SEO/SEM

This is post 3 of 5 in a series called, “5 Tips to Increasing Blog Traffic“.

3. Posting Frequency

In this post we’re going to look at how to post the perfect amount of posts to achieve the optimal “snowball effect“.

For one of my blogs, I try to post 2-4 times per day. Why? This is what my readers want. For another blog, 1 time a day maximum. How do I know this? The stats tell me!

If you don’t have a FeedBurner account, I highly recommend it. It tracks your RSS feed subscribers and gives you some data and more control of your feed without having to learn to code XML.

The picture below represents the last 3 weeks from one of my sites. FeedBurner updates stats daily, so the day after multiple posts should show more subscribers. Also in there is the day my server HDD crashed.

As you can see, when I post 3 posts, my subscribers shoot up. When I post one or two posts, my subscribers stay the same, or go up slightly. This is the data that showed me the optimal amount of posts for this blog. With some more trial and error I might find that my subscribers will be ok with 1 post on the weekends since this is a business-person oriented blog, most of which don’t work during the weekends.

What are the potential downsides for too many posts?

Too Many Posts

I have 9 total sites in my RSS reader (I use the Google personalize start page). Out of these 9 sites, I read every post from 7 of them. The two that I don’t? Digg / Technology and Slashdot. Why do I rarely read these updates? They post like a bazillion posts per day and I can’t keep up. If they were 3 updates per day, I would read all of them, every day. I understand Digg and Slashdot are more news outlets than blogs, but still the point remains.

Too Few Posts

About once a month I remove a feed and add a few feed to my RSS readers, know why? Too few posts per day. Most of the ones that get removed have 1 post every other day, 3-4 posts per week! I want something that is updated daily, atleast daily, preferrably multiple times per day.

The Perfect Posting Amount

So what is the perfect posting amount? The perfect posting amount is like the Perfect Storm. Three factors must come together in perfect harmony, answer these three questions and find the perfect posting amount for your blog:

1. Who are your readers?

Are they professionals? Are they high school students? Stay at home mothers? Obviouslly these three groups would read your blog at very different times.

Professionals – 7:45 a.m. – 8:15 a.m. then 11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. then before the day ends at 4:45 p.m.

High School Students – 3:30 p.m. – Midnight

SAHM – Various times during the day, usually from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

2. What do they want to read?

Personally, I don’t care much about your life and what you did last night. I want to get from your blog what I expect to get. If your blog is a SEO blog, give me SEO. If it is about business marketing tips, give me some tips. I do, however, like to hear a personal voice. Shoemoney is great at this. Almost all of his articles are on target with what I expect, even the personal stuff is worth reading because it is all relevant to making money online.

3. How can you keep them?

If you are in my RSS reader, and want to keep me there, post frequently, post on topic, and post engaging headlines. If you are writing about a new tool you created for SEM (search engine marketing) you have multiple title options. “My Newest SEM Tool” or “Check Out My New Tool” or “Free Tool Helps You Move Up SERPS Easily“.

Which of those 3 headlines is most likely to get clicked on? Obviously #3.

So why do you want those RSS subscribers? If people are reading your blog daily, they will spread the word. Only people interested in your target niche will read your blog. They likely have their own blog, and they might post a link to you, they might send an email to their friends, the possibilities are endless, but only if you can capture more RSS subscribers.

If you can post the optimal amount for your blog, learn to comment effectively, a learn how to linkbait, you’re on the way to the top!

This is post 1 of 5 in a series called, “5 Tips to Increasing Blog Traffic“.

1. LinkBaiting

Linkbaiting is the process by which you write and article or post that makes waves within your industry. To create a great linkbait you start with something interesting, controversial, accusatory, well researched, or unique. You then take this piece of information or article, put a great headline on it (How To Write Magnetic Headlines) and submit it let your readers submit it to Digg, Del.icio.us, and other social media sites. Word spreads like a wildfire and at the end of the day you have had 12,000 page views and 8,000 unique visitors. Then at the end of the month Yahoo! tells you that new page has 47 new incoming links.

Not only should linkbaiting get you some major traffic, it should also net you some pretty good links and a good number of them. There is one crucial key to linkbaiting. Don’t recycle or copy content! Use unique, great content, even if it takes 3 days to write one piece.

Here are a few tips to consider when creating your linkbait:

Remember your existing audience, and your new visitors. Your current audience may like 1 type of post, your new visitors may not. Try to add something of interest in a “Related Posts”, “Recent Posts”, or “Popular Posts” section that will appeal to new visitors and encourage them to become repeat visitors.

Don’t give up. If you are a new blogger without a reputation, you’ll likely have to craft a few great pieces of linkbait before you will get noticed. Don’t worry however, linkbait can be a few months old and still create traffic through links and search engines.

Avoid Spam-type words and actions. Nobody likes spam, not bloggers, not readers, enough said.

Here are some linkbait resources:

Tropical SEO – Can You Compete with Industrial Strength Linkbaiting?
“And link baiting is the fast, cheap, and bulletproof shortcut to those trusted links.”

Stuntdubl – The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited
“Linkbaiting is all about the bait. In the same way that you can’t catch a giant tuna with a bag of doritos…”

SEOmoz – Talking about LinkBait
“SEOmoz has gone fishing for links quite successfully in the recent past. Our recent heavily linked-to projects include…”

Cornwall SEO – The Enormous Linkbait list
“I have read a ton of stuff on linkbait over the past year, I thought I would put together a list of the linkbait articles I have come across. ”

Link Building Blog – How to get $196,000 worth of links, free
I’ll admit that I came up with that title. Isn’t that much better linkbait, while still being true?

Examples of linkbait in action:

Problogger – 20 Linkbaiting Techniques
Although this post is about linkbait, it is great linkbait itself.

SEJ – Search Engine Journal’s 2005 Search Blogs Awards
Great use of Linkbait although in the beginning it was unintentional.

Jeremy Zawodny – SearchEngineJournal doesn’t link? WTF?!
This bit of linkbait worked out great for SEJ because everyone was linking to this post.

Daggle – Stats Say: Sticking With Gmail!
Great little piece talking about false positives in your spam folder.

Scoreboard Media – Bruce Lee vs. The Enola Gay: Who Ya Got, Link Ninjas?
Something critical and controversial always works. Be ready for the fallout.

And one final piece of content that I saved for last because if you skipped everything I said above, but took hold of this, you would have it all!

Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing

So get out there and start linkbaiting your niche!