Generating Visitor Traffic To Your Web Site or Blog

In a prior post, I wrote about claiming a blog on Technorati. I “claimed” this Business Marketing Success Strategy Blog on November 24, 2009 and followed the procedure for having Technorati verify that the blog existed and was “owned” by the submitter. Technorati “found” it posthaste. But it’s now December 22nd, 2009, nearly a month later, and Technorati has yet to return to further verify this blog and add it to their directory.

Since writing about the importance of submitting your blog to Technorati, I’ve received a couple comments from others who, like myself, have submitted their blogs but have not yet been confirmed/listed in Technorati’s directory.

Here’s the most recent comment. (Thanks, Ephman!):

“That’s so funny! My blog was “claimed” on November 25th 2009. Still nothing.
Not holding out much hope…. But do you REALLY need Technorati anyhow?

And my reply:

Do You REALLY Need Technorati?

One simple answer would be: “No.”

There are so many blog directories now, and so many ways to ensure that people can find your blog, that focusing on whether Technorati lists your blog or not would not be productive.

Use Multiple Web Site / Blog Promotion and Traffic-Generation Strategies

Here are some other ways to get your blog noticed and visited:

Use “organic” SEO (search-engine optimization) by focusing on keyword-rich posts, with a keyword-rich sentence or two at the beginning, and a repeat of the primary keywords for that post used about two more times – once in the middle and once near the end.

Install and use the “All-In-One SEO” plugin or any other effective SEO plugin for Wordpress if you’re using a Wordpress platform.

Set your blog for automatic pinging, and ping it from Ping-O-Matic now and again, to ensure that your blog is listed in other major (and even minor) blog directories.

Use opt-in pages (to generate subscribers for your e-mail list) at other domain URLs that lead back to your blog.

Post audios with link mentions of your blog URL to iTunes and podcast directories.

Post videos with link mentions of your blog URL displayed at the beginning and end of the video (and spoken in the audio portion of your video, if appropriate) to YouTube and other video directories.

Submit articles with your blog link in your author bio to article directories such as EzineArticles.com

Write guest posts on other bloggers’ Web sites/blogs with a link back to your site in your author bio.

Invite other bloggers to write guest posts for you on your blog, with their URL in their bio. They’ll mention their article on your site on their blog, which will result in traffic from their site back to yours.

Diversify Your Promotional Strategies

Any blogger who becomes too dependent on only one means of promoting and “driving traffic” to your blog will simply not do as well as you can at that, and will not do as well as other bloggers who use a variety of promotional and visitor traffic-generation strategies.

When you use multiple means of generating awareness about and visitor traffic to your site, you needn’t concern yourself about whether just ONE of these – e.g. a listing on Technorati – is in place.

Should You Submit Your Blog to Technorati? Definitively: Yes!

Still, the answer to your question about the importance of being listed on Technorati is also: “Yes.”

Although it’s best to use a variety of promotional and traffic generation strategies and techniques to help people who are interested in your topic find and visit your blog, Technorati remains one of the most visited and most well-organized blog directories.

So although it may take a long time for Technorati to “verify” your blog – and there’s a possibility that they may, unfortunately, NEVER get around to yours – it’s vital to submit it to them for consideration anyway.

Because if you don’t need them (because you’re also doing other promotion), then your blog shouldn’t suffer too much if Technorati doesn’t list you. But if they DO list you, then you’ve got yet another means by which your blog and blog posts will be more easily found by potential readers.

Summary

Submit your blog to Technorati for consideration to be listed in their blog directory service.

But don’t “put all your eggs in one basket.”

Use as many promotional and traffic-generation strategies as you can, so that whether Technorati lists you or not, or whether any one of them does less well than you hope, then you have other means by which people are finding – and ultimately visiting and reading – your blog.

BONUS: Use Metrics to Become More Efficient and Effective

ALWAYS Measure. Everything you do. In this case, measure where your visitor traffic is coming from to your Web site / blog.

Make sure to have Google Analytics or some other reliable visitor tracking analysis capabilities on your Web site that can show you where visitors are coming from when they arrive at your site.

The 80/20 Rule ROCKS!

After you’ve used a variety of traffic generation strategies consistently for a while, patterns (discerned from your site visitor traffic analysis) begin to emerge about which of your strategies is most effective at bringing visitors to your site.

It’s likely that at some point you may discover that 80% of your visitors are coming from 20% of your promotional efforts.

When you know the 20% of your promotional strategies that are working the best for you and your audience, shift 80% of your attention to them – doing them more often and tweaking how well you use them.

That will leave you with only 20% of your promotional time to put your attention on the remaining 80% of the less effective strategies that you started with. Eliminate or improve your ability to use the ones that are generating no interest in or visitors to your blog. Then do just enough of the rest to maintain some consistency, because you never know. At some point, one person who’s visit might prove highly valuable might find you through one of those means.

That shift – becoming more efficient and more effective – can result in a multiplier effect on your visitor count to your site.

Measure. Evaluate. Respond. It’s really that simple.

What Do You Think?

Do you really need Technorati?

Should you submit to it anyway, if you don’t really “need” it?

Do you have any experience with effective and efficient ways of getting your blog noticed and visited? Any of the ones I’ve written about here? Any others?

Please leave your comments.

I look forward to your feedback and to learning of your promotional and visitor traffic-generating stories and successes.

Jay Aaron
Strategic Visionary / Visionary Strategist
Follow me on Twitter: http://Twitter.com/newthoughts

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