Last time we looked how to optimize your blogs in your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

As a quick refresher we looked at: your post titles; what to cover in your blog posts; how to create and present your blog posts; how to properly use links; what “voice” you should use; and a whole lot more.

Now you know what to do to your blogs to optimize them for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network we’re going to look at some of the final “secret” details you need to do to buff up that blog so you attract and keep readers.

You may think you don’t need these but small details are usually what separates the failures or even the fairly successful from the wildly successful.

So, to be truly exceptional, you need to go that extra step (or ten!) and do those things that others don’t.

Fine Details on Optimizing Your Blogs

Setting up and using blogs in the right way gives a remarkably strong foundation for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

There are a few additional things you need to make sure you do, or at least think about, to have your blogs be as exceptional as they can be.

Have Personality

As a mentioned above you need to have your own “voice” and if that voice has a interesting, likeable personality it will engage your readers and have them help them build some emotional bonds with you.

This isn’t always easy for everyone, some of us aren’t as witty, personable and interesting as others; I understand as I fall into that category.

But, you need to find something inside that is part of you and that can be attractive to your readers or, at least, to a large enough group who are interested in your topic that they will continue to read what you say.

Proper Use of Advertising

I mentioned this above also but it is so attractive to so many people that I need to say it again.

Blog advertising has becoming big business nowadays and will likely grow over the new few years.

There are many forms of advertising: affiliate marketing, banner ads, ads for your own products, AdSense, etc.

For you traffic network you need to start with no ads to build up traffic and build your relationships.

After you’ve done that then start putting up related ads for your own or affiliate products and sell the space to people that will be of interest and actually help some segment of your audience.

AdSense isn’t the best way to go because, for most ads, you earn so little per click and you may get a mix of ads that aren’t always appropriate to the specifics of your audience, meaning more work for you to fine tune AdSense.

Remember you are building a traffic network, you are building a few blogs to make money with.

Don’t Give Up

People are frequently ready to quit because:

• Something “bad” happens. It will happen so just deal, learn and progress.
• They don’t know how to do something. Nobody knows everything, learn how or find someone who does. Most of it isn’t hard to learn or expensive to get done for you.
• It takes too long. If you think building a traffic network will be fast you need to think again. If you want to spend lots of money you can speed up the process but expect it to talk some months to be showing results and years to be something great. Once it gets rolling though it is like the snowball rolling downhill, it happens faster and picks up more traffic.
• It is too much work. There is work, yes. It has to be done but you can automate and outsource all of it.  Look at those ways before you give up.

404 Error Pages

When a Web server can’t find a page that someone wants it returns a “404” missing page error.

When it happens, you can control what the person sees and use it to the advantage of your traffic network.

You can become increasingly sophisticated but, minimally redirect to the home page of your blog.

You can also:

1. Put  permanent redirect for that page so the search engines will know where to look
2. Give a introduction to you and your blog
3. Show links to popular posts on the blog
4. Dynamically, when they try to go to the missing page, figure out what they are looking for and either go there or put some suggested links to places that would be of interest; this could be based upon the URL and keywords/tags.
5. Put a squeeze page to capture their e-mail address so that you can remind them ofter about your blog.
6. Some people like ads but they aren’t optimal for a traffic network, particularly as they usually take traffic away from the blog not deeper into it. It’s best not to do this until you are very well established; do it for your Web sites or non-traffic network blogs but not for blogs in your traffic network.

Tell-a-Friend

You’re building a free traffic network and need as many things to help you as possible.

A Tell-a-Friend plug-in, like the one found at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tell-a-friend/, can help you generate traffic because when a person really likes a blog post they can immediate let their friends know.

This is the type of subtle thing that makes the different between an “okay” blog network and and an outstanding one.

Blog Directories

A blog directory is simply a specific type of Web directory that focuses on listing blogs instead of Web sites.

Since there are vast numbers of blogs on the Internet, blog directories help people find the types of blog they are looking for.

Some blog directories even include reviews and human-created descriptions to further help people find what they’re looking for.

Unlike a blog search engine, many blog directories are not based on keyword searches; they let you browse and search on multiple category levels. Most do include a search engine, but for some it isn’t the primary method.

Most blog directories, whether free or paid, have categories for a wide variety of different blogs; technically there is no limit.

How to Use Blog Directories

There are several ways you can benefit from blog directories but the primary way is that you can get a lot of back links; and some of the directory are high value sites so the links are more powerful than just regular links.

Most of the time your won’t get a lot of direct traffic from blog directories but the back links will provide you with indirect traffic through the search engines and it is a simple and easy way to give another little boost to your free traffic network.

Pinging Blogs

Pinging blogs is a method where blogs tells Web sites (called ping servers) that changes have been made to the blog.

That server adds the change to their list and other Web sites that have told the ping server Web site that they want to be notified of specific changes (thay are said to have “subscribed”) also get notified.

What this means is that seconds after you’ve posted an update to your blog all the lists in the ping servers you are “pinging” are automatically updated and everyone in the world who has subscribed is also automatically notified and have your update on their Web sites and blogs.

This also helps you with the search engines because those search engines can be notified automatically of blog updates and then know what they need index.

Here are a list of the ping servers I use, just add them to your WordPress writing settings:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/

Use Technorati

Technorati is a search engine for blogs, actually, it is THE search engine for blogs.

To get Technorati to know about your blog you need to “claim” your blog at Technorati.

For building traffic to your blog, Technorati is astonishingly powerful; the percentage of traffic to my blogs that come from Technorati is high compared to other traffic sources.

In addition, Technorati is considered an authority site by the search engines so blogs that have been claimed, that all it takes, get a search engine results boost.

Obviously, for a free traffic network the power of Technorati explodes exponentially.

Conclusion

That’s it you’ve got your blog optimized for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Like all the rest of the optimization techniques these are also good to do even if you aren’t creating a free traffic network.

This time we looked 8 more ways to make you blogs be traffic magnets:

1. Have Personality
2. Proper Use of Advertising
3. Don’t Give Up
4. 404 Error Pages
5. Tell-a-Friend
6. How to Use Blog Directories
7. Pinging Blogs
8. Use Technorati

We now have a very strong foundation to build our free traffic network on.

Next time we’ll look at the first ring or layer around your blogs, these will feed gobs of traffic to your blogs and are the key roadways in your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

What these are you doing that you’ve found really helped your blogs?

Was there anything I suggested that you think will be helpful or that won’t help you at all?

Please leave me a comment and let me know or with any questions you might have.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

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