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Because you are the best doesn’t mean that you deserve top rankings in the best search engine in the world, and this is similar to any industry. Take the BetaMax video recorder back in the 80’s, they died off as it was VHS that did the deals and won out, even though BetaMax had the [...]

Google vs The World – well just the EU at the moment is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

Related posts:

1. Google to Kill World Time market ?
2. “comparison sites” the new espotting ?
3. Google World Search Powers Ahead

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Google vs The World – well just the EU at the moment

Last week on my Photography Tips site we published a guest post titled Three Lenses Every Photographer Should Own.

The author of the guest post emailed me a few days later amazed at amazing amount of comments left on the post. While the average post on dPS gets a reasonable amount of comments this post is climbing up towards 200.

Why did it do so well in engaging readers?

There are a few reasons. The guest poster didn’t really set out to do any of them – but stumbled upon one of the best ways to get readers interacting on a blog post:

1. He Expressed an Opinion – the post shares one persons opinion on which lenses each photographer should own. While the post itself did indicate that it was his own personal preference and that others would find other options more suited to their situations – whenever you express an opinion you’re going to get other people reacting with their own.
2. He Made a Claim – the title was key in generating this discussion. It made a claim that every photographer should own 3 lenses. I’m not sure how intentional this was but make this type of claim and you’ll almost always get a reaction because you’ll almost always have someone who doesn’t quite fit into what you’ve proposed – and they’ll want to tell you why. Write a post about ‘essentials’, or ‘the best’ or something ‘everyone’ should do – and you’ll generally get this type of response.
3. He Invited a Response – the post finished by asking others what they’d include in their ‘must own’ category of lenses. This is the perfect invitation for an ongoing discussion.
4. He Chose a Topic People Had Invested Heavily Into – the last thing I’d say about this topic is that he stumbled onto a topic for the post that readers had strong opinions about because they’d invested into the topic. Camera owners carefully research their lens purchases and put up considerable dollars to buy them. As a result they tend to feel quite strongly about their lenses and often feel the need to defend/explain their decisions.

Keep in mind that while when you write these types of posts you will almost always get a reaction from people that you need to be willing and ready to hear some strong opinions back – something that are not always easy to hear.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The BEST Way to Generate Lots of Comments on a Your Next Blog Post

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The BEST Way to Generate Lots of Comments on a Your Next Blog Post

Last week, my good friend Neil Patel made a post explaining why he would never live in a rich neighborhood. While I understood Neil’s main argument, I found the post quite amusing. It’s true that Neil does not live in a “rich neighborhood.” He lives in downtown Seattle in the private residences of the Hyatt Hotel. Downtown Seattle is a business district and not really a neighborhood. However, as business districts goes, downtown Seattle has to be the richest business district in all of Washington State. So while Neil may never live in a rich neighborhood, he has no problems living in a million dollar suite and taking advantage of all the amenities offered by the Hyatt.

I currently live in West Vancouver which happens to be the richest neighborhood in Canada. I’ve also lived in the Downtown Eastside, which is the poorest neighborhood in Canada. While I do have fond memories of the DTES, I much rather prefer my current neighborhood than my past one. As a rebuttal to Neil’s post, here’s why I live in a rich neighborhood.

Her Name Is Sally Chow

Every parents wants the best for their children. One of the main reasons we moved to West Vancouver was because of the school district. Generally speaking, the richer the neighborhood, the better the schools and West Vancouver has the highest ranked school district in the Province. They also have smaller class sizes and better equipments. Sending your child to the best school doesn’t guarantee they’ll succeed but it does mean they’ll get the best education possible and when it comes to Sally, I want give her every advantage available.

It’s Nice and Quiet Here

West Vancouver has no industrial zones and the commercial zone is limited to one main street call Marine Drive. Pretty much everything else is residential or recreational. The city has a bylaw preventing any business from operating 24 hours a day (the 7-11 has to close for a few minutes everyday) and there are no nightclubs, bars or casinos.

You might say that sounds extremely boring but the point is I live in West Van. I don’t party in West Van. If I’m feeling the need to get into trouble, downtown Vancouver is just short drive across the bridge. The situation is ideal. I live in nice quiet neighborhood that’s just a hop, skip and a jump from the action of downtown.

It’s Safer Here

Providing a safe environment for my family is extremely important to me. Rich neighborhoods generally have lower crime rate and West Vancouver is no exception. The city reported 2,265 criminal code offenses in 2008. By comparison, the city of Surrey had 45,655 criminal code offenses during the same period. When I walk down the streets of West Van, I’m pretty certain I won’t be the victim of a drive by shooting or mugging. I don’t feel the same way walking down the streets of Surrey.

The View Is Better

I think the above photo speaks for itself.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Have you ever noticed that successful people hang around other successful people? Birds of feather really do flock together. I’m comfortable living where I am because I can relate with the people down the street. My neighbors are mostly business owners and entrepreneurs. We have a lot in common. The networking and business opportunities are much better in West Van than the Downtown Eastside.

The power of association is extremely powerful in the way it dictates who you are and how much money you make. If you want to change yourself or you lifestyle, then quite often, it will require you to change the circle of people you associate with. In order to continue climbing the ladder of success, I make sure I associate with other successful people. I thought I was doing well when I was making $10,000 per month. Then I started associating with people like Shoemoney and Neil Patel. Now, I can’t imagine living on only $10K per month.

If you aspired to be more than what your friends want to achieve, then you’re going to have to find others at your level or above and start associating with them. It’s easier to find those people in a rich neighborhood like West Vancouver than a poor one like the DTES. Birds of feather flock together. Success breeds success. This is why the rich get richer. If you want to become rich, you need to hang where they hang. While Neil may say he’ll never live in a rich neighborhood, living in the Hyatt hotel isn’t exactly poor!

Below is a video by super Realtor Jason Soprovich explaining more about West Vancouver. Give him a shout if you’re looking to move here.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Why I Live In a Rich Neighborhood

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In a session I did with Brian Clark at Third Tribe last week Brian made the statement – Guest Posting is the New Article Marketing.

In days gone by the way one of the best ways to build a website’s ranking in search engines and to pull in traffic was to write articles for article marketing sites and allow others to republish them on their own sites. In return you’d get a link or two back to your own site.

While I know some bloggers do use article marketing as part of their promotional mix the evidence that I’ve seen lately shows that links in these types of articles tend to count for less than they once did as Google gets smarter in the way that they rank websites.

I wouldn’t write off article writing completely but in the last couple of years we’ve seen the emergence of guest posting as a primary way for bloggers to build their profile, traffic and generate some SEO Google Juice to their sites.

Over the last few years I’ve seen numerous guest bloggers really build careers for themselves in a variety of niches. People like Leo Babauta and Chris Garrett are two that come to mind who built solid reputations and sizeable audiences for themselves through the tactic of guest posting.

While Guest Posts can be a great tactic to use to grow your presence – as someone who uses quite a few guest posts on my blogs I’ve noticed an incredible variety in the quality of guest posts that I’m pitched. I get 20-30 guest posts per week – I couldn’t use them all even if I wanted to – but there are some things that make some guest posters much more attractive to me than others.

In this post I want to explore 10 things that I’ve noticed about the best guest posters that set them apart from the field. These things make them more attractive to me as a blogger evaluating a guest post – but they also make the guest post more effective – which has flow on effects for the guest poster.

1. Offer Your Best Posts

I chatted with one blogger a few months back that told me that his guest post strategy was to give away his 2nd rate posts as guest posts to other blogs. He kept his best stuff for his own blog and whipped up half hearted posts for guest spots.

While I understand the temptation to keep your best content for your own blog and give a half hearted effort for other blogs if you want to maximise the chance of getting a guest post published on a well known blog and you want to maximise its impact upon the readers of that blog – you need to keep the quality up in your guest posts.

2nd rate posts are not likely to get published and if they do – they’ll not drive you the traffic that a first rate post would do.

So take the time to carefully craft your guest posts and to make them as useful as possible.

2. Use Images

This will vary a little depending upon the blog you are submitting to but I know if a guest post is submitted to me that has a good creative commons licensed image with it that I am much more likely to use it.

I love images – they lift a post to a new dimension and make it attention grabbing to readers – if a guest poster goes to the effort of finding such an image I’m always impressed.

3. Optimize the Images

If you do send in an image to go with the post make sure you take a few moments to optimize it and make it ready for posting. By this I mean:

• reduce the file size of the image so it’ll load fast
• make sure the image width will fit into the post box on the blog you’re submitting to so that the blogger doesn’t need to resize it
• name the file something that will help the SEO of the post (use a keyword in the heading).

These things are all small touches that can not only make an impression upon the blogger but help the post load fast, look good and rank a little higher in search engines.

4. Do a Little On Page SEO

While we’re talking search engine optimisation – take a few moments after writing your post to think about SEO. You might not think there’s any reason to do this and that its the blog owners job – but if your guest post ranks well in Google you’re more likely to benefit from the post for the long term as it’ll continue to attract traffic (it’ll also help pass on some Google Juice to your own blog through your byline links).

On page SEO includes making sure you work out what keywords you want the post to rank for and then using those keywords in places like the title of the post, header tags, image alt tags etc.

5. Format Your posts

Another tip to think about before sending off a post is to look at the styling and formatting that the blog normally uses for its posts.

For example – does the blog use headings in posts? If so – what header tags does it use? If it’s

tags, put your own headers into

tags.

If the blog uses blockquotes – consider using that. If the blog has a byline in a certain style or format – include yours in that format. The more ready your post is to publish the better.

6. Send posts in the Right Format

This leads me to my next point – wherever possible send your post to the blog you want to appear on in a format where it can easily be copied and pasted into the back end of that blog. I LOVE it when guest posters send me text files already marked up into html so I can copy and paste them straight in. I generally do a little re-formatting but it is so much easier if things are already formatted in html to some extent.

The best way to do this is to simply write the post up as a draft in your own blog – then copy and paste the html out into a plat txt document to send over. If you’re including images I generally would attach them to the email and indicate in the post where they should be inserted.

If you’re not sure about what format the blogger prefers to receive guest posts in – shoot them an email to ask. Alternatively some guest bloggers I’ve worked with will send two versions of a post – one in a Word Document and one in html.

7. Link to Other posts on the Blog

One technique that some of the very best guest bloggers go to the effort of doing is making sure that their guest posts interlink to other posts on the blog that they’re submitting to.

This is good for a few reasons including:

• it shows the blogger and their readers that you’re familiar with the blog you’re writing for
• it helps the SEO of the blog you’re submitting to
• it gives readers more to read and increases page views on the blog you’re writing for

It certainly takes more work to do this step but it does make an impression.

8. Monitor and Interact in the Comments of the Post

Some guest bloggers feel that their job is done when they send the post off to the blogger for their consideration. However the best guest posters going around see this as just the beginning.

One extra task that can lift the guest post to another level is to monitor the comments being left on the post and interacting with those who read it. This shows a willingness to followup with readers and can make the post more useful to everyone.

9. Promote the Post after its launched

One last task that can also make the post all the more effective for both you and the blog you’re writing for is to take some time out once the post is live to promote it to your own network.

Link to it on your own blog, tweet about it, submit it to other blogs in the niche to see if they’ll link to it, promote it in forums, email it to your newsletter list…. etc

The benefits in promoting the guest post are numerous:

• it makes an impression upon the blogger who is using your post (which could lead to further guest posts or opportunities)
• it can make an impression upon people in your own network to see that you’re published elsewhere
• it can help the SEO of the post to have it linked to (which has flow on effects for you both in terms of traffic and SEO)

All in all – the more successful the post is the better for all concerned so do take the time to give it some promotion – as if it were your own.

What Tips Would You Give Guest Posters to Help Their Posts Become Exceptional?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

9 Ways Become an Exceptional Guest Poster

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9 Ways Become an Exceptional Guest Poster

I’ve been blogging for a few years with moderate success. Much of my success has been because top bloggers like John Chow have been willing to share the lessons they have learned along the way. Now that I am approaching a place where I earn as much from my blogs as I do from my day job, I feel that it is important to share one of my favorite (and most successful) blog adventures.

In 2009 I moved from Hawaii to Morocco. Being a blogger, one of the first things I did was look at who was blogging and what they were blogging about in my new country. Morocco has a large expat community and I was surprised at the number of great blogs I found here. In addition, I found that a lot of Moroccans blog in English too. This is really not all that surprising given the facts that English is the unofficial language of the Internet and that Moroccans have a remarkable aptitude for both languages and technology.

The thing that I didn’t find was an up to date directory of all the blogs in Morocco. I found directories that covered French blogs, directories that covered Arabic blogs, and outdated blogrolls but I didn’t find anything in English that reviewed all these great blogs or differentiated them based on categories.

In November of 2009, I was conducting workshops for tourism businesses that wanted to use blogs to promote their businesses and I wanted to demonstrate how to build a blog from the ground up, so the natural choice for me was MoroccoBlogs.com, a site that reviewed, categorized, and promoted the many English language blogs in this North African country.

During the workshops, I demonstrated many of the lessons I have learned from Gurus like John, that’s not what this article is about, but for those who want a bulleted list for quick reference these were things such as:

• Be a part of the blogging community
• Make your blog easy to navigate
• Pick your keywords carefully
• Plan your blog out before you start it
• Utilize social media
• Write compelling blog posts
• Utilize great widgets and plugins
• Give your prospective readers something they want

It’s this last one that has taken MoroccoBlogs.com from an unknown website to the most visible blog in North Africa.

Since I was already categorizing and reviewing Morocco blogs, I decided to take things to the next level by using my blog as the base of the Best of Morocco Blog awards. In January, I launched the contest and my traffic went from 15-40 visits a day to 300-500 per day in a matter of days. Here is how I did it.

Step 1: I kept careful note of what blogs people were talking about both in person and in the blogosphere. I made sure to review each notable blog and notify them of the fact that their blogs had been reviewed on my site.

Step 2: I designed a rough “Nominated” logo and then I visited a webmaster forum where I ran a contest for $10 for who could create the best graphic from my rough design. Within 24 hours, I had several beautiful designs to choose from.

Step 3: I brainstormed categories for the contest based on the blogs which were available. Given the large diversity of Morocco blogs, I chose “Best Overall” “Best Personal Blog” “Best News Blog” “Best Travel Blog” and “Best Cultural Blog”. I also decided to call the contest the Best of Morocco Blogs since the name incorporated the name of my blog and had a catchy abbreviation “The BOMBies”. I further brainstormed a catch phrase “Is your blog the bomb?”

Step 4: I had the winner of my design contest create individual winner badges, nomination badges, and sponsor badges. Keep in mind these graphics would have cost me hundreds of dollars if I had simply hired a graphic designer. Instead, through a contest, the total cost was $10.

Step 5: I installed the Wordpress Polls plugin on my blog and set up the individual polls with the most talked about blogs as the nominees.

Step 6: I commented and emailed the nominees with the “Nominated” badge. I also left the nomination process open for a week so that any blogs I had missed could be included in the contest.

Step 7: I activated the polls and held my breath to see if anyone would accept the validity of a new blog determining who had the best blogs in Morocco.

Of course they did.

As bloggers, we all enjoy being recognized and I think that there is something innately competitive about bloggers as a category of human beings. We all seek recognition, praise, and….traffic. Within a day, the top Morocco blogs had all put my badges in prominent positions on their sites. Not only that, but they were also encouraging their readers to leave their blogs and to visit mine!

This isn’t a win-lose situation though. I’ve been told by nearly all of the nominees that their traffic has increased dramatically since the start of the contest. In two cases, bloggers that were nominated had decided to stop blogging, but when they found out they were nominated (and recognized) as great blogs, they decided to keep going!

I wasn’t done though.

Step 8: I wanted to offer great prizes to the winners. Sure, it’s nice to have a winner badge, but I wanted them to have more, so I started looking for sponsors for the Bombies. I decided to look for companies and businesses that wanted exposure. The great thing about a blogging contest is that the sponsors get exposure as sponsors and then, ideally, they also get exposure on the winning blogs too! This is another win-win! You don’t get much better press than having the top bloggers in a country writing about your product or service.

The winning bloggers will get a range of prizes including wine tours, weekend getaways, and exotic Moroccan cooking lessons. The sponsors are getting great exposure. All participants, sponsors, and reviewed blogs are getting more traffic. Readers are getting introduced to new and exciting blogs they hadn’t seen before. I’m getting more traffic, a more exciting contest, and increased prestige as an authority blogger. That’s a win-win-win-win-win! It doesn’t get any better.

Step 9: The contest ends February 21, 2010. Come check it out! If you have a favorite be sure to vote!

Step 10: The next step is to hold Morocco’s first ever Blog Camp. It will be a chance for bloggers to meet up, have workshops and discussions, explore beautiful Fez, Morocco (the largest car free urban area in the world and oldest inhabited Medieval city), and hopefully, we can even get John Chow to come and eat couscous with us!

Vago Damitio is a blogger, writer, traveler, and teacher. He lives in Sefrou, Morocco though his other hometowns are Bellingham, Washington and Kailua, Hawaii. You can follow his personal adventures at Vagobond.com.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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My Favorite and Most Successful Blog Adventure

My friend Lyndon Reid entered Shoemoney’s Affiliate Summit contest and amazingly enough, he made it to the final round! Should Lyndon win, he will receive a Platinum Affiliate Summit pass, invites to all the best parties, three nights hotel at the RIO, and airfare reimbursement up to $500. Then once he gets there he’ll have the choice of taking $1,000 and walking away or receive $2,000 to lay down on 1 hand of black jack or red/black on a spin of roulette.

Lyndon created a long and detail entry on his blog and the judges were impressed enough by it to put him in the final. Now, it’s all up to you. Head on over the Shoe’s blog and vote for Lyndon. Lyndon is a long time John Chow dot Com reader and it would be awesome for a reader to win this contest. You can give Lyndon the best new year ever. You have until January 4 to place your vote. Good luck to Lyndon and thanks for voting!

Vote for Lyndon To Go To Affiliate Summit West

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Vote For Lyndon Reid To Go To Affiliate Summit West

Brainstorming is one of the most powerful creative techniques ever devised. When used properly, it can produce more and better ideas than any other process. It’s based on the concept that two heads (or three, or four, or more) are better than one.

Many would argue that you can’t create by committee. I agree. Writing and other creative acts are best performed by individuals. Creating by committee, well . . . sucks.

But brainstorming is not about executing ideas. It’s simply about coming up with ideas. And it is almost always more productive as a group activity. The result of a brainstorming session should be a long list of potential ideas which you can evaluate at a later time, acting only on the best.

Sure, you’ll come up with a ton of dumb ideas, but so what? Once you get the ideas flowing, the great ideas will float to the top. And some of those ideas that seem dumb end up being pretty smart — once you try them.

It’s like panning for gold. You have to sift through a lot of sludge to get to the shiny nuggets.

How to brainstorm with other bloggers

If you interact with other bloggers frequently, you probably do a little informal brainstorming already. It’s not just a good way to solve problems, it’s a great way to keep your blog fresh and interesting.

In fact, I’m thinking about brainstorming for bloggers specifically because more and more bloggers are beginning to work together to write blogs, create products, promote each other’s content, and feed off of each other’s energy and ideas.

If you’ve had bad luck with brainstorming, it’s probably because you did it in a stuffy corporate environment where no one feels free to really open up. But if you can assemble the right group of people who feel comfortable with each other, a brainstorming session can be like throwing a match into a room full of firecrackers. There’s a sudden and powerful chain reaction.

What can you brainstorm?

Anything that will benefit from sharper ideas is good fodder for a brainstorming session. Try brainstorming ideas for post topics (or perhaps a series of posts), product ideas, marketing angles, positioning for your business, contests, link building strategies . . . the sky’s the limit.

Here are a few suggestions for creating some fireworks of your own. These guidelines are intended for in-person sessions, so if you plan to brainstorm by Skype, chat, or other means, you may want to adapt the rules a little.

Before your session . . .

Select a leader. When I conduct a session, I often serve as both leader and participant. It works for me, but you may want to select a leader who will remain fairly quiet while the others let their imagination go wild. The leader also needs to keep the group on track and on a time schedule, stifle negative statements, help the group develop ideas fully, and assure that each member contributes.

Define your problem. The leader should write a clear definition for the problem the group will address. All you need is a sentence or two that clearly outlines the situation.

Create an agenda. Outline what topics you want to cover. Prepare a few ideas in advance to get things started, and be prepared to suggest questions to keep the ideas flowing.

Set time limits. How much time you spend depends on the group’s endurance and everyone’s schedule, but it’s usually best to keep it short — 15 to 45 minutes. If you go longer, take frequent breaks to keep people fresh.

Set quotas. The idea is to work fast and produce lots of ideas, which will be evaluated at another time. So decide on a quota, such as a minimum of 100 ideas. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. If you come up with just two ideas a minute, you’ll have 120 in an hour. You can set an overall quota or individual quotas for each topic.

Select your group and announce a session. Choose a mixed group whose blogs are at about the same level to participate. Avoid control freaks and people who need to monopolize the conversation. When you set things up, don’t call it a “meeting.” That conjures images of big oak tables and idiots in neckties. Call it a “session.”

Circulate background information. Prime session participants with a simple statement of the problem, background information, and examples of the kind of ideas you’re looking for.

During your session . . .

Review the problem and background information. Don’t put people to sleep, just quickly go over the problem, background data, and what you hope to accomplish. If there are questions, answer them before you get started.

Establish the ground rules.

1. Each session participant must contribute ideas or add to another’s ideas.
2. No one may criticize or evaluate any idea. Alex F. Osborn in Applied Imagination said it best: “Think up or shut up.”
3. No one will hold back ideas. When something comes to mind, say it.
4. The group will encourage wild, out-of-the box thinking.
5. The goal of the session is quantity, not quality. Quality will be evaluated later.
6. Develop ideas fully. Participants should hitchhike ideas on the ideas of others to produce more and better ideas.
7. Once an idea is developed, the group will move on.

Take detailed notes. Whether written or typed, someone needs to rapidly capture the flow of ideas as they occur. One option is to record the session and transcribe the recording. I’ve found that a combination of note taking and recording works best. The notes serve as an outline of the major topics covered and the recording fills in the details.

After your session . . .

Allow for the incubation of further ideas. If you’ve had a productive session, ideas will continue to occur to people for hours or days after the session. Ask everyone to write down these ideas and submit them later to record along with the main session notes.

Type up and circulate all the ideas generated. The final product of a session will be a multi-page document that lists every single idea created. Nothing should be edited. Organize or classify these ideas for later evaluation. Don’t be surprised if you have literally hundreds of ideas.

Evaluate your ideas and choose the best. The same group can evaluate the ideas or another group can. It’s often best for those responsible for the problem to evaluate the ideas, but you can run into “idea ownership” problems. On the other hand, another group may not be able to grasp the significance of many of the ideas generated. You’ll have to experiment.

When the dust settles, you should find yourself with some surprisingly good ideas. And the whole process often energizes all the participants.

Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time. It usually doesn’t. Assembling the right group, creating an open atmosphere, and producing the best results often takes time. As with so many other things in life, practice makes perfect.

For more tips on being creative, read 10 easy ways to instantly energize your creative powers at my Pro Copy Tips blog.

About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s top freelance copywriters and publisher of the Direct Creative Blog and Pro Copy Tips, a blog that provides copywriting tips for smart copywriters.

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How to Brainstorm Brilliant Ideas for Your Blog

“Tell us how you ‘really‘ get traffic to your blog?”

After presenting to a group of bloggers at an event recently I was surprised to be asked this question by someone in the audience.

I wasn’t surprised that people would want to know about how to get traffic to a blog – it’s something most bloggers want to know about – I was surprised to be asked it at THIS event because i’d just finished speaking for 30 minutes on the topic of ‘getting traffic to your blog‘.

After 30 minutes of sharing how I generate traffic to my blogs – I was asked to share what ‘really’ works. Hmmmm – was my presentation that bad… or was there something else going on here?

I sat down for a coffee with the person who asked me the question to dig a little deeper and as the conversation unfolded it became clear to me that the blogger was after a ’silver bullet’.

He wanted some secret method of generating traffic that would flood his blog with new readers, some new technique that most bloggers had not cottoned onto yet that would lift him above the rest and propel him to blogging super-stardom.

He told me that he’d tried all the normal tips on how to get traffic – some had worked and had found him new readers and others had not – but now he wanted something new. What advice could I give?

I decided to share my ‘real’ secret to big blogging traffic.

Identify What Works…. and Do it Again…. and Again….. Improving it Each Time

Here’s the thing – there’s no one technique that is going to bring every blog new traffic.

But if you try lots of different approaches and identify what does work – even if it only works a little – you’re on the way.

Find something that works for your blog, your niche, your demographic and then build upon that.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me:

• A couple of months after starting my photography site (a few years back now) I started a Group on Flickr which allowed readers to share their best shots – to show them off, get some critique on their work and see what others on the site were doing with their photography.
• Readers LOVED sharing their shots. We soon started a forum with a specific area for sharing of shots – (ingeniously called the ‘Share Your Shots‘ section).
• This section of the site became so popular that we expanded it and started a ‘Critique‘ area where people could not only share a shot but get feedback on it.
• This section was so popular that we started multiple critique areas – for different types of photography (eg: Landscape photography, Portrait photography etc).
• Also early in the life of the forum we started doing Weekly Assignments to let readers all go out and take shots on the same theme each week and then come back and share their best one.
• To this point all the sharing of shots happened in the forum – but I began to realize that not all of the blog readers visited the forum so on a whim one day I asked readers on the blog to share their best shot ever. We had 300 comments left – most with links to their favourite shot on Flickr or a photoblog.
• I continued to invite readers to occasionally share a favorite shot on the blog in comments – usually when we posted a tutorial on a specific type of photography. Each time I did this we had heaps of comments left.
• Earlier in the year I decided to give readers a ‘photographic challenge’ – to photograph something within 10 meters of them. People really responded to the idea of a challenge.
• As a result I decided to start ‘Weekend photography Challenges’ on the blog – similar to weekly assignments on the forum but for those who either didn’t become forum members or those who wanted two challenges a week. At first they were only every few weekends (the first was a Landscape one) but as readers responded so well to them we made them weekly.
• The challenges continued to become popular so we added a plugin to the blog that allowed people to share photos IN the posts (see this in action in our Pet Photography Challenge) – not everyone uses this feature but it increased participation a lot. We also improved the challenges by getting people to tag their photos on Flickr with a common tag and link to the challenges.

What started as a fairly simply idea (giving readers a place to share their shots – not even on my own site but using Flickr – evolved into multiple ideas that built upon that initial idea. Each time we evolved the idea we created buzz, reader engagement, traffic and site stickiness.

Keep in mind that this process has taken us over 3 years. The changes have been gradual, we’ve made mistakes along the way, but instead of spending all our time trying to find a ’silver bullet’ that we could just drop into the site to bring heaps of traffic – we improved something that showed promise in the early days.

A further example of this would be the site’s email newsletter list. In the early days when we first tried it I remember wondering if it was worth the effort of sending a weekly newsletter out to 100 people… but I saw some potential in it and each week it grew, each week I learned something new about improving the newsletters and each week it became more worth the effort. Today it drives hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site each week.

Some questions to help identify what is working (or what might work) with your readers and niche:

• What topics generate most comments on your blog?
• What topics generate most comments on other blogs in your niche?
• What other sites do your readers visit a lot? What activities are they doing there?
• What features are readers asking for?
• What was your biggest traffic day – what brought it about?
• Which of your posts seem to get Retweeted most on Twitter and passed around most on other social media sites?
• Which of your posts are getting linked to most from other blogs/sites?
• What other sites send you most traffic? How can you build relationships with these sites?

This list could go on and on – really it is about looking for points of life on your site (even small ones) where there’s some kind of energy or positive outcome happening – and then repeating them in some way – looking for opportunities to build upon and improve what you previously did.

Got any examples to share of where you’ve done this on your own blog?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

My REAL Secret to Growing Traffic to a Blog

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My REAL Secret to Growing Traffic to a Blog

A guest post from Glen ViperChill.

I’ve read a lot of blogging success stories in my four-year blogging history. Sadly, they’ve always been about other people, rather than me. And, when I do see them, although they are real, I get a sense that the owner didn’t have to work as hard as I have. I see people getting big on Digg yet my domain is banned for no reason or linked to by Seth Godin and getting ‘famous’ overnight. I don’t want to sound bitter, but it just seemed like success was happening to everyone else.

Once I had this realisation, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get featured on Digg or Delicious for my new site, I would work on:

• Being the most authentic blogger in my niche
• Providing the best content that I can
• Interacting within my community as much as possible.

And what happened? In one year I managed to build my blog to just over 4,000 subscribers. Sure, it isn’t the success story that everyone else raves about, but it’s realistic and it is attainable. Or maybe I’m being hard on myself, because I don’t see that many blogs reaching these numbers either.

1. Getting 500 Subscribers is Much Harder than 1,000

Some of you might be completely confused by that statement and to others it will make perfect sense; let me explain. When I look at my own stats, I can see that it took me 5 months to reach 500 subscribers (which isn’t a bad rate of growth at all). Can you guess how many it took to reach 1,000? Just two.

You see, when I first started out, I was a complete nobody in my niche. I was fairly known in the internet marketing industry but totally unheard of when it came to personal development. Because of that, I had to establish a brand. I went with a logo people would remember, a unique design, and a desire to focus on content that simply helped people be who they want to be. Everything I would write would have the focus of helping people get what they want out of life.

From there I started commenting on other blogs, being active in Twitter and writing the best articles I could. I worked hard, but within a few months I was at the 500 subscriber mark. Once you get to this stage, things start getting much, much easier because when you’re trying to promote content that has no audience, you have to find people who might want to read it and show up where they are. Once you have an audience and write great content, they’re going to start sharing it for you.

If you’re struggling to get your first few hundred subscribers then don’t worry, as they’re far harder to get than the next few hundred. With the 5 months left in the year I managed to grow my site by another 3,000 subscribers. How’s that for exponential growth.

2. If You’re Going to Guest Post, Vary Your Audience

I have been one of the most active guest posters on the internet in the last few months and for one simple reason: guest posting works. It gets you out there in front of a new audience and just as importantly, an audience that understands blogs and what they are all about. If someone subscribers to another blog in your niche, there’s a good chance they will subscribe to yours if you’re writing great content. One thing I have noticed some people do is “piggyback” off a certain blog and try to write there as often as possible.

This is usually for big blogs which can help you get a lot of traffic and subscribers quite quickly, but things will soon die down. If someone has seen you guest post on a site 5 times and still haven’t subscribed, they probably won’t when you write your 6th article. There are a few benefits to varying your guest posting which include:

• Reaching a new audience: If you’re going for the same sites all the time, you’re going to reach the same readers. By varying your activities you can reach new eyeballs that want your content.
• Creating new connections: Guest posting shouldn’t just be thought of as something you can do to benefit your own site, but also something you can do to help the author of another site. Most bloggers love free content in return for a backlink so if you can help as many people as possible, there’s no harm in that

3. Find Ways to Collaborate with Others

As a blogger, I’m quite sad about the rise of Twitter in a way. Instead of the hundreds of backlinks a good blog post could get a few years ago, it will now get hundreds of tweets. Sure the tweets can bring you traffic, but they are not going to help your post move up the ranks in search engines. Even as a way for collaboration, people are focusing on twitter communication rather than working with people via their blogs. Usually these writers are coming from the scarcity mindset and if they link to other bloggers they’re going to lose readers and help their “competitor” grow.

First of all, if you think of other bloggers in your niche as competitors then you have a totally backwards mindset. Secondly, I’m here to tell you that collaborating with other bloggers in my niche has been one of the best things I have done. To begin with, I created a list of the top Personal Development Blogs. This ranks all of the blogs by their statistics and of course helps my site visitors find other amazing blogs to read. This page has been linked to by hundreds of websites and it has helped put me in touch with tons of other bloggers.

On top of that, I also ran a series called the Personal Development face-off. I had the idea thanks to Daniel Scocco doing this in the blogging niche and thought that the content generated here would be excellent. Even though I was featuring two other bloggers on my site every week, hundreds of people emailed me to say how much they loved the series. This positioned me as someone who was at the top of my industry because I had all of these top bloggers taking time out to work with me and because I was sharing the best content in the niche.

Don’t be afraid of promoting other bloggers. These days, I try to promote great content on other sites as much as possible. It will come back your way.

Glen is the author of ViperChill, a blog on Viral Marketing. He aims to help people create remarkable websites that others just naturally want to talk about.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Lessons I Learned Building 4,000 Subscribers in 12 Months

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3 Lessons I Learned Building 4,000 Subscribers in 12 Months