Blog About Your Blog » How to increase website traffic

Grow Your Blog by Working With PR

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:00:25 +0000

Contests really took over the blogosphere when I was getting started. By being able to offer different items for free, it made the appeal of your site that much better. It also really gave visitors to COME BACK and a way to grow your numbers daily.

Just by hosting contests on your website you could require them to become an email subscriber, a friend on Facebook, or a member of your forum. I even built up a list for the top 20 contest blogs. Even though it’s a bit outdated it was really popular.

From the emergence of contests, so has people working for companies to find bloggers to host contests. This is where my site, Its All Free Online, has been able to grow. Sometimes the trouble is FINDING those PR reps.

If you are spending all your time looking for companies to work with, it can take away from your blog, as well as the quality of your content. Having THEM come to YOU is always a plus.

There are a few places you can use to help you out with that. And guess what? They are all owned by Moms!

Momdot Brandfluential

I have been a member of Momdot for several years. I like being ‘the guy’ on the forum. The ladies on there accept me as their own, helped me grow, and have been a huge supporter. The owner, Trisha, has gone out of her way to help me out on more than one occasion.

After I joined their “VIP” section of the forum, which is a co-op for PR pitches, my blog changed forever.

Now Trisha is going more mainstream and offering her newest service, Momdot Brandfluential.

Are you a blogger that loves to work with Public Relations? Are you Brandfluential? When marketers reach out to us for specific campaigns, let us know if you want us to email you with potential review, giveaway, or mainstream media opportunities.

Within just one short week of starting this program, she was already able to share a unique spa opportunity with her members. Along with that, she is in the works with more campaigns.

I know this will be a success and I am happy to be able to get in on the ground floor.

Blog Friendly PR

Through my Momdot connections I have also been able to work closely with several bloggers. One of those is Shasta. She recently purchased Blog Friendly PR and revamped the entire site.

Right now she is trying to spread the word and offering a $25 gift card if you post about her grand re-opening!

Double Duty Divas

I am new to this network, but I have already gotten 2 opportunities. I asked them to send me information about their site and this is what I received:

At BlogHer 2009 Bridgette (Experimental Mommy) and Cecelia (Cool Baby Kid) realized they had a full time job, part time blog and two young children each in common. They decided to join forces and create a blog network to support each other and the other Double Duty Divas that shared their multi-tasking challenges. Since that time the Diva network has grown to offer, in addition to support and cross-promotional opportunities for the bloggers, review and advertising campaigns for companies. With some of the top review bloggers among their ranks, the Divas also provide Twitter parties, coupon code campaigns and holiday gift guide inclusion opportunities. Speaking at BlogWorld 2010 about Harnessing the Power of Numbers and Creating a Blog Network, Bridgette and Cecelia plan to help others cross-promote and support blogs within their niche to grow and build a promotional network of their own.

Make sure to check out these websites and feel free to comment below on any networks that you use!

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Free $75 Google Adwords Credit

Matthew Henrickson — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:12:59 +0000

This offer has ended.

I’ve never really been able to master the art of Google Adwords. There are certain ways that you should use Adwords, but I’ve never been able to really get into it. However like most things, it takes practice.

What better to practice with that FREE money? I have a great offer where you can get a free $75 Google Adwords credit. That means if your CPC is about $.20 to $.25 You are looking at a couple 100 visitors for free.

The offer is available for US and CAN residents. All you have to do is click the banner above and fill out the form. Then in about 2 business days you should get emailed your code.

Remember it’s available to NEW customers only, so I believe you will have to pay the $5 activation fee, but it’s still a great offer.

Check out It’s All Free Online for more freebies and deals.

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Advertisement: Before you run your next contest, make sure to check out the Top 20 Contest Blogs list. A great resource for any upcoming contest.

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Increase Website Traffic with Facebook

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:55:58 +0000

Maybe it was rust, or just getting excited about updating this blog again I made a mistake with my last Facebook Fan Pages article. I completely forgot to really sell you on the importance of it. By that I mean giving you some proof! Where’s the traffic? Well let me show you some stats of my most successful fan page.

Facebook Traffic

As I mentioned my Facebook Fan Page for Free Samples grows everyday, pretty organically. However to start it wasn’t as easy. I first really started seeing traffic in July, making it my 5th top traffic source (after Google, Bing, Yahoo and “Direct”). After that each month it has sent plenty of traffic.

July 2009

July 2009 had 436 visitors from Facebook. That works out to be about 14 visits per day coming from Facebook. Decent, but not enough.

August 2009

In August 2009 that number grew by 6 times! Facebook became my #2 top traffic source (behind Google) and came out to be 2,932 visits. If you want to break that down, it works out to be 94 visits per day (some days had nearly 200 visits).

September 2009

The great thing about these pages is they continue to grow. In the month of September Facebook easily was my #1 top traffic source. In September we received 6,211 visits from Facebook. That works out to be 207 visits PER DAY. The best day got nearly 400 Facebook visits.

With October I am anticipating even more as the page continues to grow. I will definitely keep this updated.

Did I convince you to make a Facebook Fan page yet?

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Importance of Facebook Fan Pages

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:11:31 +0000

Myspace reminds me of high school drama and spam, it’s just what I associate it with. When I was told about Facebook I thought it was just another network, and I passed on it. Wasn’t it just for college students anyways? Well at first it was (right?), but it has emerged into a dominant social network.

How To Utilize Facebook

Shortly after I joined Facebook I saw the potential to promote my websites, affiliates, and any other type of sponsorships. It can all be nicely done with Facebook Fan Pages.

Facebook Fan Pages can be very beneficial to any website or company. You can really become a fan of anything, whether it’s for someone famous like George Lopez or an interest like free samples.

Every time a Fan Page is updated, the updates go out to everyone who is a fan (unless they have it hidden from their news feed). Whenever I update my fan pages, all of my fans see what’s new and can comment, engage in conversations, ask questions, and visit my website all at one central place.

As of right now Michael Jackson and Barack Obama have the most fans/supporters on Facebook. How great is that?

So what’s the best way of setting up a fan page?

In my eyes their are three different types of fan pages. One for businesses, one for websites, and one for products. A business is going to have a different type of fan page. They are going to be for the entire company, not just a particular product they sell. The most popular one is Starbucks.

For most of us, we would want to do one for our website, or the product or “theme” it’s about. However I would recommend targeting more to the niche rather than your website brand (unless it already has a huge following).

Blogging SEO 101 tells us to target the popular terms of your niche. Ranking well in search engines can be difficult and time consuming. Yet on Facebook the same rules don’t apply.

Targetting Your Niche on Facebook

When making my fan pages, I generally make the page about the topic instead of the website name. Once you make the page, you cannot change the name, so it’s forever.

For example, I’ve made fan pages for Free Samples, Coupons and Poetry. Most of the updates all link to my websites, but in order for people to find the page in the first place, they would search these terms. On Facebook I rank #1 for Free Samples, #3 for Coupons, and my Poetry page should be moving up soon.

I’ve thought about making a page for Blog About Your Blog, but I wouldn’t call it that. Most likely it would be “Blogging” since it’s becoming a popular word and I could rank well for that.

Promoting Your Fan Page

My fan pages have been the easiest to grow for my websites. One click and you can gain a fan. In about 3 months, I was able to get 2,000 fans for my freebie site with 0 (ZERO) paid advertising. Once you gain your initial fans, they grow pretty organically.

There are some easy ways to promote your page. Of course add the widget on your sidebar. You can include the name, thumbnail image, number of fans, and the newest update. To get your widget go to “edit page” and under your Admins you should find “get your badge”. There you can customize what you want the widget to display.

After doing that, I would definitely recommend “suggesting” your fan page to your friends list. Simply go to your fan page, on the left side select “more” then “suggest to friends”. I usually like to do this once a month, so I can send the suggestions to people who haven’t joined yet and send it to new friends I added.

Does your website/business have a Facebook fan page yet?

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Using Yahoo Answers for More Website Traffic

Matthew Henrickson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:02:02 +0000

An important thing in blogging successfully is being an authority in your niche. What better of a way to show that you are by answering questions in that niche? Yahoo answers is perfect for that.

Yahoo Answers for Traffic

Yahoo Answers has a great search ability where you can enter keywords to find questions to answer. You can search between answers that have or haven’t been answered yet.

You can also leave your “source” when answering a question. This is basically asking for a plug of your own website. During football season, I try to take a few minutes every week to go through and answer fantasy football questions and give my “advice”. Then leave the URL as my source.

The questions also pose for great post titles and ideas for posts in your niche.

Yahoo Answers Trial

On my poetry site, Words of a Poet, I put my poems, famous poems, as well as song lyrics (that’s basically poetry too). When Brianna Taylor debuted her song Summertime on Real World, I quickly found the lyrics and post them. The next day tons of people were requesting her lyrics on forums and especially Yahoo Answers.

Looking up all the questions on Yahoo Answers regarding her lyrics, I began to tell them where I “found it” and linked to my own site.

From June 26th to June 29th (yeah 3 days), Yahoo Answers sent nearly 150 visitors. The traffic is obviously very targetted as they are finding the exact answer they are looking for.

Of course I got a little lucky to be one of the first to post the lyrics and I only answered questions for one day, imagine the potential.

Answer questions about breaking news in your niche, link to your site, and watch the traffic roll in.

Bloggers Buzzing About Yahoo Buzz

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Free $250 FaceBook Ads Credit

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:56:48 +0000

I’m not much of a Facebook user. I am rarely even on Myspace. But I am aware that they all have advertising space, whether it is hosted by themselves, or by Google Adsense (myspace uses adsense).

However, when I saw this awesome offer, I decided to get a little acquainted with Facebook.

Free $250 in Advertising

You can easily get up to $250 in Facebook ads credit in just a few short minutes.

The first thing you need to do is register for Facebook Ads.

You will need to enter in payment information, but you don’t need to actually pay anything.

After that you can enter and redeem coupons.

Click “Manage Ads”
Click “Billing”
Click “Funding Sources”
Click “Enter Coupon Code”

The three $50 coupon codes are:

T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH
2JXY-WTFK-72Y0-VJ6Y
R1X5-0NH7-5FXW-5YEC

The first one expires July 31st, the other two expire October 11th.

The way to get an extra $100 is to install the Visa Business Application on your Facebook account. After you do that you will be emailed an additional $100 coupon to the email you sign-up with. That also expires October 11th.

This is great for any campaign you want to run, whether it be PPC or just to drive traffic to an established domain.

Thanks to Matthew of Internet Business Daily and John of Affiliate Obsession for this great deal.

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Where Does Your Traffic Come From? First Half Roundup

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:27:38 +0000

I thought it would be a fun to reflect on the first half of 2008. We are still pretty far off our Blogging Goals for 2008, but we still have time.

I put together a few lists of our top traffic sources.

Top 10 Referring Sites

Entrecard
45n5
Bloggeries
Digital Point
Daily Blog Tips
Scratchback
Total Web Review
Resource for Bloggers
Pay Per Post
About Blog Contests

Top Social Media and Search Engines Referrers

Stumbleupon
Google
Entrecard
Sphinn
Yahoo
Blogging Zoom
MSN
MyBlogLog
Site Hoppin
Mixx

Top 10 Most Read Articles

This list was definitely fun to make, several of the posts were written by Blog about your Blog authors. I also included Entrecard on both lists because it does have a social media aspect but I also frequently use the forum to promote Comment Friday.

Are your traffic sources similar? Whats your top referrer?

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SiteHoppin Hot on Entrecard’s Trail

Matthew Henrickson — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:45:05 +0000

What is the latest trend of online business? Online business try to earn money by offering web traffic which equals potential money and charging money in return for services or virtual credits which are usually worthless.

In the blogosphere itself, we have witnessed the success of Entrecard, the ineffective challenge from Spott to dislodge the king from its throne. Now SiteHoppin is posing a serious threat to Entrecard’s authority.

Can SiteHoppin pose a serious challenge to Entrecard?

SiteHoppin can be considered Entrecard on steroids. Theoretically speaking, SiteHoppin can bring as much traffic to sites as Entrecard but it also offers many other mind numbing features.

SiteHoppin’s credit is named Beer Credits and they are almost like Entrecard credits, they can be used to bring traffic to your own sites or be sold for money. There are several ways to earn Beer Credits such as commenting, site submission, click through to SiteHoppin from the widget on your blogs and visiting other blogs in Browser-within-Browser mode. You can also earn Beer Credits while you sleep – you just have to put your computer on auto surf Slide show Mode to let the Browser-within-Browser keep on loading member sites.

SiteHoppin’s internet domination plan does not stop there. It also includes StumbleUpon’s capabilities where users can discover and submit new sites, rate them, tag them and discuss them. This feature becomes more convenient in the recently released beta SiteHoppin FireFox Toolbar. The toolbar is highly similar to that of StumbleUpon’s and simplifies the task of hopping from one site to another. The toolbar is a real stroke of genius from ZedoMax.

As if SiteHoppin is not attractive enough with the above mentioned features, it also comes equipped with money making model from One Buck Wiki. SiteHoppin is powered by MediaWiki, and as such wiki pages for certain keywords like “make money online” can be bought on the site. Those paid Wiki pages are named Beer Stocks and people who purchase them can customize their Wiki pages and can expect to get a portion of SiteHoppin’s total traffic and also a two-tier Beer Stocks affiliate earnings. The value of Beer Stocks is not constant and will depend on factors like total SiteHoppin web traffics, amount of visits an individual Beer Stock page received and the age of the Beer Stock itself (much like valuation for a domain).

What to look out for in the near future?

Recently, there has been many unsatisfied Entrecard users because of the new advertisement pricing system and the new rule that allows user(s) from an IP address to drop maximum 600 entrecards per day.

As for SiteHoppin, I am pretty sure it will be much more popular once the Firefox Toolbar is ready for public release. Besides, with ZedoMax’s experience and influence in other projects such as Wagg It, One Buck Wiki and Five Buck Wiki, there seems to be unlimited growth opportunity for SiteHoppin.

It will be interesting to note how SiteHoppin will stand in comparison with Entrecard in 3 months or 6 months’ time.

Want to try out SiteHoppin Firefox toolbar? Visit Blogger Focus.

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Do You Remember the Mylot Fad?

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:24:37 +0000

Mylot was a huge blogging fad, it seemed everyone joined and promoted it. It was a great thing for bloggers, because commission was easy. I made about $30 with little effort before my earnings fell off. I still have 30 cents pending.

Mylot was a huge blogging topic about a year ago. Every make money blogger was heavily promoting it as the best new thing. The last time that I wrote an article about Mylot was Feb 2007!

What is Mylot?

For those who don’t know, Mylot is a huge community with 127,478 members. It is basically a souped up forum with a little bit of Yahoo Answers mixed in. You can start any topic, ask a question or just simply make a comment or observation.

For each thread started or reply, you earn money. The money is small and I’m not exactly sure the algorithm. However for popular topics and replies you are essentially paid more. Once you reach $10 you are eligible for payment.

The real money is made with getting a bunch of referrals.

Mylots Referral Program

When you refer someone to Mylot you basically will earn 25% of whatever the person you referred earns.

A great feature is that you get to see how much your referral earns you each month. My referrals are no longer making me any money, I referred them over a year ago!

Promoting your Blog on Mylot

I just had remembered I made a few posts in Mylot and of course left my my URL. Checking my statcounter I noticed a few referrals from Mylot.

The blogging section isn’t very popular at Mylot, but there is tons of opportunity to promote your blog whatever the niche is.

Mike of Mikes Money Making Mission did this in a great way. Mylot was one of his biggest traffic referrals. The best thing is you are basically paid to promote your own site (since you are paid per post).

It does take a bit of effort, but if you are on daily for a few minutes it can be well worth it.

The Bloggers Guide to Freelance

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Bloggers Guide to SEO

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:29:10 +0000

First I have to say that I am by no means a SEO expert, but I do know blogging. Improving your blog for search engines has never been easier for bloggers. It just takes a little bit of work. In the last month we’ve received 1,400 visitors from Google alone.

What Exactly is SEO?

When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what SEO was.

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.

The better your website is prepared and “optimized” for search engines, the more traffic you should get. Here is how you can improve your blog and start using basic SEO methods to improve your rankings.

Change the URL Permalink Structure

It’s important for your blogs URL to include at least the post title. Basic Wordpress default settings give your blog, example, “yourblog.com/p=1″. This not only hurts your SEO, but makes your blog look unprofessional. You can customize your post URLs to have whatever you like.

To change the settings, go to your Options tab in the Wordpress dashboard. Then select permalinks. To have your post link just have the post title, go to custom and enter /%postname%/.

I recommend to do this very early with your blog. By changing the URL structure, your blog will need to be re-indexed for the right URLs. If I changed my permalink structure now, people searching my blog would get errors because the URL for each post would be different.

Install the All In One SEO Wordpress Plugin

This is an essential (and easy) Wordpress plugin for any blog. This plugin allows you to perform basic important SEO techniques with your blog. You can change the title and description to whatever you want. This is what the search engines will see. You can also tag your post with keywords which is also very important for search engines.

If you haven’t downloaded the All in One SEO plugin, you can do so here.

Blog Your Key Term

Pick relevant key terms for your blog and use them. The obvious best way to start ranking for the key terms you select (at least longtail) is to blog about them. Make sure to include the key terms in your title, post and tags.

My post, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, helped me start ranking for “blogging tips” and other key phrases similar to that.

Build Links With Your Key Terms

To get better rankings for your key terms you need to promote it. I’ve had bloggers link to this blog with keywords like blogging tips and blogging tools. I’ve used this technique for link exchanges and leaving comments.

Of course the alternative is to buy links. However this can be costly. You also don’t want to go and get 1,000 links within the same key term in one day. This could ultimately ban you from search engines, or for that particular term. SEO can be a slow process, but rewarding.

Comment on Blogs – Do Follow / Top Comments

Commenting on blogs can not only drive traffic and subscribers to your blog, it can also help with basic SEO.

By commenting on blogs with “do follow” or a top commenter list, you can build easy links with whatever key term you chose. This is how I gained better rankings for key terms like increase website traffic and blogging tips.

An important rule here is to NOT SPAM. All the comments I left were on-topic and provided value to the article and comment section.

Courtney Tuttle has the infamous Do-Follow List where you can find tons of blogs that give you SEO juice. There are over 200 websites/blogs that are now on the “D List”.

How have you incorporated basic SEO into your blog?

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Blog About Your Blog » How to increase website traffic

Grow Your Blog by Working With PR

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