“How I Got 1,000 People to My Blog in its First Ten Days” plus 1 more

How I Got 1,000 People to My Blog in its First Ten Days

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 01:05 PM PDT

This guest post is by Heather Baker of the B2B PR Blog.

When I launched my first blog, the B2B Guide to Social Media, in 2010, my strategy for building its readership relied heavily on blind faith.

I must admit, it was difficult to maintain my enthusiasm for researching and drafting interesting blog posts, day after day, while I watched my Google Analytics figures hover in the single digits, and the only consistent Facebook likes I got were from my mum.

However, I pressed on, slowly gaining traction, and eventually building a solid monthly readership of 5,000 and a close-knit community of great guest bloggers. It was a slow process, but provided an excellent opportunity to learn what it takes to build a blog's followers.

Fast-forward almost two years: I’ve been able to apply all this learning to help my latest blog, The B2B PR Blog, gain over 1,000 readers in its first ten days. Here's how I did it.

I chose my subject carefully: there are two elements of the new blog that have helped it appeal to followers. Firstly, it covers a niche (B2B PR rather than PR in general). Secondly, its core topic has not been covered in detail elsewhere on the web.
I used a web designer: my blog is targeted at professionals, and therefore needed to look professional. I was not able to create a blog of this standard myself, so I brought on a designer who could (and I was fortunate enough to be able to pay him).
I wrote my first ten posts before launching: I run a communications business and can never be sure when I will be able to find the time to blog. But I wanted to demonstrate to readers that the blog would be regularly updated with quality content. So I stockpiled my first ten posts, ready to upload daily for ten days.
I asked a professional to do the on-site optimisation: I knew that if I were to rely on Google to drive searchers to my blog, I would have to make my site Google-friendly. Unfortunately, I am no technical expert in this area, so I got a professional to do it for me.
I did keyword research: Using the Google Keyword Tool, I was able to identify what people in the industry were searching for, and insert these terms and phrases into my posts. The result was that in the first ten days, 108 people found my blog on Google.
I used my social networks: I made a point of tweeting every post and sharing it on Facebook. I also joined the relevant LinkedIn groups and posted a link to every post with a relevant question on at least three discussion boards. This alone led to 561 visits in ten days.
I used my contacts: On the day the blog launched, I sent an email to my friends, business associates, and family, telling them about the new blog and asking them for honest feedback.
I added the link to the blog to the website of my PR company and email signature: to give more people the opportunity to find it. This drove 32 visitors to the blog in ten days.
I commented on other blogs and articles: I found people who were writing about similar subjects and commented with a link back to my blog. This got an additional 46 visitors.
I used social sharing: Between digg and StumbleUpon, the blog got over 26 visitors in ten days.
I started guest blogging: I created a list of blogs covering similar areas of interest to mine (such as the CIPR or the PRCA's blog) and pitched them with ideas for posts. Because I was offering unique content that I had researched and tailored to their audiences, these were accepted, and I was able to insert links to my blog into these posts. My first three guest posts referred 28 visitors to the blog.
I kept the content unique, valuable, and relevant: because I had chosen to blog about a subject I knew well, I was able to identify the gaps in content on the web, and try to fill them. For example, while many B2B PR programs require research, no one had ever before produced a price comparison table for the major research houses. I knew that would be useful to the industry (because I had needed it myself at one stage), so I put the time into producing one (you can check it out here).
I was happy to be controversial: Without being downright mean, I decided to highlight examples of poor B2B PR practice in my Steaming barrel, a section dedicated to the worst of B2B PR. While I would never be deliberately nasty about someone, I feel strongly that our industry gets away with too much. I therefore decided to be the one to put my head above the parapet and highlight shoddy practice.
I remembered my manners: When someone did share my posts on Twitter or LinkedIn, I made a point of thanking them. And when people got in touch with ideas for guest posts, I responded even if they weren't relevant.
I monitored my analytics: Every morning I would log on to my Google Analytics account to see what was working and what was not. Then I would tailor my blog promotion activity for that day accordingly.

While building your blog's following is by no means difficult, it is time consuming and labour intensive. It's also frustrating as you never know in advance which marketing activity will turn into that big-ticket-audience-generator.

For the B2B PR Blog, so far it's been a combination of actions. But what has been your big reader magnet? I'd be delighted if readers would share their experiences of their most successful blog marketing tools in the comments below.

Heather Baker is managing director of London B2B communications consultancy, TopLine Communications and the editor of two popular marketing blogs: The B2B Guide to Social Media and The B2B PR Blog. She is also currently an Executive MBA student at the London Business School.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Got 1,000 People to My Blog in its First Ten Days

Traffic Technique 1: Search Engine Optimization

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 07:04 AM PDT

If you’re one of the thousands of bloggers out there who’s trying to generate the right kind of blog traffic, you’ve probably felt a bit bewildered at some point.

I know I have. Some days I’ve sat down at my computer and literally haven’t known where to start in building more traffic to my blogs. It’s easy, too, to fall into the habit of using the same old techniques over and over—not because they’re the best ones for you, but because they’re the ones you know and are comfortable with.

So, starting today, I’d like to take you on a little tour of some of the main traffic generation techniques.

Through the tour I plan to explain a bit about each technique so that if you’ve never really encountered it before, you’ll have a basic grounding in it. Then I’ll get into some of the more specific quirks of that traffic method you may want to take on board as you consider using each technique.

I’m aiming to cover eight topics in this series, which will run once a week, starting today, with the grand-daddy of all traffic sources: search.

Types of search traffic

Image courtesy stock.xchng user Leonardini

Search is the grand-daddy of traffic—and for good reason.

Firstly, it’s the primary way for bloggers to reach readers who have never heard of us, let alone visited our sites. Search engines “qualify” the traffic they send you, since they’re based on keyword and keyphrase searches that reflect individual users’ specific needs.

Search—and search advertising—can also be a good way to build a perception of authority around your brand: if readers searching at various times for topics within your niche keep seeing your site in the search results, they’re likely to get the idea that your site has a lot of information on that topic. This can make search a good way to stay top-of-mind with visitors who have been to your site a few times, but aren’t loyal readers yet.

Search can also alert existing readers to new material on your site—and to sub-topics that they didn’t already know you covered.

The right kind of search traffic

To attract the right kinds of search traffic, most of us follow a few golden rules:

We avoid black-hat search techniques: we don’t try to scam or trick the search engines.
We get to know the user we’re trying to target through search: by looking at the comments these readers leave on our blog or others, through our analytics, and by using the Google Keyword Tool—among other methods.
We create content around the topics our target users have an interest in: and we incorporate the keywords they’re searching on.
We do what we can to boost our online profiles: through a combination of guest posting, social media, encouraging backlinks to our blogs from other sites, and facilitating sharing and recommendations from others.

So while it seems like search is a technical topic—and I know that makes a lot of bloggers shut down before they even get a chance to look into it more deeply—in a lot of ways, I think on-site search optimization is, in large part, about relationships. The more people who talk about you and link to your blog, share links to your posts, and engage with you in various ways, the more authority you’ll have—and the search engines love authority.

The other thing I feel with search is that it’s all too easy to go overboard trying to optimize your site in a zillion different ways to attract the “perfect” searcher (or search), and to boost your search rankings.

Sites that use these kinds of focused tactics are exactly what Google updates like Panda and Penguin try to push out of the search results. Every update tries to remove “over-optimized” sites, since the search engine obviously wants to present results that legitimately, inherently comply with its algorithms—not those that are manicured and preened to match the algorithms.

The message from those recent Google updates is: don’t try too hard. I honestly believe that if you choose some good keywords and focus your content on those—following the golden rules above—the rest really will pretty much take care of itself.

Choosing keywords

Given the apparently infinite range of keywords searchers use, it’s often at keyword research that bloggers get overwhelmed, throw up their hands, and give in.

The best way to avoid falling into this trap is to focus your efforts on identifying keywords that you can adopt and build content around for the long term.

If you’re prepared to put in the time and energy to ride the cresting wave of a new fad or trend—and take the hit when that wave breaks, or a new trend catches everyone’s attention—that’s fine.

But if you’re simply out to build a strong, lasting brand as an authority in a less time-sensitive niche, look for keywords with:

longevity
a reasonable number of searches (when compared to similar keywords for your niche)
not too much strong competition from others in your space.

While every industry changes and your niche will inevitably evolve, the secret to ranking well in search is, as I mentioned, authority. Authority isn’t just about peer and reader respect. The search engines, of course, also look at the amount of quality content you have around particular keywords. They prefer to see that that content has been built up over time.

The upshot is that you need to be able to commit to some basic niche- and reader-relevant keywords that you can weave through your content, as well as other digital assets like navigation labels, link text, image captions and meta data.

Use your analytics and the Google Keyword Tool to find the keywords people are using to discover the kind of information you want to cover, and that they’re currently using to get to your site. Choose three or four keywords you want to rank well for and can commit to, and go from there.

As your blog’s authority rises in the eyes of search engines, you’ll be able to rank better for topical, less lasting keywords as well. That’s where your trending of fad keywords come into play.

On dPS, we have a strong ranking for basic keywords that relate to amateur photography, and we’ve established some strong authority (in the eyes of the search engines) around those keywords, and within our niche generally. So when a new lens comes out and we review it, we might rank well for the lens’s name as a keyword, because we’re already ranking strongly for the more basic, or generic niche keywords.

Finally, a strong keyword focus can help you more easily—and intelligently—select keywords for advertising, if that’s a route you decide to go down.

Satisfying searchers

The other side of the freelancing coin is, of course, what happens when those searchers click through form the search engine to your site.

If you’ve done your target audience research well, you should be able to produce content that truly does meet their needs. That’s great—but after they’ve read it, will they simply hit the Back button, or close the tab?

Landing page quality is very important for these searchers, and it’s an ongoing challenge for bloggers. The “landing page” will in many cases be an internal page of your blog, not the home page. We need to optimize our content page layouts so that they keep reader attention, drawing people through to more content that relates to their expressed need.

There’s a basic philosophy that says that the more a reader is compelled to do on your blog—the more they engage with it—the more likely they’ll be to come back. So there’s a common suite of tactics that blog owners use to prompt readers to action, which includes:

invitations to make comments, or rate the content
calls to action to share the content via social media or email
encouragement to comment on the content
suggested further reading on the same blog
links to more information about the blog
invitations to subscribe the blog via email or RSS

Of particular note is social search integration. The more shares you can encourage on individual pieces of content, the better your blog’s search rank will likely be in the long term, and the more visitors it will draw overall—both through search and social media.

What’s your SEO strategy?

As you can see, my approach to social media is pretty straightforward: it’s based on building authority through content and community, not the more common, technical SEO tactics.

But what about you? How would you describe your SEO strategy? What’s given the biggest boost to your search traffic? Share your stories with us in the comments. And look out for next week’s post, when we’ll look at content marketing in detail.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Traffic Technique 1: Search Engine Optimization