dimanche 18 mai 2014

blogging-basics-using-pinterest-to-grow-your-traffic

We had a great G+ hangout yesterday discussing the ways to use pinterest, great tools for helping to maintain it, linkies you can use to get your name out and more.  Because some of you don’t have time to visit the G+ hangout when they happen, I try to do a quick post recap and embed the video.
This is also the place that I include all the links we mentioned during the chat.clip image007 thumb Blogging Basics: Using Pinterest to Grow Your Traffic #learntoblog

How to Use Pinterest CORRECTLY to Grow your Blog Traffic:

This 20 minute chat stretched out for almost an hour!  We had some much info coming at us and as we did last week, we answered questions as we went.  I am going to give the basics, the tasks, and the links but you REALLY need to watch the video below to get all of the details!  Make notes and then find some time to implement this stuff.

Pinterest Beginner Tasks:

1.  Spend a few minutes a day over the next few days (or weeks) updating, organizing, and putting categories and descriptions on your boards!  If you find that you have two of the same boards, fix that!  (Yes, this is something I am working on, too!)
2.  Set up a group board and invite your tribe to join.  Do NOT randomly invite people to it.  Invite people that pin the same things.
3.  Join a weekly Pinterest Linky!  Do it consistently for a few weeks and watch your followers grow.  Remember, don’t just add your link – spend some time going to the other links.
Some really good Pinterest Linkies are:
If you are SUPER new to Pinterest and not really sure what it is or how it works, Melissa Taylor wrote a short eBook that will walk you through understanding Pinterest.  It is a great book for explaining the basics of Pinterest for newbies: Pinterest Savvy: How I Got 1 Million+ Followers (Strategies, Plans, and Tips to Grow Your Business with Pinterest) Blogging Basics: Using Pinterest to Grow Your Traffic #learntoblog  (affiliate link)

Pinterest Advanced Tasks:

1.  Search for some boards that fit your niche and follow the people that made those boards  – aka.  follow those boards.  Remember, don’t just follow but be sure to pin their stuff too.  You want yourself to show up!
2.  Check your source on a regular basis – thank people that pin your content! This is something I have been doing since I got on Pinterest – back when it was invite only.  I check my source every day and do something from repinning stuff to commenting to following people that are pining my content.  You can find your source by going to http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBNAMEHERE.com
3.  Re-pin, comment, strike up conversation several days a week for a couple weeks and see what happens
4.  Utilize a reporting tool (www.pinalertas.com) and check your Google Analytics!

More Pinterest Reading: 

OK now get comfy as this chat was almost an hour long!  Remember, if you are reading this post in an ereader or email you will need to click on through to watch the video!
Thanks guys!  Next week we will be talking Facebook and how to make it work for you even with all the new changes!
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How to SEO a Blog Post – 4 Simple Steps

I have been learning so much about SEO and how to maximize traffic on my blog so today I invited my blogging friend, Nathan–who also happens to be a professional at this sort of thing–to give us some simple tips for how to SEO a blog post. These tips are easier than you might think and you’ll notice a difference in your traffic right away!
SEO is a very tricky thing for bloggers.  Most of us started blogging because we wanted to share something.  Maybe it was a cool DIY project, a deal we found at the store, or possibly a recipe we found absolutely delicious.  But SEO was not something that we cared about.  We cared about writing compelling stories and sharing… That’s it.  Along the way, we realized that treating our blogs more like businesses and creating an audience (and a little bit of income) was important.  Then we heard about SEO and how using it correctly would help our blogs get more traffic from Google.  Well, that’s my story.  I have two blogs with a combined traffic of around 200,000 unique visitors.  Many of those visits come from Google and other search engines.  Over the years, I found it incredibly important to learn all I can about SEO and what I needed to be doing to make it easier to get more traffic from Google.  Now, after being a full time blogger for years, an AWESOME advertising agency in Louisville, Kentucky recruited me to do SEO for our clients!  I’m in a very unique position, being a blogger that cares deeply about my content and a professional agency SEO that works daily on large 

Step 1:
Select a Keyword for Your Post.  I cannot stress this enough, it’s critical.  Keyword selection is one of the most important things a blogger can do.  If you want to know the secret, here it is.  Once you’ve written a post, ask yourself this question: ‘What would I type into Google and expect to find this post?’  The goal of any keyword is to be as specific as possible.  It really shouldn’t be called a keyword, but a key-phrase because it’s rarely ONE word.  For example, I just made a yummy cauliflower pizza crust.  Now what should my keyword be?  Should it be cauliflower?  Should it be pizza crust?  Should it be pizza crust recipe?  If you typed those things into Google would you realistically expect to find my very specific recipe about cauliflower pizza crust?  Probably not.  For this post my keyword is not just cauliflower pizza crust, no, because that’s not what I’d type into Google either.  I’d type in cauliflower pizza crust recipe.  That exact phrase is what I would type into Google, and therefore, that is my keyword (or key-phrase)
Step 2:
Select a title.  I ragged (very politely and with permission LOL) on a blogger a while back for posting an amazing post about cloth diapering, but then not mentioning the word diaper in her title.  I wrote a detailed blog post all about titles on my Ad Agency’s website.  (I often write about blogger SEO there, check it out!).  The basics of a GOOD SEO blog title are this:
    •    No cute titles….ever.  Be specific.
    •    Try, if possible, to use your Keyword as your title.  That is the best and most ideal scenario.
    •    Use power words.  Every niche is specific; in recipes the word ‘easy’ is huge!  Find your power words and use them in your titles.
Going back to my cauliflower pizza crust post, the title is identical to my keyword phrase.  Simple.  
Step 3:
Use keywords in your images.  Images present you with an amazing opportunity to signal to Google what your post is all about.  In WordPress, make sure to optimize your images.  I always make sure my keyword is in my ALT description.  This is not only important for SEO but also for Pinterest.  Make sure that whatever keyword you select is in EVERY ALT tag in the post.  Also another little trick, change your image file name to your keyword phrase!  Always use dashes (and not underscores) when doing this and you have another additional opportunity to get some great SEO juice!
How to SEO a blog post - Ask Anna
Step 4:
Care about your meta description.  Meta descriptions are so very important to SEO. They are the text that describes the post to Google.  NO ONE sees them on your blog, they only appear on Facebook (if you show a preview), and on Google, and other search engines.  This is very important to understand because your metas need to be compelling advertisements for your post.  You want people to click into your post that have no idea who you are.  Write something interesting.  For example, a bad meta description for my post cauliflower post above would be something like.
“Check out this cauliflower pizza crust recipes, it’s yummy.”
Metas are allowed to have 156 characters, try and use EVERY. SINGLE. ONE! Here is an example of a good meta description:
“Paleo diet? Trying to cut calories? This cauliflower pizza crust recipe will inspire your taste buds. Try this healthy pizza crust & see the amazing pics!”
How to SEO a blog post - Ask Anna
This meta captures so many good keywords and makes you WANT to check this recipe out.  (It is awesome btw, LOL).  Metas should take a little while to write, so put effort and thought into them.  In the meta above, I included many different keywords, paleo diet, cauliflower pizza crust recipe, healthy pizza crust.  All are possible search terms people might use.  
A big part of SEO is getting into the head of people searching on Google.  Do that and you’ll be successful!
Nathan blogs at WannaBite and WeUseCoupons.  He works as a professional SEO and blogger outreach coordinator for LEAP, a digital advertising agency based in Louisville, KY.  He lives near Cincinnati with his wife and daughter.  
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14 Tips for Increasing Your Blog Traffic

Every blogger, no matter what size their website is, wants to build traffic to their blog. I want to offer you 14 tips for increasing your blog traffic that have been effective for me. Hopefully they are helpful to you or at least a good reminder of what to do!

  1. Write good content. There’s no replacement for writing well to get people to read your content! How do you know if you’re doing this? I’ll share my 3 best tips for writing well on Thursday!

  2. Make use of good SEO and keywords on your blog and in your posts. We’ll talk in more detail about exactly what that means and how to do it on Wednesday!

  3. Join relevant link-ups and blog hops. Every week you likely see all kind of blogs that have link-ups where other bloggers can join up with their posts and receive traffic. My two best tips for using a link-up successfully? Read the rules and abide by them and get your post linked up as close to the top as possible!

  4. Write a guest post for another blog. Notice I didn’t just say write a guest post for a bigger blog. Whether the blog you write for is bigger or smaller than yours, guest posting is a great way to spread the word about your own site and area of expertise. I will have some further tips on submitting an effective guest post and becoming a contributor on a blog in your niche in a post next week!

  5. Care about your readers. People will figure you out very quickly if you are writing simply to drive traffic to your website. Don’t just grab photos of Pinterest or the internet {it may not be legal anyway} or copy the style or words of another blogger. Pray that God would lead you in what to say to encourage, challenge and educate your readers. Ask them questions and then listen to their stories.

  6. Use social media to your advantage. You don’t have to use every. single. form. of social media, but pick a couple that you think would be the biggest draw for your readers to use. Facebook is likely one of the options, but you may want to try others like Twitter, Google+ or Instagram and measure the results after a few months’ time to see if it’s really worth your efforts. Post a few times a day, experimenting with different times and topics to see what resonates most with your readers. {Check out this video on building your Facebook page and this post on 10 ways to increase engagement on Facebook.}

  7. Share content from other bloggers. Give a little love and you’ll likely get it in return. Maybe not from that particular blogger, but when other bloggers and readers in general see that you are genuinely sharing another person’s post or article that you found interesting, touching or challenging, they will see that you are not just out for yourself. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember to do this! I mean to but then I run out of time or forget. This would be a good thing to write intoyour schedule or blog planner!

  8. Interact on other blogs. This is similar to the advice in #7, but it involves going directly to the blog and commenting on the post you enjoyed so much. Other bloggers DO notice when you take the time to comment and share your thoughts! {Here’s a great post from Blogging with Amy on two tips for commenting on limited time.}

  9. Become part of a forum that talks about topics you share on your blog. Just search by your topic with the word “forum” after it, and you’ll come up with tons of options! I would exercise this with caution, though, as it is not only time consuming to be interacting on forums but you may find yourself in uncomfortable situations from time to time. There are a lot of varying opinions out there on many topics, so just be aware of that! :)

  10. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog. At the end of every post, I have a subscribe box where you can type in your email address if you want to have my posts delivered directly to your inbox {hint, hint} ;) Also in my sidebar is this same box as well as other following options. They are close to the top and clearly displayed, so it doesn’t take much hunting to figure out how to follow along. Make sure you have your subscription options clearly laid out and easy to find on your blog. Time is of the essence and people may not have a lot of time to click around to figure out how to subscribe.

  11. Interlink your posts. When you’re typing up a post on “10 foods you can cook from scratch” for instance, make sure you link to other relevant posts on your blog that may be about related subjects {a recipe for a certain food or other related money saving tips, etc}. This gives readers a chance to see what else you have written about and keeps them on your blog longer, which strengthens your stats and increases the possibility of new subscribers!

  12. Be patient. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t see instant results. I’ve been so excited to see my stats, readers and engagement gradually rise throughout the past two years. My blog hasn’t been an overnight success {most blogs aren’t} but I’ve formed some great relationships, with both bloggers and readers, and have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t for my blog. As you patiently work towards your vision and goals{related: learn how to find your vision!}, you will also find out what works for your blog and the rewards you reap will encourage and inspire you to further success.

  13. Don’t give up! Galatians 6:9 exhorts us by saying, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not lose heart.” This applies in the spiritual areas of life in the context of Scripture, and if you view your blog as a ministry, you are doing good by sharing God’s truth as impressed upon you with others.

  14. Be yourself! Blog in your own voice. People will catch on and read and enjoy what you have to say! We’ll talk more about finding your own voice later in the series!

What tips have you found effective in increasing your blog traffic? 


Thanks for joining me for my blogging series What to Expect in Blogging: The Early Years! This series is both for new bloggers AND for those who have been in the game for a while! If you’d like to catch up with the previous posts, here they are:
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