Work Smart Get Search Engines Traffic

January 7, 2010 by NaijaEcash
Filed under: Blogging, Tips & Tricks 


Work Smart Get Search Engines Traffic

Do you need targeted traffic? If you answer is yes, then my advice is that you stop working hard and start working smart to get search engines traffic. If you are wondering what I am talking about, here is a little background information.

As a blogger and a webmaster, one of my goal is to have consistent and relevant traffic for my numerous websites. Before the year 2009, my understanding was that the more I socialize on the different social bookmarking websites, like Digg, StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog etc, the more popular my websites will become. So, I started the year 2009 with the zeal of increasing my participation in the various social websites that I had joined in earlier years.

I labored and joined several social communities. I was very active and participated in all manner of gimmicks to attract visitors to my website. Well, did I see result? Yes, I did. The more I participated, the more I saw increase in the number of visitors that visited my websites. However, I noticed two facts that made me felt that something was terribly wrong.

1. Even though visitors came, they were not spending time to read my posts nor comment. This was evident from the high bouncing rate that Google Analyticals recorded for the site and the zero comments that many of my articles were recording.

2. I was not making money as I expected. A glimpse into the statistics of those visiting my website showed the reason. They were fellow bloggers who only came around because I  had earlier visited their blogs. They were simply reciprocating love!

The situation was very depressing and I almost gave up because I was getting burnt-out. I spent hours laboring online but was not seeing the desired result. Well, all that is history now. I can sincerely say that every little effort that I put into my websites yield results that I am proud of. It all started when I learned to stop working hard and started working smart on my websites.

There are three key lessons that I have learned that is giving me the present result that I am having. If you practice them, you will soon start testifying too. It may be slow at first, but when it starts paying dividend, it pays good dividend. Here are the three points.

Write for Human Consumption

If you write articles that cater for humans needs, you can be rest assured that they will not hurry away when they visit your website. They will definitely stay and devour articles upon articles and will likely drop comments on those they find really interesting. That is a sure cure  for reducing your website bounce rate.

Arrange Your Writings To Get Search Engine Robots Attention

Unlike human beings that are interested in their needs being met by the content of your articles, Search Engine robots judge your articles based on certain parameters. For example, a search engine robot will try to figure out what your article is all about by identifying the keywords used in the article,how many times the keywords were used and the positioning of the keywords. Based on this and its driving algorithm, it will categorize the article and rate it. So while your article that is so rich in content is nowhere to be found on the SERP (search engine reports page), a junk article that has its keywords well arranged will be ranked higher and may find its way into the first page of the SERP.  So, you need to understand at least a little bit of SEO (search engine optimization) so that you can arrange your article well. If you don’t understand SEO, then I advise that you pick up tutorials and get yourself educated. A good place to  start learning is the The Keyword Academy. If you can’t be bothered then you need to outsource your SEO to a professional. If you don’t get your onsite SEO right, the search engines will not be rank your websites content well, and that invariably means they will not send you any traffic!

Get Relevant Backlinks From Related Websites

Finally, I recomend you spend time getting backlinks from related websites. My tutor in SEO recommends that I spend 30% of my time writing good articles that are well presented and 70% building backlinks. A good place to start building backlinks is dropping  comments on blogs and making posts in relevant forums. If you are permitted by the webmaster of the blog or forum, use your keywords as anchor text to link back to your website articles (not the home page!). This will help your articles to get well ranked in the search engine reports pages.

As you may have guessed, this is where the real work lies. You have to be persistent in building backlinks as it is a slow job. You may not see the result of what you’re doing immediately, except if your niche is unoccupied by better competitors. Also, some search engines, e.g. Google Robot are skeptical about new websites, so your website may be placed in the sandbox for some months just to double check that it is authentic and not a spam-farm. During such period, you will receive no traffic for all your effort. However, if you persist, after about six months (maximum, sometimes it is less than that) you will start receiving traffic.

Why I love Search Engine Traffic

The good news is that once the search engines start sending you targeted traffic, it gradually increases in volume. At first the traffic may be in trickles, but as you continue to write more quality articles and practice good onsite SEO the number of your articles that will be well ranked in the search engine reports page will increase. Then, you can say goodbye to laboring in social network websites forever.  This is not an academic thesis, this website is a living proof that these three simple tips works. So, if you are really interested in getting quality website traffic that will translate into income, then you need to stop working hard at the social network sites and start working smart for search engine traffic.   ;-)

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Comments

15 Comments on Work Smart Get Search Engines Traffic

  1. Paul Onwueme on Thu, 14th Jan 2010 8:22 am

    2. Hello naija enterpreneur and compliments of the season.

    I find this article very interesting because like you initially I thought getting quality traffic was all about commenting on social networking sites and providing backlinks to my blog. I have since realised that it is not only stressful but ineffective.

    Using ecpm as my yardstick, I have since come to see that 1 visit from a search engine user is far greater than 20 or more visits from social networking sites such as nairaland and facebook.

    But page rank to some extent does depend on backlinks which some of this social networking sites could offer.

    The bottom line write a quality keyword rich article and leave the search engines and backlinks to do their work.

  2. myyorubamovie on Fri, 15th Jan 2010 5:21 pm

    3. Bros, you really trashed this topic to the bottom, and i must say
    this kind of write up will give someone like us who is new to blogging
    speedy results. Thanks and more of this sir.

  3. Oluniyi David Ajao on Mon, 18th Jan 2010 5:02 pm

    4. You write well and your words are true. Too bad you had to learn the hard way.
    However, I must state that hard and smart work go hard in hand. There is no harm in discovering the smart ways to do things and then work hard in a smart way.

    Search engine traffic is the best. But don’t stop there. Build a community around the traffic. That way, they’d keep coming back.

    Best wishes.

  4. NaijaEcash on Thu, 21st Jan 2010 5:11 am

    5. Thanks David. I agree with you. Getting the traffic is not an end in itself. ;-)

  5. Brian H. on Thu, 21st Jan 2010 6:10 am

    6. I really found your suggestion to create backlinks to specific articles. Makes sense. Thanks.

  6. mk akan on Fri, 22nd Jan 2010 5:50 pm

    7. your points are true.commenting and guest posting are great ways of building web traffic.

    guest posting is to me the best way .it can move anyone from zero status to a super star…

  7. Ike Okoye on Sat, 23rd Jan 2010 8:48 am

    8. I think getting traffic from search engines should be more preferred than getting it from social networking sites. Search engines traffic is more consistent and lasts longer

  8. NaijaEcash on Sat, 23rd Jan 2010 8:35 pm

    9. @Ike
    You’re right. Search engines traffic is more consistent and reliable. Also, you can get targeted traffic if you do your SEO homework well. Of course any online entrepreneur that wants to make real money online knows that not all traffic are good traffic. Junk traffic may drive your statistics high, but it will not put money in your pocket! ;-) So I prefer search engine traffic anyday anytime. At first it may be in trickles, but after a while, it starts gathering momentum. Thanks for visiting Nigerian Entrepreneur.

  9. NaijaEcash on Sat, 23rd Jan 2010 8:51 pm

    10. @Mk
    But you’ll agree that it is a lot of hard work. Also, you need to keep doing it to remain on top. So, I still insist that Search Engine Traffic via good SEO practice is the best route to getting quality and targeted web traffic. Cheers.

  10. Prince on Sat, 23rd Jan 2010 9:36 pm

    11. Posting in blogs for SE ranking are useless because of “no follow” i do rather advice you place your url in your signature in many forums as possible. And be helpful in those forums, apart from the SE benefits, it will also bring you direct traffic from people clicking on your signatures.

    Forums are index by SE every minutes a new post drop in. Also use a good host where your site load faster, SE robots are like human, they never finish indexing a site that load slowly. Bringing traffic is a combination of many factors.

  11. NaijaEcash on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 8:32 pm

    12. @Prince
    I quite disagree with you on the “no follow” issue. No follow is not honored by some of the search engines. At least I have noticed Yahoo ignoring “no follow” and still ranking a post high due to backlinks from several “no follow” blogs. Most of my backlinks are from blogs.
    That is not to say that one cannot get good traffic from forum. It just depends on what the forum master allows. For example, some forum will allow you to post relevant links to your post when answering threads in the forum while some frown at it and label it as spamming. So it is not a sure way of getting quality backlink.
    However, like you mentioned quality contribution to topic being discussed in forums can also send human traffic to your site.
    Thanks for visiting Nigerian Entrepreneur. It’s being quite a while that we saw you here. Cheers.

  12. Prince on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 7:00 am

    13. I like supporting brothers and sisters sites, i hate argueing as i’m not here to argue on “no follow”

    To be honest with you, links doesn’t count much today, a few quality links are enough. Contents is the king, post regularly as you can and you will see the result.

  13. Prince on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 7:05 am

    14. *Remember that google created “no follow” to stop blogs occupying top positions in SE.

  14. NaijaEcash on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 2:48 pm

    15. @Prince
    I do appreciate your visits and contribution. Be rest assured that we have gone too far as friends to make an issue out of the fact that we have different opinions on how the Search Engines work.
    My stubbornness in maintaining my current stand is not born out of pride but the simple fact that results is the best judge of who is doing the right thing and who is doing the wrong things as far as SEO and website traffic generation is concerned.

    Bearing in mind that you are currently doing well with your Forum, Nigeian Best Forum, I cannot insist you are wrong about those views that you hold. Simply because I do not know if your success as the forum webmaster is based on the current view you have on SEO. However, I cannot cast aside the little lessons that I have learned on how SEO affects a blog’s ranking.

    Since I started this blog, I have done quite a number of things to promote traffic to my website, Nigerian Entrepreneur. In the course of trying different tricks and formula I have come to identify those that work for my website.

    When I first started, I was gunning for Google PageRank thinking that is what counts. I eventually got this blog to Google PR4. However, I didn’t get the result I was expecting in terms of income. Eventually, something went wrong and the PR started coming down until it finally disappeared. At first I was unhappy, but then, I noticed that my Search Engine Traffics have suddenly increased and so has my earnings from the blog. You can guess the rest.

    I prefer my present situation, whereby I write quality content when I really feel like writing and I get rewarded for every little time I spend on my blog.
    A quick look at the early days of this blog will show you that I have tried the daily posting strategy. It didn’t work for me. And it was a lot of stress trying to keep up with the posting schedule. This days, I have really become so lazy that I produce as low as one post per month. However, my readers have been commenting that my posts are of high quality.

    Well that is my story. Once again, I say thanks for visiting. See you at the forum later in the day. Cheers. ;-)

  15. Udegbunam Chukwudi on Wed, 10th Feb 2010 2:23 pm

    16. I hear tag heading play a role too in search engine traffic thus I’ve optimized my theme’s post title headers etc.

    Check out Wordpress SEO. Get Your Heading Tag Out of Your… | WordPress Hacker

    Cheers ;)
    .-= Udegbunam Chukwudi´s last blog ..Facebook Naira Free Report Analysis =-.

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