I was asked recently how to get a 1000 visitors a day to your blog network.  If you have a network it is quite easy.  The more blogs you have the more content you have, and more content you have the better chance you will get hits from search results.  Here is my quick list of do’s and don’ts.

• Content isn’t enough.  You need content with good keywords and for that material to be indexed.  If you run a wordpress blog the Google XML Sitemap Plugin is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal for getting indexed.  If you want to be properly indexed it is highly important that you use good content specific keywords and tags.  I generate specific keywords with Wordsfinder and use the Calais Tagaroo Plugin to generate Semantic tags, both of which appear as meta keywords to search engines thanks to my theme.
• Write about popular things.  If you follow the first rule of good tagging and and getting regularly indexed, writing about popular topics is going to greatly increase your traffic.  While it goes without saying that writing about football in the off season isn’t going to bring you a lot of traffic for those posts, when I say popular I mean really popular.  The Google Trends page is your friend if you learn to read it correctly.  At any given time these are the 100 most popular search terms on Google and they all have links to recent blog posts through Google Blog links.  Incorporate something from here and your search traffic will go up.  Mention sixty or seventy of them over a couple of relevant posts and you are search gold for as long as the trend continues.
• Write something worth shouting about.  If your posts are pretty good there is always someone willing to submit it to the Social Media outlets.  Promoting yourself is held by some as being tacky and rude, but I don’t think so under some circumstances.  if you aren’t the only one you are promoting.  if you submit, comment, stumble, and rate hundreds of pages a week a little self promotion isn’t a bad thing.  Once a page has been submitted by someone else there is no reason not to jump on the promotion bandwagon.  If you put up a couple of stumble worthy pages a day your traffic can easily exceed a thousand hits a day.
• Comment on popular blogs in your niche.  I can’t begin to tell you how many thousands upon thousands of visitors this can bring to your blog.  This is a long term strategy that has to be cultivated and worked over time.  You need to leave relevant comments on these blogs and do it often.  One good comment will likely get you some traffic, but a hundred comments on a popular blog a year or more is golden.
• Give people a reason to come back.  Unless you are giving your people a reason to come back they likely aren’t going to.  There are lots of good sources of the same information you are providing so you need to give people a reason to return.  I use CommentLuv, KeywordLuv, Nofollow Free, plugins and interact with the people that comment.  Some of my blogs I offer an integrated forum so readers can interact with each other.
• Make it easy for people to come back.  Not only do you need to give people a reason to come back, you need to make it easy for them to return. (I need to do a better job of this on this theme.)  You can do things like put a Del.Icio.us, Technorati,  Yahoo as well as rss feed or many other buttons that make getting back to you easy for people to return.

One of the four most important aspects of writing a post is picking out the right keywords from the text.  This isn’t something often mention in your standard how to blog post.  There is only one really good free tool and I reccomend using it every time you post.  Wordsfinder will pick out what it sees as your best go to keywords based on a Google Search.  You simply cut and paste your text into the box and it spits out a list of your best keywords.  Copy the the ready to use list, and paste it into the custom field value box in the Wordpress write/edit post page and label the key as keywords.  Remember to save or publish after this step or they won’t be part of the post’s data.

The second method for adding keywords requires a bit of theme editing.  I first saw this technique on Nathan Rice’s Blog.  I suggest you read his entire series on how to do Wordpress SEO. This technique will add your tags as keywords. If you are using good tags there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t use them as keywords. If you are using a not so good program to autotag like simple tags, you should avoid this method as it could cause google to think you are keyword stuffing. (Stuffing equals reduced pagerank) However if you use an intelligent tagging plugin that uses semantic tags, like Calaise archive or autotagger or my favorite Tagaroo you are in good shape. Simply paste the keywords you got from Wordsfinder into the tag area and away you go.

This is where the theme editing needs to be done.
In the header.php add this below the title tags <title></title>
<br /> <?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?><br /> <meta name=”description” content=”<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>” /><br /> <?php csv_tags(); ?><br /> <?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?><br /> <meta name=”description” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?>” /><br /> <?php endif; ?><br />

In your functions.php add the following in the line above ?>

function csv_tags() {<br /> $posttags = get_the_tags();<br /> foreach((array)$posttags as $tag) {<br /> $csv_tags .= $tag->name . ‘,’;<br /> }<br /> echo ‘<meta name=”keywords” content=”‘.$csv_tags.’” />’;<br /> }<br />

Before undertaking this step I really reccomend you read Nathan’s fine article on the hows and whys of meta keywords.

Post 73 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

The least utilized option in Wordpress, the custom field, is also quite possibly the most powerful function of the entire platform. I have been writing up my own tutorials on this option for several days now and thought I would share with you a few of the other great posts on the subject.

The Top 5 Uses for Wordpress Custom Fields  by  Oak Innovations Blog

For the vast majority of bloggers, this incredibly usefull, and versatile piece of functionality goes unused. At the moment you may be thinking that the reason you don’t use it, is that you have no use for it. This may very well be true but, its also likely that no one has really explained what’s possible.

Learn how to use Wordpress Custom Fields | Kriesi.at – new media design

WordPress gives an author the ability to add extra data to each written post and page. This data is called meta-data and is stored in custom fields.

WordPress Custom Fields Contest

If you are a wordpress blogger, how many times have you used the often overlooked feature called Custom Fields. It is sitting below this post page as I type and though I look at it everyday, I never got around to using it. Technosailor is organizing the WordPress Custom Fields Contest to bring forth the usefulness of this feature and its possible applications.

Jazz Up Your Site: 28 Ways To Use WordPress Custom Fields | Performancing.com

Reasons To Use Custom Fields

You create a custom field, then choose on a post by post basis what information you will add. That information can be manipulated by custom WP/PHP code to present additional textual or visual content when a visitor views a post page. To summarize:

1. Add metadata for reporting or other purposes.
2. Add visually cohesive elements to your site.
3. Manipulate information and control its display programmatically.
4. Make global changes across all your posts with a single code change, instead of manually updating each post.

The lists below show some ways that WP custom fields can be used to provide more textual and visual info to your site visitors. If you decide to change something, say a border or background or even placement on the post page, without custom fields you would have to make changes manually to each and every post. If you have hundreds of posts, you’d have a daunting task. With custom fields, you have structure and homogeneity through custom handler code.

redswish – a web design blog » The power of Wordpress Custom Fields

I can’t believe I’ve been playing with Wordpress for so long and never explored the Custom Fields feature. A website I’ve been working recently has required me to push the boundaries of Wordpress, or more appropriately my understanding and knowledge of it. In doing so I’ve bravely slipped deeper into the Advanced Options and lived to tell the tale – the tale of the Custom Fields…

WordPress Custom Fields; laying text over your lead graphic

WordPress Custom Fields; laying text over your lead graphic

For WordPress users, there are certain scenarios when the typical reverse chronological presentation of content is just not enough. I have experimented with different methods of presenting content on 5thirtyone.com each time a redesign is uploaded – from the text-centric to the image heavy version in use right now. With hundreds of WordPress driven blogs being published on a daily basis, it’s difficult to stand out; even more so if you stick to the standard two-column blog layout.

The undersigned » Blog Archive » WordPress how-to: Custom Fields

WordPress how-to: Custom Fields

Most WordPress users have seen the custom fields section when they write a new post or create a page – but what is it exactly?

Post 12 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

If you are reading this post then you have taken your first step in moving beyond the amateur blog level.  The first thing you need to accept is you don’t know everything and you should be reading a lot of blogs how to get set up right.  None of us know everything, and I am more than happy to point you to the people who know a lot more than me on any subject.  That said let me tell you what we can all agree on.

• Figure out why you want to blog.  This is the most important step and the reason most people never bother with.  Deciding you want to blog for money is perfectly acceptable.
• Once you figure out why you want to blog you need to decide on what your blog is to be about.  This is one specific thing that your blog will be known to the search engines for.  This is going to be your keyword phrase.  See my post on picking your keywords for more information.  The short of it is you want to find something that defines your blog with a lot of daily searches, but not very many search results.  This choice will define your blog for a very long time so choose wisely.
• Once you know your primary focus you can start to choose a domain name.  Choosing something simple like your name seems easy enough, but frankly that isn’t necessarily the best choice either.  your name is a particularly bad choice if you want to sell your blog later.  Some schools of thought are Google will look more favorably on you if your keyword and your domain name are similar.  Once you decide on a Domain name register it.  You can do this almost anywhere so I suggest looking for a cheap place that has been around a while.  You can host anywhere once you have the domain, but if you lose the domain because you were dicking around making other decisions, then you are SOL and have to repeat steps two and three.
• Choose a blog platform and a basic theme design.  The fact is Google loves wordpress best of all, but without a well designed theme it doesn’t matter what kind of advantage you get from the platform you are taking blind swings.  Not only will you need to choose a good theme, you need to be able to alter or fix it yourself, unless you have a paid tech guy.  it doesn’t matter how good your writing is, if you don’t look profession to your readers your won’t be seen as a professional.  This goes doubly for google and every other search engine that could care less what sort of pithy commentary you make.  Search engines want the nitty gritty of posts.  They want meta information to match the text.  They want images that have full SEO treatments since they can’t interpret the visual.  They want to know what your navigation priorities are.
• Last but not least is you want to choose your host.  You need to do your homework and not let some affectation pull at your heartstrings.  You can switch hosts as you like.  Many hosts these days are even on month to month agreements so switching is easy.  The biggest thing to look for is how fast sites using the network move.  If the cost is next to nothing for a whole lot of promises beware.  Any company that doesn’t charge a minimum of $10 a month and promises the moon probably means that have three or four times too many sites for their bandwidth and if you ever try and use as much as the promised they will likely cancel you account.

If you can manage these steps you are well on your way to moving beyond the amateur blog level.

Post 9 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

I promised a post not so long back on how to make the most of Twitter for blogging.  In the mean time a couple of big name blogs ShoeMoney and ProBlogger have gotten into twitter pretty hard and can give you their takes on the networking with your fans side of it better than I can so I would suggest you read their tweeting adventures.

What I am going to bring to the table is a different take on the subject and one that has been doing well for me.  Using for those using WordPress there are several different plugins available to you, but I have two favorites, MyTwitter, which I am new too.  Then, there is the old reliable TwitterTools from Alex King.  Twitter tools does it all creates a digest post of your daily tweets, creates a post when you tweet, creates a tweet when you post, and gives you several configurable options.  The one problem it has is it only functions as a stupid widget making it about useless for me since I don’t want it in my sidebar.  This is where MyTwitter comes in.  I have only found this in the last few days, but it will allow you to place the content anywhere you want it.  I actually haven’t decided where I want it yet, but you can damned well believe it will be somewhere useful.

Okay I know some of you are probably thinking so what good is Twitter any how I run a couple of blogs that have absolutely nothing to do with my personal activities throughout the day. Well that goes back to one of the most important feature of TwitterTools, the ability to create a tweet when you post. If you make a couple of posts per blog a day and it creates a twit each time, you will notify every one of your followers you have posted something and if they are interested may go for a look even if they don’t normally read that blog. Furthermore you can use the tweet aggregate function to list you other posts on your other blogs to each and every reader creating a direct a passive stream of directed traffic. If you use the daily digest mode or create a post every time you tweet, you provide new content.

I prefer the digest mode on one of my blogs, but not all of them to avoid repetition. Using that along with AutoMeta which creates some of the meta information, SimpleTags which creates tags, the AutoSocial plugin which submits all my posts to Del.icio.us I get a full SEO friendly post that ends up drawing me organic traffic that I didn’t have to work for at all.

There has also been somewhat of another revolution in the Twitter market of recent days and that is the battle over desktop widgets. This is just one more place that people can see your blog links and effectively get to them. Expect as this battle heats up and innovations made almost daily, that this will become one more way to drive traffic to your site.

]]> http://bradtheblogboy.com/social-networking/the-power-of-twitter/feed/ 1 http://bradtheblogboy.com/seo/keyword-marketing/?source=rss http://bradtheblogboy.com/seo/keyword-marketing/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:51:35 +0000 Blogboy http://bradtheblogboy.com/?p=51 Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

One of the best techniques for really driving traffic to your site  is the use of keywords and knowing just how to use them  Wait! Wait! Stop!  I know some of you are thinking other blogs say keywords are dead and don’t matter to your PageRank or this or that program because they can be manipulated.  That is true to a point.

What isn’t mentioned often enough is keywords do still matter and that Google isn’t the only game in town. Search engines are getting better about seeing who is fudging their keywords and actually looking for them in the text of your post.  You can’t get away with just picking out popular keywords, plugging them in and thinking you are beating the system.  Other search you can still get away with that on, but it isn’t to your benefit even there.

So how do we pick a search engine oh mighty guru?  There are a couple of methods.  There are plugins of course which will do it for you automatically.  The best ones cost money though and I haven’t had very good luck with free ones using WordPress 2.5.  My preferred method is a little more time consuming but seems to produce pretty good results if you look at my Feedjit widget.

I use the site wordsfinder.com, enter the text, usually cut straight from word, and tell it to search for my keywords.  It usually gives me a nice long list and I cut highlight copy into notepad for cleaning it up.  First, this will pick out any horribly misspelled words if you didn’t already spell check the text, so correct them before posting.  According to highestranking.com you want to comma separate your terms or phrases, but don’t leave a space.  Using notepad or any text editor you can quickly do that, then simply cut them and paste them into your keywords field in WordPress and push the add custom field button and bam you have hot keywords.

What I said about the feedjit widget is quite true.  If you look at my other blogs especially you will find a high number of the incoming visitors are coming from Google via keyword searches.  Check out The Other Blog and Brad’s Tiny World to see what I mean.  You can also use Google Analytics to see your actual stats and make decisions about the kind of posts you want to be making as well.

• Akismet This is the best in spam control there is hands down.
• Ultimate GA (Google Analytics) You can use the Google Analytics services without this plugin, but frankly why would you want to. It makes the service so much easier to use and, even better will write a lot of the code into your blog for you. This is a 5 star plugin and a must have.
• HeadSpace 2 is the best all around meta tool there is. It is a little harder to get setup than the All in One SEO Pack but it is a far superior plugin. Mani at Daily SEO has a really great post about getting it set up right using one of his themes, but the principals are the same no matter what theme you use.
• Google XML Sitemap Generator is the best tool you can have for getting indexed quickly and efficiently.
• CommentLuv by FiddyP is a sure fire way to get your readers involved by providing not only a link back to their site, but assuming they have an accessible feed it will post a link to their latest post too.
• Auto Social is a sure fire way to make sure your posts get to Del.icio.us Every post you makes gets submitted with your post tags. If you couple this with the post thingy that will put all your daily tagging into a single post auto post it to your blog, then you are in good shape to have a daily wrap up of everything you are doing online. See The Other Blog for an example of how I aggregate this feature.
• Simple Tags This is a plugin that has been around a long time, but one that is rather new for me. It is in a word complete tag management and may eventually displace my use of Technorati Tags once I learn to use it to its fullest extent.
  
• ShareThis Bloggers are foolish not to include multiple ways for people to add their posts to their favorite social bookmarking sites. I like Share this because of its tiny footprint, just a small green square that expands when clicked on. If you use Socialize which is probably the other one you have seen a lot of I suggest keeping the number of sites manageable and fixing the plugins ss so you have 100% opacity.
  
• Technorati Tags When set up right will use WordPress’s native tagging feature to create Technorati tags and provide the appropriate links back to Technorati.
  
• TinyMCE Advanced Last but not least getting a hold of this dynamic plugin will help you control your content far btter than the native posting interface. it is like going from MS Wordpad to the latest and Greatest version of Word in terms of features.
  

One of the best tools I have found of recent to help improve our blogging is the ScribeFire extension for the Firefox browser. It allows you to automatically post to your blog while surfing. It works for self-hosted WordPress, WordPress.com TypePad.com LiveJournal.com, and a few others. My hopes were dashed that it wouldn’t recognize MySpace, but that was just too much to really hope for. MySpace wants you on site or not at all, and frankly that is just too damned big of time waste for me right now. It is a good resource to try and tap, but at this point I don’t have the time to repost everything to MySpace on top of trying to write content, upgrading my themes, editing my novel, etc. The next great thing about ScribeFire is it will allow me to switch between blog accounts easily something I can’t do when I use to blog the things I Digg. It will also allow you to post in draft mode so you can use all the fancy Meta tools I am sure I will get around to preaching on later this week.

The next great Firefox blogging tool is a custom hack of the main CSS file ( usercontent.css ) which decides how things will look while browsing. Search Engine Genie shows you how to highlight any rel=nofollow links. Why is this important? As a blogger if you comment or pay for your link to be hosted somewhere that that has a rel=nofollow added to the link search engines will ignore you and not follow the link back to your site. There are many reasons to be both a do follow and a no follow blogger, but those are for another lesson. To get your name and site indexed, I would suggest posting relevant comments on any of the blogs I have listed in my D-List

If you get the coding done right it should look something like this
Google Search

You can mass around with it by using your own coded file with this link <a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>Google Search</a>