[Pathway To Success] No 3, 15th March 2014 - 10 Traffic Tips
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Irena Whitfield
Mar 16, 2014, 10:23:54 AM3/16/14
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Pathway To Success, Published since 2000
Volume 14, Issue No 3, 15th March 2014
Publisher Irena Whitfield
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Subscriber Count: 138,500+
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Contents
1. Today's Feature Article by Nick Scheidies
2. Today's Tip On the Opportunity worth checking
Today's Feature Article
10 Traffic Tips Straight from Michael Dunlop
Nick Scheidies, IncomeDiary Contributing Author
Michael Dunlop was a teenager when he started a website
called WebDesignDev.com. Over four year ago, he created a
web design blog and grew it to nearly 200,000 monthly
visitors in under 6 months. Then he sold the site for $22,
000 so that he could move out of his parents’ house.
Since then, Michael has been starting one successful
website after the other. Today, Michael’s 23 years old and
the manager of multiple sites that attract over 100,000
visitors per month, including Income Diary.
The newest, Expert Photography, is just 18 months old and
already received 137,000 visits last month. It’s safe to
say that Michael Dunlop is one of the world’s experts on
the strategies and techniques that reliably drive big
traffic to websites.
Michael agreed to sit down with me for a half hour and
discuss his top ten traffic tips.
What You’ll Learn:
- The two things Michael thinks about when writing an article
- How to turn a traffic spike into recurring traffic
- The post that was so successful Michael had to turn off
the comments
- The biggest traffic mistake bloggers make
#1 Be Simply Beneficial
“Focus on your content first. Traffic is a byproduct
of doing great content.”
Michael told me, “I think people are over-complicating
traffic. They’re reading too much into all these techniques
and spending all their time making sure their blog looks
good.”
There’s nothing wrong with having a great blog design or
doing SEO the right way. But it is a problem when your
spending so much time on the technical stuff that you
forget your site’s purpose: to provide immense value for
your visitors. Michael sees too many blogs that don’t have
any “great articles that make people think, ‘I’m going to
come back, time after time.’”
Extraordinary content is the key to extraordinary traffic.
It all starts with Michael’s straightforward mindset:
“When I’m writing an article, I have two things in mind.
Firstly, I want to make it as simple for someone to
understand as possible. Secondly, I want to make it as
beneficial to the reader as possible.”
Simple + Beneficial = the type of content that makes people
love your website and want to come back. Michael insists
that this model truly is at the root of his traffic success
and that it’s really not that complicated:
“We’re not doing anything special with Expert
Photography. We’re just writing these really exciting
posts. We’re getting people to share them on social
media. Getting people to link to them, which makes us
rank well, which sends us all this traffic. It’s that
simple.”
Learn More About Writing Great Content:
- Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Blog Post
- 20 Tips to Become a Better Online Writer
- How to Write Epic Blog Posts that Rank Well
#2 Write a Strong Title
No matter how good your article is, if the title is wrong
then nobody will read it.
When reviewing a friend’s website, Michael noticed that
their titles were all wrong:
“The titles stood out firstly because they were using
words that nobody would ever search for. If I was doing
a post on traffic tips, I wouldn’t throw in a bunch of
crazy words into the title to make it sound really
interesting.”
“Nobody’s ever going to Google ‘Premier Traffic Tips’.
They’re going to Google ‘Traffic Tips’.”
Putting the right keywords in your title is your best
chance to rank well for competitive search terms. Of course,
the ideal title also grabs a reader’s attention and makes
them curious to read more.
Since I struggle to write great titles, I take Yanik
Silver‘s advice and brainstorm a ton of possible titles for
an article before choosing my favorite.
Here are the seven titles I considered for this post:
- “100,000 visits per month” Michael Dunlop Reveals his Traffic
Strategies
- “It’s So Simple” Michael Dunlop Explains How to Get Traffic
- Michael Dunlop Explains How Great Content leads to More Traffic
- Michael Dunlop Speaks: 100,000 monthly hits is “Simple”
- Michael’s Income Diary #1: How to Write Content that gets
Big Traffic
- Traffic Advice Straight from Michael Dunlop
- 10 Traffic Tips Straight from Michael Dunlop
If you’d like to get some headline writing advice from an expert,
I recommend a Copyblogger post called How to Write Magnetic Headlines.
#3 Turn Short-Term Traffic into Long-Term Traffic Momentum
If you’re creating great content, you’re bound to
eventually get some big spikes in traffic:
“When starting out with a website, we could be getting
about 400 visitors a day. Then one day we post an
interesting article that does well on social media and
it gets about 4,000 visitors that day. That’s 10 times
the amount of traffic.”
The only problem with spikes in traffic is that they can be
gone as quickly as they come. “The spike of a successful
article goes down after two or three days,” Michael said.
But a good website is designed to turn one-time traffic
into recurring traffic. Michael says that after jumping
from 400 visitors a day to 4,000 visitors a day, “it goes
back down to 600 or 700. That’s a big increase from where
it was before.”
Michael turns traffic spikes into long-term traffic by
asking people to subscribe to his email list. You’ll notice
the opt-in boxes in the sidebar and footer of this web page
which offer exclusive content for people who subscribe by
email. Email is the most direct way to let people know that
you’ve published a great new article.
Another way to get first-time visitors to come back to your
site is through social media. Income Diary has about 20,000
followers on Twitter and over 3,000 likes on Facebook.
These communities bring a consistent social buzz to each
new post. Michael has put a box in the side-bar with links
to his social media and the suggestion, “Let’s Be Friends”.
“Every time we do a new blog posts, we have all these
new fans, all these new people. So every time we do
something it’s just going to get bigger, and bigger.
That’s real momentum.”
If you want learn more about how to encourage recurring
traffic. Michael’s made a video on how to increase your opt-in
rate and I’ve listed additional helpful articles below.
Learn How to Make a Lasting Connection with Visitors:
- How to Grow Your Email List Fast
- 10 Little Known Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers
- 10 Reasons Why You Suck at Social Media
#4 Be an Early Adopter of Social Media
It’s no coincidence that Income Diary and Twitter both
became very successful around the same time. Michael told
me, “When I launched Income Diary, something that was going
really well right then was Twitter. Twitter was the in-
thing. Everyone was jumping on board.”
Since Twittter was new, Michael’s niche wasn’t yet
saturated. Since it was hot, it could still be a game-
changing source of traffic:
“I was getting insane amounts of traffic — literally
100,000 visitors in a month from Twitter. And I could
take advantage of that so easily by just following
thousands of Twitter users a day. Thousands of people
would come to my profile to see who has followed them
and follow me back, click my profile link, my updates,
and so on.”
Michael used Twitter to build the foundation of a thriving
online community, but eventually the traffic from Twitter
dwindled. He told me, “Now, Twitter has sort of come and
gone. But there’s new social media sites opening up every
week. Don’t wait until [a social media site] has come and
gone. Part of driving traffic is taking advantage of
techniques while they work.”"
What’s working right now? For Michael and his brother Josh
the answer is Pinterest. They’re using Pinterest to get
massive traffic to Josh’s blog, Expert Photography.
“We’re getting pretty much the exact same results that I
got when I started with Twitter,” Michael says.
It’s easy to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach with a new
social media site. But if you always wait until a site is
established before you decide to dive in, then you’re going
to miss out on the best time to gain traffic. If you hear
of an up-and-coming site that might be the next big thing,
jump on it. There’s very little to lose by trying it out
and a whole lot of traffic to gain.
Learn more about Pinterest:
- Beginners Guide to Seeing Massive Pinterest Traffic
- Advanced Pinterest Marketing Strategies for Dominating
Web Traffic
- 8 Lessons Pinterest can Teach You about Online Business
#5 Enrich Your Content with Images
Fast Company recently called visual marketing “the breakout
trend for 2012”. According to social media strategist
Ekaterina Walter, “Two years ago, marketers were spreading
the maxim that ‘content is king’, but now, it seems, ‘a
picture really is worth a thousand words.’”
Attaching a big, beautiful image to your blog post will
encourage clicking, sharing, and positive brand perception.
But as Michael Dunlop emphasized to me, they’re also a
great way of making your content easier to comprehend:
“An image is a really good way for me to know what part
in this article is going to be talking about the
relevant part that I want to read about.Headlines are
good, but an even easier way to spot the section that I
want to read is by having a picture.”
As a writer for IncomeDiary, I will often use images to add
information/value and to break up the major sections of my
post (example).
Visuals are vital to your success online. But that doesn’t
mean that you should fill your blog posts with pictures
just for the sake of it. Michael warns:
“When somebody’s rushing it, they don’t tend to put
pictures up that are generic, boring, something they
got from iStock. When your images are not very well
thought through, then they don’t really help.”
Images aren’t something to haphazardly tack on after you’re
done writing a great post. Put the same care into the
visual aspect of your articles as the written portion.
#6 Big Articles Provide Big Value
If you’re a regular reader of Income Diary, then you know
that our articles are long. Personally, my average is over
2,000 words per article. This length pushes me to provide
as much value and information as possible our readers.
For instance, “Top 10 YouTube Channels” could easily have
been a 200 word article that simply lists the channels’
names, their subscriber count, and a link to their most
popular video. But instead, it’s 2,733 words and the
article contains in-depth information for each YouTube
channel detailing how they built their following and how
they make money from YouTube.
Seth Godin is a great example of a blogger who excels with
short content and Michael Dunlop told me that he recognizes
that type of content has its place. But for Income Diary,
he instructs his staff to produce longer articles:
“You can write articles that are great and that are
literally 200 words long. But when I’m reading up on
something, it’s really important to me that the author
goes into more detail so I can make a better assessment."
If you want your articles to be ranked highly on Google for
terms that are going to pull in a ton of traffic month
after month, you’ll increase your chances greatly by
writing longer articles. Not only will Google recognize
that you’re site is providing more value than the
competition, you’re also more likely to hit on long-tail
search terms that are embedded somewhere in the 2,000+
words.
#7 You Don’t have to be an SEO Master
With all of Michael’s success with articles getting on the
front page of Google, you may assume that he’s an expert on
SEO. But Michael insists, “I’m no master in Google.”
Instead, he says, “All I focus on is making sure that my
articles are literally the best articles possible. Google
just seems to rank them well because they deserve to be at
the top.”
Michael’s assertion is backed up by David Sinick – the SEO
expert behind BeastMedia and the co-author of WordPress SEO
Blueprint. In a separate interview about SEO optimization,
David told me, “There are tons of different factors that go
into ranking well, but the biggest is high-quality content.”
Recently, Google’s search rankings have been taking social
feedback into account, with a special emphasis on +1’s. As
Michael observes, “getting articles ranked does depend
greatly on how well they’re received by people. The
articles that get the most comments, likes, and links are
the ones that get ranked the best.”
In others words, don’t think you won’t be able to rank well
just because you don’t know the ins and out of SEO. Instead,
focus on writing content that deserves to be the top result.
You might be surprised by how highly your un-optimized
articles rank.
All this isn’t to say search engine optimization isn’t
important. At Income Diary, we practice some basic SEO
tactics that you can read up on here.
Learn More About SEO:
10 SEO Blog Publishing Steps that Most Bloggers Forget
#8 Write ‘Top 30? Caliber Content
Over the years, Michael has published a lot of different
types of content. He’s noticed that certain types of
content just seem to do better than others.
“One of the first articles I’d done on Income Diary was
called Top Earning Blogs in which I listed top 30 blogs
in order of monthly earnings. This article has done so
well that by now it could literally have had a million
views and thousands of likes and tweets. I’ve actually
turned off the comments on it after 290 comments just
because I was sick of having to constantly accept and
decline comments on it.”
Michael credits the articles success to the fact that its
title is a popular search term, that it’s something people
wanted to share, and that it attracted the attention of the
30 blogs mentioned in the article (and their healthy
audiences).
While article keeps getting traffic to Income Diary month
after month, Michael believes that there is still plenty of
room for this type of content in other niches and subjects.
Off the top of his head, he rattled off, “30 Top Bloggers
in the Photography Industry, 30 Best Basketball Players of
All Time, 20 Reasons Why it Sucks to be a Chef… Those sort
of really link-worthy articles that people share on social
media constantly.”
#9 Traffic is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
I asked Michael the single biggest mistake that people are
making online and this is what he told me:
“People are so excited at the beginning. They go on
writing blog posts left, right, and center. But then
after a few months, they haven’t made any money and
they just give up. That’s why people fail so often.”
Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s unrealistic to
expect to have a ton of traffic and income right away.
These things need time to incubate:
“My brother didn’t make any money with Expert
Photography the first few months. But he kept at it
because he’d seen exactly how long it had taken me to
grow my websites in the past. Eventually, he was making
$100 per month, then $1000 per month, and finally this
month he had his first $1000 day.”
Those are pretty amazing results after only 18 months. Josh
owes the traffic success to his dedication to producing
great content over the long haul (he’s already published
over 200 articles on the site and you can take a look for
yourself to see their high quality).
Before you give up on a website, give it a fair chance to
succeed: commit to publishing quality content consistently.
Inspiration to Keep Writing Your Blog:
- 3 Multi-Million Dollar Internet Companies that Sprouted
from Blogs
- Blogger Profile: How Matt Inman of The Oatmeal Built
a $500k Blog
- Inspiration from 20 of the World’s Top Online Entrepreneurs
#10 Traffic Shouldn’t Be Your Only Goal
We’ve been talking about writing content to get more
traffic a lot today, but Michael points out that not every
article for Income Diary is written with that goal in mind:
“There are other articles that we write because there
is a percent of the audience that needs to learn
something.These articles are never going to get as much
traffic as a ‘Top 30’ post, but we do it because we’re
not just writing for traffic. We’re writing because we
have a key to you making money and because our blog is
all about providing answers.”
Take for example an article I published this June, “20 Tips
for How to Make Money with a Service Business”.
Since this article is targeted to the fraction of our
audience that operates a service-based business, inevitably
it didn’t get as much traffic as my previous post (the
broadly targeted “15 Inspiring Business Lessons from Oprah
Winfrey”).
But for the percentage of our readers for whom it applied,
the information was far more valuable. One commenter said
that, “these are the skills I eagerly need now. My
consulting is not doing good these last two months and I’m
wondering what the real problem is.” Another said that the
post had encouraged him to become a “regular visitor” of
Income Diary.
So while I hope you take Michael’s advice today to help
boost traffic to your blog, don’t let traffic be the only
metric by which you measure your posts’ success.
The Last Word:
A few minutes into our interview, Michael asked out loud,
“How can I talk about traffic for so long, when it’s so
simple?”
This is what he said next:
“If you want traffic, write amazing stuff. If what you
have to say is great, then people are going to keep
coming back. Ultimately, that’s all it is.”
************************************
IncomeDiary provides the very best content for web
entrepreneurs. With over 400 blog posts, 7 educational
courses and a best selling software product, we have
influenced millions of people all around the world.
Founded by Michael Dunlop in 2005, the company started
originally as a graphics forum with over 1000 members
signing up in the first 6 months. Over 9 years that
followed, we launched 4 additional blogs, each receiving
millions of visitors. http://www.incomediary.com/
********************************
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*************************
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============================================
Volume 14, Issue No 3, 15th March 2014
Publisher Irena Whitfield
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/
iwhit...@thecassiopeia.com
Subscriber Count: 138,500+
The biggest risk is not taking any risk…
In a world that changing really quickly,
the only strategy that is guaranteed
to fail is not taking risks.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
With 'Pathway To Success' you are receiving only top information,
reliable and proven resources, never anything just to make
a couple of dollars at your expense. However, to make full use
of the resources, get fast ahead of your competition and have
your business and profits grow, you should read, apply and follow
the information you receive.
Don't forget to collect your Bonuses incl Insider Tips 6 at:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/WebLions/Pathway/Links.html
HOT! Pathway To Success Ezine Archives:
All in one place. You can start using it by clicking here:
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What's New:
** theCassi News: Learn every information the minute it's out!
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Editorial:
Wonderful publishing Sunday, my loyal Readers!
Today I am bringing an answer to your many requests for help
to start trading on forex. The answer is the Forex Training
Course below:
The importance of training cannot be stressed enough and
the damage that can be done without is irreversible.
This Forex Education Course may get you started trading
pretty fast.
Even if you don't start real trading, you can have a look
and see whether this might be for you.
In any case, enjoy the free training. The author of the course
wants to show you a couple of new tricks as well as some really
useful training.
Click here to check it:
http://www.forextradersdaily.com/education/forex-training-course/
A little note: our 2014 Calendar is all about helping endangered animals...
So, please join us. Check it here:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/Portal/2014Calendar.html
Plus, as a valued subscriber, you can get a new toolbar
of mine by clicking here:
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Enjoy and stay tuned, your Pathway To Success will be back...
Sincerely,
Irena Whitfield
Your Publisher
P.S.: You can find answers to the basic questions related
to Pathway, incl organizational items, article and ad
guidelines and submissions, communication with me,...:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/WebLions/Pathway/QAndA.html
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Subscribers Only: 1+1 ! Buy 1 item and get 1 of your own
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Any purchase from one of my websites qualifies you
for the Bonus. It's sufficient to send me your purchase
receipt to sales at thecassiopeia.com and put 'Sales Bonus'
in the Subject line.
***************************
Publishing dates
'Pathway To Success' is published every other Sunday.
Next Issue is supposed on 15th April 2014.
***************************
Contents
1. Today's Feature Article by Nick Scheidies
2. Today's Tip On the Opportunity worth checking
Today's Feature Article
10 Traffic Tips Straight from Michael Dunlop
Nick Scheidies, IncomeDiary Contributing Author
Michael Dunlop was a teenager when he started a website
called WebDesignDev.com. Over four year ago, he created a
web design blog and grew it to nearly 200,000 monthly
visitors in under 6 months. Then he sold the site for $22,
000 so that he could move out of his parents’ house.
Since then, Michael has been starting one successful
website after the other. Today, Michael’s 23 years old and
the manager of multiple sites that attract over 100,000
visitors per month, including Income Diary.
The newest, Expert Photography, is just 18 months old and
already received 137,000 visits last month. It’s safe to
say that Michael Dunlop is one of the world’s experts on
the strategies and techniques that reliably drive big
traffic to websites.
Michael agreed to sit down with me for a half hour and
discuss his top ten traffic tips.
What You’ll Learn:
- The two things Michael thinks about when writing an article
- How to turn a traffic spike into recurring traffic
- The post that was so successful Michael had to turn off
the comments
- The biggest traffic mistake bloggers make
#1 Be Simply Beneficial
“Focus on your content first. Traffic is a byproduct
of doing great content.”
Michael told me, “I think people are over-complicating
traffic. They’re reading too much into all these techniques
and spending all their time making sure their blog looks
good.”
There’s nothing wrong with having a great blog design or
doing SEO the right way. But it is a problem when your
spending so much time on the technical stuff that you
forget your site’s purpose: to provide immense value for
your visitors. Michael sees too many blogs that don’t have
any “great articles that make people think, ‘I’m going to
come back, time after time.’”
Extraordinary content is the key to extraordinary traffic.
It all starts with Michael’s straightforward mindset:
“When I’m writing an article, I have two things in mind.
Firstly, I want to make it as simple for someone to
understand as possible. Secondly, I want to make it as
beneficial to the reader as possible.”
Simple + Beneficial = the type of content that makes people
love your website and want to come back. Michael insists
that this model truly is at the root of his traffic success
and that it’s really not that complicated:
“We’re not doing anything special with Expert
Photography. We’re just writing these really exciting
posts. We’re getting people to share them on social
media. Getting people to link to them, which makes us
rank well, which sends us all this traffic. It’s that
simple.”
Learn More About Writing Great Content:
- Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Blog Post
- 20 Tips to Become a Better Online Writer
- How to Write Epic Blog Posts that Rank Well
#2 Write a Strong Title
No matter how good your article is, if the title is wrong
then nobody will read it.
When reviewing a friend’s website, Michael noticed that
their titles were all wrong:
“The titles stood out firstly because they were using
words that nobody would ever search for. If I was doing
a post on traffic tips, I wouldn’t throw in a bunch of
crazy words into the title to make it sound really
interesting.”
“Nobody’s ever going to Google ‘Premier Traffic Tips’.
They’re going to Google ‘Traffic Tips’.”
Putting the right keywords in your title is your best
chance to rank well for competitive search terms. Of course,
the ideal title also grabs a reader’s attention and makes
them curious to read more.
Since I struggle to write great titles, I take Yanik
Silver‘s advice and brainstorm a ton of possible titles for
an article before choosing my favorite.
Here are the seven titles I considered for this post:
- “100,000 visits per month” Michael Dunlop Reveals his Traffic
Strategies
- “It’s So Simple” Michael Dunlop Explains How to Get Traffic
- Michael Dunlop Explains How Great Content leads to More Traffic
- Michael Dunlop Speaks: 100,000 monthly hits is “Simple”
- Michael’s Income Diary #1: How to Write Content that gets
Big Traffic
- Traffic Advice Straight from Michael Dunlop
- 10 Traffic Tips Straight from Michael Dunlop
If you’d like to get some headline writing advice from an expert,
I recommend a Copyblogger post called How to Write Magnetic Headlines.
#3 Turn Short-Term Traffic into Long-Term Traffic Momentum
If you’re creating great content, you’re bound to
eventually get some big spikes in traffic:
“When starting out with a website, we could be getting
about 400 visitors a day. Then one day we post an
interesting article that does well on social media and
it gets about 4,000 visitors that day. That’s 10 times
the amount of traffic.”
The only problem with spikes in traffic is that they can be
gone as quickly as they come. “The spike of a successful
article goes down after two or three days,” Michael said.
But a good website is designed to turn one-time traffic
into recurring traffic. Michael says that after jumping
from 400 visitors a day to 4,000 visitors a day, “it goes
back down to 600 or 700. That’s a big increase from where
it was before.”
Michael turns traffic spikes into long-term traffic by
asking people to subscribe to his email list. You’ll notice
the opt-in boxes in the sidebar and footer of this web page
which offer exclusive content for people who subscribe by
email. Email is the most direct way to let people know that
you’ve published a great new article.
Another way to get first-time visitors to come back to your
site is through social media. Income Diary has about 20,000
followers on Twitter and over 3,000 likes on Facebook.
These communities bring a consistent social buzz to each
new post. Michael has put a box in the side-bar with links
to his social media and the suggestion, “Let’s Be Friends”.
“Every time we do a new blog posts, we have all these
new fans, all these new people. So every time we do
something it’s just going to get bigger, and bigger.
That’s real momentum.”
If you want learn more about how to encourage recurring
traffic. Michael’s made a video on how to increase your opt-in
rate and I’ve listed additional helpful articles below.
Learn How to Make a Lasting Connection with Visitors:
- How to Grow Your Email List Fast
- 10 Little Known Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers
- 10 Reasons Why You Suck at Social Media
#4 Be an Early Adopter of Social Media
It’s no coincidence that Income Diary and Twitter both
became very successful around the same time. Michael told
me, “When I launched Income Diary, something that was going
really well right then was Twitter. Twitter was the in-
thing. Everyone was jumping on board.”
Since Twittter was new, Michael’s niche wasn’t yet
saturated. Since it was hot, it could still be a game-
changing source of traffic:
“I was getting insane amounts of traffic — literally
100,000 visitors in a month from Twitter. And I could
take advantage of that so easily by just following
thousands of Twitter users a day. Thousands of people
would come to my profile to see who has followed them
and follow me back, click my profile link, my updates,
and so on.”
Michael used Twitter to build the foundation of a thriving
online community, but eventually the traffic from Twitter
dwindled. He told me, “Now, Twitter has sort of come and
gone. But there’s new social media sites opening up every
week. Don’t wait until [a social media site] has come and
gone. Part of driving traffic is taking advantage of
techniques while they work.”"
What’s working right now? For Michael and his brother Josh
the answer is Pinterest. They’re using Pinterest to get
massive traffic to Josh’s blog, Expert Photography.
“We’re getting pretty much the exact same results that I
got when I started with Twitter,” Michael says.
It’s easy to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach with a new
social media site. But if you always wait until a site is
established before you decide to dive in, then you’re going
to miss out on the best time to gain traffic. If you hear
of an up-and-coming site that might be the next big thing,
jump on it. There’s very little to lose by trying it out
and a whole lot of traffic to gain.
Learn more about Pinterest:
- Beginners Guide to Seeing Massive Pinterest Traffic
- Advanced Pinterest Marketing Strategies for Dominating
Web Traffic
- 8 Lessons Pinterest can Teach You about Online Business
#5 Enrich Your Content with Images
Fast Company recently called visual marketing “the breakout
trend for 2012”. According to social media strategist
Ekaterina Walter, “Two years ago, marketers were spreading
the maxim that ‘content is king’, but now, it seems, ‘a
picture really is worth a thousand words.’”
Attaching a big, beautiful image to your blog post will
encourage clicking, sharing, and positive brand perception.
But as Michael Dunlop emphasized to me, they’re also a
great way of making your content easier to comprehend:
“An image is a really good way for me to know what part
in this article is going to be talking about the
relevant part that I want to read about.Headlines are
good, but an even easier way to spot the section that I
want to read is by having a picture.”
As a writer for IncomeDiary, I will often use images to add
information/value and to break up the major sections of my
post (example).
Visuals are vital to your success online. But that doesn’t
mean that you should fill your blog posts with pictures
just for the sake of it. Michael warns:
“When somebody’s rushing it, they don’t tend to put
pictures up that are generic, boring, something they
got from iStock. When your images are not very well
thought through, then they don’t really help.”
Images aren’t something to haphazardly tack on after you’re
done writing a great post. Put the same care into the
visual aspect of your articles as the written portion.
#6 Big Articles Provide Big Value
If you’re a regular reader of Income Diary, then you know
that our articles are long. Personally, my average is over
2,000 words per article. This length pushes me to provide
as much value and information as possible our readers.
For instance, “Top 10 YouTube Channels” could easily have
been a 200 word article that simply lists the channels’
names, their subscriber count, and a link to their most
popular video. But instead, it’s 2,733 words and the
article contains in-depth information for each YouTube
channel detailing how they built their following and how
they make money from YouTube.
Seth Godin is a great example of a blogger who excels with
short content and Michael Dunlop told me that he recognizes
that type of content has its place. But for Income Diary,
he instructs his staff to produce longer articles:
“You can write articles that are great and that are
literally 200 words long. But when I’m reading up on
something, it’s really important to me that the author
goes into more detail so I can make a better assessment."
If you want your articles to be ranked highly on Google for
terms that are going to pull in a ton of traffic month
after month, you’ll increase your chances greatly by
writing longer articles. Not only will Google recognize
that you’re site is providing more value than the
competition, you’re also more likely to hit on long-tail
search terms that are embedded somewhere in the 2,000+
words.
#7 You Don’t have to be an SEO Master
With all of Michael’s success with articles getting on the
front page of Google, you may assume that he’s an expert on
SEO. But Michael insists, “I’m no master in Google.”
Instead, he says, “All I focus on is making sure that my
articles are literally the best articles possible. Google
just seems to rank them well because they deserve to be at
the top.”
Michael’s assertion is backed up by David Sinick – the SEO
expert behind BeastMedia and the co-author of WordPress SEO
Blueprint. In a separate interview about SEO optimization,
David told me, “There are tons of different factors that go
into ranking well, but the biggest is high-quality content.”
Recently, Google’s search rankings have been taking social
feedback into account, with a special emphasis on +1’s. As
Michael observes, “getting articles ranked does depend
greatly on how well they’re received by people. The
articles that get the most comments, likes, and links are
the ones that get ranked the best.”
In others words, don’t think you won’t be able to rank well
just because you don’t know the ins and out of SEO. Instead,
focus on writing content that deserves to be the top result.
You might be surprised by how highly your un-optimized
articles rank.
All this isn’t to say search engine optimization isn’t
important. At Income Diary, we practice some basic SEO
tactics that you can read up on here.
Learn More About SEO:
10 SEO Blog Publishing Steps that Most Bloggers Forget
#8 Write ‘Top 30? Caliber Content
Over the years, Michael has published a lot of different
types of content. He’s noticed that certain types of
content just seem to do better than others.
“One of the first articles I’d done on Income Diary was
called Top Earning Blogs in which I listed top 30 blogs
in order of monthly earnings. This article has done so
well that by now it could literally have had a million
views and thousands of likes and tweets. I’ve actually
turned off the comments on it after 290 comments just
because I was sick of having to constantly accept and
decline comments on it.”
Michael credits the articles success to the fact that its
title is a popular search term, that it’s something people
wanted to share, and that it attracted the attention of the
30 blogs mentioned in the article (and their healthy
audiences).
While article keeps getting traffic to Income Diary month
after month, Michael believes that there is still plenty of
room for this type of content in other niches and subjects.
Off the top of his head, he rattled off, “30 Top Bloggers
in the Photography Industry, 30 Best Basketball Players of
All Time, 20 Reasons Why it Sucks to be a Chef… Those sort
of really link-worthy articles that people share on social
media constantly.”
#9 Traffic is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
I asked Michael the single biggest mistake that people are
making online and this is what he told me:
“People are so excited at the beginning. They go on
writing blog posts left, right, and center. But then
after a few months, they haven’t made any money and
they just give up. That’s why people fail so often.”
Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s unrealistic to
expect to have a ton of traffic and income right away.
These things need time to incubate:
“My brother didn’t make any money with Expert
Photography the first few months. But he kept at it
because he’d seen exactly how long it had taken me to
grow my websites in the past. Eventually, he was making
$100 per month, then $1000 per month, and finally this
month he had his first $1000 day.”
Those are pretty amazing results after only 18 months. Josh
owes the traffic success to his dedication to producing
great content over the long haul (he’s already published
over 200 articles on the site and you can take a look for
yourself to see their high quality).
Before you give up on a website, give it a fair chance to
succeed: commit to publishing quality content consistently.
Inspiration to Keep Writing Your Blog:
- 3 Multi-Million Dollar Internet Companies that Sprouted
from Blogs
- Blogger Profile: How Matt Inman of The Oatmeal Built
a $500k Blog
- Inspiration from 20 of the World’s Top Online Entrepreneurs
#10 Traffic Shouldn’t Be Your Only Goal
We’ve been talking about writing content to get more
traffic a lot today, but Michael points out that not every
article for Income Diary is written with that goal in mind:
“There are other articles that we write because there
is a percent of the audience that needs to learn
something.These articles are never going to get as much
traffic as a ‘Top 30’ post, but we do it because we’re
not just writing for traffic. We’re writing because we
have a key to you making money and because our blog is
all about providing answers.”
Take for example an article I published this June, “20 Tips
for How to Make Money with a Service Business”.
Since this article is targeted to the fraction of our
audience that operates a service-based business, inevitably
it didn’t get as much traffic as my previous post (the
broadly targeted “15 Inspiring Business Lessons from Oprah
Winfrey”).
But for the percentage of our readers for whom it applied,
the information was far more valuable. One commenter said
that, “these are the skills I eagerly need now. My
consulting is not doing good these last two months and I’m
wondering what the real problem is.” Another said that the
post had encouraged him to become a “regular visitor” of
Income Diary.
So while I hope you take Michael’s advice today to help
boost traffic to your blog, don’t let traffic be the only
metric by which you measure your posts’ success.
The Last Word:
A few minutes into our interview, Michael asked out loud,
“How can I talk about traffic for so long, when it’s so
simple?”
This is what he said next:
“If you want traffic, write amazing stuff. If what you
have to say is great, then people are going to keep
coming back. Ultimately, that’s all it is.”
************************************
IncomeDiary provides the very best content for web
entrepreneurs. With over 400 blog posts, 7 educational
courses and a best selling software product, we have
influenced millions of people all around the world.
Founded by Michael Dunlop in 2005, the company started
originally as a graphics forum with over 1000 members
signing up in the first 6 months. Over 9 years that
followed, we launched 4 additional blogs, each receiving
millions of visitors. http://www.incomediary.com/
********************************
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