All Entries Tagged With: "traffic"

Why Did My Traffic Numbers Drop With Google Analytics?

Many small business owners get alarmed when they install Google Analytics for the first time and get a look at their traffic numbers. Especially if they’ve been using another metrics package.

Some blogging systems come with a proprietary analytics tool, but the problem with many of these tracking systems is in the way that they track traffic and visitors. It isn’t necessarily accurate. Some of them purposely record visits by bots and spiders so that it appears that your traffic stats are higher than they actually are. That’s why we prefer to use Google Analytics because you get a more realistic picture of your traffic counts.

The big difference in the way traffic stats are measured boils down to whether the analytics package is cookie-based or IP address-based. If your analytics tool measures traffic using IP addresses then it is likely tracking visits by search engine spiders and other bots. Every time a competitor lands on your site with a spybot or a search engine spider visits your pages to crawl it for indexing purposes you could be registering a visit, reflecting an inaccurate real person count of your traffic. A more accurate way to measure traffic is with a cookie-based analytics tool like Google Analytics.

Since robots and spiders don’t carry cookies, they won’t be counted in a cookie-based analytics package. The downside to this is if a real person visitor to your site has their browser cookies disabled then they won’t be counted as a visit either. Fortunately, most people don’t disable their browser cookies so that doesn’t happen as often as you’d imagine. Besides, it’s much better to under-report your traffic numbers than to over-report them.

June 04, 2009 | Allen | Comments 0

Traffic: The Single Most Important Thing To Do For Your Blog

You’ve set up your company blog and optimize every post to achieve high rankings in the search engines. Now what?

Don’t rest on your laurels. You need to market your blog. But how do you do that?

There are several ways you can market your blog and drive traffic to it. Here are a few that we recommend:

Article marketing
Social bookmarking
Social networking
Forum posting
Pay per click advertising
E-mail marketing
Directory submissions
Sending out link requests

Each of these methods of online marketing is effective in its own way. Article marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing online and is great for driving traffic if you do it on a consistent basis.

Chances are, if you have a blog with Blog Content Provider then we’ve talked to you about social bookmarking. If we haven’t then you should give us a call because this is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog.

Social networking is different from social bookmarking in one aspect – the emphasis is on building relationships with people with similar interests in order to bring them to your website so that they can see what you are doing. Social bookmarking focuses on the content; social networking focuses on the relationships.

Forum posting is also effective in driving traffic to your website. The idea is to simply join a conversation and be a contributor. When people see how valuable you are in giving contributions to the group they will trust you more and visit your website.

PPC click marketing, aka pay per click, is very effective, especially for the short term, but it’s the only method of marketing mentioned here that requires a fee beyond any service provider that you hire to act on your behalf.

E-mail marketing is still effective and even in this day many people use e-mail without being fully connected to the Internet. We always recommend marketing your blog through RSS feeds, but you should also have a way for people to receive notice of your blog through e-mail such as a blog promotion newsletter (be sure to ask about Blog Content Provider’s newsletter services).

Directory submissions and link requests are on the bottom end of the spectrum for blog marketing, but I wouldn’t leave them. You never know how people will find you so you should give them every opportunity to do so.

You can rely entirely on SEO for blog marketing, but why limit yourself. While most of your blog traffic will come from search engines, there is a lot more potential out there for getting traffic to your blog. Some bloggers report that Twitter, StumbleUpon, or another social media source is the biggest driver of traffic to their blogs. By focusing on marketing your blog, you can increase your traffic and your conversions. Don’t just leave it to chance.

For more information about blogging, talk to a blog consultant.

December 12, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

Should You Put Outbound Links In Your Blogroll?

Your blogroll is a list of favorite links that you highlight and showcase in the sidebar of your blog. Should you put outbound links in that blogroll or only links to your site?

Keep this in mind: Every outbound link is a traffic hole. You are essentially inviting your site visitors to leave your blog and go somewhere else. That’s why you should only promote your most important pages of your website in your blogroll. I’d offer just one exception: When you have a link exchange agreement with a complimentary, non-competitive business.

In other words, if your link partner is linking back to you then that’s OK. You might get some traffic from there site so if you send them a little it’s equal and fair exchange. But I’d make sure that your link partner is not a competitor and that his business compliments yours. You also want to go back and check periodically to ensure that your link is still there. Some webmasters will entice you into a link exchange and then delete your link when you’re not looking. So be careful out there and protect your blogroll.

November 24, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

When Should You Hire A Blog Ghostwriter?

There comes a time when you should think about hiring a ghostwriter for your blog. But when?

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a ghostwriter when:

You’ve realized that you don’t have the time to write any more
You need a professional approach to blogging
You want well-optimized content that delivers traffic to your important landing pages
Your blog isn’t performing as well as you think it should be
You are not confident of your own writing ability
The competition is beating your socks off

I know what you’re thinking. A blog ghostwriter will cost me money. Yes, you’ll have to pay for the service, but if you get a decent ROI on the expense, would it be worth it? Let’s say that you pay out $300 per month for a ghostwriter and you get 1 lead each month from that. The cost of your lead is $300. Is that more or less than what you are paying now per lead acquisition?

Even if the cost of acquisition per lead is less than you’d normally pay, you still need to close the sale. Right?

Well, if closing one sale means an additional $1,000 in your pocket and you know you can close one of out every three leads, your ROI is $100. You have a positive ROI, correct?

But let’s say you only close one out of every four leads and you have $1,000 coming in out of a $1,200 expense on ghostwriting services. Are you losing money? Not necessarily. Your blog could be sending you one lead per month, but it is also building up new content and building links to your website, which pushes up your search engine rankings. Let’s say it takes you two years to capture the top spot in Google for your key search term and once you do then you realize a 500% increase in traffic.

If your traffic count from organic listings was 1,000 unique visitors and you start getting 5,000 unique visitors per month knowing that you can close 1% of those, your sales conversions go up from 1 per month to 5 per month on organic listings. Your income will also increase from $1,000 per month to $5,000 per month based on the $1,000 per sale. Two years of spending $300 per month on blog ghostwriting services equates to a total expense of $7,200. You’ll make that up in two months after you hit the top spot in Google. How’s your ROI now?

I’m not guaranteeing you a top spot in Google for blog ghostwriting services. We’ve accomplished that feat for customers in the past and I believe we can do it again. But the illustration does show that ROI is not as cut and dry as measuring the sales developed from your blog alone. There’s more to ghostwriting than mere dimes and nickels.

October 28, 2008 | Allen | Comments 2

How Should You Monetize Your Company Blog?

One question that often pops up is “How can I monetize my business blog?” First, you have to understand what a blog is for and how best to use it. You are not trying to create a publishing platform where you sell advertising or pop on AdSense so that you earn five cents per click. If you are then you are looking at the wrong type of blog for the company blog model. It’s not that the publishing platform type of blog isn’t a good model. It is. But you can’t mix and match the concepts.

A good company blog doesn’t necessarily need a monetization plan of its own if it is done properly. That’s not to say you can’t make money with it.

First and foremost, your company blog is a marketing tool for your business. The idea is to drive traffic to your website and increase your search engine standing through optimized quality content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to achieve those two simultaneous goals.

To measure your blog ROI, follow the traffic patterns. Are you getting traffic to your static site from the blog. If so, is it converting? If not, why not? Perhaps you nee more in-text links. Or maybe you need fewer. Maybe those links need the proper anchor text. Or maybe the problem isn’t with the blog at all.

The most common problem with websites that don’t convert is with the content on the website itself. If you’re getting traffic to your website from your blog, but you aren’t closing sales then it’s the website, not the blog. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

We’re firm believers in first things first. Get your website to where it will convert traffic to sales. Then use a blog to promote it. You can use other methods of promotion as well. Don’t just stick with one way (ever hear of not putting your eggs in one basket?). But realize that not every visitor to your site will buy something and not every visitor to your blog will visit your website. What do you do with that traffic that leaves?

Here are a few ideas for you:

Sign them up for your newsletter
Hit them with an exit “pop-up” window and sell them something; like, maybe an e-book
Get them to subscribe to your RSS feed
Sell them an affiliate product with a link in the sidebar
Send to them a sister site

One important concept too many business owners ignore is the value of contact information, which can lead to future sales. Get the e-mail address, at least. Use your company blog as more than a repository for your “throwaway” content.

October 13, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

Use Your Blog To Build Inbound Links

A blog is a great way to build inbound links. You can use an offsite blog to build links to your static website by posting daily and using your keywords as anchor text to build those inbound links. The best way to use a blog for building links is to augment other types of Internet marketing that you do and not try to do too much too soon. You don’t want the search engines thinking you are spamming and discounting those links. In the case of linking from your blog to your static site, moderation is the key.

There are two ways to make your blog’s inbound links for you:

Sidebar
In-text

Your sidebar links are permanent links and won’t help you a great deal, but they do help brand your blog and drive traffic to important pages where you want your traffic to go. Your in-text in-blog-post links are the best links you can have. The search engines love those links. And they count to help push your static site up in the rankings. Learn more about how an offsite blog can help you build inbound links.

October 09, 2008 | Allen | Comments 2

5 Ways To Use Blogs To Drive Traffic Where You Want It

Blogging has grown a lot since it was first introduced online. It has changed, but the fundamentals are the same. Businesses are using blogs ever more and to great effect. Below are three ways that you can use a blog to drive traffic to your website:

Use your blog posts to promote specific pages of your website. Don’t link to too many pages in the same blog post. This strategy is best used as a minimalist approach. Focus on one – or two at the most – pages per blog post and link to that page once or twice. No more. Focus on another page in the next blog post.
In your sidebar. Pick a handful of pages on your website to promote in your sidebar. Create sidebar links for those pages and that’s it.
Use a signature link in your blog posts. In your signature link, include a link or two to specific pages on your website and try to make those pages relate to your blog post topic in some way.
Instead of a signature link, add a banner at the bottom of all of your posts. Link the banner to a specific page on your website. You can even rotate banners from one post to the next depending on the topics you write about.
Use your RSS feed to promote specific pages on your website. The number of people who will see these links will be limited, but you can use the links as an incentive to subscribe to your RSS feed. Make those links to special pages that offer a strong benefit and plug that benefit in your RSS feed promotional literature.

You can drive traffic anywhere you want it to go using these traffic-driving techniques. For more insight into managing a blog, check out BCP.

September 18, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

The Difference Between Blogging For SEO And Blogging For $$

Everyone, it seems, wants to make money from their blog, but blogging isn’t necessarily all about money. A blog can also be used for marketing purposes, to drive traffic and improve your SEO, which ultimately is about improving your search position for your important keywords.

When you monetize a blog through advertising – whether display, PPC, CPM, text links, or another model – you are really attempting to get people to click on those ads. You write content that encourages that. Some people use a mediocre or lousy content strategy. In other words, they purposely downplay their content so that visitors click the ads. It works for some of them, but you don’t want to do that on your business blog.

For your company blog, you really want to develop a relationship with the people who will do business with you. You want traffic and SEO benefits. By focusing on keyword-rich content that is valuable to human readers, you will increase your brand positioning as well as your company image, and that’s what really counts.

August 21, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

Does Social Media Traffic Bounce?

If you’ve been blogging and bookmarking for any time at all you’ve likely heard that social media traffic receives a high bounce rate. I have seen that in some cases, but I recently checked my traffic at some of the social media sites that I frequent and I’ve found that just the opposite is true. The following statistics represent traffic from popular social media sites within the last month for a blog that I write for poetry, a popular blog within that niche.

All of these bounce rates are well below the average for blogs, which tend to have high bounce rates by nature. Most blogs are around 80% bounce rate due to people just reading one post and moving on. It’s interesting to note that my bounce rate from Technorati and BlogCatalog are both considerably higher – 71.43% at each site. Likewise, at forums targeted specifically to the poetry niche market, I have higher bounce rates (75% at one), and my bounce rate from other poetry blogs are also high, some of them reaching to 75% or 80%. What gives?

I’d also like to note that my bounce rate at Digg is 100%, but I’ve only had one visit from Digg in the last month (I’ve concluded that Digg is not a good place for bookmarking my poetry site).

Traffic Figures Unveiled
Before moving on, I’d like to point out what my traffic numbers at these sites are (you’ll see that some of them are quite low):

You could argue that the sampling from most of these sites is too small to be really analyze the data effectively, but I disagree. One would expect that the higher the traffic number from any traffic source would increase the bounce right, but that hasn’t been the case at StumbleUpon. In fact, I’ve historically received high traffic numbers from the StumbleUpon community. But I’ve seen my bounce rate get lower and lower. I think that’s very significant.

LitMixx is a new social community that I started within the Mixx umbrella. It’s focus of course is on literary bookmarking – poetry, fiction, journalism, nonfiction, etc. It’s only about a week-and-a-half old so the data is very fresh and I don’t have a full month of data to analyze, but what I do have is significant, particularly since there are only 6 members in the community right now. I’ve only just started promoting it.

My big surprises are with Reddit and Furl. I really did not expect to get as much traffic from Furl as from other sources such as Delicious and Mixx. I consider those communities much more interested in arts and literary topics. I guess not. But Reddit is the real surprise because it’s mostly a news site and if I got any traffic from it at all I’d be happy. What I sense from these numbers is that Reddit users will only click a link to visit a site if they’re really interested in the topic, but if they click on a link and read the material then they are more likely to stick around if they like something. Reddit users, in other words, are more conscientious. I’m going to have to do more experimenting with Reddit.

Critical Factors For Social Bloggers
I believe my lowering bounce rate at StumbleUpon can be credited to just one thing: Consistency. I have been a consistent poetry blogger for almost a year now. And during that 11 months I have Stumbled blog posts on a regular basis. I have attracted the following of several of my friends who vote on and comment on many of the posts. Even people who are not regular readers of poetry blogs like my blog because

It’s attractive
I write interesting posts
Though I write on literary topics, I do not write “stuffy” literati stuff that is over the average layperson’s head
I write every day, but only Stumble posts occasionally (in other words, I don’t spam them)

I think these are critical factors. If you have an attractive blog with interesting writing then you’ll attract more followers. Social media users in particular care about the writing style of your blog posts. I’m talking about people are interested in more than just “share yours and I’ll share mine.” I’m talking about people who care about real content that is interesting, lively, and well written. The StumbleUpon community is largely made of people who are there because they like the interaction with other people who care about good content. The same with the Mixx community; that’s why I’m excited about the new literary community I’ve created in LitMixx. I’m anxious to see how well it does.

New Visits And Average Time On Site
A study of the new visitors and the time they spend on my blog is just as interesting as the traffic and the bounce rate are. Consider these numbers:

Again, I’m surprised by Reddit. All five of my visitors from that site within the last month had visited the blog before. Either they are subscribers (which I have no way of knowing), or they are friends of mine from another social site, or they have visited the site before from a link saved to Reddit. Whichever the case, they spent a lot of time on the site. Only one of them bounced (left the blog without sticking around to read more than one post) and the average pages the five visited was 3.0. Incredible!

Note that these numbers only reflect a modest number of bookmarks at each site. For instance, since July 9, I’ve bookmarked at each of the above sites this many times:

While these numbers represent how many times my poetry blog has been knowingly saved at these sites by myself or someone else, they do not represent how much time I’ve spent voting for other sites submitted by others or making friends and networking. The time I spend at StumbleUpon on those activities is far more than what it is at any of the others, though this may change since the start of LitMixx.

StumbleUpon, I’m convinced, is the best place to go if you want new visitors to your website, but be prepared for those visitors not sticking around very long. I see StumbleUpon as much like sending out a direct mail piece. You might send out a lot of mailers and get just a meager response. But from those who do respond, if your content is solid then you’ll see some fabulous results. That’s been my experience.

Looking at the bounce rate of the poetry-related forums and blogs that I comment on, I’d say that the small amount of traffic that I get from those is due to the trust that other bloggers have with their readers. But the high bounce rate can be attributed to a higher degree of discrimination with regard to tastes among those who have a higher interest in the topic. In other words, poets tend to know more about what they like and don’t like with regard to poetic commentary whereas non-poets who read about literary topics may enjoy reading an in-depth analysis of a topic even if they are not as familiar with it because they’ll have less to disagree with.

Conclusions
Bottom line conclusion: I think social media bookmarking works if you do it consistently long-term. Most people still only bookmark their content occasionally. I bookmark my content somewhere every day, though I don’t bookmark it at the same place everyday (and I think that is vitally important). Another thing that makes a big difference is the number of friends you make at the social sites you frequent. At those sites where you have fewer friends, you’ll likely get less traffic and higher bounce rates. At those sites where you have more (and more loyal) friends, you are more likely to get more traffic and lower bounce rates.

These results may reflect what literary blogs are capable of, but one other aspect to consider in bookmarking is making sure you approach the right target. Where you bookmark makes a huge difference. Diggers have less interest in poetry, for instance, than Mixxers and Stumblers. They have a greater interest, however, in technical topics. And I’d always consider that.

Learn how you can have your blog bookmarked
at a different site every day for $100.

August 09, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0

How Much Traffic Is Good Traffic?

You’ve installed Google Analytics or you are using Sitemeter to look at your traffic stats. But how do you know that you are getting good traffic?

There are a number of indicators. Traffic source is one indicator, but you should also judge your traffic numbers by how old your own blog is and what your competitive benchmark is. Another thing to look at is the keywords people use to find your blog organically.

I’ve had blogs that attracted 3,000 readers after six months and some that have attracted 3,000 visitors in the first month with minimal marketing efforts. That as a lot to do with niche. If your blog is in a popular niche then you could get a flood of huge traffic quickly. A small niche blog might actually be doing well with modest traffic. That’s why it helps to know your niche.

But what about those stats? Your primary traffic sources should be organic and referrals. Take a look at your referral stats to see who is referring you. Is it social networking sites like StumbleUpon? You might get a lot of traffic from those types of general topic communities but your traffic may not be targeted. On the other hand, if your referral traffic is coming from another site or blog within your niche then you can bet that it is targeted traffic.

Organic traffic is usually targeted to your niche. Those are people who found you through an organic search engine search. Check your keywords to see which phrases people are finding you for. If there are any oddball phrases not related to your niche, you might want to find out which blog post generated those and stay away from blogging on that topic. But you may use that strategy also to draw in traffic on a general search term not related to your niche by blogging outside of your niche. If you have an art or entertainment blog, a political blog, or another type of blog that might appeal to a general audience or a broad cross section of people then that might be a valuable way to blog if you don’t overdo it.

One other thing you should be doing with your analytics package is looking at benchmarks. A benchmark is a rolled up stats that measures what other blogs in your niche are doing compositely. For instance, if there are 100 blogs in your niche then the benchmark stats will take the average or mean of those and compare them to yours so that you can see how you fare against the competition generally.

Need a blog manager?

July 03, 2008 | Allen | Comments 0