Nigerian Entrepreneur

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.   😉