No cookies in the jar=(
www.priyankavictor.blogspot.com
I have been a blogger, though not very active, since 2007-08. But I still have only 25 followers, most of who are people I know. Please let me know how to increase my traffic and get more feedback. And what is SEO and how can I use that in my blog?
Also, how can I optimise it and where can I find classy, useful widgets and templates for my blog?
I think I am breaking records with the length of my comments.
true dat.
1) How do I add my site to google, yahoo etc.
Go to www.dmoz.org and keep clicking the categories until you finally reach the category (or sub-category) where you believe that your site should be included. If you see a "Suggest URL" somewhere in the links on the top right corner of the page, then you just click on that and follow instructions. Google and Yahoo, both, use dmoz for adding sites. So just add to Dmoz and you will be done. If you DON'T see "Suggest URL" on the top right that simply means that you need to go deeper into the subcategory (Eg: You cannot submit your site into "Arts" category, but you can submit it into "Arts>Music>Regional"). Don't forget that you can only submit into ONE category. So make sure to pick the one that you believe is the ONE CATEGORY that is right for your blog/site.
2) How do I know what tags are relevant?
This one is easy. You can see yourself what are the keywords that are important for your post. Check a few blogs of indiblogger members. Most posts would show the tags above or below the post. These "tags" are the words that would be used by someone to find a site. For example, if you search for "Indian Blogging Forum" on Google.co.in, you will find that indiblogger is the first site that comes up. You should also have such keywords as your tags. Don't keep too many tags though, anywhere from 5-7 should be enough for each post. Any more and you risk being considered a fake by search engine spiders which collect your tags.
3) Where do I get the awards from?
From your brain. Giving awards like "Highest commenter" or "Most regular member" or "Funniest comment of the year" can be given for free. Just a post with a mention of the commenters name can encourage people (a bit) to visit you more and comment more. Giving free gifts to people will come out of your pocket until your blog earns money from ads or any other sources like sales of products(books, clothes, art, anything else you can sell).
I’m sorry if they are stupid questions but I’m kinda tech impaired - Forget that you know less than anyone else. It's irrelevant. The learning is also fun once you get the hang of the basics. You will find many people to help you. And remember, Google Search is very helpful. I would suggest that you try to find some answers on your own before asking on any forum, including this one, so that you are forced to take some steps on your own.
Another thing I suggest is that you start another blog, say, privictest.blogspot.com and experiment with widgets, themes, plugins etc, whatever is available on blogspot. I also recomment trying out wordpress.com, since someday in the future if you move to your own domain and hosting, the transition would be easy since wordpress.org provides you a free software for hosting a blog and importing your wordpress.com account would be simple (this may be true for blogspot as well, but I don't know since I use wordpress' free software on my blog and have my own domain and hosting).
If you didn't understand the last paragraph, then start googling the keywords (same as tags) and try to learn about this stuff. When you have more questions, come back and ask.
arre, Priyanka to gaayab go gayi. Bloody, such a long comment is wasted.
Arti, you're right. I should have just used it on my blog. hehe
dude u wr awsome!Watte genuine way of helping buddy :) Arti is so right..! make it a post I wud promote on indivine
@ rumbaho never mind. I glanced through your blog only after reading that reply.
@ Rumbaho: I guess on seeing your reply, she (re: Priyanka) preferred to stick to her cookieless jar
@ Rocky Singh, nahi re... yaheen pe hoon. Sorry, I took so long though=/
You need to use each community in the way you should. And here are some examples
IndiBloggers: Being active on the forum brings you lot of visitors. I have a s atrial stopped using all other traffic generation tips and have simply stuck to IndiBlogger for a week taking part in discussions. I really enjoyed the discussions and I did get the same traffic that I used to get earlier. indiVine too brings lot of traffic.
WARNING: The day you stop being active on IndiBlogger, you hardly get any traffic from here.
Bloggers.com This was what I tried. I used to welcome all the members with a cut copy paste message. Follow everyone .Add everyone as my friend and finally vote for them. If you are fast enough you can do these tasks for 100 members in one hour. And you can expect around 20 visitors to come to your blog follwoing the links. And occassionally I got a few followers. But I have not continued it till today for the simple reason that I was lazy.
Forums related to your niche: My blog A light hearted talk deals with life, relations and similar things. It was difficult to find a forum related to these things. But at last I found one at www.selfdevelopmentforum.com . the activity there was too low . I made some 100 replies in two days to all existing thraeds, all menaingful and not spam and I receive occassional traffic from there. You too can try this. To find forums related to your niche google 'Forum directories' and you wwill get them. Don't search directly by googling 'Forums related to friendship' and so on. You hardly get god results.
did you get visitors even after you stopped adding people or welcoming them?
I've got 6 votes in 48 hours from unknown people who probably havent even visited my site.
Are you talking about bloggers.com? I simply stopped receiving traffic from there. If I restart using that technique, I will start getting the traffic again. But the traffic from there isn't much useful. The bounce rate is high and the average time spent on site is too low.
Self Development forum: I occassionally get traffic even today since the forum has low activity and my replies are always prominent.
@ Priyanks You can read about IndiVine at the FAQ's page here: http://www.indiblogger.in/faqs.php
*phew*
@ Priyanka
2. Tags are nothing but words related to your article. For example if you have submitted your entry for the recent contest on IndiBlogger 'What does real beauty mean to you?', the tag for that article would be 'Real beauty'
3. He did not mean that you should buy those awards from somewhere. You can simply state on your blog that the name of the person who will post the maximum number of comments will be displayed on the side bar along with a link to his blog/ site. that itself is an award
@ Priyanks
1. Go to http://www.google.co.in/dirhp?hl=en Browse for the category in which your site falls. Click the Submit a site button present at the bottom. Read more at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html .
3. I meant the widget that states the award that people display on their blogs as having been awarded to them by someone.
And thanks, Ranjith.
@ Priyanks I got the point. I too have seen many of those things. Most of them are given by blogjunta (www.blogjunta.com) such as Best blog, Best post, Tangy (some)day and so on. While some others that express gratitude or wish them are created by their friends and sent to them as a mail, I suppose. You need not worry about those things. If you want something like that sign up at blogjunta and www.blogadda.com and submit your blog name and URL there. If they find something interesting in your blog, they may give you some award.
Hi, I'm Rocky Singh from www.rumbaho.com
Here is what you can do to get more traffic:
You probably need to get help from your friends who are already visitors. They need to promote you on various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or even through email by forwarding links to the posts they like.
Since you have some followers, if some of them are bloggers, you could try some guest posts (write for someone else's blog and ask them to write on yours). This works like a link exchange and doesn't seem needy to search engines who look down upon fake link exchanges.
If your friends are bloggers, they can link to you in their posts like you did for Ashwin. And of course, you return the favour. This must be done carefully though, as search engines will punish you by reducing your ranking if they find that your link exchanges are not genuine. Just having the link is not right, there must be a genuine reason to have it (like the genuine reason why you linked ashwin's blog)
Join blogadda.com, bloggers.com and any other such blogging-focussed sites.They may generate a small number of visitors.
Comment on many posts over a period of time on various blogs that you like. Someone will swing by if they like your comment.
Write on some current events so that your blog shows up in searches.
Add your blog/site to google, dmoz, yahoo etc. This may help to bring more people to you.
If you want comments besides "nice" or "funny" or "cute", then you should have topics that will touch people. Try blogging about your opinions on social issues, Indian news, controversies, scandals etc.
One of my posts on TN CM Jayalalitha is on the first or second page of google.co.in search. The location on google search varies depending on the words used in the search. I'm just a new blogger, but obviously using the right tags and having the right topic at the right time has helped me. It would help you too.
One important thing for bloggers to come up in many searches and to get regular visitors is to blog regularly and on varied subjects. or you can pick a niche and focus on that.
Write well and write to the point. I, personally, am unable to contain the length of my posts (or comments, as you can see) because I cannot stop writing until I have said everything I wanted to say. Many people (everyone, actualy) have asked me to cut down the length of my posts.
While the length of my posts may bother people, the upside is that I am showing up in google searches because of that inspite of being a new blogger with just 10 posts on my site.
Generally speaking, everyone who gives advise on blogging regularly will ask you to write atleast 2 posts a week until you have a high enough number of readers. You should follow this. Probably the minimum should be 1 post per week. This will ensure that regulars will always have something to read at your blog. There is nothing that dampens a fan's enthusiasm more than visiting a site and finding nothing new.
Ask your regulars to help generate more visitors. Be discreet/subtle about this as you would not want to seem desperate.
Have some sort of competition for your regulars. Incentivize their visits. Another indiblogger gave awards to his commenters (i think it was R-A-J, not sure)
If you can afford it, and you are serious about earing money from your blog, follow in the footsteps of other sites which used free gifts to popularize themselves. Youtube gave 1 iPod a day free for many months when they started off cos they were only getting barely 20-30 visitors a day. See where they are now. You don;t need to give an ipod a day, but you could give them something else. One book a month, a free Spa treatment(for women), A free men's visit to the spa including a pedicure (for wives who are sick of getting scratched in bed by their husbands feet), and so on. This would cost around 1000 bucks a month, but it just might work. Try it out, if you can spend the money.
Very important: Go to popular blogs and see what they are writing about. If you know something on the same subjects, start blogging about it. If you want to write personal stuff, write with the same passion that I am already seeing on your blog.
Keep writing. And then write some more.
All the best.
Note: The above is from my understanding of how to popularize a blog. It may or may not be a good list. You should wait for people with more experience to come up with suggestions as well. Also, I don't know how to edit my comments on this forum. So, pls ignore any typos and look at the bigger picture.
And an other tip here: When someone asks for help just as you did, give this type of long answers that are useful just as Rumbaho did. This helps in gaining the attention of forum users.
Thats one hell of a help! Great work Rocky!:)
I know only britannia cookies Lolz...joke apart try to add e mail widget, visit others blog and add as friends, add comments in their blog and expect reciprocation. Feed your blog into Blogadda, and get associated with other forums and spread the message of your blogspot. Good luck
Those are the tips that form the base of blog promotion. If one can follow them, they can except a considerable rise in traffic.
@umesh derebail, by email widget you mean the one that readers can mail me from?
And thank you=)
@ Priyanka It isn't that. E mail widget refers to sending an e mail to your blog readers every time your blog is updated. Sign up for an account at www.feedburner.google.com and learn more about it at the help pages of that site. Seems that you have too many doubts.
@ Priyanks Never mind. You will get to know all the things all by yourself as time passes.
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