Bringing the Traffic Home -pt. 1
April 20th 2006 03:26
Most of our traffic is internal, meaning we are our own traffic. That's cool, but it's not sustainable growth. We need more. We are insatiable for human traffic.
There's the rub, in fact. The entire internet community is trying to fool people into visiting their websites - how do we clamour for our piece of ragged meat?
Posting Quality Posts
If you're not writing posts worth reading, then your blog will become a tumbleweed in the dry desert of the scorching afternoon. Every post needs to be interesting, and the occasional post MUST be mindblowing. We're trying to give the equivalent of a mental orgasm here, or a mental hit of crack cocaine. The withdrawl is what brings our readers back, Jack.
Quality means spell-checking your post. It also means using neat formatting - lining up the words and the pictures, using high-res pictures, using readable fonts, and generally, just looking good.
On our network, Amy's got things down with SecretSydney, and Jimbo is laying it out at MusicTimes. Both these bloggers take the time to dress up their posts a little, and it shows.
Another aspect of quality is style. Lia, at Freud.ianslip, has settled into a comfortable style, and it has already had a positive effect on people that read her posts. She's got this liberal, slutty feminist vibe, and it's deliciously entertaining to read (sorry Lia! I didn't mean that YOU were slutty!).
Some of the bloggers use formal English, like they're writing an essay. This is fine, if it suits the theme of the blog. Some bloggers stay casual, which is also fine. A popular Aussie blog with a very casual, run-my-mouth feel is Much Ado about sumthin!, a great blog with links to many other great blogs. It's run by a girl named Steph, and she does something that's very important...
Commenting
The crucial thing about Steph is that she replies to nearly every single comment. Go and check out her comments. She's got a reply to everyone... it's fanatical, like she's the head priest of some mystical religion, and everyone's buying into it.
The point is: if someone comments on your blog, you should, immediately, try and comment back. That feedback is soothing to the reader and they'll start purring as you pet their soft bellies. Additionally, they'll get an email telling them that you responded - that's incredible advertising! By being active on your own blog, you make it like a cozy gingerbread home, and you're the friendly witch who's holding all the keys to get out.
Similarly, if you go out into the internet and comment on someone's blog, there's a good chance they'll check yours out. Within minutes of commenting on Steph's blog, she had visited my site, and left a comment. It's mutual masturbation, to put it crudely, but it works.
Search Engines
Search Engines are tricky. I don't know how they work, exactly, and neither does anyone else. Their algorithms are propietary secrets, and we can only guess how they rank sites. If you look at a list of the top paying keywords on 7search, you'll see most of them are gambling- or Viagra-related. This is not what we want.
My personal blog gets quite a few search engine hits, but due to an unfortunate mix of words, I get all kinds of traffic from people looking for sex, pornography or illegal pornography(what's wrong with people?). We don't want that either.
So, people on the internet are looking for pornography and Viagra. Great. The human race is wallowing in sin, myself included.
We want the other traffic. I suggested to a blogger that recent events should be encorporated into your posts, since people will likely be searching for things on that topic. A great example is Stanley, writing for NBA Loud . The NBA playoffs are coming up, and he's got the word 'playoff' in the title and scattered through the post. Once this is listed on Google, people should be drawn to his site.
A good way to stay on top of the action: check out Technorati. They've got a dynamically updated list of the top searches and the hottest tags on the web. Right now, it's Iran and American Idol. Yes, the Internet is heavily American-centered... it would do us good to tap into the American market, if appropriate.
Active Blogging
You've got to get out and make yourself visible in the community. It's tough when you're in school, or working, but if you're not posting comments everyday, people will forget about you quickly.
Go on popular websites, and make a name for yourself. Try FARK, The Superficial and Slashdot. Find some others, and dig your roots.
That's all I'm going to write for now... the second part of this article will be about getting listed and trying to draw massive traffic with social bookmarking.
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