Simple Blog Traffic for Beginners

Blog Traffic For Beginners

Blog Traffic For Beginners A Step-By-Step System To Build Your Blog Traffic From Zero To 1,000 Daily Readers

Written by Yaro Starak www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author

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Table of Contents Chapter One: Let’s Talk Traffic ............................................................................... 5 The Purpose Of This Guide ................................................................................. 6 New Readers Vs Repeat Readers ....................................................................... 6 The Conversion Process ..................................................................................... 7 You Are Going To Create “Traffic Assets” ........................................................... 8 Action Step: Measure Your Progress ...................................................................... 8 Chapter Two: Content Marketing ............................................................................ 9 Core Concept 1: Pillar Content (How You Create Value) ........................................ 9 How To Create A Pillar Article ............................................................................10 Core Concept 2: Nothing Matters More Than Your Headline ................................ 16 How To Write Award Winning Blog Headlines ....................................................17 Psychological Triggers For Better Headlines ......................................................20 Core Concept 3: Case Studies, Stories And Metaphors ....................................... 23 Action Step: Use The 3 Core Concepts In Your Content ....................................25 You Must Identify And Leverage Your Core Strength ........................................... 25 Chapter Three: Search Engine Optimization ....................................................... 29 How Google Changed The Search Engine Game ..............................................30 What Bloggers Need To Know About SEO Today ..............................................31 What Is The Long Tail And Why Is It So Vital To Bloggers ................................... 35 Chapter Four: How To Set Up Your Internal Blog Structure .............................. 38 Step 1: Get Your Site Listed In Google ...............................................................38 Step 2: Optimize Your Page Title For Every Blog Post You Publish ...................40 Step 3: Set Up Your Permalinks .........................................................................42 STOP: Take Action Catch-Up Checklist ................................................................ 44 Chapter Five: How To Market Your Blog .............................................................. 45 100 Blog Marketing Ideas You Can Apply Today.................................................. 47 Techniques That Leverage Your Writing Or Skill ................................................47 Research, News And Trends ..............................................................................53

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Social Media .......................................................................................................56 Traditional Traffic Generation Techniques ..........................................................64 Repurposing Content ..........................................................................................70 Publicity And Networking ....................................................................................71 Create Significant Resources To Give Away ......................................................77 Create Even More Significant Resources ...........................................................82 Techniques If You Have Money To Buy Traffic ..................................................89 Big Marketing Ideas ............................................................................................92 What Techniques Would I Start Fresh With Today? ............................................. 97 Chapter Six: Leverage – How To Get The Most Out Of Your Traffic .................. 99 Own The Traffic: Your Email Newsletter .............................................................99 The Myth Of The Super Blog ............................................................................101 Chapter Seven: Your Blog Breakthrough .......................................................... 103 The Power Of Compound Interest ...................................................................... 103 The Daily Habit .................................................................................................104 The Tipping Point..............................................................................................105 The Flywheel ....................................................................................................105 Put It All Together ............................................................................................... 106 Other Guides Available From Yaro ..................................................................... 108 Master Your Mindset ........................................................................................... 108 How To Buy & Sell Blogs And Websites For Passive Profits ............................. 108 Blog Traffic For Beginners .................................................................................. 109 Advanced Courses Available From Yaro… ........................................................ 109 The 2 Hour Work Day ......................................................................................... 109 Blog Mastermind ................................................................................................. 110 Membership Site Mastermind ............................................................................. 110

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The Legal Section For the sake of clarity and brevity here are the two most important legal considerations regarding this book, in plain English -

1. You can’t publish the content in this book unless I grant permission. 2. I’m not responsible for anything that happens to you as a result of following the advice in this book. I don’t mind if you quote small sections, a paragraph or two, within your own writing, and appreciate a link back as credit if you feel appropriate. Here is the slightly more complicated way of saying the same thing. Copyright Notice Any unauthorized reproduction or transmission of any aspect of this book is prohibited. You may not resale, repackage or give away any part of this book by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the author, Yaro Starak. This is NOT a free book and should not be freely distributed. You can only purchase this book from the websites www.entrepreneurs-journey.com or www.ejinsider.com. If you purchased or downloaded this book elsewhere please contact me immediately. Legal Notice This book is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice. The purchaser of this book assumes all responsibility for their outcomes as a result of following the advice and materials in this book. Yaro Starak and the Blog Mastermind Partnership assume no responsibility or liability for the actions of any reader of this book.

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Chapter One: Let’s Talk Traffic Hello, my name is Yaro, thank you for purchasing this guide. Congratulations for deciding to equip yourself with the most important skill you can develop to build a profitable blog.

The importance of traffic Traffic is a part of every single success story online. No matter what industry, topic, service, product or business model used, everyone needs to figure out how to market what they do and attract an audience. I have made my living from the Internet since the early 2000s - I started with a Magic: The Gathering (trading card game) news site, then built an online proofreading business, and also made money buying and selling blogs and websites. In 2005 I started my own blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. It began as a hobby site where I told stories about my previous experiences as an entrepreneur, but within 18 months my blog became my full time business. By then I had over 1,000 readers per day and turned that audience into a $5,000 a month income stream. To some people 1,000 readers is nothing, while others struggle to reach 100 readers a day. Since you purchased this guide I know you are at the stage where attracting your first 1,000 readers will make a big difference to your blog. I consider 1,000 readers an ideal target to aim for, because with 1,000 readers you can start making enough money from your blog to make a significant difference to your life. I did not stop at 1,000 readers with my own blog, nor was I happy with $5,000 a month, but these were key stepping-stones that eventually led to making over a million dollars thanks to my blogging business.

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Without that initial platform of 1,000 readers, I would not have a business. Now it’s your turn. It’s time to build your platform…

The Purpose Of This Guide The purpose of this guide is to help you attract the first consistent stream of visitors to your blog, with the goal of reaching 1,000 unique visitors per day. This means at least 1,000 unique people come to your blog each day - day after day. You’ll have a steady, repeat, regular readership and a steady stream of new readers who find you each day, and this will be an asset far more powerful than any spike of traffic that disappears a day later.

New Readers Vs Repeat Readers Most blogs have a mix of repeat readers and new readers, and you should expect the same from your blog. New readers are people who stumble across your work looking for answers via a search engine or other exposure points where your work is mentioned, featured, or linked (other blogs, podcasts, news, social media, etc). Repeat readers bookmark your site, follow your RSS feed, join your email newsletter, or keep track of you on social media. These people visit your blog more than once. They know you best. They are your true fans and members of your tribe (and thus more likely to purchase things from you, so nurture them). There is a very good chance, for example, that you are a repeat reader of my content, which led you to purchasing this guide you are reading now. At the beginning of this process, we’ll focus heavily on attracting new readers. However it’s important you know that attracting new readers is only half the battle.

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The Conversion Process Conversion is the process you implement to take your new readers and convert them into repeat readers. This process continues as you turn your repeat readers into paying members or customers. This guide is primarily about attracting new readers. Some of your new readers will turn into repeat readers naturally. That’s what happens when you produce valuable content – people come back for more. In the beginning, 80% of your effort should focus on sourcing new traffic, but as you develop your blog business you will find the ratio changes. In the future you might only spend 20% or less of your time on new traffic and the rest on converting readers into subscribers and then buyers.

How To Convert Your Blog Readers Into Paying Customers To take the next step after traffic and learn more about conversion, in particular how to use your blog as a platform to make $10,000 a month selling your own digital training products, you need to join…

Enroll in the next round of Blog Mastermind, my premier blog training program. Over 2,000 members have already participated since I began teaching it 2007, with many graduates going on to make thousands of dollars from their blogs (and even a couple of million dollar blogs!). If you are a teacher, speaker, author, expert, consultant, or you want to build a blog as an authority platform to sell your products and services, this is for you. Find out when the next coaching round begins here…

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You Are Going To Create “Traffic Assets” As you follow the steps in this guide you’ll create “traffic assets” that continue to deliver traffic long after you build them. Traffic assets take time to create. Like a baby, they demand the most from you when they are new. As they develop, momentum keeps them running and you will not need to work as hard to keep the new traffic coming in. Bear in mind I’m going to give you more traffic techniques than you can handle. I don’t expect you to apply them all, that is not realistic. However, I guarantee if you strategically approach this process, test a good proportion of the techniques I give you, and then focus on the ones that work for you, you will reach your goal of 1,000 readers.

Action Step: Measure Your Progress Working towards a measurable goal is important. It gives you a specific destination to aim for, and a way to measure your progress as you go. In order to stay motivated, you must celebrate your first 10 readers, your first 50, 100, 200, 250 readers and so on as you work towards that 1,000 daily readers milestone. For our purposes we are measuring daily “unique visitors” to your blog (a unique visitor is one person visiting your site in a 24-hour period). All website statistic services provide information on unique visitors, and the standard for website statistics is Google Analytics. I use Google Analytics and I recommend you do too for the purposes of measuring your performance as you work on the tasks I give you in this guide. Monitor your daily unique visitors, which is the main statistic you will find in your dashboard in Google Analytics.

Do This Now: If you have not done so already, go install Google Analytics on your blog so you can begin tracking your progress from day one.

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Chapter Two: Content Marketing Traffic is often viewed as a faceless commodity. However, traffic is people, and to attract more people to your blog, you need to give them a reason to visit. In exchange for creating something of value for people, you receive their attention. It is that attention that then gives you the power to open up a relationship, and from this relationship comes the potential to make money. At the heart of this process is a value exchange, so you need to offer something of value to begin the dialogue. Blog posts, or articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, presentation slides, reports, and so on, are all known as “content”. That should be fairly obvious to you. What is not obvious is how to structure your content so it’s compelling, engaging and encourages sharing. You need to maximize the value of your content. This is where your traffic education process begins. You are about to become a content marketing professional by learning how to leverage three core content concepts...

Core Concept 1: Pillar Content (How You Create Value) Many years ago I coined a phrase to describe the most valuable blog content. I called it the “Pillar Article”. The name describes key pieces of content that form the pillars your blog is built on. To my surprise the concept caught on with other bloggers and it became the standard label and formula for good blog content. You may already be familiar with the Pillar concept, but since it is fundamental to attracting blog traffic, I’ll explain it for you here.

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What Is A Pillar? A pillar is blog content, usually an article, which does some very important things: 

It will bring in a rush of new readers and backlinks (other sites linking to your blog).

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It will continue to bring in more readers over time as you and other people refer to it, even though it may be buried in the archives of your blog.

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Eventually it will bring in traffic from search engines (this is largely because other web pages have linked to it).

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You can list it in a separate area (like a “top articles” or “resources” page) with all your other pillars so your best content can easily be accessed and appreciated.

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It’s not time sensitive, so in twelve months time it will still be relevant and popular.

How To Create A Pillar Article Here are typical article types that have consistently become pillar articles: 1. The “How-To” Article Think about your industry and write an article that teaches how to do something. Be certain to only write how-to articles on topics you genuinely understand and have experience with. Some possible examples: 

If you are a marketing consultant, write some advice on how to market a business using no money.

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If you blog about dogs, write how to choose an appropriate dog name.

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If you blog about how to write a first book, produce a how-to guide on approaching publishers.

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If you blog about food, write recipe guides on how to prepare popular dishes.

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If you blog about your life, write how-to guides on self-development from the life lessons you have learned (e.g. How you got a job, how you dealt with breaking up with your boyfriend, etc).

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It should be reasonably obvious which how-to topics are popular and relevant to your audience and which you feel capable of explaining well. Remember to tell stories from your life or other people’s lives as case studies to make your how-to articles more compelling and credible. 2. The Definition Article There are certain key concepts that need explaining to anyone new to an industry. If a concept is important or complicated, produce a pillar article that defines the concept, clearly explaining what it means and how it can be implemented. It may seem simple and obvious to you, but remember you are an expert in your field, so explain it to the newbies in simple terms. If you can tell a story as an example, then your article will be even more interesting and useful for the reader. Here are some example concepts (topics) from the world of entrepreneurship: MVP (minimum viable product), Pivot (to change strategic focus), Growth Hacking (growing a business), explaining the different levels of investment (Angels, VCs, Series A, etc) and Kaizen (incremental improvement). A glossary style definition page makes a good pillar article. If there are a handful of key concepts in your industry, write an article that lists the concepts and provides a one-paragraph definition for each. A resource page like this is a good reference and often referred (linked) back to by other bloggers and websites.

Why Not Just Link To Wikipedia? You may wonder why bother doing this if most terms are already defined elsewhere on the web at sites like Wikipedia? It’s okay to link to other websites for definitions, especially in the short term when you are just getting things set up, but it’s a lot better if you write your own definitions. You can describe concepts in your own words, using your own unique story and voice. This helps to build credibility and trust. It’s always smarter to include your own version of a definition if you are capable of explaining a term or concept, rather than link to other sites and drive traffic away from your blog.

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3. Present A Theory Or Polarizing Argument To Stir Emotions One of the most successful strategies I’ve seen used to attract blog traffic is simply having a strong point of view about something. The stronger your opinion the better, because it will polarize what other people think and elicit emotion. Controversy attracts attention and encourages engagement. People will leave comments, link to your post in reply articles on their sites, and share your content through social media. Studies of virality show that content that stimulates high arousal emotions – anger, fear, joy, lust, awe and surprise – are more likely to result in wider distribution. Your goal should be to create pillar content that triggers one of these emotions. 4. Create An E-Course, Free Report, Or Article Series This is one of my favourite pillar concepts and is responsible for a huge chunk of the traffic I’ve attracted to my blog. Think of this as a Super How-To technique, where you provide the “A to Z” guide of how to do something important. You have several options for presenting this information: 

Type the content into several blog posts and interlink them together. You can also highlight them as a stand-alone series in your archives. As one example, I did this with my Business Timeline history series, a collection of articles that reviews my “life story” as an entrepreneur.

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Create a PDF that your readers can download. The benefit of this method is that the file can be shared easily (forwarded through email for example) and you may benefit from viral marketing effects, especially if you produce a top quality report.

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Write the content as a series of email newsletters (an e-course) that you also publish on your blog. This way you solve two problems – create an email sequence for your newsletter subscribers, and create pillar content for your blog.

One of my top ways to use this technique is to come up with fairly lengthy solution to a big problem my audience has that I have some experience with.

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From Pillar Articles To A Free Report I wrote a series of blog articles to explain how I launched membership site training courses. I came up with 9 topics I would cover in 9 articles, which took about six weeks to write. I released them one-by-one on my blog as I finished each article, and some of them became Pillar Articles (How-To Pillars). I then took the articles and combined them into a PDF to create a new report – The Membership Site Masterplan – that I gave away as an incentive to join my email newsletter. I went further and used the initial 9 topics as the modules I covered in a training course, which I sold to my audience.

You don’t have to go as far as I did with this technique. Keep it simple to begin with and just plan an article series for your blog. This might become your email newsletter course, or a free report. Start with normal blog posts and see what you end up writing. The important thing with this concept is to create a complete all-in-one solution to a common problem. Big guides genuinely help people attract a lot of traffic. 5. The Top List Article You have no doubt seen many of this type of article all over the internet. The usual titles are “Top 7 Ways To…” or “10 Tips To Improve…” or “Top 25 Celebrity…” etc. These top list articles work well for a couple of reasons – 1. Lists are easily digested by human beings. It’s been tested and proven that articles in the 300 to 700 word range with lots of clear dot-point bulleted lists and a compelling headline are good traffic pullers. In this case it’s all about ease of consumption for people with short attention spans – i.e. most web surfers. 2. Lists provide directly actionable lessons that people love to share. Humans have a drive to be seen as the source of valuable information that helps or entertains other people. This is why list articles are often heavily

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shared across social media. We have an inherent drive to distribute things to our fellow human beings for the social kudos we receive in return. This technique is great if you are short on time. A list article can be written up in half an hour, starting with an opening paragraph, then seven dot points and a concluding paragraph. Short, sharp and to the point. 6. A Technical Blueprint A technical blueprint is a step-by-step, visually enhanced article demonstrating exactly how to complete a task. Often the pictures tell the story more than the words do. Designers and programmers use this style of blog post to show how they code a website, design an image using Photoshop, code software, or simpler activities like attach a file to an email. You can apply the principle to almost any industry that has common tasks that may be complex to understand. In this case it’s more about the imagery and less about the story.

7. Embedded Multimedia If you take every previous format listed above and mix in some embedded multimedia, you increase your chances of it turning into a pillar article. Different people prefer to consume content in different ways. Some like to scan and read words, or listen to audio, watch a video or live stage presentation, or participate in a group exercise. You can focus on one medium and still do well, but understand that some people just won’t pay attention to your work.

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If you want to have maximum impact, use video, audio, text, graphics, spreadsheets, slides and live streaming content like webinars, and include these in your written articles. Capacity is the main challenge here as it’s difficult to create quality work in one format let alone duplicate it across multiple mediums. My advice is to have one main format and then when possible, recreate or enhance your work in one other format. In today’s world of social distribution on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube, hitting people on multiple platforms with multimedia gives you a better chance of reaching a critical mass of people and creating a pillar outcome. A good example from my blog is an article I wrote – How To Set Up A Stand Up Desk And Why It Could Save Your Life

This post features graphics I cut from an infographic someone else made, and a special video I created on the same topic for YouTube. The article was widely shared across social networks and became a pillar, ranking well for stand up desk related search terms. Don’t forget you can also embed other people’s work if they allow sharing. YouTube videos are a good example – you can embed almost all of them in your blog posts. Of course it’s better if a video is your work, rather than someone else’s.

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Can You Publish A Pillar Every Week? A successful pillar article is never guaranteed, but if you follow the formats above and combine them with the marketing techniques I will reveal to you later in guide, you have a much better chance of creating a solid base of pillar content. Make sure you celebrate your first pillar and don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t immediately earn results. This is not an exact science. The only way to win is keep putting in the effort and produce value for your audience.

Core Concept 2: Nothing Matters More Than Your Headline There is one area more than any other you need to focus on to enhance the likelihood that your blog content will attract traffic: Headlines. The headline is the first part of your blog article that a person reads, which acts as the gatekeeper, responsible for whether the visitor continues on and reads the entire article, or at least scans it, or scurries off looking for more entertaining subject matter. On most blogs, what you type as the headline of your article also becomes the “title”, which is what appears in a browser at the very top.

As you will learn in the upcoming chapter about search engine optimization, the title bar is the most important element when it comes to determining what search words

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your article will rank for in search engines. It also influences whether people will click through to read your article at all.

In summary, your blog headlines are responsible for – 

Whether a person reads your article or skips it

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Which search words your article ranks for in search engines Whether people click through to your article if they find it in search results

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How your article is presented everywhere else online, including the headline if you share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, RSS readers and other social media sites.

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When it comes to your email newsletter, what subject line you use is the most important element, which is just like a mini-headline.

To be a good content marketer, you must learn how to be a good headline writer. To develop this skill you need practice. Nothing helps more than writing articles and newsletters and coming up with good headlines and subject lines. If you can also pay attention to the titles of some of the more popular articles on the web you’ll get some clues. But you can speed up your learning process by studying headline templates that are proven winners. Here are some of the best headline formats I use on a regular basis…

How To Write Award Winning Blog Headlines To begin with I’ll list the most common formats I use for headlines on my blog Entrepreneurs-Journey and in other writing I do. The “How” Headline The “How” headline format is by far the most common headline used on my blog. This includes “How To Do Something” (don’t over use this).

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Here are some examples 

“How To Avoid Hype When You Sell”

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“How To Outsource Your Blogging – A Case Study”

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“How An Autoresponder Made My Life Easier”

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“How You Can Make Passive Income Online”

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“How My Biology Blog Landed Me My Dream Job”

The “Why” Headline The “Why” is the next most common format on my blog. It’s a good headline format because it opens a door in the readers mind. The headline says why something is important or relevant or secret or effective, but you have to read the article to learn more. “Why” headlines also work fantastically as questions. Here are some examples of “Why” headlines I have used on E-J… 

“Why People Struggle To Get What They Want”

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“Why Blogs Fail”

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“Why Some People Succeed Against All Odds”

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“Why Thinking Like A Fish Can Help Your Business”

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“Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?”

Open Loops The above are examples of a psychological technique called “opening a loop”. The question opens a loop in the reader’s brain, and the brain has a strong desire to close it by learning the answer. Here are some more examples... 

“Is All Publicity Good Publicity?”

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“Is Your Marketing Strategy Using This Powerful Principle?”

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“Are You Solving A Problem Or Just Spinning Your Wheels?”

All of these headlines ask a question with the promise of providing the answer in the article.

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The “Context Phrase: Headline” Format This headline format is all about placing a statement or name or phrase just before using a headline with a colon to break it apart. Here’s an example 

“Tony Hawk: How A Personal Brand Can Build A Business Empire”

I really like this style of headline because it allows you to use one or two or three preceding words before a standard how or why or what or any type of headline. The preceding words give context and grab attention.I like to use them to make headlines more specific, talking about a person or event, followed by the headline that explains what the article is actually about. Here’s another example… 

“Scam Alert: Don’t Buy Any Internet Marketing Products Until You Read This”

The “Scam Alert” part of this headline makes it so much more compelling because of the controversy, while the rest of the headline reveals more about what exactly the article is about (and notice again the open loop?). You can use this headline format to give more zing to bland headlines. You can also use it to link articles on a broad topic together into a series. Here are some more examples from my blog archives – 

“Market Saturation: Is It Too Late For You To Make Money Online?”

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“Trade Show Checklist: How To Successfully Sell Your Product At Trade Shows”

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“Ego, Passion And Expertise: How To Find Balance And Win Clients”

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“From Video Games To Netbooks: How Chris Guthrie Made $150,000 Online After Losing His Job”

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“How To Be Creative At Work Part 2: Are You A Director Or Collector?”

The (Brackets) Headline The brackets headline is similar to the above colon separated headline where you aim to highlight or combine elements using the brackets as the separator. Here are some examples… 

“What Successful Internet Marketers Know (But You Don’t?)”

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

“Take Control Of Your Publicity (Or End Up Like Bill Clinton)”

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“The Truth (And Myth) About Passive Income”

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“How Not To Be Boring (And Why Your Website Will Thank You)”

The List Headline The list headline has always been one of the strongest formats, well used long before the World Wide Web in traditional print media. Like the “How To” format, the list format is often overused and thus becomes less effective, so be careful. Generally speaking the numbers 3, 7 or 10 are my favourites and have proven the most effective. It’s important you use powerful word choice when applying the list format otherwise your headline will look like just another boring top ten list. Here are some examples: 

“7 Tips To Super-Charge Your Online Communication”

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“My Top 10 Methods To Make Money Online”

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“7 Blogging Tips You Can Apply Today”

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“3 Steps To Avert Disaster When Things Go Wrong”

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“3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting Your Business”

Notice you can begin headlines with the number, or personalize the headline using a personal pronoun like “my” or pair it with the ever-effective word “steps” if you are teaching something. If you like using “steps” and publish a lot of tutorial style articles, you can use - “A Step-By-Step Guide To…”. This works well in any niche.

Psychological Triggers For Better Headlines I recommend a healthy dose of good old-fashioned brainstorming to generate a lot of ideas to find that perfect headline. To help you get the final zing into your headlines, here are some psychological triggers and hot points to apply in your blog headline writing.

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The Famous Name Technique Read this headline… 

“What Do Microsoft, Tim Ferriss, Donald Trump and Katy Perry Have In Common?”

There’s nothing in this headline that tells you what the article is about. The publication the headline is used on gives it context (this headline was used on my blog), but the elements in the headline are not related in an obvious way. That of course is a curiosity hook – and a good one – but the other key point here is leveraging famous names. Headlines that use famous names of people or places or events can be very effective. Sometimes they are time sensitive based on when something is newsworthy, but some celebrities or places will always be well-known. I wouldn’t recommend you force famous names into your headlines just for the sake of it. However if there is a person mentioned inside the article, it’s worth asking if you can leverage their name in the title. The Controversy Technique What’s so powerful about this headline?… 

“Is Email A Bigger Productivity Killer Than Marijuana? (UK Study Says Yes)”

It’s controversial, and that’s what makes it interesting. Similar to the previous point with famous names and places, if you can see an angle in the article that is controversial, that can be pulled into the headline, go for it. Alliteration And Cadence It’s not always easy to produce alliteration (a repetition of sounds like “cool camping careers”), but if you can find a way to apply this, or at least have good cadence or flow so your headline “sounds” good, your headline will perform better. If you’re not naturally good at reading the flow in a headline, find someone who is (to give you feedback). Changing just one word can make a huge difference to the way a headline sounds when a person reads it in their head. Chunky headlines that stop and start turn people away. If in doubt, read it out aloud.

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People Thrive On Variety If your headline is common the assumption is that the article is too. If they come to your site and see five “how to” headlines in a row, you will start to lose them. Simplify I spend a lot of time during headline brainstorming sessions trying to remove words. Taking unnecessary words out of your headline so you are left with the minimum amount of words required always results in a better headline. Short headlines have more impact. There’s more whitespace around the words, which creates contrast and thus focus on the words. There is also less to read, which helps all those apathetic and lazy readers.

It works.

Avoid Passive Tense Your headlines should be in active tense, not passive. If you see an “ing” word, like for example “Planning”, it should be made active, to “Plan”. It takes some practice, but eventually you will start to see passive tense and it will annoy you. For example the headline in this chapter you are reading now could be stated as 

“Writing Award Winning Blog Headlines”

When I see the word “Writing” I know it should be “Write”. However, you have to be careful to spot the right words to make active, it’s not a rule to apply in every instance. Once you get a feel for this you will automatically see how best to switch words from passive to active, often converting them to a popular format like a “How To” or a “Why” headline. In this case the headline works much better as – 

“How To Write Award Winning Blog Headlines”

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Focus On Individuals And Use Personal Pronouns An important tip for bloggers is to write as if you are talking to one person. This applies to headlines as well. Often a well placed “You” or “Your” into a headline will make it more personal and more attention grabbing because it speaks directly to the reader as an individual.  

“Do You Blog Strategically?” “Does Your Blog Have A Hook?”



“Can You Make Your Blog Reader Feel Like This…”

Many beginners make the mistake of trying to appear like a large company, using phrases like “We care about good customer service” and “Our business is a market leader”, even when it’s just them. I encourage you to keep all communication with your audience as one-on-one as possible, even when over the internet. Be personal and direct and they will feel like you are talking only to them, even if you are writing to thousands. This is what I am doing right now as I write this to you.

Headlines Control The Internet You might be wondering – Why so much focus on headlines? There is no more important aspect of your content marketing than headlines. Every traffic outcome you desire is predicated on the first impression your content makes. The first impression is your headline.

Core Concept 3: Case Studies, Stories And Metaphors The content on my blog that receives the most traffic always contains some aspect of personal storytelling, usually in the form of a case study. Writing about strategies, theories and tactics is great, but people engage when you combine these concepts with a story or metaphor to illustrate exactly what someone did.

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You can focus on your own story if you have a relevant one to tell, or someone else’s if they represent the concept better. Whenever you tell stories you avoid generic explanations. You make things specific rather than abstract. The more specific and “real world” you can be with your case studies, the more readers will respond to your writing and follow your work. For example, if I was writing about using online advertising to get traffic to my tomato growing blog, I might write something like this… I spent some money on adwords to get traffic to my newsletter.

Or I could turn this into a case study with specifics that people pay much more attention to because I present tangible results and data, like this… In one week I spent $151 on Google Adwords to buy traffic using the following list of keywords 

“How to grow tomatoes in winter”



“Growing tomatoes in winter”



“Grow winter tomatoes”



“Tips for growing tomatoes in winter”



“How to grow tomatoes in cold weather”

The result of this was 3546 visitors over the week, delivering 543 opt-ins to my newsletter, which you can see at www.growingtomatoesinwinter.com/newsletter/

The second explanation is a lot more specific and interesting to the reader. People want to know details, it gives them direction and clarity and makes you a much more valuable resource to them. What stories can you tell? If you’re blogging to promote a business, this is a perfect chance to tell stories of how your product or service is helping people.

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Action Step: Use The 3 Core Concepts In Your Content I’ve given you the three most important content tactics to apply to your blogging – 1. Pillar Content 2. Killer Headlines 3. Storytelling Case Studies Coming up in the traffic techniques chapter many of the methods I instruct you to use involve content production. It is absolutely vital that you include these three concepts whenever possible in all content you create. It doesn’t matter if you are creating videos, a podcast, writing short or long articles – these concepts will boost your traffic results.

Do This Now: Write an outline for your next article including how it will make use of the three core concepts. Choose a Pillar structure, write a powerful headline and use a story or case study.

You Must Identify And Leverage Your Core Strength The above concepts and techniques are universally applicable no matter what kind of content you produce or what topics you cover. There is one more critical concept you need to apply in order to create content for your blog that will deliver the traffic results you are after. This is the final piece of the content marketing puzzle, and in my opinion the most important piece. You need to figure out your core strength when it comes to content production. I can’t teach you your core strength. You have to figure out what it is and nurture it. What I can do is explain the types of core strengths bloggers tap into and offer you some tools to explore your own strengths. It’s time to get a little personal...

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How To Identify Your Core Strength Core strengths when it comes to blogging often start with a preferred medium of content production –  

Written Audio



Video

I am best with the written word. I can do well with audio in the form of podcasts, and video as well, but they are not my core strength. I’ve practiced the craft of writing the longest, I enjoy it the most and it’s the area where I experience the sensation of “flow”. Which brings me to the next criteria for finding your core strength… Where do you experience Flow State? Flow is that place you go when you are completely “lost” in the task you are doing. Time melts away, work becomes effortless, even joyful, you forget where you are, and your output is of high quality. Flow is an important experience to look out for because it always points you in the direction of a core strength. Some people enter flow while dancing, or performing or speaking on stage. Often adrenalin sports force you into flow, as does anything where your physical senses take over your conscious mind. I see flow as a simple idea – your body and mind focusing together on something you enjoy. Put simply, this is what will make the hard work you’re about to do, seem a whole lot less like work. And that’s a key advantage you need over all the people who start a goal like this but fade away quickly.

Where Core Strengths Come From Here are some ideas for defining your core strength:

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

Subject Matter This might seem obvious, but passion for a subject almost always leads to a core strength. Most successful blogs are born from someone having passion about a subject and the blog is simply a manifestation of that passion.



Goal Achievement The successful attainment of a goal, or the ongoing quest towards a goal often leads to the development of a core strength. You may not even like what you are doing, but having a destination, an outcome you desire strongly enough that you focus on every day, leads to the development of a core strength.



Practice Malcolm Gladwell explained in his book Outliers, that people become exceptionally good at something when they put a lot of time into it. He stated that 10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery. You may not have put that much time into something yet, but rest assured that whatever you practice a lot will become a core strength for you.



Experience Or Unique Situations Sometimes life gives you unique experiences by random chance, or perhaps you went after them deliberately. It might be tragic circumstances, like a life threatening illness, or the loss of a loved one, or something you strived for, like participation at an Olympic games or winning a tournament. Experience is so effective at building a core strength because we learn best through experience, and many successful blogs have been built on this strength.



Natural Talent You obviously can’t control this aspect - it’s determined by genetic lottery - but if you happen to be born with a unique talent that can be leveraged somehow through your blog, it’s a crime if you don’t use it. It might be a gift for writing, or natural charisma when presenting on video, or perhaps artistic talent to use in an art or music related blog. Whatever talent you have, it’s a gift that you should harness wholeheartedly.

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The kind of core strength you are looking for is one that you can apply somehow to your blog content. The whole point of having a core strength is to share it with others and leverage it for above average results. Don’t feel bad if you can’t identify your core strength immediately. This is not obvious for everyone. Sometimes (nearly always actually) the best thing you can do is begin the blogging process even without knowing your core strength just to see what comes easy to you, or what challenges you enjoy. The act of doing is always the path to an answer. Do not self-reflect for too long. You never know until you create.

Coming Up Next: An Introduction To Search Engine Optimization The next chapter provides an introduction to core concepts you need to understand about Google and how search engines decide what content should rank well. If you have studied Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before, this won’t be new to you, so you can skip the chapter. If however you have never studied SEO, or you need a refresher, this is an important chapter. Let’s move on…

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Chapter Three: Search Engine Optimization As you no doubt realize, the Google search engine is potentially a very large source of traffic for your blog. It’s a free traffic source, which makes it even more appealing. The problem with SEO is the rules constantly change, because search engines are always trying to improve the quality of the results they deliver. There’s a reason why the previous chapter focused entirely on content production… As a blogger, your content is the best SEO tool you have. All search engines rely on a combination of what your content is about (the words you use) and a popularity ranking that is based on how much attention your content attracts. In the world of the internet, attention is measured by links and engagement. Your content ranks well when other quality sites link to it, it is shared through social channels, and when people demonstrate a high level of engagement with it. The environment you compete in plays a part too. If you produce a blog about a topic with not many people searching for information about it, it doesn’t matter how good a job you do with SEO, there just isn’t enough demand for your work. On the flipside, if you enter a market with your blog where there is demand for the subject, and the current websites and blogs about that subject do not have very many links or quality information, that’s an ideal situation. It’s easy to rank well when the competition is weak. That, at least from a broad view, is how SEO works.

Basic SEO Training For Bloggers Most of the work you do to improve your search rankings is a by-product of your content marketing, the focus of this guide.

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That’s great news because as a blogger you should feel a whole lot more comfortable producing content rather than trying to figure out things like keywords. I am not an SEO expert and you do not need to be either. However, I do consider it helpful if you have a basic knowledge of how search engines work. Let’s begin with a brief history lesson...

How Google Changed The Search Engine Game Before Google search engines like Lycos, Looksmart, HotBot, Altavista, Yahoo! (this is what Yahoo! looked like in 1997), were the leaders. Search results were erratic back then and relied on matching keywords on the web page to the keywords you type into a search box. There wasn’t nearly as much content to search through either. Since there weren’t that many good websites, rather than search for things, often you would simply “surf” following links from website-to-website. As the web became more crowded it was clear that a powerful search engine was vital, yet no one had really cracked it.

Google’s First Great Invention: PageRank Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, invented PageRank and it formed the basis of how Google’s early search engine worked. PageRank is the algorithm that gave Google its competitor-killing edge, a way to greatly improve the accuracy and validity of a search response to a user query. Although PageRank faded somewhat in importance as more factors became part of the search algorithms, it’s still vital you understand what PageRank is. In essence PageRank provides a means to determine the value of a web page for any given search term or keyword phrase. This value is determined by how web pages link together, with the more popular (and theoretically better) sites receiving more links. It’s these incoming links that help the site have a high PageRank value and thus display higher up in search results.

This is how Google explains PageRank: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.

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Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query. Source: http://www.google.com/technology/

What Bloggers Need To Know About SEO Today Pagerank was just the start of a process of refinement that has continued and still continues today. Today Google and other sophisticated search engines rely on a combination of variables that constantly evolve. Here are just some of them 

Incoming links to your site and how you get them.

 

The relevancy (to your site’s subject matter) of the pages linking to you. The PageRank authority of pages that link to you (how many links they have).

 

The keywords other pages use to link to your pages. The keywords on your blog, in particular in places like page titles/headlines.

 

How much social syndication your pages receive. How long people stay on your site.

Some of those factors you can control, others you can manipulate but not directly control. As you can tell, things quickly become quite confusing. Thankfully, assuming you produce quality content and implement the marketing techniques I present to you later in this guide, most of the above elements will take care of themselves.

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It’s Not Just About Any Old Links Anymore! Encouraging other sites to link to your blog is still vital. Without links, it’s like your blog has an empty resume – no credentials to back it up – and thus it’s a lot harder to rank highly in Google and attract free traffic. However, there is a common error that many new bloggers make once they learn about the importance of link building. They see links as the path to free traffic, so they run out and build as many as they can from as many different sources as they can find. This is a mistake. You need to consider some important factors first, including – 

You should aim to develop a natural link growth profile



Where you attract links from counts, too many links from the wrong places can actually hurt your search rankings



What keywords other sites use to link to your blog matter, so you need to think about what kind of target audience you are going after



Spamming sites just to build links will not make you any friends

The Natural Linking Process A natural linking process is a reflection of what would naturally occur as you build a quality blog. The story should go something like this… At first no one knows your blog exists. You publish some content and you struggle to gain attention. Then one day someone finds your site and decides to share it on Facebook. From this share another blogger discovers your article and links to it. Events like this repeat and become more common. You reach more people through different platforms, which helps you reach even more people, which leads to more links to your blog. An UNNATURAL linking process is if you go and pay a company to leave 500 comments on random blogs all linking back to your blog. Content of value should attract incoming links because people want to share that value with other people. Links that you pay for, or links that are created just for the sake of creating links, do not help your cause.

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Google is smart. They are good at determining what links are relevant and should be considered a “vote” for your site, and which were artificially generated and thus carry no benefit.

Your Link Neighborhood Another important factor is what “category” of site links to you. Your blog should naturally attract links from blogs about related topics. Links should come from your own neighborhood, so to speak. If you write a blog about tennis, and a blog about manufacturing fridges links to it, that is not a related website. If a blog about sports shoes links to your blog about tennis, that’s more likely to be seen as from the same “neighborhood”.

Link Quantity Vs Link Quality Not all links are equal. Each link has a value based on how important a search engine thinks that page is. If a high ranking site links to you that is a valuable link and will help your ranking. If the page is not so important, then the link is not so valuable. There are many factors that determine how “valuable” a link is. Some pages are naturally considered more important – for example a link from an official university website or a mainstream news site like CNN or the BBC. The amount of links you attract is not as important as the value of the links. Gaining thousands of links from unimportant sites will not do much. Gaining just a few links from the top sites in your industry will help you rank at the top of search results. Of course it’s harder to get links from more popular sites, but not impossible.

What About Keywords? Hopefully you are beginning to see how everything comes together. Links are the most important ingredient, and attracting links from existing authority sites is of prime importance in your quest for a high-ranking blog. The final ingredient is to understand the importance of keywords.

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As I mentioned earlier, you do not have to confuse yourself with keywords to rank well in Google. Many of the top blogs never even look at keywords, they just write amazing content for humans. However, I do believe there is some value of at least being aware of how many people search for certain things and what words they use to search with. This is where a keyword tool can come in handy…

The Only Keyword Tool You Need To keep things simple I recommend you only focus on one tool until you get better acquainted with keywords. That tool is Google. Google provides a Keyword Planner within their AdWords advertising system that you can use to look up relevant keywords. Google tells you what kind of search volume there is (how many people search each month), like this this search I did when I typed in “girls tennis shoes” -

Who knew that 1,600 people per month search for “high heel tennis shoes”! As you can see in the picture above, Google will also tell you the competition for a phrase. Bear in mind that data is competition to buy ads through their system, not competition to rank organically in Google for that phrase. There is a relationship

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between the two (people who buy ads for a phrase will possibly also build a website to try and get the traffic for free), but it’s not absolutely relevant. If you really want to see what you are up against to compete for a phrase, go to Google.com and type it into the search box and see what sites show up in the first page of results. The good thing about this process is you can experiment and see how well your blog ranks against the competition. Just do this 1. Find a keyword phrase you want to rank for. 2. Write an article on your blog and use the keyword phrase in the title. 3. Roughly 24 hours after you publish your article go to Google and type in the phrase and see where your article shows up. 4. Attract new links and see if your rankings improve. You can get a lot more advanced, but to start with this is the approach I recommend you use.

What Is The Long Tail And Why Is It So Vital To Bloggers The final concept I want to teach you before we move on is the Long Tail. The easiest way to illustrate what the Long Tail is to look at how the book selling industry has changed… Barnes & Noble has physical stores with finite shelf space. As such they stock the biggest hit books that sell the most and ignore all the not-so-popular niche books. This is the only formula that is financially viable when you have a limitation like shelf space. Amazon has virtual shelf space as an internet company, and thus can potentially “stock” all books. They can make obscure niche books available, which are not best sellers, but will sell some copies. The Long Tail is all the sales of not-super-popular books, which when combined together is significantly more profitable than selling only the best sellers. Until technology came along that allowed abundant resources, the Long Tail of product inventory just wasn’t financially viable to stock. Now thanks to virtual products and digital shelf space, it is.

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The Long Tail is a vital concept in our quest to grow blog traffic because search engines leverage the Long Tail of digital content. Google is a tool for searching the Long Tail of information. It allows you to discover content about incredibly niche subject matter. While the most popular trends are searched more often (the “head” of the graph) there is much more search volume in the Long Tail of not quite as popular but still relevant search queries.

Source: http://www.longtail.com/about.html Chris Anderson is the “father” of the Long Tail concept, which he popularised in his seminal Wired magazine article – The Long Tail. If you want the longer story with lots of data to back up the concept, Chris has a book too, strangely enough titled The Long Tail.

Your blog is going to succeed not because you rank for the most popular phrases in your industry, but because you attract a small amount of traffic to a range of niche articles you create. You won’t easily rank for -- “tennis shoes”.

But you can for -- “boys size 12 Asics red tennis shoes”. This is harder to rank for -- “gluten free cooking” This is easier -- “how to cook gluten free pizza using a potato base”

When you reach your goal of 1,000 daily visitors it will be because each of your 100+ articles receive 5 to 50 visitors a day, not because two articles you wrote get 500 a day.

It’s important you adopt the Long Tail concept as your mantra, because you will see each article as a small piece of the Long Tail traffic castle you are building. Pillar content is your foundation. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, the best formula for building those pillars is to create content that taps into Long Tail traffic.

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Your SEO Foundation Now you have a foundation understanding of how SEO works, including an introduction to these key concepts –  

PageRank Link Building

 

Keywords The Long Tail

In the next chapter we are going to set up your blog’s internal structure. This process naturally flows from what you just learned about SEO. The next chapter is the final “set-up” chapter before we move on to the meat of this guide – the techniques you apply to bring in the traffic. It is vital that before you put in all the content marketing effort, your blog is a welloiled machine, ready to perform. Let’s get to it…

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Chapter Four: How To Set Up Your Internal Blog Structure This chapter is about internal blog optimization, the “easy” part of optimizing your blog. It’s easy because it’s completely under your control – you only need to tweak your own blog. That hard part is called external optimization – all the things you do to build traffic channels that bring people back to your blog from other places online. That’s our focus next chapter. Once you’ve completed the steps in this chapter, the search engines will know your blog exists and your blog will display content in a way that is more effective for attracting traffic. It doesn’t mean the traffic will suddenly come flooding in, but it will place you in a good position to leverage the work you do creating and marketing your content.

Step 1: Get Your Site Listed In Google Here’s a question every new blogger asks… How do I get my blog into Google?

Google finds new webpages by crawling the internet using little robot computer programs called “bots”. The bots job is to index all the content on the internet, and it does this by following links. So the simple answer is – Get a link to your blog from another site. To get the Google bots to discover your blog, you need a link from a site that Google does already know about. There are three steps I recommend you begin with. Here they are – a) Setup A Sitemap A sitemap is a listing of all the pages in your blog. You then take this “map” and give it to Google (the next step) and also make it available on your site so the little bots can find every page of your blog.

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To make this process easy, install the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin, which includes a Sitemap Generator. There are many other plugins and sites that can create a sitemap, but with just this one plugin you can control all the SEO elements we care about, which keeps things simple. The Yoast website provides instructions, so seek them out if you get stuck installing or configuring the plugin. b) Submit Your Blog To Google Webmaster Tools Add your blog to Google’s Webmaster Tools, which provides plenty of helpful information about the “health” of your website as Google sees it. You will need a Google account (Gmail) to use Webmaster Tools, which is free. Once you login, you can then submit your sitemap and verify ownership of your blog. Google provides instructions on how to do this. c) Get A Link To Your Blog Once a link to your site appears on another site (ideally more than just one) your site is destined to show up in Google and the other search engines – though it may take a few days. The next chapter contains plenty of link building ideas. However, as a starting step you can take right now, simply add your blog site address (domain name) to your social media profiles. For example, make sure you put your blog address in your Twitter account, and link out to your blog posts in tweets. Do the same with your LinkedIn profile, your YouTube and Pinterest profiles, your Google+ account, and any other online profiles you maintain. These are some of the easiest ways to get links to your blog. Your first links may not be incredibly traffic-producing, but they are all you need for inclusion in Google and other search engines.

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Should You Ever Buy Links? You may be tempted to buy links as a way to increase your rankings or get your blog into Google. I do not recommend this. It can cause more harm than good, because Google can readily tell if your linkprofile is natural or not, and may penalize you for buying links. If you have money to spend on marketing, use it to create resources to attract links naturally (good content, giveaways, etc). This will do a whole lot more for your blog.

Step 2: Optimize Your Page Title For Every Blog Post You Publish

The title of each article is the most important factor determining how many people will read it. Why? 

It’s the headline people see on your blog and click to read the article

 

It’s the headline that will appear in Google search results It’s the headline that will appear on social media when your content is shared



The keywords you use in your titles are the number one factor that influence which search terms your individual blog pages rank for



When people link to your blog articles, they will usually use the title as the anchor text

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What Is “Anchor Text”? In a link, the words that are blue and underlined are called the “Anchor Text”. As per what you learned about PageRank earlier, in SEO terms a link is considered a “vote” for that article. That vote is contextual to the anchor text. This means that what keywords used in the link matter – they tell Google that this article is relevant to these words.

Once you install an SEO Plugin like the YOAST Plugin recommended earlier, you have the ability to adjust your blog titles easily.

As you can see in the picture above, the YOAST plugin provides an area where you can type a new title into the SEO Title field. Note that this will not change the title/headline of the post itself, only the title that is displayed in Google results. You have the headline writing guide I provided in the content marketing chapter. Use the templates to create powerful titles for every blog post you write and use the YOAST plugin to control exactly how your titles appear.

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Don’t Forget: If you want to experiment with your search results in Google as I mentioned in the previous chapter, make sure you use the keywords you are going after in the title of the blog post.

Step 3: Set Up Your Permalinks Each blog article you write has a Permalink. A permalink is the URL or web address that article resides at. You can control the words added on to the end of your domain name to specify the unique location of each article. For example my About Page is at: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/about/ This is important because the keywords you use in the permalink are relevant for what keywords that article ranks for in search engines. The combination of the title you choose for your blog article, the anchor text other people use to link to that article and the permalink you use for its web address (the URL), all contribute to how that blog article ranks. How To Change Your Permalinks Most advanced blogging tools have a simple permalink edit function.

In the picture above from my WordPress blog, you can see where I can change the permalink so it only contains the most important keywords for this article. Each blogging system has a default setting for how permalinks are controlled. The most important rule for you to remember is to include only the keywords you want that article to rank for in the permalink.

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My Secret Internal Linking Strategy One thing you can control is how you link to your own articles. One of the secret techniques I rarely talk about that I recommend you replicate is always link back to your previous blog posts in your new blog posts. For example, I strategically wrote a key set of definition pillar articles defining important terms in my industry such as “PageRank”, the “80/20 Rule” and “What Is A Podcast”. I wrote a blog post about each of these topics and whenever I refer to the subject in new content I always link back to my own posts. By thinking strategically during the early days of your blog you can write a series of the most important definition articles, and then link back to them over and over again as you write more over time.

Titles, Anchors And Permalinks The most important elements of your blog’s internal structure are: 1) Page Titles 2) Anchor Text 3) Permalinks All of these elements are within your control. Stay conscious of the keywords you want your pages to rank well for when you create titles, permalinks and link internally.

Coming Up Next: It’s Time To Bring In The Traffic You have all the pieces of the puzzle now. You know how to produce powerful content, you have a basic SEO framework and how to optimize the internal structure of your blog. Now the real work begins – it’s time to get out there and bring new readers to your blog. Scroll onwards to begin…

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STOP: Take Action Catch-Up Checklist Here is a checklist of tasks you should complete at this stage of this guide. Do these before moving on…

 Add Google Analytics to your blog so you can track your traffic growth  Create a sitemap using the YOAST plugin if you are using WordPress  Claim your blog and submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools  Review how your blog creates permalinks and make sure you are happy with the keywords you have used on pages you have created for your blog so far

 Check the title you have given your blog homepage and make sure that is the phrase you want your blog to rank for

 Go to Google’s Keyword Planner and do some initial research into what keyword phrases have traffic and create a content schedule of articles you could write to match the keywords

 Create a list of definition pillar articles you can write so in future you can link back to them in other articles

 Create your first incoming link by setting up your social media profiles so your blog is discovered by Google and appears in the search results

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Chapter Five: How To Market Your Blog We covered the internal structure of your blog in the previous chapter, which you have direct control over. Now we cover your external linking strategy, which is an area you ultimately have less direct control over. External exposure comes from other people linking to your content. Since you can’t force people to do things this is very much a dynamic activity that will require some time and effort on your part to succeed at. Hustle is the answer.

Tangible Traffic Is The Result That Matters Remember, Google is not your only source of traffic. When you attract links it’s not just about how that helps your search rankings, it also brings direct visitors to your blog immediately. I have found that while search traffic is great, it’s slow to build and is difficult to correlate directly to your marketing efforts since so many variables are at work. Exposure on other popular blogs, websites, social media and in newsletters deliver immediate traffic. You know exactly where that traffic came from, how many visitors there are, how long they stay at your blog and how many days, weeks, months or even years the traffic keeps coming (Google Analytics reports on all of these things). By focusing on a marketing strategy rather than just an SEO strategy to get links, you are not at the mercy of Google and how they think your blog should rank. The great thing about the strategies in this chapter is that you create multiple traffic sources with the same techniques. 

People click the links and come to your blog

 

People share your content on social media As you build a large regular readership those people tell others (word of mouth).

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AND links help your search rankings

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Ready-To-Use Link Building Techniques Now it is time to get down to business. Below you will find 100 marketing techniques designed to open up communication channels back to your blog. Some are simple, and others are more difficult and take time. It’s best to start with the simple ones to get some quick runs on the board, but remember that some of the biggest rewards are reserved for those willing to put in extra time and effort. I’ve included almost all of the marketing techniques I have experimented with on my blogs and websites, and a bunch that other people use too. New link building options open up every day, so don’t be afraid to expand beyond it. In the end, all of these strategies are simply about find your audience and giving them a reason to visit. Here we go…

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100 Blog Marketing Ideas You Can Apply Today This list is grouped into similar types of techniques. I’ve also focused on the easier techniques earlier in the list, and the more challenging and time consuming techniques towards the end. I wouldn’t expect you to execute every technique I’ve included – that is beyond what one person can achieve. What I suggest you do is start small, and work your way up the “success ladder”. Build on your previous results, stop using techniques that don’t work, keep using the ones that do and always work on a variety of link building techniques. Consistent actions will build all the momentum you need.

#1 - Ask For Opportunities From Friends And Family If you have friends, colleagues or family members who blog or own websites, ask if you can do some kind of collaboration that will result in a link from their site to your blog. But it MUST be relevant. You won’t get any benefits from a link on a blog that is irrelevant to yours.

#2 - Include Your Blog Link In Your Email Signature This really is a no-brainer technique. Do you send email? Of course you do, so why not use every email you send out as a little advertisement for your blog. Use the signature system in your email client to set it up so you don’t have to retype the link in every email. It should automatically append to the end of every email you mail.

Techniques That Leverage Your Writing Or Skill

#3 – Write Blog Posts Directly In Response To Other Blogger’s Posts I love this technique because it reminds me of the good old days when bloggers would link to each other all the time.

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Find bloggers who write about similar topics to your own. Make sure you pick individuals who appear to be interactive and responsive – they communicate with their audience and share other people’s work. When they write an article (or create a video or audio) and you are knowledgeable about the topic, create a blog post for your blog directly in response. Try not to just repeat what they wrote, add something, or even argue against their point of view. Then take your article link and send it to them. You can do so via social media, send them an email and leave a comment on their blog post. Here is the key part: If they respond, communicate with them and see if you can convince them to add a link to your blog post at the end of their article as a source of “further reading” on the same topic. If they decline, ask if they will share it on social media instead – they should definitely say yes to that. You can target more than one blogger with this technique using just the one blog post. Write a blog post in response to several other blogger’s work and then email them all following the steps above.

#4 - Write A List And Feature Top Bloggers In It As I introduced in the section on Pillar Articles, the “list” article format has always worked well to pull in traffic and encourage distribution. One of the smartest ways to apply the list format is to make a list of other bloggers or influential people in your industry. For example –   

Top 10 Most Attractive Cooking Bloggers The Top 7 Bloggers To Inspire You To Lose Weight The Best 50 Blogs About Real Estate Investment In America

Make sure you mention names, include a picture of each person listed, write something about them and link to their blog (they will receive a notice about the link if they are tracking incoming links). Once you finish send it to every person you featured in the list. They will be dying to know what you wrote about them and whom you decided to put in first place (hoping that they are number one of course). Use email and social media to let them know about your list and make sure you ask them to share the post via social media. You can even give them a tweet ready to copy and paste in the email to make it easier for them.

#5 - Write A List Featuring Not-So-Famous Bloggers

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This is exactly the same technique as above, but instead of targeting the same top people who always get featured in lists, pick lesser-known bloggers. People who are always featured in lists are less likely to be impressed and therefor share your list. If you focus on up-and-comers who have not had the same level of exposure, they will be more grateful to you for including them in your post. This is a good tactic because it helps surface quality bloggers other people may not have heard of. You don’t want your list to look like every other person’s list. This is also a great way to build relationships with other bloggers in your industry who are on the same journey as you, just starting out and looking to expand their audience. You can grow together and your top list blog post might just be the starting point for a relationship.

#6 - Email Other Bloggers And Say Thank You For Their Content Everyone who creates a blog LOVES it when they receive positive feedback, especially when the feedback is specific. Specific means you point out a certain article you just read and how you benefited from something in it. Perhaps say how you applied what you learned from them, and what happened as a result. Getting the attention of another blogger is the first step in getting exposure to their audience. The simple act of acknowledging and appreciating their work will open the door to opportunities. Many of the techniques I give you work best when you have people who know you and are willing to listen to your ideas. You can begin relationships simply by saying thank you.

#7 – Get Emotional And Write About People As I covered in the section on Pillar Content, studies of virality have shown that content that stimulates high arousal emotions – anger, fear, joy, lust, awe and surprise – is more likely to result in wider distribution. One of the best ways to test this theory is pick one of the high arousal emotions and make it the focus of a blog post that covers something current and popular in your industry. For example, in my industry I might complain how bloggers never link to each other anymore and everyone is so much more selfish compared to the early days.

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Obviously I have to be prepared to defend my point of view if I do this, but it’s a potential hot topic that will trigger discussion. Bear in mind after you publish your post you will very likely need to tell the people you wrote about that it exists or they may never find it. Send them a short email and let them know via Twitter or Facebook. If you don’t like the negative emotions, a blog post full of kittens in cute costumes can work too .

#8 - Offer A Free Service To Other Bloggers As A Case Study I believe this is one of the single best traffic techniques available to you today. It’s a simple idea – if you have a skill that you can apply to help other people, you offer it to other bloggers if they allow you to use them as a live case study to help other people too. The case study is shared on their blog. In my industry two people used this technique really well to basically launch their entire businesses – Derek Halpern and Clay Collins. Derek went from well-known blogger to well-known blogger, offering to critique their blog design and help them improve their newsletter opt-in rates. Clay did something similar, going from blogger to blogger doing a presentation about the most important web pages a blog should have. Both these guys offered their information in the format of a recorded live webinar, which is then shared on the blog that was critiqued. This gave them exposure to a new audience and framed them as the authority about a subject. The blogger gets to improve their site thanks to free consulting and the audience also learns how to improve their sites. It’s a win-win-win technique. The key element for this to work is that you have a valuable skill you can apply and share. Remember there are people who are not as advanced as you. While you might not feel super confident you have a skill to share, if you pick an audience at an earlier stage on the development curve, what might seem like common knowledge to you, is valuable to them.

#9 – Submit Articles To Other Blogs And Invite Guest Bloggers To Your Blog

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You probably already know about the idea to “guest blog” on other websites as a way to get traffic. This is a technique that gets your work exposed to new audiences on other blogs. The basic principle is that one blogger creates some content for publication on another blog. Google’s rep Matt Cutts (inset) has publicly stated that guest blogging is no longer a good link building technique for SEO purposes. That’s because spammers have taken advantage of the practice by publishing a lot of low quality guest posts. But guest posts are still a great way to get direct traffic through links, build your brand and reach new people. Just don’t rely on only guest posts as a way to boost your search engine rankings or you might struggle. Always produce your best quality work whenever you do guest writing. You have to impress the new audience so much that they come through and check out your blog. This also helps the person who hosts your guest post because they get amazing content for their blog. I have done quite a few guest posts over the years and am always happy with the results.

#10 - Write Original Articles For Authority Sites In Your Industry This is similar to the previous technique, but instead you target authority sites in your niche to publish your content on. For example, Dan Faggella a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu trainer and online marketer, gained massive exposure and credibility for his blog by contributing content to every leading Brazilian Jiu Jitsu magazine in his industry, both online and offline (you can hear his story in this podcast interview). Of course the top magazine sites won’t just take content from anybody, but

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you can work your way up to them by targeting the smaller, less known content sites. Find the relevant authority sites for your industry and see what the submission criteria is, or if you can’t find any, email an editor and ask.

#11 – Start A Group Writing Project I have to give full credit to Darren Rowse at Problogger.net for this idea. Darren regularly runs group writing projects where he invites his readers to submit content. Darren will make an announcement about a group writing project, state the subject and invite contributions. He creates a page dedicated to the project, explaining how it works and keeps adding new links as contributions come in. You can see an example of one of Darren’s group writing projects here – Lists - Group Writing Project Darren arranges prize sponsors who in exchange for providing some form of prize for the group writing project also receive publicity on Problogger.net. This technique works in almost any niche where there are enough other bloggers to support it. By acting as the host of a group writing project you gain links from the bloggers who participate because they link to your blog to tell their readers they contributed an article. If your project receives a lot of quality submissions you may end up with a fantastic resource of content stored at your blog. If you decide to implement this technique you must be prepared to proactively seek participants. You will need to personally invite other bloggers from your niche to contribute and offer enticements for them do to so. There has to be something in it for the participants and if your blog isn’t an authority yet links may not be enough – you may need to offer prizes to encourage participation.

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Research, News And Trends

#12 – Include Academic Or Scientific Data In Your Blog Posts Human beings love helpful information that is backed up with data. When you are new, people won’t know you or trust you. This is where academic research can really help. To put it simply – other people’s data can make you look very smart. You don’t have to be an academic or a scientist yourself to include data in your articles, just find data produced by other people and write about it in a way that is relevant for your audience. One of the methods I have used to do this is write down any relevant stories with research I read in books or magazines or websites, especially if the story triggers a thought about something relevant to my audience. I then include that story/data in my article.

#13 - Create A Survey And Share The Statistics Using your own data in content is even better. While you might not be a university professor, you can conduct research by circulating a survey. You can survey your existing audience, or if you don’t have enough people yet to get meaningful results, try asking in a popular forum or in social media. You can post your survey to multiple places, collect all the results, and then produce them in a powerful blog post.

#14 - Conduct Your Own Research and Publish Results Similar to a survey, you can go a little further and conduct research and then report it back to your audience. When I say research it can be something as simple as trying out a few different products and then reporting back your results. Or you might try a few different methods to achieve something. For example if you write about how to learn a language, you might try three or four different methods or products and then report back which was best and why.

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#15 - Maintain A Series Of “Reporting Back” Blog Posts To Track Your Progress A technique I have seen work really well is to maintain a series of regular “reports” writing about how you are going in your quest to do something. In my industry, many bloggers over the years have maintained income reports, stating how much money they make each month and where the money is coming from. It doesn’t have to be about money though. You might track and report your quest to lose weight, including how you are exercising, what you are eating, and daily tracking of your weight change. You could report on how you are going in your dating life, or your progress renovating your house, or what you are learning as you study to become a chef.

#16 - Track Trends And Write Articles About Hot Topics Many bloggers use this technique as their bread and butter for attracting traffic. Some of the biggest blog success stories today started off as news-breaking sites that grew and grew into massive media companies. By tracking current news and hot trends within an industry, and writing about the news quickly, you attract incoming links and your blog becomes a known hotspot for news about a certain subject. This technique suits those who have regular net access and can watch for breaking news all day long. The key to make this work is consistency, opinion, speed and frequency. You have to post fast, post often, share the latest news and offer your own unique spin on things to keep it interesting. Social media is definitely your friend with this technique, since most stories break there first. You are going to have to source news from social media and build a large profile for your blog on social media. Bear in mind this type of blogging is hard work. If you are going to be a news blogger, this should be your only focus.

#17 - Be The First Source Of A New Hot Topic The truly best news blogs don’t just repeat news, they source it and report on it first.

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If you can break a story – perhaps by being at the source of the news or through your unique contacts in an industry – you can do very well with the news blogging formula. The great thing about being first is that other blogs and news sites will reference you as the source. You can very rapidly build an audience because very large and popular sites link to you. The challenge is consistently breaking news. I personally wouldn’t be able to sustain this technique, but if it’s something you feel in a position to test, definitely give it a go, you might just create the next big news blog in your industry.

#18 - Write Or Do Something Controversial – Sue Someone, Be Sued, Write About Politics, Religion Or Sex Instead of breaking the news, how about becoming the news yourself! This is not a technique for everyone, but it can be the single most powerful traffic technique ever in terms of raw exposure. Everyone is drawn to a scandal. If you ever find yourself embroiled in one, and you have the kind of personality who can handle the heat by talking it up, then you have the perfect storm for big traffic. All of the most controversial situations, from sex scandals, to being sued or suing someone else, to extreme opinions about religion or politics – all of these subjects will garner attention. The problem with this technique is you might not want to foster the kind of image it creates. That being said, I have seen people use controversy successfully, writing about how they were sued and defending themselves. They can sometimes come off as a kind of hero.

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Social Media

#19 – Share Your Content On Social Media Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Tumblr all contain areas for you to showcase your content, create links and get visitors back to your blog. Each of these tools have entire courses and books written about how to use them for marketing purposes. If social media appeals to you, continue studying how best to use it. The easy steps you can take immediately are set up accounts with each service if you haven’t already, and list your blog URL in your profiles. You can start sharing your blog posts using these sites. Bear in mind that if you have no followers sharing your blog content is not exactly going to bring in a wave of new readers. Blogging and social media are very symbiotic. As your blog exposure increases, your social media following will too, and vice versa. That’s why it is important you pick one or two social media platforms you want to focus on from the start, and use them as a platform to both connect with other people and share valuable content (your blog content and other content from the web).

#20 - Share Images On Pinterest, Instagram And Flickr These are the three leading image-focused social networks and have massive user bases. You can publish your pictures and photographs on each of these networks, connect and follow people and share images. If I was going to pick only one to focus on, Pinterest would be it because it is the most structured for sharing, and thus gives you a better chance to reach new people. Spend thirty minutes in the evening exploring pictures and pinning them to your boards, and add your own pictures that point back to your blog posts. As with all social platforms you only get back what you put in. The more time you spend cultivating content and connections, the more people will discover you and find their way back to your blog.

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#21 - Participate In Relevant Groups Facebook, LinkedIn and most social platforms have what are usually called “groups”…  

LinkedIn Groups Facebook Groups

Groups are great because they are targeted. You can join groups related to subjects you blog about, or groups containing the type of people you focus on.

Just like with a Forum, you can’t just join the forum and place spammy links to your blog. You have to participate in the discussion, contribute advice and help people. Demonstrate your expertise whenever you can. That in turn will result in them taking more interest in you and discovering your blog.

#22 – Add Your Content To Reddit, Delicious And Stumbleupon Although these tools have dropped in popularity over the years (Reddit is still very popular), they are potential sources of traffic. Since it takes a minute or two to add your content to these platforms, this qualifies as an easy technique you can add to your marketing process after you publish each new blog post. 

Reddit is the self proclaimed “front page of the internet”. It’s a place where people share interesting things about all kinds of topics. Your can submit your blog content to reddit, just make sure you put it in the right category and that your content is interesting enough to warrant sharing.



Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that provides tools for users to bookmark their favorite sites, including a tag cataloguing system. Pages that

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get more bookmarks get more exposure across the site. 

Stumbleupon is a discovery tool that allows people to stumble upon good content. You can vote thumbs up or down to tell the service what content you like. Content that gets more thumbs up gets more exposure on Stumbleupon.

You can manually add your blog articles to all these services. If you also use them to share other people’s quality content your profile will rise in significance and thus you will have more power on these platforms.

#23 – Add Social Sharing Buttons To Your Blog Posts You have no doubt seen social media buttons on content across the internet. They appear as little buttons like the Facebook “Like” button, or the Twitter “Tweet” button.

Making social sharing links easy to access on your blog posts is a great way to encourage distribution of your content. It also makes it easier for you to share your own content on social media since you can just click the links after you publish a new article. During the early days it might be upsetting to see zeros or ones on all your counters, but trust me, as your blog audience grows your social sharing buttons will help you to reach new audiences. I use the WP Socializer plugin for WordPress to add social sharing buttons to my blog posts, however there are many more options, so look around.

#24 - Automate Twitter Tweets To Share Blog Posts Being active on social media is a huge job. While you can’t automate your live conversations with other people, it doesn’t hurt to automate a few “broadcast” type messages, sharing your previous blog posts during times when you are asleep for example. There are many tools you can find online to automate twitter tweets, the most popular being Hootsuite. All you need to do is sign up, then set up a schedule of the tweets to publish in the future. The great thing about doing this is you feature your previous blog content to your growing social media profile. I recommend you focus on automatic sharing of only the pillar content you produce that stays “evergreen” – it won’t date so if you tweet it out six months later it still provides value.

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#25 – Add A “Click To Tweet” Quote To Every Blog Post You Publish On my current blog post checklist for every new article, I have a requirement that I include a “click to tweet” link to share a good quote from the post.

There are many options for creating a click to tweet link in your blog posts. I currently use the Click To Tweet WordPress Plugin. Obviously this is designed to encourage your readers to tweet out your blog post. The great thing about it is you can see how well it works because you will be notified of the tweets in your twitter feed.

#26 - Ask Your Friends To Social Share Your Content When social bookmarking first rose to prominence thanks to Digg, then Delicious, Reddit and Stumbleupon (etc), bloggers would openly request people share their posts on these platforms. Today people are more likely to ask you to Tweet, Like or Pin since social media platforms have become the key distribution channels. Whatever the platform, don’t be afraid to openly request people share your content. You can do this individually, asking friends directly (this can work really well if you have friends who have significant social media followings), or you can simply leave a sentence at the end of your blog post asking for your readers to share (a “call to action”). I often ask people to social share when I send out an email newsletter to my blog content. It never hurts to ask!

#27 - Follow Trending Hashtags And Social Tag Your Related Articles Credit goes to social media kingpin Gary Vaynerchuck for this concept. Gary suggests rather than just blindly broadcasting to social media, instead follow the hot trends using #hashtags, which you can then jump on board with by tagging your own content.

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Instagram, Facebook and Twitter all use hashtags. If you search around you will find various tools for discovering trending tags, including Twitter’s own search tool.

You can then share your content – blog posts, pictures, videos, podcasts – whatever is relevant and use the appropriate hashtag. Your share will then show up in the tag stream with all those eyeballs watching it.

#28 - Establish Yourself As A Social Media Leader On One Platform This is going to seem incredibly obvious, but it has to be included as one of the most powerful modern day traffic techniques available. If you spend time on one particular social platform and work hard to establish a strong following (just as you do with your blog), it can become the most consistent source of traffic you have. If you have 100,000+ followers on Twitter or Facebook, the simple act of sharing your content on a regular basis will drive significant traffic back to your blog. Your following also grows more rapidly the bigger it gets (this is called compounding, which we cover later). It’s a smart practice to stick to just one social network as your main focus to begin with. Focus is key. Become an expert on one rather than a generalist on many.

#29 - Identify Highly Active Social Influencers And Help Them

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While you are busy growing your own online profile it helps to have connections with other social media influencers. In your industry there will be leaders on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. You should identify who they are and monitor what they do. Become familiar with their goals and aspirations so you can figure out how best you can help them. It might be something like helping them find a resource, researching a topic, connecting them with someone else, helping them to set up a new platform, volunteering at their event, editing a book, creating graphics, filming a video – whatever it is you are good at that is relevant to the leader you are attempting to connect with.

#30 – Make Friends With A Maven A “maven” is a highly connected individual and expert in their field. If a maven discovers you and likes you, it can lead to many good things. Mavens carry a lot of clout in an industry. When they endorse you, that clout is distributed to you, creating a halo effect. This means even if people have never seen your work before, because a maven endorses you, people assume you are good at what you do. That’s a powerful advantage. It opens doors, leads to connections with influential people, invitations to events and opportunities to collaborate. A maven will likely be a social media influencer, but that’s not necessarily always the case. A maven has high status in the minds of other people who have influence. By going to the maven, you cut straight to the top of the tree.

#31 - Use Klout And FollowerWonk To Find Targeted Leaders Klout and FollowerWonk are tools to help you identify people who have influence in the world of social media. You can use these tools to monitor how your social media followers interact with you, but more importantly, they can help you assess the “influence” of other people. The higher the “klout” score, the more power that person has in social media. By power I mean how engaged their audience is. This is an important metric because numbers can be deceiving. Just because someone has hundreds of thousands of

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followers doesn’t mean that those people actually care what that person shares on social media. You can use these two research tools to help you find social media influencers and mavens, or even just find other people doing similar things to you who have some kind of presence online.

#32 – Maintain An Active YouTube Channel This is definitely not one of the “simple” techniques for attracting traffic, but since YouTube itself is such a massive source of traffic it has to be mentioned.

I have several colleagues who rely only on YouTube as their core source of traffic. They post regular videos and then drive traffic from those videos back to their own blog or newsletter optin page. I can’t teach you everything you need to know about YouTube marketing here, but I do know the most important advice I can give you is to be consistent. Maintain an ACTIVE channel and you will be rewarded. For more advice on YouTube marketing I suggest you study the work of my friend Gideon Shalwick, who specializes in video marketing.

#33 - Create Parody Videos Video marketing, like blogging, follows many of the same content production rules. When you tap into the core emotions that trigger engagement and sharing, you can do really well. One of the best examples of this I have ever seen in terms of video marketing is the parody video.

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A parody is when you make fun of something well known. It’s great because you do not have to personally be well known and can piggyback on the notoriety of what/whom you are parodying. You can apply this to any industry. Pick whatever is widely known, whether it’s a person, or a technique, or an event or location – and then come up with an idea to make fun of it. Make the video and share it with a few key people. Ideally share it with the person you are making fun of and they will share it with their followers (assuming they are good sports and you don’t insult them too much!).

#34 - Create A Slide Presentation And Share It On SlideShare If you already create slide presentations there is no reason not to use this technique. Slideshare is a community where people share their presentations. It’s like YouTube for slides. What you may not know is Slideshare is commanding a lot of attention from business types. Small business owners, managers and even big business decision makers use Slideshare, which makes complete sense since that is where slide presentations are most widely circulated. If you need to get in front of business decision makers with your blog business, sharing slides on Slideshare is a very good idea. Like all social media platforms, slideshare has comments, liking and functions on similar rules of popularity. The more relevant, insightful and well designed your slide presentation, the better it will do on Slideshare.

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Traditional Traffic Generation Techniques #35 – Post In Forums This might be one of the oldest marketing techniques around, but it still works. Most forums have a function where you can add a signature where you can link back to your blog. Your signature is automatically included on any posts you make in the forum. Pick one forum about the same topic you write your blog about and then spend a little time each day responding to topics and creating new ones. When I started my blog I set aside 30 minutes at the end of every day to participate in forums. This not only helped my blog gain exposure, I also found it a great way to discover topics I could write about. You can weave a link or two directly to articles in your blog within discussions on forums. Be careful not to blatantly advertise your blog because forum moderators will delete your link or post. If you add some value to the discussion AND link to your blog article in reference to the topic, you can generate traffic.

#36 – Ask For Email Exchanges With Other Newsletter Owners You won’t find any other technique that can send you targeted traffic as quickly and in such significant amounts as newsletters. The challenge is convincing other newsletter owners to link to your blog. A simple way to start is do a “newsletter exchange” with people in your peer group. Don’t aim for the top players in your market, instead find people similar to you in terms of audience size, and ask to do a cross promotion. You write about their content in your newsletter, and they do the same in exchange.

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#37 - Create A Squidoo Page And Hub Page About Your Area Of Expertise Years ago Squidoo and Hub pages were staple tools for SEO. Nowadays since the links from these sites are “NoFollow” and Google doesn’t rank the pages as highly, people rarely consider them. That being said, it doesn’t hurt to have your content featured on these communities for the potential direct traffic it can bring in. Since they can be set up within an hour it’s a technique worth trying, especially if you have the content ready to go. My advice is to pick the biggest problem your audience has and create a page directly focused on solving that problem. Take some of your best content, ideally content not published on your blog (repurpose audio or video into text, or extract content from your newsletter or free reports) and create a page on each platform. Of course you should link back to your blog on the pages for further information.

#38 – Post High Quality Comments At One Leading Relevant Blog Too many bloggers take the traffic building advice “post comments” and go and leave nothing but crappy one-liners on other blogs. If you really want to build traffic using a commenting strategy you need to make an impact when you comment. There are two groups of people to focus on: 1. The author of the article you are leaving a comment on, and 2. The people who read the article and comments To truly impact these people you need to present ideas when you comment. Don’t just compliment an article, compliment it and extend upon it by talking about an example from your life. If you disagree, explain why you disagree with an argument that makes sense, not just an insult or blanket statement with no evidence. If you know a particular blog has an audience who would benefit from your blog, aim to be the first person to leave a comment on each article and become prolific. If you show up everywhere on a blog and present smart ideas I guarantee the author will take notice of you, as will his or her readers. I certainly recognize and appreciate the regular comment makers on my blogs and take more notice of their blogs as a result. Comments are better when they are conversations, not broadcasts. Reply directly to another commenter, or the author, as if you are sitting with them at a café talking to each other.

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It can be a slow process, but commenting still works.

#39 – Make Lots Of Comments Across A Range Of Smaller Blogs The problem with commenting on the large blogs is that your comment is lost in the flood of conversation. As with many traffic techniques, often it’s a smarter practice to go after the lesserknown blogs and interact in the comments there. The smaller blogs may not have as large an audience, but when you leave a comment you know it gets read. The author appreciates the comment more, and because you are not competing with all the other comments, your comment stands out. This results in engagement. Don’t forget that small blogs grow, and you may find yourself benefiting from all the comments you leave on a site that increases in traffic over time.

#40 – Submit Your Site To Directories Directories will not send you much traffic, if any at all. The links won’t do anything for your search rankings either. With that being said, there may be certain directories in your industry that carry some clout because people rely on them to find good information. The one good thing about directories is you just need to fill out a form to submit your site and get it listed. Easy. If you decide to submit your blog to directories, write a compelling title, description and keyword list relevant to your blog, so you give yourself the best chance of pulling in some traffic.

#41 – Submit To Blog And RSS Specific Directories There are directories that focus on blogs only. I wouldn’t expect much in terms of quality links or exposure for your blog from these directories either, but they can help you find similar blogs to yours. TopRank maintains a list of Blog and RSS directories you can submit your blog to. Blog Catalog has been around for years and still maintains an active blog specific directory you can add your blog to.

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Keep these sites in mind when you need to find other blogs similar to yours.

#42 – Submit Content To EzineArticles EzineArticles.com is a site where you submit original content and make it available for others to use. In exchange for your content, you get to include a signature, much like a forum signature, including a link back to your blog. When your content is published, your link is included too. While EzineArticles.com itself doesn’t get as much traffic as it once did due to changes to search engine algorithms, it’s important to remember that it’s not just about search traffic. Articles you submit to the site may be picked up and placed on other blogs, published in email newsletters, in print magazines and other offline media. In short, you never really know where your content may end up, so it’s still worth experimenting with this site. I recommend you start by creating ten unique articles and publishing them on EzineArticles.com. Make sure these are not the same articles you publish on your blog. They have to be different. Try and keep them short – 500 to 700 words is a good length, so you should be able to write five articles in two-to-three hours.

#43 – Spend Time Answering Questions On Quora And Yahoo Answers Quora and Yahoo Answers are popular question and answer community sites. While a link on these sites won’t likely do much for your SEO, many of the Q&A threads rank really well for very targeted search phrases. Chances are questions related to your blog topic are being asked on these sites. If you go in and provide helpful answers, with the occasional link back to one of your blog posts for more info, you can bring in a source of highly targeted traffic.

#44 - Write Reviews At Amazon.com And Epinions.com And Link To Your Blog Posts Amazon.com and Epinions.com contain millions of products, and you can leave reviews on any of them.

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If you run a product related blog, leaving reviews of the products you cover at these sites and then linking back to your own blog review for more information is a brilliant way to bring in very targeted traffic. As always, you can’t just leave links back to your site all over the place and expect to get away with it. If you write quality reviews on Amazon and end them with a curiosity link like – “Check out this blog post for a video review of the product” that’s a pretty compelling lure. Amazon is almost always going to rank in the top results for product related searches. This is a great technique to piggy-back on that search traffic. You won’t get thousands of visitors, but you will get very targeted visitors.

#45 - Review Someone Else's Product If you want to get the attention of a certain person one of the best ways is to write them an email with the subject line “I bought your product”. As someone who sells products I always pay extra attention to an email from a person who bought something from me. I value people who value my work. If you want to get some incoming traffic to your blog, buy a product from someone who has the audience you want to get in front of, write a proper review of it, including pictures and video if you can. Then email the product creator showing them your review and asking if they are willing to share the review (which is promotion for their product, so they obviously should!). Not only will the possibly share the review via social media and their website, they might make your review a permanent part of their marketing sequence, sending you a steady stream of ongoing traffic.

#46 - Blog About Unusual eBay Auctions This technique won’t suit every topic, but it can be a great strategy if it fits your blog. EBay auctions are compelling and by sharing the best or most interesting, you will attract attention to your blog. In fact you could even start a blog that is just about surfacing the best eBay auctions in a certain category and publishing them to your blog.

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The really controversial auctions – like someone selling space on their forehead to place a tattoo as an advertisement – go viral. If you are the first person to break news of these kind of auctions, you have yourself a viral blog post.

#47 - Run A Charity Drive Here’s a technique that helps other people at the same time as helping you attract traffic. Come up with a charity cause you want to help and a goal to work towards. Ask for donations, or contributions of some kind, or say you will do something or donate a certain amount if people share your campaign. It doesn’t have to be much. You might say for every Facebook like your charity drive blog post generates you will donate $1. Or perhaps ask for comments, or get really ambitious, ask people to write about your charity drive on their blog. I previously ran a yearly charity drive on my blog to raise money to sponsor a child through World Vision, and later two children. I asked for donations and for set amounts of $25 or $100, I would offer rewards – like a link in the blog post. This is a technique that is more likely to return a positive response when you approach other bloggers because it’s less about you and more about the charity.

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Repurposing Content #48 – Repurpose Your Articles Into Audios, Videos And Vice Versa One of the great challenges of modern internet marketing is the idea that you have to place your content on every platform out there to stand a chance. Looking back over the traffic techniques I have already presented and it’s clear you have a lot of options for where to publish your work. One of the simplest methods for extracting more value from what you already do is to repurpose your existing content into other media formats. 

If you write blog posts, they can be turned into spoken word podcasts and video slide presentations.

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If you do a podcast, it can be transcribed into text and turned into a video presentation and a slide show.

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If you do videos, the audio can be extracted for a podcast and the words transcribed into text for an article.

I suggest you hire a virtual assistant to help with repurposing. Start small, aim to just repurpose one piece of content per week and then take that content and circulate it on the relevant social media (YouTube for video, iTunes for Podcasts, SlideShare for slides, and so on).

#49 – Repurpose And Compile Previous Content Into Lead Resources To take the previous technique to the next level, you can collect several of your previous resources and compile them into new larger resources. For example, a series of ten blog posts can make the foundation for a 30-page free report you give away in exchange for joining your email newsletter. You can collect ten videos and put them all on one page of your blog as an online course. The idea here is you take various pieces of your previous work to create larger, complete solution resources, which you make available all in one download or location.

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#50 - Create Autoresponder Series That Links Back To Your Blog Posts Another way to get leverage from your previous work is to use an email autoresponder to drive traffic back to your blog posts. Create an email newsletter that features emails that link back to your blog posts. You then schedule those emails to go out automatically over time. As people join your newsletter they go through your email sequence in the order you set up, clicking through to discover your old blog posts. Obviously this technique works best if you focus on sending people back to your evergreen pillar content so it’s not dated. I had an automatic newsletter that had 50 emails in it set to go out over a year, one email per week. Some of those emails were self-contained lessons, others linked back to my previous blog posts. I used that automatic sequence for over three years but only had to set it up once.

Publicity And Networking #51 - Interview Someone And Ask Them To Share It Interviews are one of my favorite content creation techniques because they have marketing built right in. When you interview someone you create content for your audience. You also help the person you are interviewing reach more people. You gain traffic when they share the interview with their audience. That’s win-win-win. The one challenge with this technique is that some people have been interviewed so many times they won’t share your interview with their audience. You should be able to get most people to at least share the interview they did with you via social media. However, if you really want to ramp up the traffic from this technique you should aim for people who are likely to email their newsletter or write a blog post about the interview.

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For that sort of outcome to happen you need to interview people who are rarely interviewed. It needs to be something special for them. If they are truly excited about the interview you did with them, they will tell everyone about it. Interviews can be text based, where you send the questions via email. You can record an audio to create a podcast interview, or even do a video interview. I use Skype with Call Recorder for Mac to record all my interviews.

#52 - Get Interviewed On Top Blogs Interviewing other people is great, but it’s even better when you are the one being interviewed because you are presented as the expert to a new audience. There has to be a reason to interview you. Some kind of hook or angle or story that makes you an appealing case study. Convincing someone to interview you is easier when you can show other interviews you have done. As with many of the techniques I have presented so far, if you start with the smaller bloggers who are not bombarded by requests all the time they are more likely to be interested in interviewing you. You can work your way up to the big shows as you gain more exposure. The one exception to this rule is if you have a really powerful and fresh story to tell. I’m always keen to interview people on my podcast if they have done someone amazing that doesn’t sound just like every other person I have interviewed before.

#53 - Get Interviewed On Top iTunes Podcasts The same technique used above with blogs, can be applied to all the relevant podcasts in iTunes. Pick the category that best matches your industry and then work your way down seeing which podcasts have guests on, then email the owner and ask if you can be a future guest for an interview.

#54 - Get Interviewed On Top iTunes Newsstand Magazines Now this is a technique that is so fresh no one is doing it. Take the same principle from the previous two techniques, but instead approach the publishers of relevant magazines in the iTunes Newsstand.

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These publications are dying for fresh content and since it’s very unlikely that people approach them directly, you stand a very good chance of receiving an affirmative reply when you email asking to be featured, assuming your story is a good one. For maximum results, get yourself interviewed on blogs, podcasts and magazines and that may just be all you need to get your first 1,000 readers to your blog.

#55 - Promote Your Blog Offline I’ve read about some crazy people who take this technique quite far – like changing their legal name to the name of their website – but you don’t have to be quite that drastic! Consider decals on your car with your blog domain name, or advertising via a billboard, or sponsoring an event or team that has the target audience your blog focuses on, like a local basketball team if you blog about basketball for example. Offline promotions are limited only by your creativity. There are many established advertising media, some of which might be out of your financial range – like television and radio – but there is no reason why you can’t think local to reduce costs.

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#56 - Circulate A Press Release Manually When I was growing my proofreading company before I was a blogger, I wrote press releases following the “who, what, where, when, why” formula (cover each in your press release). I then looked up publications I wanted to get into, found the contact email for various editors or journalists, and then emailed them my story. The end result was three stories in local magazines and even one in the biggest newspaper in my city. I was surprised how easy this actually was. If you have a good angle – a hook – that grabs there attention they will be eager to write about you.

#57 - Pay For A Premium Press Release Circulation Service If you have a good story that worked well locally, you can expand your reach globally by using a press release distribution service. PRWeb.com offers distribution, however they are not free. They do have a large network and many journalists monitoring their releases, so your results can be amazing…or you might get no result at all. Make sure you go in with the very best story you can coin around your blog (think human interest) so you do not waste your money, and track your results – see what links you generate and what caliber of site they show up on.

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#58 - Hire A Publicist To Drum Up Press Coverage Publicists are not cheap, but publicity can be the most significant source of traffic you will ever have. The beautiful thing about a good press campaign is that once it gains traction it will spin off into more and more publicity. One appearance on TV can turn into radio, newspaper and magazine coverage, not to mention all the online coverage points like news sites, blogs and in social media. A publicist gives you the advantage of someone who has contacts within the media industry and experience coming up with stories that will grab attention. If you have a big release coming up – a new book for example – that is the right time to hire a publicist. One successful book launch can cement you as a leader globally, and it won’t happen without having lots of media talking about you.

#59 - Cultivate A Relationship With A Journalist/Columnist Cultivating a relationship with a journalist, who writes for a large publication in your industry, is a very smart idea if you believe you have something coming up that they will be interested in. If you write about technology startups (or you have one) for example, getting one of the Techcrunch writers as a friend, could lead to coverage on the mega-blog. Often one story on Techcrunch can be enough to kick-start a rush of publicity as other blogs, websites and newspapers feature your story. Relationships are key, so make friends and offer help to key writers now and when it comes time to promote something it will be that much easier to ask.

#60 - Cover An Event Via Your Blog Robert Kingston, who was one of my writers at Small Business Branding when I owned that blog, attended an event called Mplanet, which was a technology, Internet and business related conference held in Florida. Robert was invited to the event to do blog coverage and given a free press package. This was the result of a relationship he established, via blogging, with one of the people involved in organizing the event. You don’t have to be invited to do coverage, just show up at an industry specific event, conference, party, show or performance and blog what’s going on live as it happens (remember to bring your camera!).

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If you decide to do this be sure to email the event organizers and let them know your plans. You may be given special press access and, more importantly, your blog may gain some extra links and coverage from the official site for the event, or any other bloggers interested in the event. Be sure to use the right #hashtags too when you share all your pictures and stories on social media.

#61 – Attend Conferences/Networking Events And Meet Bloggers Attending events and meeting people in your industry, including other bloggers, podcasters, company representatives and celebrities, is the single best way to foster relationships. Nothing beats face-to-face contact. If you attend an event or even just a local gathering with other bloggers or famous people, take advantage of the chance to photograph, record an audio interview, or if you have the capabilities – capture some video of the event. Once you post the media to your blog there is a good chance the target of your camera lens or microphone will link to your post and possibly many other bloggers if the person is famous enough and/or the interview content is interesting.

#62 - Join A Mastermind Group When I started blogging I noticed an interesting phenomenon (in hindsight at least!). My blogging peers – people with blogs about similar topics as mine “growing up” at the same time – would monitor each other, share links, chat on skype and informally mastermind with each other. What I didn’t realize at the time was how good a traffic building technique it was. We all helped each other, linked to each other’s content, and whenever you had a new product to promote you had all these other top bloggers ready and willing. I’ve seen this happen today as well. All the fresh faces in my industry are working together, sharing each other’s work and in some cases, forming mastermind groups. While masterminds are great for holding each other accountable and solving problems, in my opinion the real power behind them is the potential for collaborations and exposure.

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Of course you might not be able to get into a top mastermind group, but you can form one yourself and hand-pick some other quality bloggers of a similar size in your industry to be in it.

Create Significant Resources To Give Away #63 - Create A “How To Start” Page When I started blogging I created a page I called “Feature Articles”. It was a page on my blog that I linked in my navigation bar to highlight my best work so I could make a good first impression to new readers. Today this page has evolved into what is commonly called a “How To Start” page. On this page you guide a new visitor through your blog, explaining what they should read first, and clearly present each of the key content areas you offer. My current how to start page is actually a course. It’s a course I created by connecting all my previous content hidden away in the archives of my blog. You can see it here – How You Can Start. These pages tend to become traffic magnets because they are shared through social media and linked to. Obviously yours might be a bit empty to begin with if your blog is new, but you can start and add to it as you create more content. It’s worth doing this technique no matter what because it helps keep visitors on your site longer.

#64 - Create A Video Course Just as you can write a series of emails and deliver them as a course, you can do the same with a series of videos. The key is to connect the videos into a series to solve one specific problem your audience has. You can then display all the videos on the one page, or you might release them one at a time and then compile on them on page as you go. I also suggest you encourage people to join your email newsletter to get the next video in the series as you produce them, helping to grow your email list.

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#65 - Create A Newsletter Series Other People Can Distribute One of the techniques I used in my affiliate program was to create articles and let my affiliates use them in their newsletters. You can write an article that teaches how to do something, link through to your blog or newsletter or product at the end, then make the article available for use in newsletters. Take this technique to the next level by approaching a person with a newsletter and asking if you can write a series of free content for them, which they release via their autoresponder automatically.

#66 - Create An Infographic And Make It Shareable Infographics have been very popular recently. They display a lot of information, usually mixed in with statistics, in an appealing visual style. You can use this technique by conducting some research to gather interesting data about a hot topic in your industry. Then have a designer create an infographic to present the information.

You then make your infographic available to anyone to embed on their blog or website. When they embed it, your blog is linked back as the source. All it takes is just one very popular infographic and you will have viral exposure for your blog.

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#67 - Create An Awards Badge This might be an older technique but it still works well, especially if you make it an annual event. Come up with some kind of award for your industry, which you might give once off to specific bloggers, or perhaps hold an annual awards and pick a series of winners, or list a top 10 or top 100. Produce a quality awards badge graphic that you give to any of the winners or people in the top list, and offer them code to embed the badge into their blog design. The badge links through to the awards page on your blog, so you receive exposure and your winners earn credibility. That’s win-win.

#68 - Create A Widget A widget is software that bloggers can place on their blog, usually in the sidebar. There are thousands of widgets, from map widgets that tell you what bloggers are near you, to traffic widgets that tell you how much traffic your blog has, or picture widgets that rotate photographs from your online photo album. Widgets are a fantastic way to generate incoming links. Obviously when you create a widget it should link back to your blog as the source of the widget. This means that every single person who places that widget on their blog links to you. Many bloggers place widgets in their sidebar, which means your widget could be on display from every single page of their blog. You should not let your lack of technical skills stop you from creating a widget if you have a good idea for one. You can look to freelancing sites like Elance.com as sources of contract programmers, or ask around your network.

#69 - Create A Blog Theme Design And Give It Away If you are like me you love looking at blog theme designs. You probably spent a while searching around to pick a theme for your own blog. To attract traffic from blog themes, hire someone to create a custom theme that you give away for others to use. The theme contains a line in the footer to show that it’s your design, including a link back to your site to get the theme. If you create a tailored theme specifically for people in your niche, you may end up with thousands of people using it.

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#70 - Create A Plugin And Give It Away Plugins add functionality to popular software programs. The WordPress blogging platform is a good example as there are literally hundreds of thousands of plugins available that extend what the popular blogging platform can do. There are entire businesses based on plugins that cost money, but most are given away for free. By giving away a plugin, you gain traffic because people link to your site as the source of the plugin. When you produce a popular free plugin to help people do something specific to your industry, you gain credibility and exposure. You will need to hire a developer to create your plugin for you, but you will be surprised that plugins do not cost much to make if your idea is not too complex.

#71 - Run A Competition And Ask For Shares As Entry Competitions are a great traffic technique. You give away prizes, which your audience loves, and you gain traffic because people link to the competition. To make this technique work really well, you can make it a condition of entry that people share the competition via social media. You can also invite people to offer prizes, for example free courses, or software, or even physical goods. This way the people who offer prizes gain exposure and you get free prizes. When this technique works well, it really works well. Everyone wins – competition winners, the people who offer prizes, and you as the source of the competition.

#72 - Offer Games, Quizzes or Puzzles For some types of blogs, offering a “sticky” service like games, quizzes or puzzles can keep people coming back for more. It also helps bring new people as current visitors look to bring their friends to involve them in games. If you search around you can find websites that allow you to embed their games into your site. There are literally thousands of options, however you shouldn’t add just any games – you need to find something that suits your niche. You might even hire someone to create a unique game if you have an idea for something fun for your audience. Having a unique game is a great way to open doors to new traffic as you can approach other bloggers to try your game and then ask them to share it if they like it.

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#73 - Create A Magazine In The iTunes Newsstand The iTunes Newsstand is an underutilized source of traffic for bloggers. Magazines are very similar to blogs, so coming up with content for one is not hard. You will need some help to set up the app to go into the Apple Newsstand, and a designer to help with the layout with the magazine, but the rewards in terms of branding and exposure – and even income from advertising, subscriptions and product sales – can make it worthwhile. As I type this there is not much competition in the Newsstand, but plenty of people using their iPads and iPhones looking for magazines. You can reach new people simply by having a magazine in the newsstand. I foresee in the near future most companies having a magazine as a standard marketing tool. Get in now while it’s still early and not too crowded so you can lock in a leadership position in your industry.

#74 - Create An App For Your Blog Apps are hugely popular, as you probably know. You can capitalize on their popularity by creating an app version of your blog. You might release your blog/podcast/video content in your app for ease of consumption, or you can use your app to offer special app-only content or even provide a service related to your industry. If you have an idea for an app that people in your industry would love, this technique can be a very powerful way to reach a lot of people. You will need a developer to create the app for you, which can cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on the complexity of your app.

#75 - Develop Software And Give It Away Like creating a plugin, or blog theme design, or app, creating some kind of software that helps your audience and giving it away from your blog is a great way to build your traffic.

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The software might be a simple utility related to your market, something you have wanted to create for yourself. This technique works great when you really understand what your audience wants and then give it to them in a software tool. Software is not something most bloggers go to the trouble of creating, so by offering the tool you stand out and attract incoming links.

Create Even More Significant Resources #76 - Start A Podcast If you know about blogging, chances are you know about podcasting too. A podcast is like an Internet radio show that can be time-shifted (listened to at any time unlike the radio). You can read my longer explanation if you have never heard of podcasting before - What is a Podcast and How Can I Use One? I jumped into podcasting shortly after starting my blog in 2005, more out of curiosity and a chance to hear my voice in public – I am a closet radio-jockey wannabe. Initially I used the voice recorder on my portable MP3 player with a headset and microphone, which would record my voice in .WAV format. I converted the .WAV file into an MP3 using iTunes and uploaded it to my blog. I have since progressed to use software along with Skype to record live interviews (I use Call Recorder for Mac presently). When I was on PC I used a free open source program called Audacity to edit the file, add some intro music I found on AudioJungle, used iTunes to convert it into MP3 and then upload to my blog. Today I use Garageband that comes with Mac to edit my podcasts. The PowerPress plugin for WordPress helps you customize the output on your blog. For more details, including exactly how I conduct my interviews for the podcast, read this post - How To Conduct A Quality Podcast Interview In 7 Steps Each podcast I create is downloaded initially between 1,000 to 2,000 times during the first week or two, and then continues to be downloaded at rates of a few hundred a month per episode.

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Every month there are thousands of people listening to my voice. It’s a great way to increase your exposure and since you host the podcasts from your blog you build links each time you release a podcast. If done right, your podcasts will syndicate across the web via podcasting directories and services. ITunes is the most popular and can account for upwards of 90% of a podcaster’s audience. It’s important you get your podcast show into iTunes, here are instructions from iTunes on how to do so. I don’t have the space to cover all of podcasting in just this one section, however as an initial goal if you aim to produce one show a week and make sure you appear in iTunes, that is a great start. Don’t forget that podcast interviews are a great way to meet important people in your industry too. There’s nothing like having half an hour of personal time with a person to create a relationship.

#77 - Write A Free Report This is my favorite traffic technique. Free reports have done more for my business than any other method. A powerful free report acts like a “bible” that you use to lead a movement behind whatever it is you do. My “bible” is the Blog Profits Blueprint, which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times and every day reaches new people. A quality free report provides an A-to-Z guide on how to do something. It’s comprehensive, educates and provides steps to create a result. It has pictures, tells stories (ideally your own case study of success) and instantly stamps you as an authority on that topic. If you feel writing is your strongest content creation skill and you have the confidence to teach something important, start work on your free report immediately. Give it away in exchange for joining your newsletter or even plan an entire product launch behind it (more on this coming up). The Internet business coach, Rich Schefren, conducted one of the best case studies of using free reports.

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Rich started by releasing a hugely popular report called “The Internet Business Manifesto”, followed it up with a sequel report called “The Missing Chapter” and a few months later came up with what he called “The Final Chapter”. All the reports were released at and discussed from his blog, Strategic Profits. Rich reported that he generated somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 to 3,000 links during the launch of his first manifesto. Although he did have the advantage of partnerships with many prominent marketers to help promote the release of his first report, you can see the potential for building links to a blog centered on the release of special reports. Rich Schefren did well because his reports were designed to zero in on the problems of a specific group of people, a group he understood very well. He had a message that directly addressed a major sticking point for his industry and he was the first person to highlight it and then teach how to solve it. Quality free reports will go viral, and act as a “pillar” source of traffic for years to come (I still have people come to my blog every day for my report, more than seven years on since I released it).

#78 - Write A Book Extending on the previous technique, a book is a fantastic brand building tool, can drive traffic back to your blog, and if you really nail a good book launch, can cement you as a leader in your industry. A book takes longer to write than a free report, so you might want to start with the report and if it goes well, expand it into a book. Bear in mind there are strategic considerations with a book that you want to factor in. It’s more than just something you throw out there hoping to get traffic – it could be the biggest marketing tool you have in your business, so you want to get it right.

#79 - Create A Mini-Course In Email, Audio Or Video If a book or free report are a little too daunting right now, creating a mini-course sequence of articles, audios or videos is a great “lead” resource to start with. In today’s online marketing world people talk a lot more about “epic” content of high quality. A mini-course is a perfect example of this.

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You write ten “lessons” as blog posts, include a nice layout, pictures and multimedia, link them all together and then add them to your email sequence for people to work through. This helps build your email list, sends you traffic as people share the lessons and gives you your first potential “bible” resource – something that people see as a market leading course. Bear in mind you can’t just create a mini-course and expect people to find it if you have no existing audience. You have to go out there and tell people about it. It is easier to ask people to check out something you have done if it is of epic value.

#80 - Run Google Hangouts Or Webinars Google Hangouts and Webinars combine all formats of content – written, audio, visual – and even include you in person if you have your camera on. While one Google Hangout won’t suddenly drive a huge amount of traffic, if you find you enjoy the webinar style format of presenting, stick to it. The great thing about doing a webinar is you can save the presentation as a video. Then you can then do all the repurposing I suggested in a previous technique, creating a Youtube video, a text transcription, an audio podcast and the slides into Slideshare, all from the one presentation. You might create a series of webinars that you use as your mini-course, and eventually combine the text from it into your free report. There are plenty of options. If you do decide to use this technique focus on creating a brilliant presentation first, that is your most important goal.

#81 - Present Live At An Event If you like webinars and want to take the next step, get yourself up on stage at a live event. Nothing is more powerful in terms of connecting with people and presenting yourself as an expert than crossing that line at an event and talking on stage. Once you move from sitting in the audience to being on stage, you gain instant credibility and have a captive audience. Traffic can come directly from this as you mention your blog on stage, and from the status you earn as a result. People remember you talking on stage. People want to

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know you, work with you and are more willing to respond positively if you have the halo effect that comes from presenting live. You can start small with this technique. Run workshops in your hometown and see if you can get 20 people to show up. That is only a few steps away from standing up in front of thousands on stage.

#82 - Create A Community (club, forum, group) One of my favorite techniques for “passive” traffic is to create some kind of community element as part of your website. I once owned a forum that was attached to a news site I created about a collectible card game. Hundreds of guys would log into my forum every day to trade, buy and sell cards, and talk about the game. Even if I did not publish a single article on the website itself that day, the traffic kept coming. On top of the consistent traffic, it also attracts more people. Members of the community invite others, increasing the value of your forum. Any time you can create a “sticky” web asset like a community that does not require you to participate, you have one of the best models for creating a passive income stream. Of course the challenge is how to get people to show up and keep using the community tools you offer. I suggest you only apply this technique once you have a few dedicated readers. A forum can start small – just a handful of regular readers who check in every day can be enough to get things started.

#83 - Create An Affiliate Program An affiliate program can be one of the best sources of traffic you will ever have because you offer one of the best reasons to drive traffic to you – money. An affiliate program is not a beginner technique. You need something to sell – and it has to convert (actually sell), in order to convince affiliates to promote it. I mention the technique in this guide (along with the next two techniques) to show you some more advanced traffic ideas that become available as your online business expands. I use Ontraport to run my email newsletter, shopping cart and affiliate program. The system is completely integrated, so I can create products and give people affiliate links to send traffic to my pages, including pages on my blog.

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Over the years I have used Clickbank and 1shoppingcart to run my affiliate programs. There are many other options, including e-junkie, idevaffiliate and Infusionsoft, which like Ontraport is a full service option including an affiliate module. When you run an affiliate program you give tools like banners, text links, articles, videos, audios – virtually anything you want to – which your affiliates can use to send traffic to you using their unique tracking link. If they make a sale, they earn a commission (as high as 100% in some markets – yes that means they make 100% of the ticket price because the person who sells the product profits from backend sales). To start with just having a quality free report and some text links your affiliates can use to send traffic works well. If you need help convince people to become your affiliate, read this – How To Gain Access To Top Affiliates.

#84 - Do A Joint Venture Promotion Or Partnership A joint venture is like an affiliate promotion on steroids. Instead of just giving a person an affiliate link and waiting for them to send traffic to you, a joint venture is a special coordinated effort between you and your affiliate. The key with this technique is a tailored promotion just for the audience of your partner. For example, you might –  

Create a special discounted offer just for their audience Conduct a live webinar just for their audience

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Give them a sequence of articles driving traffic to a special sales page, just for their audience

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Jump on a video together and co-present some content and an offer for your product

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Do a podcast interview and make a special offer just for their audience

I think you can see what I mean by a tailored offer. A joint venture doesn’t need to be about selling a product. You might agree to partner on a special content project. For example, many years ago Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com and I joined forces by collecting our content together to release a special report. Brian shared the report with his audience and I shared it with mine, resulting in shared audiences.

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You can take this technique as far as you want to, and if it works, try it again with another partner. Some of today’s biggest success stories are based on one person going from partner to partner, doing a special promotion for each one.

#85 - Do A Coordinated Product Launch This is the mother of all promotions – the product launch. The product launch is a combination of many of the techniques above, all rolled out over a short window of time to concentrate the effort, usually supported by many affiliates at once. The traditional product launch formula as made famous by Jeff Walker (hear his excellent interview in my Interviews Club), takes the long format sales letter approach, turns it sideways and makes it a month-long story. Product launches usually contain – 1. A sequence of content released over a one-to-two week period (such as videos, or a free report, or a combination of resources), designed to tell a story, educate your prospects and pre-sell your product 2. A small army of affiliates who ideally send your free resources out to their followers via an email list and/or blog all around the same time 3. Several top partners who you do special live webinars with to promote your launch 4. A coordinated “launch” to make sure your affiliates promote often, usually including a competition with prizes and leaderboard to encourage them to compete with each other 5. A time sensitive offer to encourage people to take action I break down the steps in the launch process in some detail in my other free report, the Membership Site Masterplan. Go to the chapter on the launch process to read my breakdown (I have done launches more than ten times).

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Techniques If You Have Money To Buy Traffic

Do You Have To Buy Traffic? I want to make it clear you do not need to spend any money on paid for traffic to reach your goal of 1,000 daily visitors. I never spent a cent to grow my blog traffic. It’s not that I am against it, but most of the time I did not have the budget for it. I had time and motivation, not money. Today the story is different and I will spend money on traffic because I have a system to make a return on investment from the money I spend (I can sell my products). Since you are just starting out there is a good chance you have little to no money to spend. That just means you will have to use “content” as your currency and invest your time instead of money. If you do have a little money to spend, I suggest you use it to create assets that will continue to bring in traffic. Do not spend it on once off traffic bursts that require ongoing money to “feed” the channel (such as Pay-Per-Click advertising) unless you have a means to earn a return on your investment. When I say an asset, I mean use your money to create or buy things – like free giveaways you can offer to your audience, tools, software, reports, videos, other blogs and websites – assets that once created or under your ownership keep delivering value over time.

#86 - Hire A Contractor To Produce A Resource To Give Away Many of the previous techniques mention creating resources, whether videos, or mini courses, free reports, software or blog themes – there are hundreds of options all which could deliver significant traffic. As you might expect, the more of these types of resources you create, the more traffic you bring in. The challenge is how to work on so many epic resources when you are only one person?

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While hiring itself is a challenging job, if you can find just one person who is talented at one thing you are not – say a video editor to turn your presentations into animated videos, or a designer to turn your articles into an amazing iTunes magazine, you can double your output. I’ve hired people to compile my blog posts and turn them into e-guides. I’ve hired people to write email sequences for me. I’ve hired people to create an app version of my blog. The great thing about spending your money on this sort of work is you create assets that bring in results for a long time. It’s not like advertising that stops working once you stop paying money. You pay once to create a resource that delivers ongoing value.

#87 - Buy A Blog Or Website That Already Has Traffic In my other e-guide, How To Buy And Sell Blogs And Websites For Passive Profits, I go into in some depth about how you can buy a blog or website that already has traffic and plug that into your online business. At one stage I bought another blog in a very similar industry to my existing blog. I had to spend $2,000 to acquire it, but after that I had an ongoing traffic stream that I used to make much more money from. This is a great technique because you buy an asset that can significantly increase your audience reach over night. Read over my e-guide before you attempt this technique however as it’s not a “simple” one by any means.

#88 - Buy Your Way To A Portfolio Of Blogs/Websites If it works once, why not keep doing it? Buying a portfolio of sites is one way to massively increase your audience reach, break into new markets, and increase the overall value of your blog business. You shouldn’t look at mergers and acquisitions as something only massive organizations do – you can too, just on a smaller, more manageable scale. If you want to get started, monitor what goes on at Flippa.com, the largest marketplace for buying and selling websites, and see what kind of sites are available that match your niche.

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#89 - Pay-Per-Click Advertising Pay-Per-Click advertising works, if you take the time to learn how to use it. Google AdWords, LinkedIn Ads – even niche sites with ads such as Plentyoffish.com – are available. The thing with buying ads on a per click basis is you need to have some way to recoup your money. Sending traffic to your blog just to get more readers is difficult to scale. You will end up spending more than you earn in return. Generally it is a better practice to purchase clicks and send the visitors to a free resource they get after joining your email list. Then you can use that list to make money and also send those people to your blog posts.

#90 - Paid Promotions On Twitter And Facebook Twitter and Facebook both have options where you purchase a sponsored message, which appear in various areas on their platforms. Like with Pay-Per-Click advertising, it’s a better practice to use these methods to drive traffic to some kind of email optin first, that way you can “capture” the audience and stay in touch with them. There’s nothing worse than spending money on advertising to send people direct to your blog only to have that visitor leave and never come back.

#91 – OutBrain You may never have heard of Outbrain. It’s a relatively new format of advertising that displays “relevant links” at the end of articles. Some of those links are from the same website, some are links to interesting content on other websites that people are paying to place there. The great thing about Outbrain is you are buying advertisements at the end of content to drive people back to your similar content. The medium and message match, so the engagement level is higher.

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#92 - Buy Ads On Other Blogs At BuySellAds.com BuySellAds.com is a display advertising network. Most of the sites there are blogs, which you can browse through and see how much traffic they receive. The great thing about the network is you can search by category, then find the sites that match your audience target, and go visit the site itself to see where your ad will appear. It’s very transparent, although you will never know how well a campaign will perform until you try it.

#93 - Test A Re-Targeting Campaign Re-targeting is huge right now. While it might seem confusing at first, re-targeting is actually quite simple. When a person visits your website a cookie is placed in their browser. If they leave your website without finishing the action you wanted them to take (buy a product, optin to your newsletter), you can run a re-targeting campaign, which will place banners on other websites they visit, encouraging them to come back to your site. It’s like your campaign will follow them around the web, repeating your message to bring them back. Since it often takes multiple reminders to convince someone to take action, re-targeting is a great way to increase conversion. It’s probably a bit too advanced for merely driving traffic to a new blog, but once you build some kind of back-end, like an email newsletter and products for sale, retargeting can really help. Google AdWords offers retargeting, as do dedicated services like AdRoll.

Big Marketing Ideas #94 - Optimize Your Blog For Mobile Mobile is obviously a huge channel for traffic. In fact, by the time you read this there are likely more people accessing the web through mobile devices than any other. Your blog must appear well on mobile browsers. Most modern blog themes today are responsive, which means you may not have to do anything and your blog will automatically format better for mobile.

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#95 - Incentivize Distribution For your blog to grow you need to reach new people. One of the best sources of traffic is referrals – your existing audience sharing your work with their network. Sometimes, as with Viral Marketing, sharing will occur because people want to enjoy the kudos they receive for being the source of something valuable. Viral results however are difficult to control. What you can control is what you do to encourage distribution by offering incentives. Many of the techniques I have covered in this guide involve creating something of value, giving it away, and then making sure people know about it. If you factor in some kind of incentive – a reward for sharing – you complete the circle that leads to traffic. Value creation, consumption and then distribution. That incentive may be money (affiliate programs), or prizes, or freebies, or unlocking more resources, or emotional manipulation (law of reciprocity), exceeding expectations (manage expectations first) or any kind of trigger that creates the action that leads to sharing. Ask yourself every time you produce something of significant value, is there a way to incentivize distribution of this content, and reach people who have significant influence.

#96 - Viral Marketing Viral Marketing, while difficult to control, has become something you can strategically pursue.

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Taken from the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger, here are the six secrets to contagious content: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Social Currency - How your peers feel about a particular idea, topic or brand Triggers - Tying your idea or product to common occurrences in daily life Emotion - Evoking deep emotional reactions Public - Increasing the visibility and recognizability of an item Practical Value - More useful information gets share more often Storytelling - The broader narrative that surrounds this idea, topic or brand

I recommend you view this fantastic infographic that breaks down each of these ideas and you will have a much stronger grasp of what causes content to go viral.

#97 - Guerilla Marketing According to the Wikipedia definition: “Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy in which low-cost unconventional means (graffiti or street art, sticker bombing, flash mobs) are used, often in a localized fashion or large network of individual cells, to convey or promote a product or an idea.” I recently had someone suggested to me that if I wanted to promote my blog I could do something silly, like wear a swimsuit with my blog address on it, paint myself blue and then jump into the local river and swim across it ten times (the local river is not something people usually swim in!). Of course I would film the event and fingers crossed, the police would get involved creating even more sensation. That’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek example, but that is the direction you take with guerilla marketing. It’s free, a little crazy and designed to grab attention.

#98 - Counterintuitive Marketing Counterintuitive marketing is a fantastic concept I was introduced to by Rich Schefren (you can hear him explain it in my two-hour interview with him as part of my exclusive interviews club). It simple terms, counterintuitive marketing is when you find an angle that is counterintuitive to whatever is the accepted practice in an industry. For example, you might go to the weight loss market and say…

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How to lose 30 pounds by eating more fat and exercising less. Think about your industry and what is the common advice everybody knows. Then think about how you can come up with an angle that is counterintuitive. You can apply your counterintuitive concept to your lead resources. Write a free report about it, create a video about it, do a mini-course about it – it really doesn’t matter, as long as the core message you use in the marketplace is counterintuitive to what is accepted practice. That is what will get you attention.

#99 - Write One Blog Post Every Day For A Month (Then Do It Again) Many of the best blogs were built off the back of what you might call “content sprints”. Several of the successful bloggers I have interviewed over the years explain how during their first year, since they had so much content inside their head to share, they focused on a big content goal – like writing one article every day for a month. Every traffic technique you do will bring people to your blog and it’s helpful if your blog is not empty when they arrive. You also receive more search traffic the more content you have simply because you can rank for more terms. I don’t recommend a “quantity” goal like this long term, but it’s a great place to start if you have a lot inside you that needs to get out. There’s nothing like thinking only about writing your blog for the first month to create something you are proud to share with the world.

#100 - Get On Oprah/Ellen (A “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) I’ll end this list of 100 traffic techniques with what you should consider as your big hairy audacious goal. In the past Oprah has been the pinnacle of exposure for most writers, and this can include bloggers too. Ellen of course is now the biggest day-time TV star, but you don’t have to see Ellen and Oprah as your big goal. Is there a “dream” outcome you’d like to achieve? It might be shooting a music video and having a top ten track, or winning a certain prestigious tournament, or making the cover of a magazine, having a number one podcast, or ten million views on your YouTube channel.

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In my case my big hairy audacious goal is to write a book that has mainstream impact across the globe, read by millions, and making a positive difference to their lives. I’ve always loved the message and wide spread readership that Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist has enjoyed, so it remains my benchmark for success. Whether or not I get there, I think it’s important to have a goal that seems too big. Dreaming big is what makes it possible. You can only reach as far as you can see yourself reaching.

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What Techniques Would I Start Fresh With Today? You now have one hundred traffic techniques ranging from easy to those that take months to execute. If you were to ask me what techniques I would begin with if I was starting a brand new blog today without any existing advantages, this is what I would do…

1. I would plan my first free report and come up with ten-to-twenty chapters. 2. Those chapters would be the first articles I would fill my blog with. 3. I would set up all my social media accounts, follow 50 key leaders in my market and begin publishing my blog posts to the social platforms. I would begin to interact casually with the key people so they become aware of who I am. 4. Once the blog post chapters are done I would collect them together into a document, add pictures, a table of contents and then make the report my incentive for joining my email list. 5. Once my report is beautiful and full of value I would contact as many other bloggers and social media influencers as I could find in my niche and send them a copy (if you can include them in it, even better). These are the people I had already begun communicating with, so I would not be a stranger. If they replied saying they like it, I would ask them to share it by giving them a page on my blog where they can send people to download it. 6. I’d plan out a blog content schedule for a month, aiming to produce three articles per week. Those articles would target specific bloggers by replying to their posts, making list posts about people in my industry, and conduct some interesting research to include in my articles. 7. As my blog became more established I would begin sharing my report with certain key podcasters and ask if they would like to interview me about it.

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Of course before I do all of this I would make sure my blog setup was done correctly, as per the instructions outlined in this guide (plugins, sitemaps, permalinks and titles, etc). From there I would continue to test various techniques. If something works, I do it again. If it doesn’t, I try something else. The goal here is to leverage my main free report as the best first impression I could ever make and the blog as the platform I use to continue an ongoing dialogue with my ever-growing audience. Once the platform is built and your following is growing, what you do next is up to you - Product sales, coaching, consulting, services, affiliate marketing, advertising – all of these options are available.

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Chapter Six: Leverage – How To Get The Most Out Of Your Traffic Own The Traffic: Your Email Newsletter As you will discover as you build your blog and online business, there is no perfect traffic source and nothing lasts forever. Google changes their algorithm, competitors come in and erode your advantage, relationships with key people end, fads come and go – everything changes and you can’t control it. What you can control are your repeat readers who subscribe to your content. As I stated earlier, this guide does not focus on conversion, however I am going to recommend you add one conversion tool to your blog from day one… An email newsletter. When a person visits your blog and joins your email newsletter, you have just converted them into a repeat reader. Repeat readers deliberately choose to continue to receive your content – they “opt-in” in exchange for the value you provide. They might do so via liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter, subscribing to your RSS feed, or by bookmarking your blog. The problem with all these tools is you do not control them. Facebook decides when and how to display your content. Twitter is a noisy medium and again they are in control of how they display your content. RSS feeds and bookmarking are weak subscription mechanisms because most people do not use them on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong – you should use all these tools – but email is by far the most responsive subscription mechanism.

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For most people on this planet who use the internet, checking email is a daily activity. That’s why you need to have a way to get your content into their email inbox. An email newsletter is by far the best traffic source to focus on in the long term because you control it. You decide when to send a message, what the content contains, and which formats or media to use. Don’t forget – email is a direct source of blog traffic because you can use it to send people directly to your blog posts. Best of all, no one can take a newsletter source of traffic away from you once you build it. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other tools constantly change and you have no say in how or when they do. That’s a pretty fragile foundation to build a business on.

The Newsletter Service I Recommend You Start With My very first newsletter was built using the AWeber system. I used my newsletter in combination with my blog to make over a million dollars during a five year period. Although AWeber is not free, you can get started for as little as $20 a month and have room to grow. It’s a professional newsletter service you can use to send broadcast newsletters, automated follow-up email sequences, and manage multiple layers of lists. You can use AWeber to have a newsletter for your subscribers, your paying customers and everything in between. It’s powerful enough to be the backbone behind your entire sales and marketing funnel, with your blog as the entry point. If all this sounds a little overwhelming, just keep it simple to start with. Create one newsletter for people who want your latest blog posts, then build up from there. Here is my affiliate link for AWeber – http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/aweber/ Don’t make my mistake of waiting an entire year before adding a newsletter to your blog. Start collecting subscribers from day one.

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The Myth Of The Super Blog Generally speaking, there are two types of blogs – 1. High traffic super-blogs (rare, but famous, with bucket-loads of content) 2. Lower traffic conversion blogs (more numerous, but not as well-known) I’m going to state a sobering truth… There’s a good chance you will not build a really high traffic blog. In fact, I’m going to suggest you avoid the really high-traffic blogging formula. Let me explain… The super-blogs like Huffington Post, Mashable, Techcrunch, Gawker, The Verge, Buzzfeed, TMZ, Refinery29, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Engadget, Kotaku, Smashing Magazine, and Business Insider are companies, with teams of writers spewing forth incredible amounts of cutting edge news content every day. Then there are the large personality driven blogs by people who are celebrities in their industries, from Mario Lavandeira (Perez Hilton), to Leandra Medine (Man Repeller), Darren Rowse (Problogger), Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Workweek), Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist), Steve Pavlina, Leo Babauta (Zen Habits), and Heather Armstrong (Dooce). These are all inspiring case studies, and there are other incredibly successful individual bloggers and multi-author super news blogs out there than I have listed. However, as a percentage of the total amount of blogs in existence, these are outliers – rare outcomes.

Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore

There is nothing wrong with aiming to build a super-large blog with millions of visitors per month, as long as you are prepared for the challenge. It’s a lot harder, takes a lot more work, and very likely means you will require a large team around you… and even then your chances of success are slim. Big blogs need lots of content, which means you either work a 12-hour day yourself, pumping out article after article, or you hire a team to do it. Either way you are going to be very busy, lead an unbalanced life and will struggle to be profitable for a long time.

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Do More With Less I suggest you follow in the footsteps of those bloggers who might not be as famous or have quite as much traffic, but they do very well with smaller audiences. These bloggers know how to leverage their traffic for a significant return. They build email lists, sell digital products and offer services that have high margins. You won’t have heard of many of them, they are not trying to be famous. These bloggers just work to service a nice small market and earn healthy returns from it. I know many bloggers like this because they emerged as successful case studies from my coaching courses. There’s Lance with his blog about a ski resort in Bulgaria (inset), Fran with her blog about treating acne with alternative medicines, Joe with his how to build a home audio recording studio blog, Leigh with her blog about how to lose fat from your body and Ian with his blog about model trains. Bloggers like these can do a lot with a few hundred to a few thousand visitors a day. They require just one author and once the momentum kicks in might not need much more than one blog post a week to keep going. Some only post new content once a month! That’s a lot different to a mega-blog, publishing twenty new posts a day, from a team of ten writers, with payroll costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I suggest you keep things small and simple, and focus on finding ways to turn a profit sooner rather than later. This leads to a more balanced lifestyle. Of course you can work your way big if the potential is there, but it’s not the only path to success.

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Chapter Seven: Your Blog Breakthrough There are enough techniques in this guide to achieve your traffic goal many times over. I’ve done it, I’ve had many students do it, yet most who read this guide will not. Why is that? It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. -- Sir Edmund Hillary

Even though you have all the information now, it won’t be easy. Everyone knows how to keep fit and eat healthy right? But it very often doesn’t happen despite our best intentions. There are distractions, negative thoughts and doubts that make it difficult. To keep you on the path forward, here are the “big picture” concepts that guide all successful bloggers. If you keep these in mind while you work, you will progress further.

The Power Of Compound Interest When I first grew my blog I observed how important the concept of compounding was to my success. In school we all learn about compound interest, and how you can earn more over time as you have a bigger base to leverage. The same thing happens with your blog traffic, and there is a very good reason why. The best source of new traffic is your existing audience, especially in today’s socially driven online world. When you have an audience they help you reach more people. It’s like word of mouth in the real world, except online there are so many tools to encourage the sharing of good content.

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It’s not fair in many ways because the bigger blogs get bigger because they have such a large base of audience to leverage for more traffic. The rich do get richer. This is why it will never be as difficult for you as it is right at the start when it comes to growing a popular blog. When no one reads your work, your ability to reach new people is entirely dependent on your own hustle. If you don’t go out there and tell people you exist, no one else will. As you build an audience they will help you, if your work is good. The larger your audience, the more leverage you have.

The Daily Habit Gary Keller and Jay Papasan in their book, “The One Thing”, explain that you have a finite amount of willpower that you can spend each day. They argue that instead of trying to do everything well and having an attitude of “grit and determination” to force yourself to work when you just have nothing left to give, that it’s smarter to accept your peak performance is only going to come in short bursts and then run out. The smart thing to do is use your finite amount of willpower on the most important task you need to get done and keep doing it until you form a habit (around 60 days of daily repetition should do it). Once the habit is in place you’re not going to stop doing it, it will be on autopilot, so you do not use up your willpower. You can then focus your willpower on another goal until it is a habit too. A successful blog takes time to build. Like all achievements that are worth anything in life, it’s best to look at the process as something you create, piece-by-piece, dayby-day. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time… As the strange saying goes, it’s the daily task that leads to the big reward.

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The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell in his very popular book, The Tipping Point, explains… “The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.” Every successful blogger I have talked to explain how some kind of event or series of events led to their big break. It might be the release of a piece of content that goes viral, or being featured on a certain high profile website or media outlet, or perhaps a specific tool – like adding a podcast – that led to the big change. There is always a slow build up to the event. Usually the habits formed earlier have laid the foundation for the tipping point event to occur. Once it does happen, you jump to another level and stay there. In my case, although I did well enough slowly writing content and building connections with my blog, I really cemented my position as a leader with my free report, The Blog Profits Blueprint. It helped that I did a product launch to market the report in many places when I first wrote it. However, long after I did that launch, the Blueprint continues to bring in traffic. I command a leadership position in the mind of thousands of people because of that report. I couldn’t have written it without building my own blog up first, but it’s the report that created the tipping point for me.

The Flywheel Jim Collins introduced the concept of the Flywheel in his article, Good To Great (also the title of his book), which had a huge impact on management thinking at the time. To apply this concept to what we are striving for, look at your blog as a large Flywheel that begins in a stationary position. It’s your job to begin it spinning, which at first takes a momentous effort just to make it move an inch.

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Blog Traffic For Beginners

As it spins quicker, momentum carries it onwards, and you don’t have to work nearly as hard to keep it going. Thanks to the habits you have formed that led to compounding of results, and eventually tipping points, you reach more people with less effort. What is really important to understand about the Flywheel is everything in your blog should be designed to positively reinforce whatever is key to making the Flywheel turn. What exactly your Flywheel is depends on your blogging strategy. For example, if your goal is to get as much traffic to your blog as possible to increase your pageview count and make money with advertising, then you structure every element to bring people back to your blog posts and stay at your site longer.  

Your newsletter sequence sends people back to your best posts You ask people to share your content on social media at the end of your posts

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Any big resources you release, like a mini-course or free report, references back to your blog posts

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Your blog posts link to your other blog posts

…And so on. By setting up your entire blog to encourage people to spend more time on your blog, everything grows. If your goal is to sell a video course, then all the materials on your blog are designed to drive people into the process you use to sell your course. This is a different goal to making money with advertising, and thus a different focus for your Flywheel.

Put It All Together I’ve given you a brief introduction to three important concepts – The Daily Habit, The Tipping Point And The Flywheel. Compounding occurs when your daily habit kicks in over time. This helps lay the foundation for tipping points to become possible, launching you to a new level of

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results. All of these things must tie into your flywheel – which delivers tangible success and gives you access to more resources thanks to increased cash flow. The 100 techniques I laid out in this guide are where you draw your daily habits. You won’t know which are the right habits to apply until you test them, but after reading this guide you should feel pretty confident about where to start. Now that you’ve reached the end of this guide you know a lot about blog traffic. But it’s what you do that really matters.

Thank You For Reading! I hope you enjoyed this guide and feel much better equipped to go out there and build you traffic up to that goal of 1,000 daily visitors and beyond. A blog-based business is a joy to run if you’re a creative person. No other business I know of allows you to sit at cafes with your laptop, or record videos in the park with your smart-phone, or talk to your friends on a Skype call to create podcasts – and all of these things are considered your “work”. You can earn an amazing living, decide your own hours, be creative as you like, become famous – or hide at home - and it’s all on your terms. You get out of it as much as you put in. It’s not easy, but it can be fun – and so worth it. Here’s to your blogging success,

Yaro Starak EJInsider.com

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Other Guides Available From Yaro

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Blog Traffic For Beginners A Step-By-Step System For Building Your Blog Traffic From Zero To 1,000 Daily Readers No blog succeeds without traffic. If you are new to growing a blog, this is a must-have guide, packed full of techniques that have proven to work again and again.

Don’t leave it to chance, follow a traffic system that works, download Yaro’s Blog Traffic For Beginners eGuide.

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