by Paula Neal MooneyYou set up a free website, now you want free traffic.
Or, you paid for your website, and now you need enough search-engine traffic to at least pay for your web hosting fees.
Try these quick and (not so) dirty ways I've used to get more free web hits to my blogs:
1 - Gird your loins and wash some dirty, stinky feet
That's my metaphorical way of saying that "you gotta serve somebody."
Wish I could find the blog to give link love to that I read last night, saying that he increased his subscriber count to something crazy like 900 folks in a few months.
What sticks with me is that he said if you provide people a service, they'll come back. So...
2 - Give people the quirky things they're looking for
I was amazed to find out how many people per month search for "Google's USA Home Page," so that's why I titled my post that.
If you blog it, they will come.
3 - Ask short questions in the title that people want to know
"Robin Thicke's Race? Wife? Lyrics? Dad?" has gotten me so many hits, because whatever combination of those search terms people type in satisfies their specific need. (Amazingly, the "hot, hot and still hot" part gets me folks looking for the lyrics to that "Hot hot hot" song!)
Same deal with "Barack Obama's Race? Age? Religion?" (without repeating the Barack Obama name like I did when I was an SEO-newbie -- but you get the picture.)
4 - Borrow some keywords
Copy and paste can be our best friend. Just look at all the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool (is that puppy really dead? Why is it showing January 2007 when it was updated to April 2007?) keywords about Robin Thicke I copied at that bottom of the post about him.
That's a quick and dirty way to get more search-engine traffic, because depending on how fast Google crawls your site, that's what people will find right away.
I should, however, update the Robin Thicke post to ensure I've covered all the bases people are searching for to be even more helpful.
5 - Brag about the number of readers you have...after you pump up the number
Put your stats front and center, recommends Blogging Tips, whom I found whilst surfing late Saturday night.
I finally moved up my counter once my subscriber numbers increased, and then chose from a pretty image on Al at Self-Made Minds post about Feedburner counts to make my subscription count even more representative of my daily pageviews.
Fake it till you make it!
(John H. Johnson pretended to be janitor to his non-existent white boss in order to be shown the piece of real estate that birthed the Johnson Publishing empire. Bishop T.D. Jakes got his 1-800-Bishop2 phone number and had women around the church answering the phone.)
6 - Meta Tags still matter
My blogging buddy Bonnie told me forever ago to update the metatags in my blog's code. I finally did and they have helped. Thanks, Bonnie!
Just right click anywhere on the white page on my blog and choose view source and look for the first META content that says "Get blog readers..." and such to see what I mean. Google really still looks at those things.
7 - Type longer labels
I used to just type labels like "lil, wayne,kissing,baby" and hit publish.
Now I'm wiser and realized that typing in stuff like create a free website, create your own website, digital camera for kids, make a free web site, make your own web site, make your own web site for free, personal, Popular Posts separated by commas really make the difference to the ol' "Goog" for bringing in that search-engine traffic!
8 - Post a lot...it takes time
Yeah, I know I just told everybody to slow down and create good posts, and that still holds true. But until you get a lot of email subscribers, or until you set up a strictly search-engine blog driving traffic to your main blog, you need to build content and open as many doors or gateways for people to find you as possible.
Like the "Watch Grey's Anatomy Full Episodes Online Free" post I put on my search-engine blog, it's getting hits now that I hope come on over here and stay.
9 - All about the ALT tag
In the Edit HTML mode of Blogger, in between the ALT " " space after I inserted the above foot-washing picture, I put "Increase web site traffic and hits free by getting more search engine traffic" in between those double quotes.
This is what's called "tagging" a photo, and that text will show up in search engines, both for folks looking for the post and for images.
That's it. Happy blogging and search-engine gaining.
And God bless and keep our troops this Memorial Day.
What you are doing and sacrificing for us all is beyond words...but thank you.
Comments
A lot of my traffic comes from Google, too, so I hope these tips really help you.
And stayed tuned for more, because I'm going to write more about using Wordtracker Keyword Suggestions Tool as well.
Bonnie
From your heart to God's hand...
Carlos
Yeah, amazing how I gained 2,000 subscribers overnight, heh?
Tee hee hee...Wink wink wink...
BloggingWriter
So glad that some of this stuff is new to people.
Hi Kim
Yes, it can take a little time to implement some of this stuff, but it's so fun to me.
I hope you got my email about Picasso.
Linda
Stay tuned for many more tips as I figure out what works and what doesn't work to drive traffic to blogs.
And what should I put in the META content tags? a description of my site or some SEO friendly keywords?
Thanks
I made my move to TypePad so I need to make sure I re-connect and get more readers. I'm sure these tips will help.
Hope you have agreat Memorial Day.
I mostly find my pics from Google Images. (Hopefully they're free!)
Only once have I even been asked to remove a pic, and that guy was a scam artist, but I complied...at least with the picture taking down part.
And yeah, put SEO-rich keywords in the ALT " " part.
Hey Vanessa
Just checked out your new TypePad digs. Nice.
You're good with the changing platforms stuff. Does TypePad have as many plugins as WordPress?
Paula
Those are some great Free Traffic Tips in Your Post for Memorial Day.
Yes Meta Tags still carry weight in
Search Engine Postioning.Really I just love how You shared about using images to get some Free Traffic from Search Engines. The most important of all is the
"Title Tag", even more so than "Keywords Tags". After the 'Title Tag' of course by my experience and opinion
is the "Description Tag" among Your
Meta Tags. Thanks Paula, from now
on I will be using images better for sure. Yea, There is so much substance planted in Your Post, Keep it up, Everyone can be a Real Champion when we serve. God Bless!
I'm drawing from my experiences as an adoptive dad of special needs kids.
Thanks for reminding me about the title tag, too.
I make sure to title my post with hotly-searched for keywords, and name my image with those, too.
I think that's what you mean, right?
Don
Woo woo! I love your attitude. Nowhere to go but up!
And I believe many parents of special-needs children could benefit from the comraderie learned online, just like the Autism Every Day folks did to help folks.
Black Pixie
Well thank the Lord that this info is making sense and is applicable.
Y'all let me know how your stats rise!
Paula
Regarding reader subscription counts, I've never bothered with them due to very low readership of my blogs.
It is a catch-22 situation: People are more likely to subscribe if you already have a large number of readers. But in order to have a large readership, you need to get people to subscribe.
I've thought about the fake reader counts before, but didn't actually use it. Do you think it is easily detectable if you have a fake counter?
I'm so happy for you. Keep it up. I know that really take a lot of time and commitment.
Yeah, my reader counter is just an image I copied from one of those listed on Al at Self-Made Minds list.
I realized that Feedburner subscriber counts only counted the people who access my feed, and not those daily pageviews from my blog, so I felt okay with making that number more representative of my real numbers.
And yeah, the techie can tell where the image location is pulling from if they look at my code.
Good enough!
My real subscriber number is growing, so I guess it's working...
Yeah, Zaki, I added 2,000 subscribers overnight. Amazing, huh? Nothing like a little monkeying around with that image source location. Hint, hint...
I'll let you all know what final affect this experiment has on my actual Feedburner subscriber count.
And thanks, I love it when guys call me "ma" instead of "maam"! Seriously!
How have you been :-)?
I am going to officially request a application to Paula U when it starts, seems like your two steps from being a regular U on the how to's of the net.
Great post , I need to spend some time re reading what you said about the images and the meta tags.
And how in the heck do you get your header to increase and fit that whole pic like that????
You can't beat a bit of H1 or H2 now and again :)
Just left a comment over on your site. You got me wanting to check out Jericho.
Oh and as you can see, I was playing around all morning with my header.
I Google around on Google Images and select the wide images only (they have the drop-down menu where you can select large images) and I type in words like "pretty" or "panoramic" or "heaven" or "sky" or whatever and then link to that image's URL in the background image code in my template.
I did this ever since some reader showed me how short my image looked in the browser he was viewing my blog with.
Simon
Okay, so I think I know what H1 and H2 is.
I should Google it to make sure.
Is H1 the blog post's name?
Or is H1 blog title's name or metatags?
Tom LeDree
great list.
as always, you're supplying massive value!
This is an example of your posts that make me think, and I've given you the Thinking Blogger Award. You can read the details on my post.
Thanks, much.
Hey there, Agent Sully
I keep wondering...Is that your real avatar?
Lillian
I appreciate the award nomination. Don't you just love Ilker's TheThinkingBlog.com?
Took me ages to figure that one out too!
But i've just discovered this clever site that you can post links on. Could help reach different people.
The List