to 3,500 visits/day?

FC: Right from the beginning of the website, I integrated a daily email newsletter into my publication schedule, so I was accumulating email subscribers a handful at a time. Over the years that list really built up, and served as the very core of my audience.

There's nothing more powerful than a distribution platform that you can reach out through. So my initial audience came purely through word of mouth and building that subscriber base one person at a time.

ES: Now let's hear about how you got to 100,000 visits per day. What were the most important steps you took to get you to this remarkable milestone?

FC: A lot of that growth happened naturally, but I became aware of the importance of search engine optimization about three years ago. Once I started incorporating SEO into my overall content process, my traffic jumped up in leaps and bounds. Until that point, I was only blogging and reporting on news, but I realized there was a whole class of evergreen content – the kind of concepts that people are always searching for.”



Hope the points might have been useful, I have been utilizing the above points into my blogs and websites and enjoying some wonderful results.

Now if you happen to be doing something which is working for your website then do share here. 

Monday

Word of Mouth – Will it work ?


Besides social media and television studios, the AAP is hoping word of mouth will do the magic. Will it work? [source]

This was a question posed on the website of a very popular news channel a week before the Delhi Assembly elections. ‘Will it work?’ I believe the question has been answered rhetorically and an astounding and deafening Yes has been said by the delhites.

Sitting on a peaceful Monday morning sipping tea, I was really wondering on the strategies of Mr. Kejriwal, I myself had friends calling me and securing my vote for the debutant and I heard a lot of small group meetings being formed and people being made aware of a new non-corrupt emerging party. They were such discreet that probably it sent it’s most of adversaries and competitors off-guard. The next thing I know was congratulatory notes flooding my FB wall for debut party.

Anyways, my intention was not to discuss Delhi politics, but it was to capture an amazing observation of a growing trend called ‘Word Of Mouth’.

If I may happen to recall you, not so long ago in the yester-years a young passionate person by name of certain Mr. Mohandas karamchand Ghandhi (our very own Bapu), happened to collect a huge crowd of followers for the famous Dandi march, with no social media, internet or even telephone to assist, how did he manage to spread the word, that too with media being against him totally. It was simple, yes, word of mouth…a philosophy as old as the mankind itself, i.e people will always be talking to people on any subject, thing, cause or product of interest. The most nascent form of advertising and probably the most powerful as well.

The most important feature of this strategy is the personal touch and sense of ownership that is incurred into the people participating in word-of-mouth as happened in this case of AAP where most of the supporters felt they were promoting was something they owned and part of a larger picture.

word of mouth is not something that the Indian politics is getting aware of, it is something that the corporate world is also realizing and many companies has resorted to these techniques for movement of their products and services.

Companies hiring through this mode of referencing and asking it’s employees to spread the word in return get some benefit and thus substantially cutting down on their advertisement budgets and get some trustworthy people on board. Freelancers and SMEs getting their clients and customers through this channel of advertising and marketing.

Similarly has a new industry flourished where corporate world is waking up to this medium, getting it’s customer base talk about their products and services and creating a win-win situation for itself and their existing customers as well by sharing a percentage of profit which happened because of the marketing and further revenue generation, something getting popular being known as Referral Marketing or Word-of-Mouth Marketing, creating an amazing source of income for people and equally amazing less costly way of advertising for the company. Some say this is the start of a new beginning, only time will tell.

No wonder, Mr Kejriwal succeeded as this is the most time-tested and powerful medium of building anything substantial, word-of-mouth.

Essentially word-of-mouth is the talk of the day so as they say Wake up and smell the coffee.

Happy Talking !!