From MarketingCharts.Com:
“American and European bloggers are relatively in agreement when it comes to the most effective ways to drive traffic to their blogs, both citing frequent updates and promotion on social networks as their top 2, per an Overblog study released in June 2012.
Yet, when it comes to what defines the ultimate success of a blog, Americans are most likely to cite genuine content, while Europeans stick with frequent updates.
Roughly 3 in 10 American and European bloggers said that updating their blog frequently was the most effective way to drive traffic.
Americans were more likely than Europeans to say that promoting their blog on social networks was a key driver (28% vs. 20%), while more Europeans see value from contributing to other blogs or sites (14% vs. 8%).”
Data from a HubSpot e-book released in March 2012 found that 92% of blog users who posted multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog, a figure that decreased to 66% for those who blogged monthly and 43% for those who posted less than monthly.”
Source below.
My Observations:
People I assist want to know more about search engine optimization (SEO) and gaining traffic than any other topic.
I’ve spent as much time as anyone investigating the endless series of tips and tricks and this is the conclusion I’ve come to; there are no secrets to getting people to your site.
It’s a matter of doing the following:
1. Create great content. Create articles, audio or video people like, find useful and want to follow.
2. Create great content as often as possible.
3. Use key words to help people find your material. If they are looking for information on the best ways to market websites, using these words naturally and consistently throughout your material will help.
4. Get similar websites and blogs to link to yours. Regardless as to all the endless SEO advice, Google, Bing and the other search engines are going to principally push traffic to sites with lots of links.
5. Market your site, especially to similar sites.
6. Post your material on social media sites.
All of us chase the latest and greatest in search engine optimization and traffic generation and you can either spend endless hours reading or signing up for expensive courses or you can stick to the above.
Yep, there are a thousand additional things you can do, but all collectively don’t equal the steps articulated above.
Note that traffic sent through SEO carries baggage. For example, advertisers aren’t spending a lot of money on media websites because people spend little time there when they come from search engines.
However, people coming through direct links (your web address is listed on other sites or they already know it) do spend considerably more time thus becoming a more valuable consumer more prone to supporting your causes and donating money.
Finally, there simply are topics that generate traffic and some that don’t. Some sites that cater to the right demographics or causes are going to do well regardless of what you do.
I used to feel that because my government sites did well that I knew what I was doing. When challenged to create a non-government site (Google trusts dot.gov’s) from scratch I found various levels of success (one did well, one struggles).
Best, Len
Nice summary Len. It’s interesting to see the variations between US bloggers and European bloggers. I suppose if there was a magic bullet, we’d all be buying it.
Thanks,
Hi Stephen: Heavens, I wish there was a magic bullet. Website success is a result of a ton of hard work over years and a little bit of luck (plus some cute cat photos). Best, Len.
This is a great post. Could have saved me a lot of headbanging if you had posted it a few years earlier.
Exactly what works.
.
Thanks Dick. I still feel that social media depends entirely on the audience served. The formula will change depending on audience and what you want them to do. Best, Len.
Hi Robert: Agree and somewhat disagree: Links aren’t going to change. Same for key words and other aspects of the article. That said, Google will change their algorithm in a second and you are right, some organisations have lost lots of traffic. Webmaster World (and Search Engine Land) is an excellent reference. But it’s not as complicated as many make it out to be but often requires years of hard work. There is no magic bullet. Best, Len.