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

.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Make Your Blogs Exceptional: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 5

This time we’ll continue looking at what you need to do to make sure your blogs are optimized to get the greatest benefit and the most traffic.

I’ve identified 15 things to do that will make an incredible difference in your traffic network.

Each is a valuable technique but combined they really help each other.

1. Title Your Post for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines

First, and foremost, write your title for your readers, including those who have subscribed to your RSS feed.

Make them snappy, on-topic and catchy.

However, you also want to think about the search engines when you create your titles, since they are a primary traffic driver.

What I do, and I find it works great, is to write the title then run a search at Google’s Keyword tool and WordTracker to see if there is a better phrasing or word ordering that I can use that better matches target search terms.

2. Cover Topics that Need to Be Covered

There are always certain topics and questions in every niche that constantly come up but don’t have good answers.

Those are always good to talk about and to provide definitive answers to.

I get a lot of topics for my posts from e-mail questions and blog comments. When you have people asking you questions then these can make great blog posts.

Spend time and effort researching hot topics that will be of interest and great value to your readers and to search engines. Then write posts about them giving your readers information, ideas, techniques, etc. that will keep them on the forefront of their niche and put them ahead of their competition.

3. Don’t Just Have Text in Your Posts

Break up your blog posts and keep them interesting by including images, video, audio, polls, charts, graphs and other non-text content.

You can even just use formatting like headings, whitespace, indentation, bullet points, call out boxes, etc. to create more visually appealing and readable blog posts.

4. Link Smartly and Judiciously

Some people think you shouldn’t have link from your site that aren’t links to your own Web properties.

While I don’t agree with that, when you include external links in your blog posts be aware of how those links are part of your content.

Of course, not every post needs links to other sites and there should be a good reason for everyone your have.

Add links only when it will provide additional information of great value to your reader. For example, if you are talking about using a tool that isn’t commonly known or that requires searching around to find then include a link to it.

Also, if you quoting or discuss the ideas of other bloggers or online sources then you should link to them; not to do that is bad etiquette and could cost you nice back links from them in the future.

5. Create and Use Meaningful Permalinks

Creating permanent link that are useful is, in my opinion, the best way to go.

It should readable to a person and include keywords for the post; this helps the reader and the search engines.

They should be as short as possible but clarity should trump brevity because it isn’t likely that people will try to remember the URL link.

6. Be Sure to Bookmark Your Posts

Technorati is the first, and still THE, place that you should be bookmarking your posts and make it easy for others to do so.

Be sure to properly tag your blog posts and to use Digg, del.icio.us, Propeller and StumbleUpon.

There are many other places and you can automate much of this if you build a Social Media Domination Machine (http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/social-networking/social-media-domination-machine),

7. Archive Effectively

The best archives are the ones that make it easy for people to find what they want and for search engines to understand.

Carefully organize your blog posts into categories and date ranges.

For search traffic having the entire text on the archive pages but for readers having a short introduction and then a link to the full blog post is easier.

You need to try to balance these two conflicting needs and make your decision based on personal your goals for the blog.

8. Track Your Pages and Visitors

Use tracking software, like Google Analytics, to see which of your posts and more popular and also where you visitors are coming from. Also, track any sign up and comments links or buttons so you can what percentage of people use them and where they are coming from.

Use this information to improve your pages and your strategies.

9. Create Your Blog Without Comments and Add Them Later

A blog post with no comments feels sort of dead.

One solution is to disable comments and then when you have about 100 RSS subscribers or 7-800 unique visitors per day, then enable comments and you should start seeing some comment activity.

10. Use a Human Voice

The success of a blog is tied to the “voice” you present to your readers.

For direct response marketers, like most Internet Marketers, people in most niches like an informal voice that has empathy, authority, humility and honesty; so write from that place and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

If you see people start to leaving and your traffic dropping it’s time to do something and one of those things is to relook at your writing style and the “voice” of your posts.

11. Create a Personal Style and Be Consistent

When writing, create a personal style in tone, content focus, when you post and what your post look like.

If you vary widely from that it will be harder to get a group of people who like your style; makes sense since you don’t really have one.

Part of why people will read what you say again and again is that they like both the information you provide and the way you provide it.

Whatever style you decide you will attract people, although certain styles work better in certain niches, but you need to be consistent in that style both in content and “voice”.

This applies somewhat to post frequency so try to be consistent in how many and when you make your posts.

12. Don’t Be Secretive or Stingy with Information

The more open and giving you are with the information on your blog posts the more likely they will be read and the more you will be trusted.

The Internet itself has become a vast library of information much of it previously considered, or believed to be, private.

If you aren’t pushing to the limit of what you can rightfully publish you’ll be defeating yourself but if you do “go all the way” then you’ll be rewards with more visitiors, links and traffic.

13. Build a Brand

Most direct marketers are successful because they build a brand – not do brand marketing but build a brand.

That brand may be a personal brand where they brand themselves or it may be a corporate brand where they brand a company.

When you brand you need to create a brand that people want to be associated with that people feel they are better off by “patronize” that brand.

As with your style, be consistent with your brand.

14. Don’t Advertise (at Least for Awhile)

Some people love putting up blogs with lots of ads including AdSense.

This isn’t a good thing no matter whether the ads are AdSense, banners, contextual or any other type it has a negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, bookmark or evn add to their favorites.

That is something you don’t want particularly while you’re still trying to get established.

It also gives people a lot of places to go to that are your sites.

So, even though you might pick up a little money, until you are popular, don’t put an advertisements on you pages except maybe to your own Web properties; ultimately you’ll earn much more than you’re going to lose.

15. Have Guest Bloggers

Having a well known person in your niche to write a short post on their subject of expertise is a great way to give great value to your readers and attract new ones; particularly because you’ll probably get a link (or at least be associated with the person).

Be sure that you getting a quality post from the person and not just a sales piece and that the person is well know and thought of highly in your niche.

Also make sure they agree to have let you edit their post before it’s posted to avoid any later unpleasantness.

Conclusion

Now you know what to do to your blogs to optimize them for your Ultimate Free Traffic Network to turn them into traffic magnets. In fact, they’re good to do even if you aren’t creating a traffic network.

We looked 15 ways to do this optimization:

1. Title Your Post for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines
2. Cover Topics that Need to Be Covered
3. Don’t Just Have Text in Your Posts
4. Link Smartly and Judiciously
5. Create and Use Meaningful Permalinks
6. Be Sure to Bookmark Your Posts
7. Archive Effectively
8. Track Your Pages and Visitors
9. Create Your Blog Without Comments and Add Them Later
10. Use a Human Voice
11. Create a Personal Style and Be Consistent
12. Don’t Be Secretive or Stingy with Information
13. Build a Brand
14. Don’t Advertise (at Least for Awhile)
15. Have Guest Bloggers

Remember that your blogs are the true center of your traffic network and they need to be setup as optimized and powerful as possible.

Next time we’ll look at the last things you need to be doing to with your blogs as you create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Do you have any things you do to your blogs that has been successful?

Are you building a traffic network? I hope so, I am!

Leave me a comment and let me know.

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

.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Make Traffic Magnets, Optimize Your Blogs: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 4

Now we are going to start looking at the individual parts to the network, the various Web properties that will make up the network; remember what it looks like…

The center of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network is to your blogs. This is where, ultimately, all your links lead; some directly and some indirectly.

There are two types of blogs: personal blogs that are hosted by the blog owner; and hosted blogs that are hosted by specific services like Blogger and WordPress.

Each has a place and importance in a traffic network and both should be used to maximize the value of network.

The purpose of all the blogs used in a traffic network is to attract visitors and help generate traffic, either for the network or to a money site.

To attract and retain visitors, the steady stream of great content posted to the blog needs to remain focused on the specific topic on the blog both because this helps attract and retain but it also improve search engine rankings and builds authority.

Now let’s start looking at specifics of what and how to use blog to build your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Hosted

Many people blogging start with hosted blogs because they are quick and easy to get going it they don’t cost anything; they are a great places to start to learn about blogging and to build the habit of blogging.

Hosted blogs are very similar to personal blogs except you have less control of the blog but you don’t have to worry about or pay for hosting and the major blog hosts are considered authority sites and add some weight to your search engine and traffic generation.

While hosted blogs should be a part of your traffic network in many ways they are dead.

Using places like WordPress.com and Blogger.com won’t make you much money and it will be harder to come by, that why you don’t see serious bloggers using it.

But they are very useful as part of a traffic network particularly because they are authority sites.

Blogger

Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

There are fancier hosted blogs but the free cost and some of the additional flexibility makes Blogger attractive.

Of course, since it is owned by Google, they index it regularly and get a lot of traffic. This makes it valuable for adding to a traffic network.

You can set up a Blogger account very quickly, all you have to do is: sign up for an account, choose a name for your blog and choose a template for your blog. You can then host any number of multiple blogs under that account

Remember, the value of a Blogger blog isn’t to make money with it or even to use it as a primary blogging platform; the value is the power of it being an authority site and getting content, even just an RSS feed, on there that points to your other Web properties will help increase your traffic.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is free blog hosting from the people who created the WordPress blogging software.

The search engines value it highly and index the pages there very frequently and give it a lot of traffic. This makes it valuable for adding to a traffic network as you can get traffic to WordPress which you funnel to your other Web properties.

It is a quick and easy way to get a blog up and running; it literally only takes a few minutes. You don’t get to take advantage of all the great features of the non-hosted version but the fact that it is an authority site still means you should spend the few minutes to set one up.

Like Blogger, WordPress.com isn’t about making money directly or even about being your primary blogging platform; use it to point to your other Web properties so you get some good back links.

Personal

Personal blogs are blogs are the true core of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

They are blogs that the blog owner hosts themselves. You have to pay for space on a computer that is connected to the Internet and install the blog on that computer. It’s crucial that you actually own your blog including the domain name.

The value of a personal blog is having complete control over the blog and that you can monetize it is many more ways than a hosted blog.

It can be a direct link to your money site and, in fact, a personal blog can protect your money sites from the whims of the search engines, social networking sites and other components of your traffic network.

There are a number of ways to get traffic to blogs, Seth Godin has a list and here is my top 23 that I find work best for getting traffic and getting that traffic further in your traffic funnel:

1. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now
2. Learn enough to become the expert in your field
3. Break news
4. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year
5. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic
6. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you
7. Announce news
8. Write long, definitive posts
9. Be sycophantic. Share link love and expect some back
10. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us
11. Encourage your readers to Digg (and to use furl and reddit) your posts; do it with every post
12. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS
13. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education
14. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lenses
15. Point to useful but little-known resources
16. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle
17. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers
18. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger
19. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention
20. Be patient
21. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive
22. Don’t be boring
23. Write stuff that people want to read and share

Conclusion

We’ve started looking at the center of your Ultimate Free Traffic Network, blogs.

We looked at hosted blogs and how to use them in your traffic network.

Your personal blogs are the true center of your network and we looked at the purpose of personal blogs and 23 great ways to get traffic to your blogs.

But there is more to personal blogs than that and next time we’ll look at some other things that you need to be doing to with your blogs as you create your Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

Leave me a comment about your thoughts.

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

.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Blogs, the Center of the Universe: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 3