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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Tags: Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Traffic, SEO, SERP, Website Traffic
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.
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.
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.
Thanks David. I agree with you. Getting the traffic is not an end in itself. 😉
I really found your suggestion to create backlinks to specific articles. Makes sense. Thanks.
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…
@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.
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
@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.
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.
@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.
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.
*Remember that google created “no follow” to stop blogs occupying top positions in SE.
@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. 😉
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 =-.
I will like your organisation to connect me with a good business. You can reach me at any time via my contact. 51,49b coates street ebute metta east lagos state nigerian .
phone +234018056259103
@Akanni
I’m sorry, your request is beyond the scope of this website. Maybe another reader who is in a position to help will contact you. However, the comment should have been on a relevant topic. This particular topic is about Search Engine Optimization. So it might take a while before you get any response as readers of this particular post may be more interested in SERP and website traffic than business ideas.
Thanks for visiting Nigerian Entrepreneur.
Hello ,
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am very hapi abt ur blog.i give kudos to u on d work done.pls how can i increase traffic into my blog.and about google cheque payment,how wil i be collectin dis money.thnks
@Olayemi
Thanks for the compliment. The answer you seek is already in the article. Here are the points that I suggested for getting search engine traffic.
1. Write for human consumption. If your writing offers no information to the end users, then the whole purpose of having a website is defeated. Search Engines are not the end users of your website, they are more like middlemen. Once they noticed that visitors to your site run away immediately they land on your site, then they will stop ranking your website high in the SERP. But if they notice that visitors spend time and even go from one article to another, then they will consider your website as being important and rank it high in their Search Engine Report Pages. I learned that the algorithm that Google search engine uses for its SERP consider social behaviour. So it is important that you write for human consumption. Also, gone are the days when you can easily fool a search engine by doing keyword stuffing. They are smarter now. If they detect that you are engage in such black hat seo, your website will be penalized.
2. Have the Search Engines in mind while writing. You need to understand how the search engine spiders work. When search engine bots visits your site, you won’t be there to explain to them what your article is all about. They use their own algorithm and the arrangement of words on your website to determine what your site is all about. That is why SEO expert recommends that you be careful with eye candy graphics if you’re really interested in drawing the attention of search engines. If you use graphics, ensure that you provide alternate text that the search engine robots can read.
3. Get backlinks from other sites using your targeted keywords as anchor text. You need to visit other sites and get backlinks from those that write articles that are relevant to your niche. This is where blogs have an advantage over the traditional websites. Bloggers are good at exchanging comments. Even though some SEO experts claim that comments are useless for generating backlinks, I have discovered from practical experience that it is not through. Even comments on site that are no-follow still has some value in some search engine. Yahoo search engine for example seems to ignore the no-follow attribute. So go out there and start building backlinks for your website. That way, you will get ranked well in the SERP.
For further information, post your request in the forum. Cheers.
Great Article NaijaEcash.
Very informative and thanks for sharing
Absolutely spot on. The advantages of search engine traffic referrals is that most come to your blog looking for something and in many cases (depending on if you make related posts visible), they might actually stay to find out more. When I started my new blog 3 months ago, I had to be patient and at the moment I get almost 200 visitors a day from Google alone, better than any other traffic source, including search engines.
.-= Jay´s last blog ..Google Chrome OS Launch Date Revealed =-.
Great information. Thanks for sharing
Entertainment;Jokes & Comedy,Ask love doctor forum,NYSC forum,Modeling, Dating, Herbal therapy,E-books, Research,Wedding planning, Events management, Mcing, Charity, Freebies, Make money scheme, and lots more.
Above are some of what my website is made of. Please generate traffic for my site.
Thank you.
getting many backlinks is very important for websites to gain search engine rankings.-*`
Yeah.. we all in a battle of backlink war to drive human to come to our target. A website! A great note. Thanks
well, if you want to have lots of backlinks, you better have great content’*”
getting backlinks is sometimes difficult but article submission should give you good backlinks
Well-said. One thing that I always tell people is that content is king. As long as you keep writing quality contents, people will keep coming back to you blog. These same sets of people will recommend their friends and you will gain new followers
Identifying your business objectives and website goals (lead generation, ecommerce, content/media or support site) should be the first task. And then you define your outcome (macro conversion). What exactly do you want people to do on your site? Your goals & outcome should determine your online tactical mix. I’m always amazed at how many large organizations and even small businesses do not articulate this before developing and designing a site.
Remember, SEO is one of many online tactics to help drive traffic and engage visitors once they get to your site. You’ll need to compliment your SEO efforts with Email, Online PR, SEM, Social media and offline activities. And above all, provide content that is relevant to your target audience to encourage repeat visits.
And the most ignored (and perhaps most critical): tracking, reporting & analyzing visitor activity on your site.
I’m really learning a lot from you. Hope to get there one day too. Thanks for the advice.
getting backlinks should be the first priority of any webmaster if he wants to rank well on search engines
I was reading some articles on ericstips.com and came to know that 95% of searchers click on organic results and only 5& click on the paid ads or the sponsored listings.
Free web traffic strategies need hard work; it’s not easy though.
Good article.
However, I disagree with you when you say people should focus on SEO with an aim to reduce their activities in social networks. Search engines now take into account activities on social networks in relation to websites. For example, they monitor links from websites that are shared on social networks and that affects the ranking of articles.
The simple logic behind it is that if people are sharing and talking about your article then it’s most likely good content and as such should have a good ranking.
Besides all that, social networks are good for engaging reader/customer. I’ve written an article on that. See link below.
http://www.onlinebusinessnigeria.com/social-media/engage-customers-clients-online/
Ya search engine traffic is a good source and its also free, but now a days my site is suffering from very ups and downs in search engine traffic trends, Are you having the same amount of traffic or after start of this year your site also not having traffic as was in past….
Aliza Shehpatii´s last blog post ..Costa Rica vs North Korea 30 May- 2011
getting backlinks is sometimes difficult but article submission should give you good backlinks,you should consider submit articles to these site … hubpages,yahoo answer,squiidoo ,today.com they are ll high page rank site .
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