Blog Help

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

2008-06-18T09:58:00.002+05:30

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

1 .Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)

The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.-

2. Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain

Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).-

3. Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind

First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.-

4. Participate at Related Forums & Blogs

Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).-

5. Tag Your Content

Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.-

6. Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)

There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.-

7. Don't Jump on the Bandwagon

Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).-

8. Link Intelligently

When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.-

9. Invite Guest Bloggers

Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.-

10. Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)

I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.-

11. Go Beyond Text in Your Posts

Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.-

12. Cover Topics that Need Attention

In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.-

13. Pay Attention to Your Analytics

Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.-

14. Use a Human Voice

Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.-

15 . Archive Effectively

The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.-

16. Implement Smart URLs

The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.-

17. Reveal as Much as Possible

The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.-

18. Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait

Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.-

19. Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days

If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.-

20. Create Expectations and Fulfill Them

When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).-

21.Build a Brand

Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.
Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.

How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

2008-05-07T14:14:00.002+05:30

Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Why SEO?

In today World ,every body uses Google and every body wants that his/her blog/website should come on the 1st page of the Google Search.

So lets start how to increase ranked and how to be indexed by them.

Writing for Search Engines and Humans

Many bloggers have lots of problem in Optimizing their blogs for search Engines.
They said that ,rather than focusing on search engine , focus on content. I dont think so. Its true only .01 % , in my opinion.

Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that - if you do write quality content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in SEO) - however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the only one).

Basic SEO tips for Bloggers

1.Off Site SEO Techniques

The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:

they are from higher ranked sites than your own
they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
they link to you using relevant keywords to your page

Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.

How to generate quality inbound Links?

Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier - its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?

Quality Content - There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content - Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links - I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines
Directories - Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy - the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories - submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there - many of which offer a free submission.
Inter-link your Blogs - Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach - if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
Buy Links - Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites.
Swap Links - Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) - makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?!

2. On Site SEO Techniques

1. Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions

How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
What other keywords are other sites using?

The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.

These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:

Keywords in post and page titles
Keywords in URL of page
Keywords in outbound links. Of course you should always link to sources of content as an ethical consideration but the bonus of this is that many SEO experts think that linking to relevant and quality sites on the same topic of your post with good keywords can also add credibility to YOUR post also.
Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags.
Keywords in image alt tags
Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post - but especially early on in the first few sentences
Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines

Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content - but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% - I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.

One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) - don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings - but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords - these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy - don’t fall for the temptation.

Keep in mind keywords that might be specific to the season we are approaching. While during the year there might be less people searching for posts relating to Christmas, gifts, presents, new year sales etc - this time of year will see an increase in these types of searches.

2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.

3. Site Design - Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site - keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).

4. Interlink your Site - The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog. This is a key point in the lead up to Christmas - if you have a few seasonal posts that you particularly want to do well in the SE’s make sure they are linked to from every page on your blog.

5. Update regularly - The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging - make the most of it!

6. Outbound Links - There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you . Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO - moderation is the key.

7. Choose your domain name wisely - there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time.

8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period - a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.

9. One topic per post - the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.

10. Write optimal length posts - there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either - because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article (looks like this post is in trouble - is anyone still reading?).

11. Avoid Duplicate content - Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs - these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) - my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).

12. Ping - services like Pingomatic will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog.

13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo - submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.

14. Quantities of Content - I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content - but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites - whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site - it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content - be careful about this - rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.

15. Submit to Search Engines - You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site - submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine.

You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you - I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.

The Time Factor

One more element that I think is often overlooked in SEO tips posts is that of ‘Time’.

My own experience of blogging is that you can do all of the above things and still not be ranked well in the Search Engines for months and months. Here at ProBlogger it actually took around a year before I started to get significant search engine traffic - despite me doing all the ‘right things’.

This might not be particularly good news for those of you wanting to optimize your site for Christmas this year - but it is yet another reminder that blogging is a long term thing and that it takes considerable time for a blog to become established.

If you’re not ranking well in the search engines - hang in there. Keep posting, keep working on quality content and keep the above factors in mind - as you do this you’ll find that in time your SE traffic will gradually increase.

Five ways to Increase your Blog Traffic

2008-05-07T14:09:00.003+05:30

Traffic, traffic, traffic! We all want more traffic but sometimes it can be hard to sift through all the things you can do and figure out the best way to increase your traffic. For starters, here are five proven things you can do that will increase your traffic.

1. Hit the Google , Yahoo , Microsoft

A great source of traffic is search engines, so why not leverage them to their fullest before worrying about anything else. Getting your website placed high within search results is determined by three main things: code, links, and content. Because you are a blogger, content isn’t the biggest problem however the other two might be. By following these simple steps , you can increase your rankings and increase your search traffic.

2. Don’t be shy

There is always something hot in the blogosphere, just keep an eye out for what’s hot and make sure to join in on the conversation. This can boost traffic and links almost immediately. Sites like Techmeme feed off of what’s hot in the blogosphere and are a great place to put on your watchlist for the latest hot topics. This article was taken by a handful of other bloggers and ended up becoming the 16 rules of social media optimization. This did not only create tons of links for the original article, but it also created tons of links for all the other bloggers who added to it.

3. Create some buzz

Social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Netscape are all great sources of traffic. If you can get on the homepage of any of these sites you will get thousands of visitors within minutes and potentially thousands of new regular readers. These sites are mainly driven by votes so make sure your readers can vote for you by placing social bookmark buttons within your posts in order to have the best chance of success. Keep in mind that you’ll need to write content that is actually appealing enough to be voted to the top, not just anything will be successful here. We’ve seen a lot of how-to guides, resources, and lists become popular quickly so these might not be bad categories to play around with first. Just try to add value with your content and you’ll have the best chance.

4.Don’t be a link Nazi!

By linking to others within your blog posts and showing some link love, other people will likely link back to you. The more generous you are the more generous others will be to you. When linking out give it some time and don’t expect the majority of the sites to link back to you. And most importantly make sure to only link out when it will benefit your readers. Sooner or later this tactic will increase the number of sites linking to you which can ultimately help drive traffic.

5. Be a drama queen

By being constructively and tastefully confrontational you can get tons of traffic. Even if you don’t have a popular blog, calling out certain companies or individuals who are tracking their buzz will certainly get you a little traffic boost.

Most of these items almost deserve a post on their own to explain why they work and what they are really doing however sometimes it helps to keep things simple. The overarching theme here is really about being as proactive as possible and putting some work into getting out there more. If you put more energy behind getting your voice out there, your traffic will respond.

Blog Promotion for Newbies

2008-05-06T22:51:00.000+05:30

1: Don’t use blogrolling: it may be easier to use but the javascript stuffs up search engines when they are looking for links and makes the links useless, use WordPress’s managed links feature or similar product, or even hard code it, I did for the 18 months I used MT before changing to WordPress

2. Pinging to weblogs et al is good but trackbacking to sites is better, when of course your post is in relation to that sites topic. Also legitimate commenting directly on other sites helps expose your site to others. But remember, it must be legitimate comment and not spam!

3. Offer to exchange links on your site under your links section, it lets people know that your interested in linking and will build up your site quickly in Technorati and Google.

4. Link to other small sites without exchange, either through side bar or post: linking to big sites is great in showing what your reading but does nothing to build up your readership because they nearly always never return the favour, indeed a number of them will steal your stories or ideas without any attribution at all. Smaller sites on the other hand are often stoked that you’ve linked to them and will return the favour without asking, even if they don’t, you’ve still done a good deed.

5 submit your blog to ALL the search engines, it might take some time but the spiders will start coming if….

6. The most important feature of all: post regularly and post often. It not only brings readers back regularly but it means the spiders from the search engines will return more frequently indexing your entire site, and you’ll start getting hits from the search engines. Some may argue that these aren’t that valuable but I would argue that’s rubbish. It exposes your site to a new audience for free, and even if only a few return you’ve still built up your readership for free. Take the Blog Herald for example, we get 5,000 views per month just from clickthrus in from Google and another 2,500 from other search engines (Google is the only real game in town though). Even if only 1% return to the site later, that’s 75 new regular readers per month or nearly 1000 per year, and what I also find is that this traffic also responds well to advertising on the site if they’ve stumbled in for the wrong reason.

What is RSS

2008-05-06T22:35:00.001+05:30

What is RSS?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

What problem does RSS solve?

Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community and religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, and weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.

Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.

RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.

How does RSS work?

RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an "RSS Feed". People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called "RSS aggregators" have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".)

Producing an RSS feed is very simple and hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs.

What information does RSS provide?

RSS provides very basic information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. Each item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description and a link to a web page with the actual information being described. Sometimes this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a weblog post) and sometimes it is just a summary.

How do I find out if a website has an RSS feed?

It is getting more and more common for websites to have RSS feeds. They usually indicate the existence of the feed on the home page or main news page with a link to "RSS", or sometimes by displaying an orange button with the letters "XML" or "RSS". RSS feeds are also often found via a "Syndicate This" link. Text "RSS" links sometimes (there are lots of variations) point to a web page explaining the nature of the RSS feeds provided and how to find them. The buttons are often linked directly to the RSS feed file itself.

Once you know the URL of an RSS feed, you can provide that address to an RSS aggregator program and have the aggregator monitor the feed for you. Many RSS aggregators come preconfigured with a list to choose from of RSS feed URLs for popular news websites.

How is the RSS feed file produced?

Unless you are maintaining a website or want to create your own RSS feed for some other purpose, how the RSS feed is produced should not be of concern and you may skip this section.

The special XML-format file that makes up an RSS feed is usually created in one of a variety of ways.

Most large news websites and most weblogs are maintained using special "content management" programs. Authors add their stories and postings to the website by interacting with those programs and then use the program's "publish" facility to create the HTML files that make up the website. Those programs often also can update the RSS feed XML file at the same time, adding an item referring to the new story or post, and removing less recent items. Blog creation tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, and Radio automatically create feeds.

Websites that are produced in a more custom manner, such as with Macromedia Dreamweaver or a simple text editor, usually do not automatically create RSS feeds. Authors of such websites either maintain the XML files by hand, just as they do the website itself, or use a tool such as Software Garden, Inc.'s ListGarden program to maintain it. There are also services that periodically read requested websites themselves and try to automatically determine changes (this is most reliable for websites with a somewhat regular news-like format), or that let you create RSS feed XML files that are hosted by that service provider.

Other uses

In addition to notifying you about news headlines and changes to websites, RSS can be used for many other purposes. There does not even have to be a web page associated with the items listed -- sometimes all the information you need may be in the titles and descriptions themselves.

Some commonly mentioned uses are:

Notification of the arrival of new products in a store
Listing and notifying you of newsletter issues, including email newsletters
Weather and other alerts of changing conditions
Notification of additions of new items to a database, or new members to a group

One RSS aggregator is all that you need to read all of the RSS feeds, be they headlines, alerts, changes, or other notifications. RSS is shaping up to be a very popular and useful means for communicating.

Using Feedburner for Syndication

2008-05-06T22:28:00.002+05:30

Feedburner is a great way to syndicate your content and get more people to read what you write. Feedburner offers a bunch of different services to help you build awareness of your content, keep stats on who is reading and even will help you with ways to monetize your blog.

A few highlights of Feedburner:

The Feedburner PingShot automatically notifies a bunch of web directories when you post new content.
Feedburner lets you easily setup email subscription lists.
Gives you serveral different chicklets to put on your site to make it easier for people to sign up for your feed.
Allows you to automatically add links to social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us, Slashdot, Furl, Spurl, etc.) on each blog post and also in your FeedBurner feed. By using these links you can have your readers promote your blog for you. This is a very powerful tool for you to use as you grow your blog.

All in all, Feedburner is an awesome and free tool. Definitely worth checking out.

Ways To Increase Blog Traffic

2008-05-06T18:02:00.000+05:30

Whether your blog is a personal or business blog, the question of 'how do I increase my blog traffic?' is something which usually isn't far from the mind of any blogger. Blogging is addictive and the thought that other people are reading, or (if it's a business related blog) purchasing products from your blog is as equally addictive!

There are a few simple things you can do to substantially increase the number of potential visitors to your blog:

Number one on your list should be submitting your blog's URL and RSS feed to blog and RSS specific directories. This way you'll increase your blog's exposure to a maximum number of potential readers, thus increasing your blog's traffic potential.

Second on your list should be making regular posts on your blog, and once you've posted an entry, you should then ping the blog and RSS specific directories to tell them that you've updated your blog.

Remove the NavBar

2008-05-06T17:50:00.002+05:30

Hiding NavBar is so simple. Many people think that its give by google and it cant be removed.

Here is the code to remove the NavBar.

Step 1. Log in to blogger

Step 2. your Dashboard, select Layout. This will take you to the Template tab. Click Edit HTML. Under the Edit Template section you will see you blog's HTML.

Step 3. paste this code in the head section

#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
}
or u can use this code also...

#navbar-iframe {

dispaly: none !important;

}

Increase Traffic by Changing the Title for blogger

2008-05-06T17:46:00.003+05:30

Change ur Blogger title to increase ur traffic

Some people thing that only URL of the Blog is importnat but accutally has their importance. So be active white choosing both TITLE and Blog URL.

Enjoy...

See lots of PICs at foto-Jug

Put Buttons on ur Blog

2008-05-06T17:37:00.003+05:30

Put lots of button on ur site or blog to increase ur site traffic.

like

Add Digg vote button on Blogger Template (update)
Add Technorati blog reaction on your Blogger Template
Add Reddit button with counter in your Blogger Template
Add StumbleUpon button in your Blogger posts
Add delicious button with counter in your blogger posts Add Mixx button on Blogger template
Add DZone button on Blogger template
Add Design Float button on Blogger template

Mandira Bedi On Facebook and spaces.live.com

2008-04-09T14:19:00.001+05:30

Mandira bedi on spaces.live.com
Mandira bedi on Facebook

Send a msg , and if u r LUCKY today , u will get response definetely.

I love u Mandira.... [:P]

Virtual TechDays

2008-04-07T17:46:00.002+05:30

Microsoft TechNet & msdn

presents

Microsoft Virtual TechDays

An event by Microsoft India for Developers and IT Professional to give further insight into Microsoft's newest technologies! Join us on

April 9 & 10, 2008

to explore the potential of Windows server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL server 20008

Join the Tech day and Win lots of prizes....!!!

Secure IT companies in India.

2008-03-22T22:33:00.001+05:30

1) Microsoft --- Has projects till 2050.

2) EDS --- Most secure company in India. Not laid off any of its employees even during 2001. Has lots of projects in Defense and financial areas

3) HP --- Dream Company. In-house and outsourced projects

4) Infosys --- Dream Job. On a way to achieve the status of a secured, stable Govt. company.

5) AOL, Google and Yahoo - Best companies to work with, great job satisfaction as well as great salary and work environment. Rarely fires an employee. As they are internet based companies' they offer lots of opportunities to grow.

6) HCL -- A good company to be in. Called as a "retirement company."

7) HSBC--This is the most secure company. It has never fired any employee, even when they know that the employee is showing fake experience.

8) Aricent--a communication based software company, has never fired any employee and gives great perks & incentives, lot of projects in kitty. Minimal level of attrition.

9) KPIT Cummins Infosystems Limited ---- This is the most secure company not known to many. It has presently acquired CG Smith, Bangalore and has lots of projects in pipe line. Acquisitions plans will continue.

Top Most firing IT companies in India...

2008-03-22T22:27:00.002+05:30

1) IBM --- Right now this is the most firing company for IT professionals. In the last 6 months, this company has fired nearly 20% of their employees because of BG check and performance issues. This is the most insecure company from an IT professional's point of view. They don't have any strategic plans at HR policies regarding employee security. No appraisals (maximum 10%).

2) TCS --- Previously its an government IT Company . Now a days TCS also becoming firing IT company. Recently they fired on 500 people.( the people below 2 years of experience) and TCS lost so many projects recently( especially British Telecom Projects).

3) Accenture --- This is second top most firing company. The firing rate is around 5%. This depends upon outsourced projects; they have a unique system where Accenture development centers around the world bid for a project coming into the company. Currently Philippines centre is taking the cake and the Indian centers are in a firing mode.

4) WIPRO --- Firing people with very frequent back ground checks and firing them with out even experience letters and relieving letters (will mention as terminated from services)but will promise the employees that they will retain them. After the project is over they will fire away. Will threaten of criminal cases against such employees if they oppose the move and has also filed against some.

5) Intel --- Recently joined the league. Running in heavy losses, hence firing 3000 employees in the Bangalore center in a phased out manner.

6) CTS --- Has a steady firing policy (checking the Educational background and previous employment and also employee performance in work). In a Recent HCL walk-in, around 50% attendees were from this company. Sadly the I-pods have not helped them.8) CSC --- Excellent package but fires folks in Background check and those on bench regularly. Recently fired 400+ employees from its subsidiary Covansys.

7) CSC --- Excellent package but fires folks in Background check and those on bench regularly.
Recently fired 400+ employees from its subsidiary Covansys.

8) Satyam --- Currently stopped firing. The Attrition rate is very high. No firing from 2005 until now when 1000 employees were fired in Hyderabad.

9) Patni ---- They fired so many employees that currently they are facing understaffing and deficiency with number of employees. Very high attrition rate.

10) Keane India ---- This USA based company is always involved in firing employees. Although they proudly say that they don't have hire and fire policy. Recently they fired Java and as400 professionals after which most of the employees have started to pack their bags. Employees change this company within 1 year.

So take care before accepting offers from these companies.

Student Rockstar forum

2008-03-16T00:16:00.001+05:30

here is the direct link for Student Rockstar forum

Do's And Don'ts

2008-03-16T00:12:00.001+05:30

Please read carefully.

Click here to view Do's And Don'ts

Points Table

2008-03-16T00:07:00.002+05:30

Here is the points table. Points Table give you a detail that how many points you get awarded for each activity

points earn table

Feature List

2008-03-16T00:05:00.000+05:30

The detail abouts the activities are here.
http://www.studentrockstar.com/featureList.aspx

Activities at Rockstar

2008-03-16T00:01:00.002+05:30

• Activities which earn points:

o Registration and College Profile: Get registered for the contest and submit college profile. o Referrals: Refer a friend to join the contest.

o Imagine Cup: Participate in Imagine Cup contest.

o Forum: Post a thread, Reply a thread, Get response to the thread posted.

o Coding Challenge: Participate in Coding Challenge when it is announced.

o S2B Program: Participate in the Student to Business program and earn points.

o Downloads: Download a free Software / Product provided on this site.

o Announcements: Post an announcement on the site. You can post maximum three announcement in a week.

o Knowledge Base: Post a white paper / technical article on the site. Students can download and rate the articles.

o Web-cast: Access a webinar / web-casts by using the links provided on the site.

• Other Activities:

o Edit Profile: Change the personal details in your profile.

Microsoft RockStar Contest

2008-03-11T23:33:00.005+05:30

Here’s your chance to become Microsoft Student Partner! Microsoft India is organizing Student RockStar Contest for Students across India. If you are an engineering student (B.E, B.Tech and MCA) studying in India then you are eligible to join this contest. For an invitation just a comment on this post and we’ll send you an invite. .
Microsoft India has put up some criteria for earning points and once you earn a minimum level of required points you will automatically be rolled out to Top 300 members who will be benefited with this Student Partner Program.

Rewards and Opportunities:
Top 300 members in the contest (based on ranks) would be evaluated for being “Student Partners” with Microsoft. Within these top 300 members:
Top 3 students would each get an X-Box 360
Next 10 students would each get a Windows phone
Next 50 would each get 2GB flash drives
About 1000 express CDs & 500 desktop calendars would also be given away
All Microsoft Student Partners will receive these goodies from Microsoft:

Contest Duration
The contest is available from 4th September 2007 to 31st May 2008.
The results for the Contest will be displayed by 15th June 2008.

For an invite, drop ur email and mobile number