I’ve been working hard on the new blog about La Palma. I’ve written fifteen posts, and friends say they’re good. It’s already getting more traffic than the other two sites combined, but I’m trying to publicize it. The catch is that I’ve never done anything of the sort before. Suggestions welcome!
I’ve set up RSS feed and Blogrush, so similar blogs get a link on my site, and my site gets a link from theirs. I’ve submitted it to Digg and Reddit, but so far I can’t find out how to put up those little buttons for people to give my content the thumbs up.
Ah well. “A baby step a day” has worked so far, so I’ll leave that until tomorrow. But if anyone wants to give me a thumbs up, I’d be grateful.
Your friends are right, they are good posts and I’m learning something every day.
Getting traffic / publicity
Not that I know anything, but some of this might help for starters:
You probably need to start with some keyword research so you can write posts that include phrases that searchers are actually looking for. The world expert on keyword research, no really, lives in Tenerife: Dr Andy Williams.
You should submit to blog directories. This list is a start.
You should (and so should I 🙂 write articles to promote the blog and submit each article to an article directory. There are article directories listed here.
I do recommend joining BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. It is even worth installing the widget thingies the latter provides and the stats, because the information about where readers came from, what pages they viewed and what they clicked is priceless in helping decide what’s popular, so you can give ’em more of it.
Cover the weather. Daily. That’s what most holidaymakers are looking for! 🙂
And disasters. And any bad press we get. And any celebs who visit.
On the other hand, I’m sorry to report that I haven’t yet heard any good things about BlogRush. It seems to be largely “internet marketer” type hype and every report I’ve read about it says that it does not even seem to deliver traffic. It isn’t likely to be targeted for you anyway, so I would respectfully suggest that it would be a waste of space. I joined and later deleted my account.
For getting useful, relevant links, you would be much better off commenting on other relevant blogs. For that, I suggest first getting a copy of Dr Neil Shearing’s software, Real Link Finder, which he just released this weekend (gratis) and that will take some of the pain out of finding suitable venues. (Another good place to seed your links is in forums, by answering people’s questions.)
StumbleUpon, can provide lots of traffic. It isn’t always people who subscribe or stick around, but it can still be better than many other sources.
ShareThis provides an easy to install, small and tasteful means of providing a button so people can save your posts to “social bookmarking” sites.
CanariasBruta have just installed a thingy for giving thumbs ups to their posts. If you go there and just hover your mousey over one, a bitty will drop down so you can “Consigue este widget” from ClickComments. It does also come in English.
Sign up for Feedburner so you can get stats and other toys on your feed. Also use their own facility to offer people with an email alternative means to get your posts (some people still like email / all people like choices, so I’m told.)
But before you do any of these things in any serious manner (for, I presume, commercial purposes), you really should consider getting the blog its own domain, otherwise you are only building traffic for Google / Blogspot and not for yourself.
It would be much harder to change / move, once the Blogspot URL is well-known and, in some cases, e.g. the “better” directories that you need to list with, like DMOZ probably won’t look at it on Blogspot and until it’s on a domain.
Now you can just get a domain and point it at the current blog, but although I have done all of the last point, had I known then what I know now, when I did it, I’d have chosen to install WordPress.org and I’m now going through the painful task of setting that up so I can import posts – about 3,000 of them.
And, not that I think they would, but what if Google changed their policies?
Keep pluggin’ (posting) and I’ll keep giving you links. You are in Santa Cruz province, so it’s relevant. In fact, I’ve been “waiting” for you to start this blog, so if you wanted to do some guest posts on my blog, about La Palma in which you include your own links back to your blog, I’d be very happy to publish them.
You’re a star! The best!
LOL! I’ll try not to let it go to my head. God, I hope I didn’t come across as a “know it all”, ‘coz I don’t, but I couldn’t ignore the plea.
Me again. 🙂 By coincidence, this just dropped into my feed reader: Blog and Traffic Tips
You didn’t come over as a know all, just someone very helpful who knows more about this than I do (which is NOT difficult).
And I really am grateful.