Blog Traffic Sucking? Do these 7 things right now...

by Paula Neal Mooney

"For your eyes only," wrote a mysterious foreign man who I've been communicating with thru email.

I scrolled down to take in the vulnerably naked pic he'd attached in the email...of his sucky blog stats.

Raise your blog stats
We've all been there. Posting and posting our hearts out, only to check our number of visitors and discover maybe 10 or 15 people have read our blog that day.

But take heart.

Do any of these seven things right now that you haven't already done, and I can almost guarantee you'll see those traffic bars spike:

1 - Make sure your post title comes before your blog name in the search engines.
Which one looks better?

This search-engine result with my blog's name, PAULA NEAL MOONEY, listed first and the full post title "George and Callie on Grey's Anatomy Getting..." cut off...

...or this listing about the "DC Madam List of Names and Phone Numbers...Everybody Wants You" with the full post title displayed first in all its blogging glory, so much so that the PAULA NEAL MOONEY cut off?
Which one would you click on?

Turns out ever since I switched and put my post titles first in the search-engine results, more pageviews have come my way for the old posts that got reversed. This is especially true if you have a blog name like mine, one that doesn't say "BLOG ABOUT MONEY ONLINE" or something descriptive.

Follow these instructions for Blogger/Blogspot blogs to make sure your post title comes first. (Some folks have had a problem with those instructions, but they worked on two of my blogs.) Wordpress has plug-ins to do this too, but I can't vouch for them personally, since I've yet to fully delve into WP.

2 - Post your real pic
Sure, I've adopted the avatar of a hot blonde for reasons of subterfuge in the past, but the pic in my blog's profile is real -- save for a few retouches...

And just look at the controversy that erupted in my comments section when I posted what I thought was Kumiko's real image on my blog.

I know one well-known blogger who uses a pretty woman as his avatar, and it got him a lot of traffic, but I always wonder how duped (or angry?) his male readers felt when they discovered that the hot woman they left drooling comments for was really a man.

People who stick around for the long haul need to know who you really are if you're serious about turning blogging into a career. Yes, I understand people who are just blogging to express themselves or blow off steam -- they don't want to get Dooced, and they have jobs to consider.

But name one famous anonymous blogger who has hit the big time.

It's difficult -- because though some anonymous bloggers have a large following -- there are the issues of personal appearances and speeches that can't be overcome without rigamarole.

Just this week I received a big blessing: an invitation to speak at the BlogHer 2007 Conference in Chicago on the gorgeous Navy Pier in July. I don't think that would've happened without a whole lotta God and a little real pic of me for the conference heads to see.

Now I'll be able to get my blog's name and face (me) before nearly 1,000 more people, who'll hopefully go out and tell 10,000 more people...and so on and so on...

The truth is, I just feel a closer connection to people once I see their real pic. It gives me a jumping off point, a touchstone, a point of relation.

Those who choose -- for valid reasons -- to not put a face with a name (or neither) to keep the blogosphere at arm's length for protection must realize they will get just that -- distance.

3 - Use your real name
This goes hand-in-hand with posting your real picture. If your blog is named something like "Men Walking as Trees," it's essentially important to put your real pic and name somewhere at the top of each post so readers know whose blog it is.

Associating a face and a name with a particular blog brands you -- and that coupled with winning content keeps them coming back.

4 - Write cryptic headlines
My headlines can look a little crazy some days, but I do what I must to get the search-engine traffic.

For example, instead of wasting the first 3 or 4 keywords of this post title by writing, "Would You Like to Increase Your Blog Traffic?" I got straight to a couple of key keywords, "Blog Traffic."

I don't always do this, but the closer you can get your key search-terms that folks find you with in the 1st and 2nd positions of your post title, the better.

Check Overture Keyword Tool and Google Adwords Keywords Suggestions to come up with excellent keyword suggestions and title your posts with the most commonly typed in search terms that have the least search result pages already published, and you'll get some traffic.

(And after every blog post, make sure to Google Blog Ping, submit to Google and Yahoo, Ping Feedburner and Pingoat ping each of your posts that you want to get attention, and Digg or StumbleUpon them too.)

5 - Include the words "sex tape" anywhere on your page
Okay, I'm kinda kidding with this one, but not really. You'd be amazed if I published the search terms some people type in to find my blog. Why do you think I put the word "sucking" in this blog post title?

A combination of really kinky phrases sometimes leads them here. And while some of them surely click away when they discover mine is not a porn site, I'm sure some stick around.

Just think, you're helping lure people away from PornTube!

6 - Tag your pics like crazy
Click on any image I've attached to this post to see all the long and crazy things I name my images.

I don't know if they all get indexed, but I was surprised when checking my stats to see how many people come to my blog after finding one of my images listed in search engines like Google.

7 - Live your life and take your time
Go take your kids to see Shrek 3. Or walk a park trail.

Fill up on some experiences and quiet down to ask God what you should post about next before you hit that publish button.

I had to learn to step away from the computer and to stop using it to fill the holes in my life.

Stop rushing and posting so much. I used to think that if one post brought me 1,000 pageviews, then 10 posts would surely bring me 10,000, right?

Wrong. Writing is about more than simple logic or mathematics. I had to learn to slow down and take my time and create posts that actually mean something to people so they'll pass it around and visit it time and time again.

Funny that I write this whilst I'm rushing to make a conference call, and writing this in the Edit HTML tab of Blogger cause that new Hindi script is popping up all over the place where I don't want it to in the "Compose" mode, but I'm going to slow down and make sure this puppy is right.

And valuable.

So people will come back...