Posts Tagged ‘blog’

Why The WordPress Platform?

Many people think Wordpress blogs are to complecated in the back office or Admin area.

Compared to most …. they are more complicated. But there is a reason!

Wordpress blogs have made getting seen on the internet easy for a lot of people the last few years.  The reason? The many ways to personalize your blog to your needs. A Wordpress blog can be use for just about anything now, including a membership site and never leaves the arena of easily posting lots of great content very easily that already has basic seo built in. The area of seo is ever changing  so there are always tweeks to be made by the pros to get the "edge" but a basic WordPress blog will do you well without doing any more than posting interesting content on a regular basis!

So…… too complicated?

I don't think so! If you can log in and click the add new post button you will do ok! Starting out by just posting is easy, going to Appearance to select a theme that fitts your style is as easy as clicking a few buttons! The hard part is deciding which one you like the best! Just go to one area at a time and browse around, see what each section is for. Don't push yourself and get lost! Learn at your own pace and you will be doing things you never would have thought you could in no time!
 WordPress has tons of instruction and even videos to help you do anything you want with your blog. All one has to do is ask! Traffic  Blog Net Owner Scott Reynolds is happy to work with anyone having a hard time with their WordPress Blog. On TBN, Support can change or repair anything you may think you messed up without any hassle! Some sites will take 3 to 4 emails to get things right. TBN uses Live Help and Skype to keep support fast and more personal.

Sure … you can use the other blog platforms that seem easier….. But will anyone see your posts but you?

I want to help you! But to do that I need you to see my posts. That is why I use WordPress and why I started my own blog network….. I can be seen by you…. then help you be seen with a TBN blog.

Good List – Bad List

Are you building your lists?

Every good marketer should be! Even if you believe email marketing will not work, you need lists.

Your friends list at social communities are a list. Is yours a good list…. or bad list?

Here are a few hints….

A good list is targeted to one subject or category. List building could be one, but is still a little to broad for a really good list.

Just your friends list is a bad one….. It is not categorized at all. Even I usually add everyone that request to be my friend. Most of them only want to sell something to you and are not looking to spend money….. not a good list! Now if you sort your friends into narrower categories as you accept them….. You know, take the time to visit their profile and see what they are into, then selecting the best list for them, even if they are not looking to spend money, they will be seeing information they are looking for from you and will pay you more attention!

The best lists are built from highly targeted capture pages offering information about only one thing (product or service). The people signing up for more information about this product or program are looking to eventually buy from the best info source.

Knowledge in many areas is required to build your lists like a professional, but can be done easily with a free blog and an autoresponder. Simple make a capture page on the free blog with the form from the autoresponder on it. One of the best free blog available is yours free right here on this SEO blog network and autoresponders are available to upgraded members (lowest price available of any pro responder!) at Community Marketing University along with training and live help to get you started!

Its never to late to start list building! Be sure to keep your lists highly targeted, do not try to get every person! It will make for a bad list.

Regular Posting

Like everyone else, I have a hard time finding time to post regularly on my blogs. For one thing I have to many Blogs! Then there are all the blogs on the Ning networks I belong to, the social communities, and a few forums…..  I run my own online business, work a regular job, do all the maintaince on all my websites plus the handfull that I am admin on.  Trying to keep up with SEO and making sure all the websites I am involved with have the best chance of success is time consuming.

But ! I will never get anywhere online if I do not spend time promoting myself regularly!  Why would you want to read my posts if you don’t know me? If you could red back through a few to see if you liked my style would you be more inlined to come back and read more? If the posts seemed to be posted regularly…. every 2 days, or even once a week. Would you think it would be easier to remember when the best time was to check to see if I posted something interesting?

I do not post as regular as I know I should. I watch the traffic stats….. I know how much traffic I generate every post. Yet…… I still let it slide! There are some days it is best I do not post I am sure! Then some days I do post when I should have  built a new website…. lol

Regular posting is not an issue if you are not looking for regular readers or maybe someone to make a purchase from you.  Heck…. most blogs never get seen by more than a few people anyway so why am I even mentioning it? SO MORE BLOGS DO GET SEEN!

Blogging is an art. To get your blog seen is a full time job! Especially if you have a blog hosted on your domain! That puts your blog against billions competing for the same readers! And you have to keep up with updates, plugins, crashes, backups, and every other little thing that can go wrong! On big blog networks like Wordpress or Blogger the maintaince problems go away but you may not be able to customize your blog like you wish. The network can help get you seen quiker but large networks have hundreds or even thousands of pros that can beat you out for any keyword or tag.  Use of lesser used tags work in this situation but deliver less traffic.

Smaller networks like this one is easy to get on top for most any tag or keywords. But our raking is not as high to begin with so it is still hard to compete for better tags.

One person, posting regularly, building links back and steadily building their web presence will gradually work themself to the top!  It is not what you have, or where you are…….  but what you have built…. one post at a time!

Your Blog Theme

Some of you may not know that you can change your theme on your WordPress Blogs, both here on our network and your own self hosted blog. Here it is as easy as finding the Appearance tab, clicking the right side (little arrow) to expand, then click on "Themes". You will find an assortment of I think, pretty nice looks! you can click and try any of them and easily go back to any one you like without breaking anything! Self hosted bloggers can do the same thing but need to find the theme you like, download it, then upload to your wp-content file/themes through FTP or cPanel. Then you can change it through your WP Admin just like on our network.

Starting Out With Your New Blog

You signed up for a new blog of your very own!

Now where do you start?

You will receive an email with your Blog URL, Admin URL and log-in information. Save this email where you can find it again and bookmark both URLs when you get to them so they will be easy to find later.

Once you get to your new blogs Admin and log-in, you will see a menu down the left side of the page. This is where all the controls of your blog are! Some have sub-links which can be accessed with an arrow on the right side of the menu button, click it and the drop-down of the sub links will show. The most important for your first day is Posts, click the drop-down arrow to find edit, add new, tags, categories, ect. The WordPress blog platform comes with a plugin that automatically posts a first post for you. You can edit that by clicking the edit link. Our blog network comes with an added wysiwyg editor to make posting easier for you. mouse over the tool buttons to see the functions they provide.

If you went in to edit the default post, go ahead and add something! Do not worry! if you don’t like it, you can edit or delete it later! Click add new and make a new post…. Most people are afraid they are going to break their blog. Well…. It has been done! But not to worry at this point! The worse that can happen is we will have to delete and re-install your blog. No problem if you do not have a lot of content on it you want to save. Another handy feature of our network is ease support from admin!

Click around to see what your new blog can do. Pick a new theme by clicking the Appearance link.

I have WordPress Training linked along with my own training videos to give you the basics. I will also be posting regular tips here in the blogging basics category. Next post in this series will be basic settings.

Network Update 5/2/09

Hi Blog net Bloggers!

If you have not noticed, I would like to call your attention to a problem we have been having the last week or so. The Blogs have been down quite often lately. We generally enjoy 100% up-time and this has been a pain.

There is no problem with our network or blogs. Your information is perfectly safe and your blog will be there when it is live again. If your blog can not be found, the system has tagged you as a spam blog from your blog content, inactivity, or email address. Contact support@trafficblognet if you feel your blog should not have been removed. 

I have been working with our host to resolve problems with another site on our server. This afternoon our blogs are back with added security and features like this simple newsletter I added today so we can keep in touch easier.

For those of you that think your efforts have been in vain, Here are our network stats:
Feb. (our new beginning) 89183 total hits and 7376 unique visitors
March. 183821 total hits with 15721 unique visitors
April. 179872 total hits with 17392 unique visitors

This ain’t bad for our few blogs folks!  But why so few comments or sales you ask?

1. To many non targeted hits

2. Keywords…Keywords…. Keywords…… If people do not find the info they are looking for when they get to your pages they look somewhere else! Be sure your links, tags, keywords, and descriptions used do not mislead the people searching!

3. FOCUS! If your page has ads and widgets leading everywhere but to more of your awesome information and products…. Where do you think the people you worked so hard to get there are going to go? Follow one of those fancy widgets or banners away from your blog faster than you can say "oh crap!"

Your pages and posts should have one focus and lead your readers/visitors straight to what you want them to do while telling them a story. People will read a story. Blatant ads are deffinately out of the question! Your focus can be building your readers trust or simply getting them to return. Always offering a sign-up to a newsletter or other "email capture" is a good idea but keep that just out of the way and still in view so they don’t feel pressured….

There are way to many "focuses" to list here. It can be anything. But staying focused and having your post read easily while leading them in the direction you planed will build your readership, list, and income!

Make use of our traffic people! We are getting it, and it will keep growing!

Still Not Making Money?

So you still believe The Internet means overnight success…

I keep getting comments on my blogs and articles saying "I have been doing it this way but I just don’t make any money."

For you I have these questions:

1. Have you, or are you building a list targeted to YOUR brand?
2. Have you even created your own brand?
3. Have you changed all information you had previously on the internet to your brand?
4. Have you created a massive web presence for your brand?
5. Is there any reason for new customers to trust your brand? If yes. Are they available online?
6. Do you have any "real information" about you and your brand on the internet?
7. Do you have targeted traffic funnels started, or sending traffic to your sites now?
8. Are you working hours every day to get those few hits just to make nothing?
9. Do you blog about something you love to do and talk about?
10. Do you blog about a business you know almost nothing about?

Answer these 10 questions with careful thought. Do you think you are on the online success track?

Why Blog?

I heard someone say the other day they stopped blogging because they weren’t getting results.

They would rather click sites or widgets or something to get clicks back. Definitely one way to get some visitors but you must be very careful to stay within your categories to get targeted traffic back. I would think it would be more like cold calling….. just call the non targeted list of numbers until you get a positive reaction…..

I have to give it up for him! I really don’t want to work that hard for so few results!

I do know where he is coming from….. if you just slap some copy and paste articles up with no research, key words, or links in on a blogging platform like Blogger. You won’t get ANY visitors unless you send them by working at clicking or reviewing their blogs or sites. Blogger is a cool site and done right will bring you traffic but it has so many members, it makes it hard to get to the top to be seen. Most bloging platforms will give you those same results  unless you are a pro blogger and a SEO expert. So without help, blogging is just more unproductive work! …….. You Might as well go start clicking!

Why Blog?

I blog because I can produce thousands of visitors with a single post!

I blog because once my posts and keywords are up there….. they keep working for me  driving traffic until the are taken down! The traffic DOES NOT STOP when I stop clicking!

I blog because I can easily funnel my visitors to any product or program, build a list or downline, and even make money on demand!

The WordPress platform and this blog network is highly  search engine optimized (SEO) and easy to get your keyphrases seen on searchengines.  It may be a little less user friendly than blogger but the results are worth it.

By blogging you are building your web presence and as long as your blogs are online and you keep posting, your web presence grows along with your rank! (someone with non related posts on every free blog they can find that are not linked together are not building anything.  These people will not like blogging because they can’t get results……. They will not get results any other way either……except maybe, for chasing after every single lead they may not even ever sell anything to…… A  LOT of work!

You can make your blog work for you  with a few easy steps.

Watch my on the video page and SIGN UP for your own free blog and start telling the world why they can’t live without you!

Web Traffic Basics

How do visitors get to the sites they want to see?

It all starts with a key phrase or "keyword" someone types into their browsers search box.  That  search checks all indexed listings with that "keyword" in their default or chosen search engine.

Getting your website or blog to have keywords or phrases that will show up on the first page when a search is done for those words or phrases will bring those visitors to you.

No…. You can’t put up a web page with the keywords you want people to find you with and expect people to show up. Oddly enough … that has been done. What a mess these "keyword sites" have made on the internet. Picking keywords that will get you results will take some research…. think of a word or phrase, do a search on any search engine. They will tell you how many time they matched your word or phrase. Now try to find one on the same subject that has under one million matches….. (Under a million is pretty easy to get you on the first page of a search).

OK, so now you have 1 or 2 key phrases with under 1 mill. competition. To guarantee top placement with those key phrases you need to set it up like this…..

• The key phrase has to be in the url or web address. Can be like http://trafficblognet.com/keyphrase/
• All or part of the key phrase has to be in the page title.
• All or part of the key phrase has to be in the category.
• All or part of the key phrase has to be in the sub title.
• Key phrase has to be spread throughout the article or post (and still be readable).
• Key phrase or words have to be hyper linked to (the same word or phrase if possible) in different post on and of your blog.
• Lead in posts or excerpts should be posted on other high ranking sites (where allowed) and keywords or phrases linked in to your blog (same word or phase on lead in as main post linked to).

Every step above is a must for your main keyword or phrase. Using this for your main key phrase and then branching off with others using hierarchy will create the multiple streams of trageted traffic I mentioned before. I guarantee any key phrase set up like that on trafficblognet.com will be on the first page of a search withing hours! Of course you can not do every step for every keyword or phrase (the url and page) but doing the rest of the steps will get a lot of your posts seen and keep building your organic search traffic with every key phrase you ad!

The search engines like Google and Yahoo have had to keep changing how they find and report information to try and give their customers the best information possible. My forecast of future internet searches is if one does not have large quantities of interesting and informative relevant information on and linked to their pages….. they will not receive any visitors. This has the Guru marketers nervous because their marketing tactics will not work anymore.

If you want to compete in tomorrows organic search traffic, I suggest you start building your information base (your web presence) now!

You do not need your own domain and hosting to start.

You do not need to spend loads of money to get started and using my system, the more you do…… the more it gives back later. No. It is not something that takes no work at all. BUT!  You can build a HUGE reader base and multiple targeted traffic streams just by blogging about something you love to do and talk about!

Now the SECRET!………. Once you have multiple streams of traffic and a huge reader base……… you can recommend what ever product you feel they will be interested in to them and make money on demand! (if you keep milking the cow it will go dry…. so be reasonable)

Watch my Traffic Building Videos for more information or come to the live CMU7 Blog Traffic Training. every Tues. in the CMU7 training room.