Pro Business Tips

4 Proven Traffic Building Strategies with Social Media

Social is a cornerstone of any audience development and traffic-driving strategy. You can use it to build your business in a myriad of ways:

• Communicate site updates on Twitter and Facebook to encourage fans and followers to check out your site to see new product features and new content
• Drive traffic via calls to action, such as newsletter sign-ups, special offers, commenting, and contests
• Syndicate site content to social media venues like Twitter and Facebook
• Increase engagement time and site "stickiness" by adding Facebook commenting and other "social widgets"

Here are a couple of greats resources to get started:

http://developers.facebook.com

http://twitter.com/about/resources

Building Traffic with Wikipedia

A free online user-edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia is one of the most trafficked websites in the world. Used as a reference by consumers, casual internet surfers, college students and hobbyists, Wikipedia is a massive online collaboration run by volunteers and enthusiasts.

Wikipedia dominates Google search results because of the presumed quality of its content. Search for almost anything and chances are that a Wikipedia entry will appear on the first page.  

How Wikipedia Can Monetize a Blog

1. Credibility from being listed in Wikipedia increases customer and visitor trust, which might lead to repeat visits, bookmarking and a bigger audience base. If you are pushing products on some other pages of your website, you might have a higher potential for affiliate conversions and product sales.
2. Wikipedia traffic is ultra-targeted. Visitors arrive through a keyword search onto a Wikipedia page and then onto your blog via a link.
3. Getting listed in Wikipedia has a direct correlation to any website’s long-term monetization strategy and should be considered a strategy to explore within any traffic building or marketing campaign.

But, before you get too enthusiastic... Keep reading to find out what to watch for before you sign-up and start using Wikipedia to market your brand.

The 3 Tactics That Kill Search Engine Optimization

In the previous post, 5 Effective Search Engine Optimization Strategies, I looked at the best SEO tactics. But it's just as important to consider things that can hurt your best efforts to improve your search engine ranking.

1. Consider the trade-off between readability and a post stuffed with keywords that appear like little more than spam and will be penalized by Google as such. 
2. Avoid duplicate content as much as possible. Google can penalize you for writing about basically a rehashed version of a previous post that you wrote or appeared elsewhere. This is because a classic tactic of some spammers is to repackage or steal content from other sites.
3. Don't be verbose in your post. Generally speaking 1000 words is the absolute most you should post and many think that 250-500 words is a better target. Most of my posts are even shorter than that because of that's a core mission of the site.

Marketing with Google AdWords

Google's AdWords is the default paid advertising vehicle of choice for many members of the blogosphere. I've used it pretty effectively on some other products but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error. You can certainly open an account and do some investigation but I don't recommend that you do much more than that because you can get fleeced very quickly, if you aren't sure what you are doing.

But the point to understand is that Google Adwords is part of the core tool-set of traffic building strategies many blogs use. So while we're not going to cover it detail yet, it's something you should consider once you get some traction, traffic, and revenue. 

If you are keen to dabble, I recommend that you head over to the Adwords Beginner's Guide first.

Google's AdWords is the default paid advertising vehicle of choice for many members of the blogosphere. I've used it pretty effectively on some other products but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error. You can certainly open an account and do some investigation but I don't recommend that you do much more than that because you can get fleeced very quickly, if you aren't sure what you are doing.

But the point to understand is that Google Adwords is part of the core tool-set of traffic building strategies many blogs use. So while we're not going to cover it detail yet, it's something you should consider once you get some traction, traffic, and revenue. 

If you are keen to dabble, I recommend that you head over to the Adwords Beginner's Guide first.

Widgets and Plug-ins for Your Blog

Widgets and plug-ins are self-contained little applications that add functionality to a Web site or blog. These include interactive polls, search, RSS, and tag clouds. Most of the major blogging platforms offer these for free. For example:

• Wordpress Plugins
• Typepad Widgets
• Blogger Widgets

If you want to see zillions of free widgets that can be used no matter what site software you use, head over to WidgetBox for the largest offering on the Web.

But don't get carried away adding widgets. They can clutter your page and make it slow to load. Also, make sure the widgets are consistent with your topic. It may take some testing and discarding before you find one that works with your niche.

My 9 Favorite Blogs for Making Money Online

There's a ton of good, free resources out there to help you make money online. If you are looking to supplement your reading beyond this blog, I recommend the following sites:

• Copyblogger - Features indispensible blog writing and marketing tips.
• Dosh Dosh - Superb internet marketing and money making advice blog.
• Mashable - Social networking and must-read Web trends blog.
• ProBlogger - Best of the best for making money blogging.
• Internet Business Mastery - Outstanding resource for creating and building an online business.
• Get Elastic - Excellent blog for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
• Inside AdSense - Must read for Google Adsense users.
• Silicon Alley Insider - Great site for getting the big picture view on technology and business movers and shakers.
  
• The Blog of Tim Ferriss - The "The 4-Hour Work Week" provides key insights into lifestyle design, which is why we are trying to make money in the first place, right?

What are your favorites?

Traffic Building Strategies Using External Commenting

There are many types of traffic building strategies a publisher can pursue to bring users to their site. In this series, I'm going to discuss the most popular ones. Let's starting with commenting on an external site. Make sure to include your name (and/or company name) and a link back to your site in the applicable area of the comments box. Why?

• Readers of that blog might see your comment and be interested in learning more by clicking on the link that leads to your site.
• Search engines will also spider your comment content and your comment will appear in search results, which may garner clicks.
• You will also get some mild SEO benefits since Google's algorithms rewards in-bound, quality links--even if they are your own comments pointing back at your site.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best-kept secrets that Google has in its product portfolio and it's a great thing to know about if you are serious about making money online.

It's free to sign-up and provides all sorts of useful information about who your users are, where they come from, and how they engage with your blog or website.

And best of all, you just cut-and-paste a small piece of code into your site to make Google Analytics work for you.