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Get More Blog Traffic: Write Highly-Sought, Least-Covered Topics

by Paula Neal Mooney

If you're itching to get more people to read your blog, try my method of gaining readers.

Sometimes I'll type up a subject that's close to my heart.

Other times, I'll do a little research first to make sure it's a topic that will bring me more blog traffic.


Here's an example of the method I used to increase my blog traffic:

1 - Check for the most-recent search terms.

My favorite up-to-date search term lists are Technorati's Popular and Yahoo's Buzz Log overall movers and shakers list.

2 - Start from the bottom up.

Search terms that are at the bottom of the list, like Frenchie Davis in the 20th position right now, are ones that still have time to gain more popularity.

Names at the top might already be well-covered on the net.

3 - Use Google's suggestions to find the best keywords...
...for your blog post title and to repeat throughout the post.

Once I began typing in the name Frenchie Davis in the Google search box on my Internet Explorer toolbar, it gave me suggestions that other folks are typing in.

Once of these was "Frenchie Davis Dreamgirls."

So if I were to write up a post about this, I'd make sure those keywords were included in my blog post's URL by putting all three toward the start of the post title, like "Frenchie Davis' Dreamgirls Role of a Lifetime" or something.

And I'd make sure to bold the terms "Frenchie Davis Dreamgirls" all thru my post.

For the love of God, make sure you have your blogging platform set to create separate URLs for each blog post!



4 - Do a Google Blog Search to check out your competition
Before firing off that blog post, check out Google Blog Search to see how many other bloggers are banking on your keywords.

As you can see in this screenshot, a Google Blog search on "Frenchie Davis Dreamgirls" only turns up 56 total listings.

Not bad.

You can out-SEO those and get your blog posting near the top of the list in terms of relevance if you bold your specific keyword terms and make sure they make up about 5% of your blog post's total text.


5 - Get on Google News!

Another avenue to drive more traffic is thru Google News.

Join Associated Content (use their news template to submit your news report) and American Chronicle -- two news joints that can get you listed in Google News.

The Frenchie Davis Dreamgirls thing would make a good news report, for example, because only four news reports pop up when you plop in those search terms in Google News.

Make sure to include links back to your blog in any Google News reports you get published.

6 - Publicize, Publicize, Publicize!
And don't forget to submit your newly created URLs of your blog post and any news reports to Google, Yahoo and social networking sites like Digg.com

Ping Technorati.com, Pingoat.com and Google Blog search ping (put in your new URL and hit enter - when it says "Thanks for the ping!" it worked) with your new URLs, too.

I get lots of traffic employing these methods.

Hope you will too, now.


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Comments

Anonymous said…
Great great post.
Very useful for bloggers like me.
Thanks for sharing them...

I like points no 4, 5 and 6. At least I'm learning something new...

Thanks again...

Did you realize John mentioning Link Love in his blog...?
Anonymous said…
Soooo who IS your competition?
Paris David said…
Zaki - Yeah, I swiped the "link love" idea from John Chow himself.

Other folks are doing it too...

How are you feeling since the accident? Better?

I pray you are. That must've been some crash...
Anonymous said…
Awesome advice!

This know-how plus your perspective is what makes you a must-read!!
Anonymous said…
Wow! I was looking to bring more traffic to my blog. Thanks for visiting and very useful post!
Anonymous said…
Ok Devils advocate here! I don't want to help other bloggers be more successful do I?

I know I know, and I actually so so many cool things that I thing, wow, if more people knew about this...but I honestly am torn as to let too much out!

Pray for me...I MEAN IT PAULA!!! ;)
Anonymous said…
Hi Paula,

These are great tips. I just think of a title and through it up there. I've never thought about whether they were keyword friendly.

Thanks for these tips! I'm really going to have to give them a try.

Take care,

Jose
Anonymous said…
I'm ok after the crash...

However, I'm just sad thinking of my car's faith...

Hey...You've cleared the bottom half of your site...and that's great...
Scott Nance said…
Hey, Paula,

You may have touched on this before and I just didn't see it but do you use metatags in your blog? Does it help pagerank? I've been told it does but I don't know how to go about them correctly.

Thanks as always,

Scott
Paris David said…
Yes, devil's advocate Paul! We always want to help people.

Thanks Laura, Akoua and Jose - I hope the tips help.

Hey there, Scott - Yeah, I still haven't really messed around with metatags too much.

A lot of what I read say they are passe, but I'm not completely sure...

Thanks for stopping by!
Martin Lindsey said…
Thanks for the tips in this one Paula. I just found a new blogger that I'm saving from the technorati popular list. You should read Guy Kawasaki's blog if you haven't checked him out already. I'm going to write about him in a post. I think you'll like his style and content. Your readers will too.

Also in the marketing tips where you say submit a post URL you literally mean just the URL for the particular post and not your general blog URL right?
Paris David said…
Yes, definitely put the full URL of the blog post in when you submit the URL to Google.

For Blogger blogs (which means blogpost blogs), this setting is found under Settings, Archiving, Enable Post Pages.

If you set "Enable Post Pages" to "yes" you'll get a unique URL for each blog posting.

That's what you want.

And if it contains good keywords as described above, it'll help with search engine ranking.

Thanks, Martin, for reminding me about Guy's blog.

I gotta see if I'm subscribed.

Happy Friday!
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the tips Paula! Randy Barefoot sent me here saying that you had some great suggestions. He was right, as always LOL Thanks again.

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