Keep Your Blog Posts Archives Alive

How to Keep Your Blog Archives Alive:

Do you have blog posts that are Left 4 Dead?  If you have written many blog articles you will want to keep them from being ignored by your readers.  Most visitors to your blog will read the first one or maybe two blog posts on your home page.  Don't let all of those old blog posts that you slaved over get lost in the vast wasteland of old blog posts.

There are several ways to keep your old blog posts featured or highlighted so that new blog visitors will read these gems.

• Add a popular blog posts widget on your sidebar and feature some posts you believe your readers should read.


• Make your old posts into a series and link them all together.
• Use your Twitter account or Facebook page to add some of your old blog post links.


• Put links in your new posts to an old post that explains the topic further. 


• You can put up a new blog post just listing your favorite old posts.  Possibly a top 10 favorite blog posts list.


• Interlink old posts to one another.


• Post the top three posts at the end of each month.


• Have a related posts plug-in at the bottom of each post.

You can always find a new way to get those old blog posts some more love.  Try posting a follow up post about how the blog post topic worked or didn't work or is no useful to you.  Think about it for a little bit, maybe get creative, and you can breathe new life into your old blog posts.

SEO Optimize Pillar Posts for Blog Traffic

How to SEO Optimize your Pillar Posts for Maximum Traffic

When you write a blog post more specifically a pillar blog post, you need to make sure it is optimized for the search engines.  First off a Pillar Post is a major post that your visitors will be coming to view.  If you would like an example of a Pillar Post you can find one on my blog if you Click Here.  The Pillar Post is a post that you think is well written or gives great value, etc.

To make sure your blog is SEO optimized you need to know what your key words are, or at least some key words that you think you should use.  Maybe your blog is about work at home moms, and you are writing a post on wahm scams.

Find the keywords:
1. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.  (Free)
2. Enter your keyword or phrase into the form. (work at home mom scam)
3. Enter the captcha letters and submit.
4. Check the list of keywords for other phrases you can work into your article.

Here are just a few of the keywords for the phrase: work at home mom scam.
online work at home
work from home scams
internet work at home
work at home for moms
legitimate work at home jobs
work at home
making money at home
work from home for free
work at home scams

The Free Google AdWords Keyword Tool also shows you how many people are searching for those words monthly.  In all there were a total of 199 keyword phrases that popped up when I put my original keyword phrase into the blog tool. You need to pick a few of the most searched keywords and make sure you try to work them into your blog post in a natural way.

You don't want to fill up you pillar blog posts with keywords and make it difficult for visitors to read.  If you repeat your key words over and over again you will essentially be keyword spamming which is a bad thing and Google and its little spider bots will punish your search engine ranking for spamming the keywords.  The goal is to optimize for the search engines, not to stuff full of keywords.

Occasionally you will be writing a blog tutorial and you will need to repeat your keywords to show your readers exactly what you mean.  For the most part though, you don't want to over use your main keywords.  That is why the adwords tool comes in very handy so you can have other phrases you can use in your blog posts.

If you want to know more about SEO you can read more of what I wrote in this post:  How to use SEO to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

I am not the best at writing with SEO in mind, sometimes you just write for your reader to get your points across and not for the search engine bots.  If you work on SEO are mindful of your key words and make good use of the tool you can optimize your blog posts so more traffic will find its way to your blog.

Want Lots of Free Blog Traffic? Use Entrecard

Free Blog Traffic with Entrecard

You may notice the little widget in my sidebar that has a little bar that says Get One or Drop.  Well this is one way you can get a bunch of free blog traffic.  I just signed up with them yesterday as part of my 31 Day's of Free Blog Traffic Challenge.  

 

This is my Entrecard "card" one that I will use to advertise on other sites.  I know it needs some work but I thought it wasn't too awful for just throwing something up there.  I made a new advert card - the one on the right.  I think it is better in some ways and also harder to read?  It will have to do for now.

So I "dropped" in on 100 blogs last night and then another 100 blogs today.  I will say that it is very time consuming to do all one-hundred, but I will continue this rate for the full 31 days to see what kind of results I can get.  From these blog views I have gotten 24 visitors that I had also visited, and I expect this to continue to rise every day.  I have also gotten one comment and suggestion.  So far I am impressed and hooked, but we will see how it all turns out.

I was not sure about signing up for this Entrecard at first or not, I thought it might be considered black hat.  It may be somewhere in the gray area, because this is not targeted traffic and ultimately that is what you want coming to your blog.  When you start a new blog as I have you are some what desperate for any blog visitors so you are willing to go out there and try some interesting things. 

I have read a bit about Entrecard on some other blog's and here is what I have learned (not sure if any of it is true or not).  John Chow used to use Entrecard, so if it was good enough for him then it is good enough for me.  Google and the other search engines may lower my page rank because of the high bounce rate or the blog traffic from Entrecard visitors.  Many of the site visitors will just click on the "drop box" then immediately leave.

Well right now I am not concerned about my page rank because I don't even have one yet.  The problem of having some of the free blog traffic just clicking in and then right back out, well maybe a few will leave comments.  I might even get a small percentage of  loyal readers out of  the whole thing.

If your blog needs to get some free traffic you might consider trying out Entrecard.  You may not like the widget that must be displayed but once your blog gets approved I think you can move it down lower on the page, which may help your blog visitors see more of your blog and stick around to read something.

Free Blog Traffic - 31 Day Challenge

My Blogging Fortune is going to go through an intensive 31 Day Course or a Challenge to get more blog traffic.

Take the Free Blog Traffic Challenge with me:

You may have heard about Problogger's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, well I came up with a similar idea only he beat me to it by a long shot.  They say that  imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  So I hope that Darren Rowse sees this is a huge form of flattery.   Yes, that is an affiliate link and yes, I am trying to suck up to him.  Do you think it's working yet?

I thought if I made a plan for the entire month and really concentrated on doing all of the free blog traffic generation ideas.  I know that my blog traffic could potentially explode.  It may be frustrating and very time consuming but it should be well worth it in the end.

This month just happens to have 31 Days and so do several other months but you can start taking this challenge at any time because it will be laid out so you can do daily tasks.  This Free Blog Traffic Challenge will be tailored to my schedule and therefore be a much lighter load on the weekends when I like to spend time with my family.

Daily Tasks - Complete this list every day for all 31 days:
1. Make a blog post each day.
2. Ping your blog after every blog post each day.
3. Make 100 Entrecard drops.

Free Blog Traffic Challenge - Week 1:
1. Sign up at Entrecard.com
2. Article to GoArticles
3. Squidoo Lens
4. Article to Ezine Articles
5. Blog Carnivals
6. Bookmark on Digg, Delicious, and Onlywire.com
7. Make 20 comments to like blogs

I am only going to list the first week of my Free Blog Traffic Challenge.  I thought about filling in the entire calendar but then I thought that was too overwhelming so I am going to try this as a week by week thing.  I used a free calendar from Calendars That Work that downloads into a Word Document that you can edit and add your own daily items.  I am really liking this and think I may continue using the calendar in this way.

I hope to see some really great blog traffic results and I will let you know how it goes.

No Traffic - Get Mad About It!

Are you going to sit there and wine about no traffic or will you get mad about it?

Your blog has no traffic (or only a little trickle) what can you do?  Do you get depressed?  Stop blogging?  Move onto another blog niche?

No you get mad about it.  OK, then what?  You go out and take action.  Go get yourself all angered up that no one cares but you will make them care.  You will make them see how valuable your money making blog is and then they will all come to you for answers. 

How to get motivated to go and get your own blog traffic:

• Do something to promote your blog - in-action often leads to more in-action.  Do something to get your engine started and maybe you will get motivated to do so much more.
• Make a blog plan - if you already have one then chuck it in the trash and make a new one that is better.
• Follow your blog plan and reach the goals and then set new ones.
• Make deadlines for your blog plan and work to meet those deadlines.
  

Here is a little motivating quote to get your butt in gear and go out and get that blog traffic, "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have." Thomas Jefferson

Remember that even the biggest pro-bloggers did not have overnight success.  Everyone claims that they are making money, but some of that is deception.  Proof of income can be faked with paint shop or photoshop programs.  If you are reading a popular blog chances are if you were to look into their archives (if you can find them) they have been blogging on the same site for around two years and have hundreds of blog posts or more.

Well, why are you still here reading my blog?  Don't you have some work to do?  Go now and get busy!

Your Favorite Free Traffic Links - Poll

Favorite Free Traffic Links

Please Take a few seconds to take the Poll.


Just a little curious to see what type of free traffic methods others are using to get visitors to their blogs. Thanks for voting!

Why Your Blog Will Fail

Why Your Blog is Destined to Fail

Many people start blogs every day and the majority will never even reach the minimum $100 Google payout.  It is easy to start a blog, but it is not as easy to actually make money from blogging.

Reasons Blogs Fail:

• The blogger never made goals for their blog.
• The blog just does not get enough traffic to make money.
• Just posting is not enough.
• Inaction on the bloggers part.

I want to liken a brand new blog to a new restaurant in a big city.  If you opened up a new restaurant (not a franchise) you would make sure that you advertised as much as possible right at the grand opening so everyone would know about the new place.

At first you might see a trickle of customers but there is potential.  If your restaurant is appealing and the food is great and the service is good you will get free word of mouth advertising.  So you do lots of advertising at first and build up a good following and let your regulars use word of mouth and they will advertise for you.

The same thing must happen with a new blog.  The internet is a vast city with new blogs opening on every corner.  You must advertise to get people to visit your blog.  Then once you get a following your regulars will use word of mouth or link love to advertise for you.  If you have a funny post or important post they just want to share with friends or maybe they will bookmark you for many others to see.   They might make a post about your blog and put up a link for others to go check you out.

The restaurant is a pretty good analogy for blogging.  If you don't advertise in the beginning no one will come.  Likewise if your blog sucks or there is no real content people will quickly move on to the next one that came up in the search engine for your key words.

You have bloggers like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse and they are the McDonald's of restaurants.  Which means that if they wanted to they would never have to advertise again.  Because all of their loyal fans and followers are doing the advertising for them.

How to Make Money With Your Blog

There are only 2 things you need to do to make money blogging.  When you start a new blog those two things need to be done on a daily basis.  New bloggers or struggling bloggers will need to make a commitment to check these two items off each and every day.

OK, do you want to know what the 2 really important things are that bloggers must do?  You may be disappointed to learn that you already know the answer to the blogging keys to success. 

How to Make Money Blogging:

1. Make useful posts that help your readers.
2. Drive traffic to your blog.

Told ya that you already knew them.  These  items need to be part of your daily blogging routine.  Because if you have no helpful content people will leave.  If you don't have traffic they can't find your blog.

It seems so simple and in reality it is, but the traffic is extremely important and can be hard to attain.  That is why you have to work on getting visitors daily at first.  Later when your blog has taken off the traffic will come on its own.  For now though you must do some work.  So click on over to my post  5 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog and get busy getting your blog traffic.

Another 5 Ways to Get Free Traffic to Your Blog = 15 Tips

Another 5 Free Blog Traffic Tips

5 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog

5 More Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog

And now: Another 5 Free Traffic Tips to drive targeted traffic to your blog to help you make more money from your visitors.   OK the title is a little different but I thought maybe it would get you to click on this blog post about free traffic ideas.  It worked right, you are here reading this.

So if you have already read the other previous 5 Ways and the other 5 More Ways for Free Blog Traffic Generation Ideas then you need more free blog traffic ideas.  Again the key to these ideas is to actually do them and if at all possible do them over and over again.  If you like you can set up a checklist of your traffic steps and do them all daily or weekly.  You will need to continue to get traffic to your site until you are popular enough that the traffic comes on its own.

Another 5 Free Traffic Tips:

1. Offline Promotion - Tell all your friends, email them the blog link, call all of your aunts and uncles and let them know about your blog.  Make up business cards with your blog's URL.

2. Blog Post Frequency - Minimum posting should be 3 times a week, once a day is better.

3. Answer Questions - Post your blog link on answers that you leave on questions sites like Yahoo Answers and Blurtit.  Make sure the questions and answers are related to your blog.

4. Press Release - Write up a press release about your blog and submit it to a distribution service.

5. Trackbacks - If you don't understand this there is a great description here: How Trackback Works.

If you have implemented the 15 ways to get free traffic then you should see some visitors trickling onto your blog.  You need to make sure that you continue to do these free traffic generating ideas to keep getting new blog readers. 

Each time you implement one of the ideas you should see a serge in traffic but then it may dip back down again.  Keep on putting your link out there and eventually you won't have to rely on these methods, but this is where you need to begin. 

Go Get That Traffic!