How to increase website traffic? Many bloggers ask themselves this question and struggled to find the answer.
A few day ago I bumped on interview with Ana Hoffman on Michael Alexis site. In this interview Ana described her way of generating more and more internet traffic.
After a few minutes of interview I figured out that this interview is very helpful and give some new ways (unknow to me) of generating blogs traffic.
Why Ana Hoffman opinion is relevant?
Recently, I visited Ana blog trafficgenerationcafe for the first time. My first impression was that it is quality blog which stand out. This blog currently have Page Rank 4 which is good, but Alexa rank is around 8500. According to Michael Alexis, Ana started her site 1,5 year ago. In this light Alexa rank at around 8,500 is amazing achievement.
So, I believe that Ana is authority and her interview have real value based on two facts:
- Ana blog is interesting for reading
- her blog achieved high Alexa rank in only year and half
How to increase website traffic interview with Ana Hoffman
Original interview length is over one hour and you can find it by following the link on the beginning of this article. Here are interview notes I make and decide to share in this post.
How to pick a niche
- become authority in a niche, when you one become authority it is much easier to generate new traffic
- to choose a niche you have to find something that is in demand
- to succeed you must have passion for business, if you have passion only for niche it is not enough
- to find topics in demand you need observe and reading other blogs, comments and forums, find what a people want to learn more about
- pick a niche you have knowledge about, for example if you just start a blog, write about starting a blog not about how to make money with blog because you can't know how to make a money when you even don't have established blog and practically earn nothing
- start from your experience, it won't go to write about something you don't know about it, people will know that you faking it
- you must not just a talk about topic but show you know how to do it (like Ana generate traffic on her blog about generating traffic)
- don't write about topic everybody write, try with different approach from others, put your spin at a topic or different opinion but the most important do something different
How to establish authority
- there is no secret trick!
- content is very important, also pay attention how you represent your blog and how you stand out
- people have come to your blog and say : "Wow, I never read this before, this is amazingly helpful to me, I must come back!"
- write plainly, write the way you talk
- don't write fancy, do not put too many words in you post
- blog content should be simple and helpful
- you can't do it alone, you need a help of other people
- find blog that share a niche with you, try with established but not most popular blogs (because it is almost impossible to connect with A blog, they have many various proposals every day)
- try to form your own tribe (community) with 15 - 20 other blogs
- try to find a people who are good solid bloggers and a hungry for more attention
- spread a shares and comments on each other posts, with this method you give a life to your blog plus you learn from each other
- comment on another posts builds your brand and recognition
How to find and reach member of your tribe
- identify blogs in your niche
- start commenting on those blogs
- it is better chance to be noticed on blogs that doesn't have too much traffic, for example commenting on CopyBlogger or ProBlogger give minor chances to be noticed
- when you are noticed on this smaller blog send him request for mutually social sharing and commenting
- pick a blogs who have solid content
- keep your group small, up to 20, if a group is bigger it is difficult to control
- you can use facebook group to organize tribe
- if someone in a group doesn't comment or share he couldn't be member of the group anymore
- so, if there are 20 members of the group you will get 20 comments and shares per new post
Find traffic sources
- there are short term traffic (like social media) and long term traffic sources
- social media is just a way to find people who could be interested in your blog
- job for you is not to build relationship with them but to introduce and bring them back to your blog
- find something that works and concentrate on that (Ana is focused on twitter and facebook)
- stumbleupon have low conversion rate
- facebook have higher convert rate than twitter
- choosing right social network depend on niche
- when you find what work for you stick with that
- facebook like widget on your blog can be negative social proof if you have small number of facebook followers
A few words about twitter
- post 4 tweets one after another to make attention, 2 tweets would be links on other blogs, solid posts, 1 tweet a quote because people love quotes, a last one, a tweet to your blog (it will be at the top of tweet stream and chances are that people will click this one first)
- 25% tweets should be self promotion the rest just useful to other people
- it is important to provide a lot of value
Conversion
- pick exactly conversion goal
- put a call to action in post, for example "thanks on coming, now do this please"
- it must be only one call for action per post
- no to popups!!!
- in middle of quality post add this "if you like to hear more, I talk a more abut that with my subscribers" or lead a visitor to other page which have call to action
Two tips for increasing website traffic
- think like a regular visitor, if you are a casual visitor will you stay on your blog and read it, would you even scroll down?
- write a guest post it is best traffic generation strategy
I hope that my interview notes will help you to increase your website traffic. Please, leave comment does tips listed in this article are helpful for your website traffic.
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