SEO Ranting on the subject

Over the past month or so  I have been searching for ways and techniques to increase traffic to my site. This included checking out already well known blogs such as ProBlogger but after reading those crazy e-books all the way to going to my local borders and reading books on SEO , taking advantage of Google etc etc.

What surprises me the most is that every time I read a new source claiming to be the cure-all to increasing traffic is that all they do is reiterate and recycle old ideas or useless ones that a majority of web developers either already know or consider it to be common sense.

I mean take this for example , “Google is very important for your traffic”. Yes this is true but I think everyone including my GRANDMA already knows this , Give me a break. Then the next statement usually made is that the “DMOZ will make or break you depending on your acceptance into the directory”. You’ve got to be joking me , no directory such as the DMOZ will give you non-stop traffic. You’ll be lucky enough if you even get 50 or more unique visitors in 1 week’s time. So I figured it was up to me to talk to friends who blog as well as consult for others about the best way to market yourself.

The majority of their answers sent me to one word “Social Networking”. I know you’ve probably heard of this well over a million times , I was actually disappointed to hear this simple answer as most of you would agree. You may have some misconceptions from people saying things such as I have heard of Digg and I think it sucks because I submitted my article 100 times but never got the Front Page or StumbleUpon is too complicated.

My friends in various niches` of the blogosphere then told me after my sarcastic remarks that everything takes time but unless you take time to market yourself in high-traffic social sites then no one will never know you even exist or read your article that you spent all night long writing.

So I’ve listed a few social-networking sources and will go into detail on how to use them , how to expand your reach. Be prepared to burn an hour a day or more marketing properly. You know you can stop when your website’s traffic is increasing on a daily basis without you the owner doing 1-ounce of work I call this web-traffic-nirvana. But be aware that it’s best not to leave your blog tend to itself for long periods of time. It’s kind of like your puppy , if your away from the house for too long then it will mess up your house and rip your pillows up.

Resources

1) StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is more friendly in my opinion as well as my friends I’ve spoken to. The only gripe on it is that to have an effect you have to spend some time building your friends network.They offer a toolbar you can download to stumble sites you enjoy and would like to share.

• Advantages the great part about this is that unlike Digg traffic that spikes to 30k the first day then just dies off quickly, traffic from StumbleUpon is spread out and doesn’t die out for weeks to months at a time depending on how great of an article you wrote. From my analysis StumbleUpon traffic is more quality traffic. By quality traffic I mean that the users don’t just come on to your site then leave it in under 15 seconds.
• Disadvantage DO NOT submit or stumble your own website , SU has an algorithm built in for that each time you stumble your own site , it becomes less effective till no one comes on your website. What I you could do is suggest an article to your friends and it could start a chain reaction of stumbles as well as other social sites posting your article.

2) Digg – What I think – Personally I have used Digg for experimental reasons at first and have gotten the front page on my second submission , but albeit the users over there can be pretty nasty. Some comments may even offend you. That’s why I have listed them at #2. If your article is of low-quality or not helpful to the average user , expect your blog to be marked as spam and get lots of hate comments if at all any depending on how much visibility your Digg has gotten.

Disadvantages are the users have a bounce rate of 80-90% or higher. So if you were to get like 1000 users from a Digg article expect only 50-75 to actually stick around.

3) Consider joining blog networks ;

• blogospherenews
• blog carnival
• 9rules
• b5media

4) Submit your RSS Feed n’ spread the word!

• blogpulse
• feedfury
• feedbomb
• millionrss
• icerocket

5) If you are using WordPress I suggest you use the SEO All-In-One Plugin. This plugin will optimize each article’s keywords , meta data , and title. You should also use “SEO Friendly Images” WordPress Plugin , this makes all the images placed into your article/post optimized to be included in search engines such as the image section of Google.

I will be posting more on this topic and sharing details on how to further promote your blog using unorthodox techniques that you most likely have never heard of before.