“PPC: A Viable Alternative to Organic Traffic for Bloggers?” plus 2 more |  |
- PPC: A Viable Alternative to Organic Traffic for Bloggers?
- Blogging, and Twitter, and Readers…Oh My!
- 11 Ways I Diversified Traffic Sources for My Blogs to Become Less Reliant Upon Google [With a Surprising Twist]
| PPC: A Viable Alternative to Organic Traffic for Bloggers? Posted: 02 Dec 2013 08:37 AM PST This is a guest contribution from Nicholas Whitmore, freelance journalist and website content editor.copy With search engine traffic becoming increasingly difficult to rely on, it's important for bloggers, like you, to think of different ways to drive people to your website. After all, there's no point in blogging if no one is going to read what you write, right? One question I'm asked a lot is whether PPC traffic is a viable alternative to organic search engine traffic, from the point of view of a blogger. It's something I've looked into, experimented with and drawn my own conclusions about. It's not freeYou didn't need me to tell you that PPC traffic isn't free, but I wanted to get it out of the way. The main different between PPC and SEO is that you pay on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per mile (CPM) basis. Whereas organic traffic is served on a golden platter to your website completely free of charge, PPC traffic costs you real money. The fact it costs money isn't a problem in itself. Hundreds of thousands of websites use PPC, so it is definitely worth it in a lot of situations. A few merits of PPCSome people point blank refuse to use PPC because they don't like the idea of paying per click or impression. Each to their own – but here are a few reasons you might consider using PPC advertising for your blog:
Return on Investment (ROI)Some bloggers I know cram their blogs full of affiliate links, adverts and sponsored editorial content. The more traffic they get the more affiliate sales they make, the more advertising revenue they receive, the more they can charge clients to publish sponsored editorials. These aren't your average hobby bloggers – they're calculated people aiming to make serious cash. There's nothing wrong with that though. Other bloggers I know have vast sites that ooze authority and popularity – but their owners have made no effort whatsoever to monetize them. They just don't want to for one reason or another. Their blogs are hobbies, interests – but not apparatus for making money. It's clear that in the former example, there's some ROI to be calculated – the difference between the PPC expenditure and the sum of the income from various revenue streams. For the later example there is no ROI, because the blogs aren't being monetized. If you're attempting to monetize your blog in any way, shape or form, it's generally a good idea to at least dabble with PPC traffic. If you're not going to monetize your blog at all and it's just a hobby, there are few merits to throwing money at traffic – you'll never make that money back, so what's the point? Define your goalsThe original question posed in this blog is whether PPC traffic can be a viable alternative to organic traffic for bloggers. In truth, the only person that can answer that question is you. It's important for you to define your goals as a blogger – if you're going to create value and generate revenue somehow then PPC will almost certainly be a traffic generation method you should use. Examples of value generating techniques bloggers might use when driving traffic via PPC include:
All of the above are reasons why a blogger might pay to send traffic to their website using PPC. Even if PPC is useful, is it really an alternative?There's a difference between something being useful and something being an alternative. The problem a lot of bloggers and website owners have is that they're overly reliant on one source of traffic. They invest all of their time and effort into that one source of traffic – when that goes belly up their interest wanes and their blog dies. PPC isn't an alternative to SEO traffic. The two should be used in tandem – they complement each other perfectly. They should also be used alongside traffic generation techniques like social media marketing and email marketing. To conclude…Most people look for an alternative to SEO because their organic traffic has come to an abrupt halt – usually due to a search engine algorithm update. By putting all of your eggs in one basket (and focusing solely on SEO) from the outset you're asking for trouble. If you put an equal amount of time and effort into various marketing practices like SEO, PPC, social media and email marketing, if one of your campaigns goes badly wrong, you've got the others to fall back on. If you're a hobby blogger and you make little or no money through your website, PPC is probably not something you should look to experiment with. If you're a blogger that monetizes your website, PPC is very useful indeed. That said, PPC shouldn't be seen as an alternative to any other traffic source though – the most successful blogs and websites draw traffic from multiple sources including search engines and social media. Nick is a freelance journalist and website content editor from http://www.contentwriting.org. He writes extensively about the art of blogging, as well as online marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC and SMM. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger PPC: A Viable Alternative to Organic Traffic for Bloggers?     |
| Blogging, and Twitter, and Readers…Oh My! Posted: 28 Nov 2013 08:09 AM PST This is a guest contribution from Courtney Gordner. If you want to maximise the potential of your blog, it's essential that you interact with your followers. And if you want to interact with your followers, you need to know where to find them. When they're online and not reading through your latest post, odds are, they're engaging with social media. This is exactly why if you have a blog, you should be interacting with your readers on Twitter. But hang on just a second. Before you jump right into linking your blog with Twitter, you should take some time to make your blog "Twitter friendly." Here’s how this is done: Creating a Twitter-Friendly BlogBe Familiar with Your Target Audience and What Interests ThemIt's tempting to think that your blog should be all about your interests, but in reality, if you want to accrue a consistent readership, it's essential that you write for your audience. With this in mind, you should develop a marketing persona to understand the needs and priorities of your audience and a social media persona to know where they gather and interact on social media. Use a Featured ImagePictures, infographics, and visual aids draw readers in and grab their interest. Pictures should be properly formatted and appropriate for your content. Also, images of people are especially effective, so they should be used whenever possible. Twitter Tools to Use with Your BlogUse the SidebarAsk visitors to follow you on Twitter in your sidebar. Maximise the value of your blog by getting readers to interact with you on other social media sites. It's likely that visitors are already spending a lot of time on these platforms, and if you want to attract more readers, you need to go where the people go. Incorporate Social Sharing Icons Above and Below Every PostThis is especially effective with your readers who are visually oriented. Linking Twitter and Your BlogDevelop a Blog ProfileIn your blog profile, you should give information about your blog, along with providing its URL, a current description, and gravatar. The name you use on Twitter should be consistent with your blog. Make Your Blog's Brand Part of Your Twitter Image and BackgroundSince you're using social media to enhance your blog's brand, you should make sure that your Twitter profile uses brand elements that identify with your blog. Enlist the Help of Your FriendsShare posts from your friends on your Twitter page, and have them return the favor by sharing your posts on theirs. Keep Your Eye on the CompetitionUse your personal account to follow and interact with your competition on Twitter. The benefits of this are twofold: first, it allows you to develop relationships with people who may be interested in your content; secondly, it gives you ideas for other topics to address on your blog. Optimizing Your Blog's Potential with TwitterTweet Each Blog Post Multiple TimesSince people on social media live across the country in different time zones, this helps to ensure that your posts get noticed. Condense Blog Posts into "Tweetable" ChunksFor more lengthy posts, roundups, and lists, make the most of your content by creating a set of tweets to be posted over an extended period of time. For Reader Accessiblity, Pre-Format TweetsThis works especially well with quotes and data roundups. To promote tweeting, use Clicktotweet. Extend Your Blog's Reach with Optimal HashtagsKeep your audience in mind as you evaluate the relevance of the content for your hashtags. You should use a maximum of three hashtags and keep them separate from the body of your message. Publish Your Tweets With a Scheduling ToolScheduling tools allow you to set the time you want your tweets to appear. Express Gratitude Towards People Who Share Your Blog PostsThey will appreciate the recognition, and by thanking people, you can develop and strengthen your social media relationships. Join Pertinent Twitter ChatsJoining chats on Twitter is another great way to build social media relationships. Consider joining #BlogChat on Sunday evenings to learn ways to optimise your blog and interact with other bloggers. Interacting with your blog readers on Twitter shows readers that you care about them and value their input. It helps you maintain your current readership and even allows you to draw in new readers. So, if you want a widely followed blog that can't be beat, the answer is clear: you better start to tweet. Courtney Gordner is a blogger with a passion for all things internet, social media and SEO! Read more from her on her own blog, www.talkviral.com Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Blogging, and Twitter, and Readers…Oh My!     |
| Posted: 27 Nov 2013 08:32 AM PST Yesterday I shared the story of how back in 2004 I almost losing my business overnight. That big blip made me realise that I had too many eggs in one basket when it came to both traffic and income. At that time the basket that all my eggs were in was ‘Google’. I was reliant upon Google for most of my traffic and most of my income (by monetising purely through Google AdSense). Over the next week, I want to suggest a number of ways I’ve tried to diversify my business since 2004, to build something that isn’t quite so reliant upon any one thing. My hope was and is to build a business that could survive any one source of traffic, income stream, type of content or trend disappearing. Today I want to start with the most obvious area and one that was a big problem for me…. Diversifying Sources of Traffic Rather than a single stream of traffic I’ve been trying to grow multiple streams. Yesterdays story is the perfect example of why this is important. I was reliant upon Google for around 80% of my traffic so when that traffic all but disappeared – so did my income. If I’m honest with myself I think I had become a little complacent about traffic in 2004. Two years earlier I had worked hard to grow my readership. Every day I networked with other bloggers, submitted content to other blogs, engaged in forums on my topics, commented on other blogs, learned about SEO and much more. The result was growth in profile and traffic. All of the above also contributed to a growth in search engine rankings. So in 2004, when I was getting decent traffic from Google and was making a decent income, rather than pushing to grow my blogs through every avenue available, I’d allowed myself to become reliant upon search traffic and stopped pushing as hard. That traffic disappearing was a wake up call that I needed. I’m actually grateful for it because it started a sequence of events that led to much faster growth of my blogs. At the time I decided to do a number of things to grow new traffic streams to my blogs including: 1. Identifying WHO I Wanted to Read my BlogsPart of this process was paying more attention to thinking about what type of reader I wanted to attract to my blog. This thinking later led me to create reader profiles for my blogs. 2. A Renewed Focus Upon Creating Great ContentIt dawned on me that I’d not only become a little complacent with growing my readership but I’d probably also become complacent about creating compelling and useful content for my blogs. This wakeup call changed all of that. I began to identify my readers’ problems and needs, and write content that served my readers rather than content that I thought might rank well in Google. In doing so I created content that made a big impression upon the readers I did have – and they did the next step, sharing it with their friends! 3. Writing Content on Other Blogs as a Guest AuthorAt the time the term ‘guest posting’ wasn’t that common but people did feature content from other bloggers from time to time. I sought out a number of these opportunities and they drew new traffic to my blog but they also helped me get ranking again through new incoming links to my site. 4. Starting a NewsletterAt the time I didn’t realise how important this would end up being but I started a free newsletter for readers of my site. I offered to email monthly updates to anyone who signed up with the best content from the blog. It started very slow and initially only sent a trickle of traffic to my blogs each week but today we now have over 1,000,000 subscribers and each week when I send these emails the result is great waves of traffic. 5. Promoting Other Subscription MethodsAt the same time I began to realise that I should be working hard to promote other ways to subscribe to my blogs. I began to promote our RSS feed more prominently. 6. Social BookmarkingBack in 2004/5 social bookmarking sites were just starting to hit the scene. Over the next few years we saw sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Reddit rise in popularity. I didn’t spend a heap of time on them but certainly began to create occasional content that I thought might have a ‘shareable’ appeal to it which led to some great spikes in traffic when that content did hit the mark and get shared around. 7. Social NetworkingAt the time there wasn’t a lot of social networks around but in the years that followed I certainly began to jump onto networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as a way to engage with readers but also drive traffic. 8. NetworkingI also spent more time getting to know other bloggers at this time. At the time as there were so few social networks this was largely done through commenting on other people’s blogs and email. This led to some great friendships and a few profitable partnerships in time too. 9. Events2005 saw me make a decision to start finding readers to my blogs through attending and running events. It started very humbly by me running some free workshops in my local library to 20-30 people at a time but in time I saved enough money to attend some conferences relevant to my content – and eventually even got invited to speak at a couple. All of this helped grow traffic, little by little. 10. Personal Interactions with ReadersAt this time I also realised that while all my Google traffic had vanished, I still had something pretty powerful – I had regular readers. The people who had already subscribed via RSS or had bookmarked the site in their browser were real people and they were connected with a lot of other people. Rather than spending all my efforts looking for new readers, I decided to spend some serious time looking after the ones I already had. So spending more time in comments on my blog, emailing readers to thank them for contributions, linking to their blogs, running site challenges and engaging with them on social media all helped to build relationships which led to readers telling others about the site. 11. Pitching Other BlogsAnother technique that helped grow my blog a lot at this time was promoting the content I was writing to other bloggers in the hope that they might link up. I didn’t do this for every post but when I’d written something that related to the topics of other blogs I would email those bloggers suggesting that they take a look. Back in 2004, this would often lead to those other bloggers blogging about it. Things have changed a little and I find that most times these days when you pitch other bloggers they share the posts on Twitter or Facebook – perhaps not quite as good as a link on a blog but still a great way to grow your traffic. The Twist: An Unintended Impact of Doing All of the AboveMy intent with engaging in the above strategies was to diversify the sources of traffic coming into my blog and become less reliant upon search engines. I’m glad to report that the strategy worked and traffic from other places did increase, however the unintended implication of doing all of the above was that my traffic from Google actually increased too! While I’d previously done some SEO on my blogs with limited success this intentional effort to grow my readership from other sources than Google actually increased my search rankings higher than they’d ever been before. The satisfying thing is that while I’d hate to fall out of Google again my business today wouldn’t but sunk by that happening. It’d hurt – but the blow wouldn’t be fatal any more. Further Teaching on Finding Readers for Your BlogLooking for more teaching on the topic of growing your readership? Check out my free webinar on the topic here (it’s completely free without any need to register). You might also like to read my recent post that analyses 5 posts from the first year of my main blog – Digital Photography School – and how they led to 6 million views since publishing. PS: in the coming days I want to turn my attention to other areas that I think it might be wise to diversify in as a blogger. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger     |
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