Netizen

Friday, May 22, 2009

Best Way To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

Mark Penn says in his famous Wall Street Journal article that at 100,000 unique visits per month, a blogger hits 75K in income. There is a suggestion that there is a direct correlation between how much traffic you get and how much you make as a blogger. So how do you go about increasing traffic for your blog?

There are three kinds of traffic:

Search Traffic
Referring Sites
Direct Traffic

If you focus solely on content creation and engage in no other marketing effort, all your traffic is going to come from search engines. If you become inactive for any length of time, you are still going to get residual traffic. Most of that likely might be search engine traffic, except if you get residual traffic of the other two kinds from your previous marketing efforts.

It is fundamental that you use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how much and what kind of traffic you are getting. The tool also tells you of the keywords people use to feed the search engines to end up at your site, and what pages they visit. This helps you discover your niche, and to create ever more content for that particular niche. For me right now that seems to be Android.

More specifically "donut android" and "cupcake android." For those two phrases my blog for now shows up on the first page of Google search results. That is prime real estate. The reason I have to hone in that niche makes sense at many levels to me.

When I write new blog posts on Android, content creation and marketing are not two different activities. They are one and the same.
Android is no cottage industry. It is not some sub sub sub topic. It just might end up being the top technology news for this year.
Android so totally fits into my IC vision and my startup. The more I learn about Android, the better for me. I don't mind getting paid to learn. (Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures) I plot every day to go back to working on my startup full time. Android is fundamental to the IC vision. The ground - operating system - itself has to move for the vision to become reality.

I feel lucky that the topic in technology that I find most fascinating right now is also my blog's prime niche according to Google Analytics. And I got told of that niche right after my first Android blog post. I find that amazing. My respect for Google's algorithms grew. And when Google gave me the number two spot after my first Donut Android blog post, my respect for the search engine really grew. (Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android)

Search engine traffic I think is the best kind, but working on the other two does not take away from your search engine traffic, quite the opposite, so don't ignore the other two either.

If I am a tech blogger, it makes sense that I visit TechCrunch, for example, or Mashable. And if I am going to visit anyways, why not participate in the comments sections? It takes but a few seconds. And because your name gets hyperlinked to your blog, those comments sections start sending a little traffic your way. What is there to complain?

Contrary to the stereotype, blogging is a social activity. You have to belong to blogging and online communities around your interests. You have to forge friendships in the blogosphere. And forging friendships with bloggers who are not so big name increases your chances of them putting you on their blogrolls. After traffic, those backlinks are what jack up your google rank. Those backlinks are key. And content creation alone will not do the work for you, especially during the early stages when you are still wondering how you hit 1,000 page hits a day.

Twitter is micro-blogging. And there is another: that would be the comments sections of other blogs. Got to participate.

Twitter is another great place to socialize. Don't just have a list of people you follow and followers. Got to make some time and visit their profile pages and respond to some of their tweets. These are real living, breathing people. Get to know some of them, or many of them if possible.

And there is direct traffic. Feedburner lets you put a box at your blog that gives visitors the option to subscribe to your blog with their email addresses. Seth Godin claims that mailing list is how he gets most of his traffic. But he probably became a star blogger first. But before you become famous and other people know you, when you are a small fish blogger, there are people you know. Once in a while it is okay to send out emails to people you know sharing a blog post or two with them. Look Ma, no hands!

Focus on great content creation.
Find your niche, and create great content for that particular niche, but also constantly be diversifying. You don't want to go out of business when one rainy day Google revised its algorithms and your blog ended up in Siberia.
Blogging is a social activity. Be in a habit of visiting other blogs and participating in their comments sections in meaningful ways.
Strive to generate a band of loyal visitors, people who want to lap up every blog post you put out because, oh, you are just so wonderful.

Google: Tweet Me Baby One More Time
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
Google Analytics Says I Am Paul Krugman Friend, Cupcake Android Expert
What Does Your Resume Look Like Today?
Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess
Content Is Queen
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
Spamming Om Malik

Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Blogging Several Times A Day
Blogging Tips
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog

On The Web

SEOmoz | 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
The Best way to increase traffic to your site
Whats the best way to increase traffic? - Authority Blogger Forum
What's the BEST way to increase traffic to your blog? // Blogging ...
Blog Traffic - 15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic
WikiAnswers - What is the best way to drive traffic to your website
Web Site Marketing - Lead Generation and How to Increase Traffic ...
How to Use Blog Sites To Increase Traffic To Your Blog | eHow.com

The Android Architecture

Image by dannysullivan via Flickr

Just take a look.

All your stuff is saved. Contacts you add on your Android phone are automatically saved in your Gmail account that you are used to accessing over your laptop. So you can lose that mobile phone and not lose anything. Get a new phone, sign in, pick up where you last left.
You can take your photos and videos from your mobile device straight to your online destinations, in Google's case Picassa and YouTube. You don't have to download them to your desktop and then upload them online. That right there is further liberation from the desktop. And of course the editing happens online.

Many human beings come with a pair of legs. We move around. A lot. The mobile space was always very important. Technology is catching up. But it would have been a minor disaster to realize the mobile space was a whole different silo from the big rectangle of your laptop.

That seamlessness from the mobile space to, what will we call it, the immobile space is key. It has to feel like one continuum. When mobile and not so mobile, we are still dealing with the same ecosystem of information and people.

The Android architecture has that seamlessness in mind. That seamlessness is at the heart of the Android vision. That is also why the architecture is open. You have the Open Handset Alliance. Android is open source. It is free. Just like Google search is free. The business model perhaps is to create a vibrant mobile space, get people to start using the basic services like Gmail and calendar, and then cash in in the mobile ad space which promises to be huge measured by any yardstick.

On The Web

HowStuffWorks "Google Android Architecture" the Android OS as a software stack. Each layer of the stack groups together several programs that support specific operating system functions. ..... the kernel ..... memory management programs, security settings, power management software and several hardware drivers. ...... libraries. ...... the media framework library supports playback and recording of various audio, video and picture formats .... runtime layer includes a set of core Java libraries -- Android application programmers build their apps using the Java programming language. ....... A virtual machine is a software application that behaves as if it were an independent device with its own operating system. ..... The Android OS uses virtual machines to run each application as its own process. ...... no application is dependent upon another. .. if an application crashes, it shouldn't affect any other applications running on the device. ..... simplifies memory management. ........... the application framework. ....... programs that manage the phone's basic functions like resource allocation, telephone applications, switching between processes or programs and keeping track of the phone's physical location. ...... Think of the application framework as a set of basic tools with which a developer can build much more complex tools. ........ the applications ...... the user interface.
Android The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.
Android Architecture
Ideas 2.0: Google's Android Architecture
Code Beach: Android Architecture Overview
Google Android Architecture Overview : iPhone Killer
Curiosity is bliss: Google Android architecture
Android Architecture Overview (Android forum at JavaRanch)
Android An Open Platform For Mobile Devices
HyperFuture » Blog Archive » Android architecture video - Part 1 of 3

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Best Way To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

The Android Architecture