Using a blog to generate and increase blog traffic was probably never in the mind of the very first blogger more than 10 years ago. Similarly using it to get your pages indexed quickly or working to get an increase in search engine ranking. In fact I would even say when you and I created our first blog, how to increase blog traffic was furthest in our mind or a top priority. Using it as a marketing tool probably was, complimenting what we would term today as a non-interactive page – our static website.

Today, as more than 120 million blogs have emerged, a blog is used more for generating backlinks, and to bring you free organic search engine traffic or  traffic directed from other blogs.

So as your blog evolved over  time and throughout your blogging history, you must have witnessed some phenomenal blog traffic happening on your blog. Perhaps a new traffic building technique you were testing out got some fantastic results or something which you’ve been religiously doing in getting your blog traffic. Share with us here any of your best methods which have helped you get an increase in blog traffic. Give your blog traffic tip by giving your comment below. Then come back here again to read other good tips that others have shared here.  A Tip for A Tip.

Over to you…..

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site

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Getting that relatively high page rank PR 4 for my Home Internet Business Homepage 2 weeks ago came with some mixed feelings for me. I admit when my homepage had gotten a PR1 a long time ago, I was more overjoyed than getting my PR4 now. Now why is that so you might ask?

Well that’s because in our internet marketing journey we learned that page rank though important contributes only about 10% of what Google uses to give ranking to our search terms. ( page rank: 10%, page content: 30%, backlinks: 60% ). So it doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? Or is it?

It’s not like I’m going to get much richer with this PR4 but then again getting a high page rank is a recognition of what I have done on my homepage and it didn’t come overnight. It’s the same sense of satisfaction whenever I succeeded in something small but fulfilling that has kept me going all this while. Call it a little boost to my ego a little bit with this new PR status. While I’m not over the moon with a page rank PR4, I’m happy it came. It just reaffirms the approaches of some of my work particularly my link building strategy, which I’ve practiced and shared with everyone here.

Let me share with you what I think may have helped me get my page rank PR4 in a chronological list of important events:

1. Link Building:I researched and followed some of the best SEO practices including one from a good friend of mine Scott Coplen’s SEO Tips. I wrote a 5-part blog series documenting and sharing with everyone what I’ve learned. Have you read any of my Link Building Strategy-5 Part Series?

2. Getting Backlinks:I think at some point in time, you could say I focused a little too much in getting backlinks. This post The Easiest Way To Get Backlinks Starts Here described pretty close how fanatic I was in getting lots of backlinks. You could say my quest for backlinks started from here.

3. Blog Commenting: One of the easiest ways I found in getting lots of backlinks is through blog commenting. I didn’t believe it at first so I took up a personal challenge and started an experiment to see if it really works.  At the end of the test I have to say yes it sure did, but not before learning a lesson on How Blog Commenting Got Me 1200 Backlinks in 5 Days. Here are some backlinks growth statistics Oct 2008: 1566 inbound links; Mar 2009:12,873 inbound links.

4. Top Search Engine Ranking: There were already some signs of Google noticing me, or rather, my backlinks growth although most times, we really cannot tell exactly this number in Google. But I started seeing more keyword phrases getting to top search engine rankings. The most noticeable keywords “Work From Home Ideas” and Work At Home Ideas made it to Google Top 10 in Nov 2008. They have stayed on the first page till today.  Well that’s another challenge, keeping it there.

Another of my favorite keyword phrase “Home Internet Business” lies on 12th placing out of 174,000,000 in Google, waiting, just waiting…..

5. Link Exchanges: Don’t underestimate the benefits of doing link exchanges, laborious as it may seem. While #3 focused more on getting quantity of backlinks, my search became a little more intensive hunting for quality backlinks too. The post “The Easiest Natural Link Building To Search Engine Success” takes a look at how important it is in doing link exchanges with others. I focused exclusively in link exchange with other sites with high page rank. The funniest part is that many people approached me first to do these link exchange too, some with high page rank PR5. If you’re still not convinced that quality links are better than quantity links, you can read more in  “10 Back Link Building Techniques Bloggers Often Missed (Part 3)”

“Getting a few of the right links, from the right places can be more valuable than getting 100 links from the wrong places.” – Jim Boykin

“How easy is it to get Page Rank PR4

Well I’ll let this table provide you the quick answer:

Disclaimer: This table may not be the most accurate calculation of the number of backlinks you will require to get your desired PR so please use it only as a good benchmark in your link building.

You can see the full chart here:

How long did I take to get Page Rank PR4

The quick answer would be how long have I had this homepage and it’s 20 months. So does it really take me 20 months to achieve a PR4 ranking? Of course not because I’m a part time blogger working only 4 hours a day and if you’re a full time blogger, you could well achieve it much faster. Like I said before it’s relatively easy, if you follow an organized plan.

My Final Thoughts

While in the truest sense, page rank having a 10% influence over your top search engine ranking may seem insignificant, it is nevertheless an important part of the equation:

PR (10%) + Quality Contents (30%) + Backlinks (60%) = Top Search Engine Success

It is also a highly regarded metric used by advertisers seeking out advertising opportunities in all online niche markets and blogs, besides the usual Alexa and Technorati Rankings.

For me the excitement is already over and the real task has begun.  I believe that getting a high PR4 is relatively easy but maintaining it is the bigger challenge. And of course the fact that Google has the final say in changing the way page rank is calculated, makes it even more challenging to maintain a high page rank.

For reference:
Understanding Google Page Rank
How Did Google Calculate Your PR?

Over to you…what have you to say about getting high page rank, how you got yours and does it really matter to you if you are PR1 or PR10. Why or why not?

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site

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Searching for good SEO Tips and Blogging Tips on my work at home blog, I’ve found a few posts to share with everyone. This is my Link Love-Links Round Up No.22 and this week I’ve read a few blogs on SEO Tips as well as stumbled upon a blogging course sharing useful tips on how to build a popular as well as profitable blog. Well all for the sake of learning and getting more work at home ideas on my Internet Marketing journey.

• DECH tells us there is so much amazing SEO power built in WordPress but you may need to make some tweaks and some changes before you’ll ever see them. You’ll lose all these SEO tools just relying on default options. Check out in more detail in his Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips.
• If you are still struggling with Search Engine Optimization or SEO for your blog, let ATMMultimedia share with us all about his Simple SEO Tips so as to get top SEO  ranking and of course increase your blog traffic.
• If you have not been using images on your blog, you ought to. Here is what JWRmedia has to say about SEO for your images.

• Read up 3 Blogging lessons completely free from Caroline Middlebrook who sells her Blogging Bible, a comprehensive, Blogging Course for $119. No fluff, just pure content of a complete step-by-step guide to building a highly popular and profitable blog from scratch. Enjoy the free lessons to her Blogging Bible.
• If you’ve been blogging for some time and feel like your blog has not progressed much, don’t give up blogging yet. You may be doing all the things right without knowing it. Well let DailyBlogTips tells us the 10 Signs That Your Blog Is On The Right Track.

Share your thoughts on SEO Tips and Blogging Tips by leaving your comment below. We really like to learn from you how they’ve helped you. Over to you….

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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After seeing many other blogs post their monthly blog income stats, I’ve decided to do this too on this home business blog for 2 reasons. Firstly if you want to make money blogging, you really need a way to keep track of how your blog is performing in terms of income generation. Only then can you focus on specific areas that need more attention and changes so that you ultimately achieve consistent blog income growth.

Secondly, it goes well with this blog‘s mission which is sharing with others whatever changes, tweaks I have done or will do to increase my blog income. It may help some people in some small ways and fashion in their blog monetization efforts. It’s also giving this blog a more focused direction as it is growing steadily in terms of traffic and income.

Blog Statistics:

• 167 RSS Readers
• 3188 Visits
• 6,945 Pageviews
• Technorati Rank: 37,135
• Technorati Auth: 118
• Alexa: 80763
• Inbound links: 13,071

Traffic from search engines amounts to 43% while referring sites and blogs contributed 34% and 23% come from direct traffic. I guess I’m quite pleased with the search engine traffic and it shows that my seo work on this blog is starting to take effect. I haven’t done any study to determine what is a good ratio among these 3 components of statistics. But I did check up one reputable blog of Caroline-Middlebrook just for comparison and she had hers as 45:29:26 for Feb month. So I guess I’m not too bad for now.

Blog Income:

• Private Advertising: $12
• Affiliate Marketing: $30
• Text Link Ads: $16.72
• Backlinks Ads: $12.00
• Squidoo: $1.02
• Links Transaction: $90.00
• eBooks: $47.00

Total Revenue: $208.74

Private Advertising and text link ads continue to generate my blog income and I hope it continues. I’d like to thank everyone who may have purchased advertising or contributed to my blog income one way or another.

My immediate focus is to increase my affiliate commission and I found an alternative to Google Adsense for this blog towards the end of February. It looks like a very good affiliate program to increase my blog income with.

How much money did you make off your blog in February?

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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Page views represent the number of web pages being visited and viewed by people who land on you website or blog. These statistics are tracked by many website monitoring applications but the most common and popular ones are Google Analytics and Statcounter.

There are essentially two groups of  bloggers – one who truly believes in tracking unique visitors rather than page views since a single visitor can  increase your page view statistics by just reading many other pages on your blog or website. The second group believes pages views are more important since it means more business opportunities are presented to visitors which hopefully convert to sales.

Personally I prefer to get more page views than unique visitors although actually one spurs the other. But what do you think is more important for your blog?

10 Ways I’ve Done To Increase Page Views To My Business Blog

1. Well Written and Unique Blog Content

It’s funny how what you’ve been preaching to others about ‘content is king’ comes back in a full circle. Well believe it or not, nothing is more important than writing unique and interesting content on your blog. Anyone can write a post about any topic, but to present it in a well written good unique writing style takes some effort, practice and skill to get the job done nicely.

2. Use keywords On Your Blog Post

Keyword ranking or keywording is one of the best ways to get more page views on your blog. Write contents with your keywords you are ranking in the search engines. It takes both practice and skill to master the art of keywording but over time, will help increase page views enroute to gaining top search engine ranking.

3. Favorite Posts

Put your favorite blog post links on your blog homepage. If your blog theme does not show them, there a many WordPress plugins which can do this. It’s a good way to showcase some of your best work to make an impression.

4. Related Posts

Install a WordPress plugin for ‘Related Posts’ which will show some of your older posts relevant to the post you’ve just published.  That’s a sure way of keeping the visitor much longer on your blog and at the same time providing the information he has searched for.

5. Make It Simple and Easy To read

Make your blog simple to read. So this means your font size you used and the color combination used on your blog play an important aspect of attracting more visitors and ultimately increasing your page views. It’s good to use bullet points, bold text and short paragraphs on your posts as they help to present quick summaries that your readers can understand what you are trying to say.

6. Use Headers On Posts

The proper use of headers including h1, h2 helps to convey the key points of your post. Very often your visitors just skimp through your post to find something interesting. They read your headers to determine  what your post is all about and if it’s interesting enough to read more. Here is a post I came across on the use of headers, which shows just how much you may be missing if you don’t use headers. As an added SEO advantage, search engines love headers too as they tell exactly what kind of content to expect.

7. Change your WordPress Blog Theme

Changing your blog theme can help to increase your page views on your blog sometimes quite drastically depending on the circumstances. Wouldn’t you like to wow your visitors to your blog with an impressive blog theme with good header or logo?  Or is it enough just with good contents on your blog?  While good content as mentioned is important, the visual impact instantly gives that added edge and projects a good image to your first time visitors. After all first impression lasts forever.

8. Include Deep Links On Every Post

Try to include deep links on every post you write. These are internal links to your older posts which are relevant to your post. For someone who is keen in your topic or if your topic provides the information your visitor is searching for, you can be sure that he will want to read it.

9. Optimize your images

You may have noticed I like to put up a picture on each of my posts. Apart from enhancing the look of this blog, more importantly it’s also to give a little boost to SEO on this blog and getting some traffic and more page views too. Ask.com reports that 25% of searches actually queried are not of web pages but images. But needless to say, your images must be optimized with your keywords you are ranking for in search engines.

10. Write About Current Events

You can be sure that when you write about current events, many people are going to be interested in what you’ve got to say, especially those that affect them. The key is not just write the news event, but rather write the event and relate to a specific goal, or objective of your blog or a lesson to learn for your home business.

Final Thoughts

As a blogger, your job is actually to make sure your blog becomes the best blog there is on this blogosphere. Getting traffic and top search engine ranking are top priorities but you simply can’t make this happen without taking the first step – increasing your page views.

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site

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I remember very clearly getting Google Index for my first website when I was an undisputed complete newbie proved disastrous. That was more than a year ago but that pain still etched in my mind till today. It took me 2 weeks then to get my first website indexed by Google. Four months later I fared better when I had my first WordPress blog. I got Google Index after 3 days. Yesterday I set up a new WordPress blog and I took 3 hours before getting Google’s blessing.

Such is the journey everyone of us goes through, learning and improving along the way. But if you’ve been reading my blog as a frequent visitor or a subscriber, you would know that what I learned along the way I’ve shared it quite openly with everyone. Perhaps a little too openly as a few readers noted:

Oh you are letting the cat out of the bag again..LOL…. it’s nice of you to share it here with your readers…..Yan

Guys..If you are reading Peter’s post, I suggest you read it seriously..or even bookmark it for future references…This guy provides you FREE information where other’s are paying hundreds of bucks on the same piece.Peter..time to start charging!…Lee Chin

And if you know me well enough, I don’t plan to stop sharing and passing on good information that I’ve learned.  Call it ‘bad habits die hard’ or blame in on a defective gene in me. Yes history repeats itself in this post and I’m going to share it with my readers, albeit with a little twist.

The Google Index Challenge

Unlike my other challenge How Blog Commenting Got Me 1200 Backlinks in 5 Days, which was clearly an experiment to see how many backlinks I could get over a few days, this Google Index challenge isn’t one. It’s the real thing. I started a second WordPress blog as part of my link building strategy and I wanted it indexed like yesterday. I’m sure many of you faced similar situations before when a bright spark suddenly came to your head and you just can’t wait to roll it out. So I did all the research and came out with my own blueprint and of course, I’ve already revealed that my new Make Money Blogging got the Google Index in 3 hours.

Let me share it with you….

Who Will Need This Information

• Newbies who want their sites/blog indexed by Google fast – why wait days, weeks when you know you can get Google Index within hours.

• experienced marketers wishing to start a another new site/blog but don’t wish to waste precious time in research on the best ways to getting Google Index.

• anyone who wants to know this information and keep this document for reference.

Ask and I Shall Give…I’ll give you:

• The same document I had used. A step by step guide with the related links and a short description on each step explaining how it should be done.

• Bonus: Links to all my useful and important posts e.g. Link Building Strategy, eBay Secrets, etc. so that you can refer to this document even after you got the Google Index.

What I Need From You in Return

• Just a tip from you. Go to my right side bar and find “Tip me to get in my list of links” (plugin has been configured to auto approve your tip)
• Put your text link as requested. Your link should show on this home business blog immediately.
• Leave a comment here that you have given a tip (I’ll ensure that your link is showing correctly and I’ll email you within the same day the document you requested.

Just a tip? Why I don’t charge ….

• It’s just a small document although I labored it just to get the best proven ways to get fast Google Index. It’s not even an ebook, so charging would be a little short of a sin.

• The document that I will share with interested parties is free. The tip is actually for your link that goes on my blog. Use your link to advertise like you would on other blogs or sites. A link costs you $5 and stays on my blog till someone bumbs you off after 10 links are reached.Well since I don’t have 10,000 uniques a day, your link may be showing here for sometime.

Extra Juicy Early Bird Bonus:
The first 5 tippers get a permanent linkback on this page

Thanks for the tip:

1. Dennis Edell: Direct Sales Web Marketing
2. Website Traffic

Here’s a reference post titled Are You On My Top Spot by Garry Conn who uses this tipping as a way of giving back to his community and he says “…. value each slot at $25 dollars or more, so when you place your order, you are getting a really good deal!…”

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