Five Free Apps » traffic

3 Sexy WP Plugins – Drag to Share eXtended, YARPP and Digg Digg

Brian Mongold — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:26:59 +0000

Since migrating the site from Blogger to WordPress a little over a year ago, my favorite thing about WordPress has been Plugins. There’s a plugin for just about everything, but sometimes the best plugins are a little tougher to find in the Plugin Directory of 8002 WP Plugins. I recently installed WordPress Drag to Share eXtended and loved it so much that it prompted me to share a few of my favorites. Let’s take a closer look.

WordPress Drag to Share eXtended

Easily the plugin I’m most excited about! This plugin uses the same functionality found in TechCrunch and Mashable. It works by allowing readers to drag any image on your post and drop it into a social networking site of their choice. You can select which social networks to use, which include Delicious, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, StumbledUpon, Technorati and Twitter. Other options include text to display while dragging and display location of icons.

I recently switched from Possibly Related Posts to YARPP and couldn’t be happier. This plugin will give your readers more relevant content and increase page views and popularity of older content. YARPP gives you a list of posts and pages related to your current post. The algorithm is based on post titles, content, tags and categories used. In addition to displaying the related posts, YARPP calculates a match score beside each related post. You can display the related posts in blog posts, RSS feeds or both. The templating system gives you quite a few options to customize what’s displayed.

Digg Digg

Don’t let the name full you, Digg Digg gives you much more than just Digg buttons. It features the best fbShare button I could find. This plugin gives your readers vote buttons to simplify sharing for your readers. It integrates social network, which include Digg, Reddit, Dzone, Yahoo Buzz, TweetMeme (Twitter), fbShare (Facebook) and Polladium buttons. You can choose either normal size or compact buttons, select only those buttons you want to display and the location.

What do you think about these plugins? Is there any plugins you think are better or more useful? Have you tried the WP Drag to Share eXtended yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Calculate Your Blog’s Worth – 4 Free Blog Value Calculators

Brian Mongold — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:45:00 +0000

After pouring your heart out into your blog, have you ever wondered what it’s value was? For many of us, our blogs are worth more to use than any number that can be assigned. However, getting an idea of how much it’s worth is very intriguing. For entertainment purposes, I found some very cool tools that calculate the worth of your blogs, based on criteria such as traffic rankings, visitor statistics, ad revenue, etc. Each calculator uses a different algorithm and as you’ll see below, expect to get different results with each. Whether you buy into these tools or not, each do provide valuable information and should entertain you.

Cubestat – Simply type in your URL and it will calculate Website Worth, Daily Page Views & Daily Ad Revenue. In addition to the general stats, it displays your Meta Info, Index Data and other helpful bits of information. It displays index data, such as Alexa Ranking, Quantcast Ranking, Compete Ranking, Google Page Rank, indexed pages, indexed pictures and more.

dnScoop - dnScoop is a domain name value, history and stat tool to provide your estimated domain worth. Type in your URL and see links pointing to your domain, domain popularity, age, pagerank, traffic, etc. Find your Google Page Rank, inbound links and Alexa Traffic Rank.

Blog Calculator – With Blog Calculator, you provide your URL and specific information (i.e. unique visitors per month, unique posts per month, average words per post, how much you make, how much you spend, etc) and they give you your worth.

WebsiteValue Calculator – This is yet another tool that you simply plug in your URL and watch it calculate your stats. It displays your Networth, Pageviews, Daily Ad Revenue & several helpful statistics in your index data.

So of the four calculators, Eazy Cheezy’s worth ranged from $8000+ to $17,000+. I can also tell you my ad revenue is nowhere near what a few of these tools have calculated. Have you tried any of these tools? Did you find any interesting results? Any other tools you’d recommend? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

Top 10 Traffic Referring Sources – Eazy Cheezy’s 1st Birthday

Brian Mongold — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:47:29 +0000

Continuing on with my series of postings highlighting the good and bad, today I wanted to share my Top 10 Referring traffic sites overall and within the last month. I am not shy in posting the good and bad of my blogging experience and ultimately am hoping it helps other newer bloggers. Prior to looking through my primary traffic analyzing tool, Google Analytics, I wasn’t aware of many of my top referrers. It’s quite interesting for me to compare the overall with the month of August. The lesson within this post is to keep publishing high quality content and with time, you’re quality of traffic will improve significantly as your content will appear in more search results and as your reader base builds, many will also share the content with their social networks.

OVERALL – 561,900 Visits from 6,064 Sources

10. Facebook.com – The nice thing about Facebook is that typically people you know are on your Facebook page. By posting content from yourblog on Facebook, you can get quality traffic since many are curious/interested in the work you are sharing. Of the top 10 referring sites, Facebook gives me one of the lowest bounce rates.

Hits: 1,089 | Pages per Visit: 3.56 | Average time on site: 2:40 | Bounce Rate: 48%

9. Google.com – Other than search engine traffic, Google has brought me additional referral traffic.

Hits: 1,097 | Pages per Visit: 2.68 | Average time on site: 1:59 | Bounce Rate: 54%

8. Bildirgec.org - This is a site I am not too familiar with primarily since it’s written in a foreign language. It looks to be a blog, similar to Eazy Cheezy, which focuses on Apps, blogging, etc. What I love is the fact that my content has also been appealing to sites based outside the US, such as Bildirgec.

Hits: 1,126 | Pages per Visit: 2.04 | Average time on site: 2:10 | Bounce Rate: 60%

7. Blogger.com – I started my blog on Blogger, but several months ago transitioned to WordPress. Of the top 10 referring sites, Blogger brings me high quality traffic, providing one of the best Pages per Visit and blowing the competition away in Average time on site.

Hits: 1,141 | Pages per Visit: 4.02 | Average time on site: 8:05 | Bounce Rate: 52%

6. Yahoo.com – It took awhile for search engines, especially those not named Google, to bring traffic my way but the quality of traffic search results have brought me some of my best quality traffic, with the highest Pages per visit and lowest Bounce Rate.

Hits: 1,686 | Pages per Visit: 4.26 | Average time on site: 3:09 | Bounce Rate: 37%

5. Delicious.com – One of my favorite sites, Delicious is basically a collection of bookmarks that you can share with others in your network. It’s my go-to site for finding great bookmarks and it’s also the site that brings me some of the highest quality traffic with theone of the lower rates.

Hits: 1,754 | Pages per Visit: 3.28 | Average time on site: 3:46 | Bounce Rate: 49%

4. Digg.com – Some of my worst traffic has come from Digg. From about October to January, I was a full-time Digg member engaging in the community, Digging other members articles, etc. Even though Digg brought a decent number of hits, the bounce rate was second highest to Reddit. I no longer use Digg, since it takes quite a bit of work and time to become an active community member. For my site, Digg doesn’t bring in quality traffic.

Hits: 3,575 | Pages per Visit: 2.12 | Average time on site: 1:52 | Bounce Rate: 70%

3. Google Organic – Everyone loves Google! Google is my top traffic source for search engines. It blows Yahoo! away in hits, but not necessarily quality. Regardless, Google searches is one of my best sources of quality traffic.

Hits: 66,258 | Pages per Visit: 3.77 | Average time on site: 2:17 | Bounce Rate: 41%

2. Direct Hits - I’m happy to see the number of direct visits is number 2 on the list. This is readers who have found value with my content that visit and revisit the site. The number of Direct hits is perhaps the most valuable of all.The most discouraging number below is the bounce rate, but having so many different topics as I typically do, won’t always appeal to everyone.

Hits: 124,676 | Pages per Visit: 2.53 | Average time on site: 2:17 | Bounce Rate: 60%

1. Stumbled Upon – The success Eazy Cheezy has had with Stumbled Upon still baffles me. I can visit my site one day and have a post that has had little traffic in the past, suddenly get 1,000 to 3,000 hits on a given day. When I see this happen, I always know it’s because a reader submitted my content and it was community members hitting the Stumbled button and giving it a thumbs up. I no longer have the time to be an active member of Stumbled Upon, but it’s a site that is all about good content. If you have something that catches on with readers, the traffic can really blow you away. The quality of traffic is so-so, but with the amount of hits, I can guarantee this has been the biggest contributor to increasing my number of Direct hits within the last year.

Hits: 329,338 | Pages per Visit: 1.81 | Average time on site: 1:07 | Bounce Rate: 61%

Though the overall quality of traffic hasn’t been great over the last year, most of the failures came early and as time passed and more of my content was within various search engine results, my bounce rates dropped significantly. If you’re just beginning with your blog, keep writing high quality content and as time passes, you will achieve more search engine traffic and ultimately much higher quality traffic. To compare my top 10 referrers of the last year, let’s take a look at the top 10 referrers in the month of August 09.

AUGUST 09 – 58,824 Visits from 676 Sources

10. Twitter.com (NR)

Hits: 77 | Pages per Visit: 4.45 | Average time on site: 1:53 | Bounce Rate: 2 %

9. Bing (NR)

Hits: 109 | Pages per Visit: 6.61 | Average time on site: 2:58 | Bounce Rate: 4%

8. Google Images (NR)

Hits: 134 | Pages per Visit: 3.54 | Average time on site: 0:37 | Bounce Rate: 20%

7. Google.com (9)

Hits: 136 | Pages per Visit: 4.20 | Average time on site: 1:39 | Bounce Rate: 8%

6. AOL (NR)

Hits: 147 | Pages per Visit: 6.16 | Average time on site: 2:32 | Bounce Rate: 2%

5. Search (NR)

Hits: 185 | Pages per Visit: 7.43 | Average time on site: 4:39 | Bounce Rate: 10%

4. Yahoo! (6)

Hits: 317 | Pages per Visit: 7.27 | Average time on site: 3:17 | Bounce Rate: 4%

3. Direct Hits (2)

Hits: 8,017 | Pages per Visit: 4.66 | Average time on site: 1:39 | Bounce Rate: 7%

2. Google (3)

Hits: 12,724 | Pages per Visit: 5.09 | Average time on site: 1:53 | Bounce Rate: 3%

1. Stumbled Upon (1)

Hits: 35,138 | Pages per Visit: 3.21 | Average time on site: 0:27 | Bounce Rate: 13%

As you can see, my results changed dramatically, with 6 search engines now appearing in the top 10, compared to just 2 in my overall. The bounce rate is the biggest success here, which tells me that the majority of visitors to my site are not landing on my site, then leaving without reading atleast some of my content.The traffic from Stumbled Upon is great, but most don’t spend much time on my site. If I had to pick an MVP of the referring sites, I’d have to choose Google since I get consistent high traffic numbers, more than 5 pages per visits and a bounce rate of just 3%. I love what Yahoo! is bringing me, but I don’t get many hits with Yahoo users at this point. Stumbled Upon has been valuable for many reasons, but I’ll take quality traffic over large amounts of traffic anyday.

10 Greatest Hits & What I’ve Learned From Each – Eazy Cheezy’s 1st Birthday

Brian Mongold — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:38:04 +0000

It’s been a year since Eazy Cheezy was established and what better way to review the last year than to show you all of my greatest successes and failures. From today until Monday, I’ll be publishing multiple posts showing you my successes and failures, while highlighting previous interviews, guest posts, favorite moments and things I’ve learned within the last year. To kick it off, lets review the top 10 posts ranked by total page views. In addition to listing the top posts, I wanted to provide a bit of a “what I’ve learned” section for each.

(10) 20 Free Music Sites You Should Know About (Oct 08) I love music and there are some great sites available. I used my favorite music sites and explored some of the best sites to combine them for this 2-series post. It started out as a post with 10 sites, but when I found so many great sites, I had to expand on the post and keep it going.

Page Views: 9,355
What I’ve Learned: The title of a post is very important. In my limited knowledge and experience, I originally titled this post “20 Free Music Sites” which translated to very little interest from readers. Once I changed the title to something a bit more interesting sounding, I retweeted it and had new found success from a previously unsuccessful post.

(9) 5 Free IP Masking Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online (Mar 09) After realizing that many of my readers from countries outside the US didn’t have access to many of the movies sites I’ve previously posted, I used this post to give them a work-around.

Page Views: 9,588
What I’ve Learned: This is one post I never expected would have as much success as it did. The most interesting part of this post came from the comments, as I had a few readers debating whether these sites encouraged illegal behavior. Posting controversial content can lead to some great debates and more interest.

(8) TOP 10 FREE MOVIE SITES: Watch Movies & TV Shows Online (Feb 09) I branched off from my most successful post, 50 Free Sites to Watch Movies & TV Online to create this post, which was my opinion of the best of sites in 10 different categories.

Page Views: 22,904
What I’ve Learned: As you’ll see mentioned in other posts below, expanding upon a successful post can bring you great success. Lists can be very successful since it’s easier for your readers to process.

(7) Free Asian Movie Sites – 10 Sites to Watch Free Asian Movies (May 09) This post was created to focus on the Asian-genre movie niche, which I personally love. I particularly enjoy Asian Horror movies, so I knew there were other Asian genre fans.

Page Views: 11,510
What I’ve Learned: Drilling down the content of a previous post (i.e. 50 Free Sites to watch Movies & TV Online) and focusing on a certain niche can make for a valuable post.

(6) 10 Free Sites to Watch Live & Streaming Sporting Events Online (Jan 09) I’ve used sites such as Justin TV quite a bit in the past and wanted to explore other similar sites to see which was best. Well, I sure found some great ones and really enjoyed this post.

Page Views: 45,581
What I’ve Learned: One interesting thing about this post is that the page views are predictable. For example, when there is a big sporting event, such as a UFC fight, the traffic pours in. On other days, the traffic for this post is minimal.

(5) 5 Free Sites to Watch Anime Online (Mar 09) When researching various movie sites, I found quite a few Anime sites. Though I am not particularly an Anime fan, I knew this was a popular niche. I really enjoyed this post. It was short, but well received.

Page Views: 46,691
What I’ve Learned: Keeping a post short can make the content even more successful, since it’s displayed in easy to read chunks, i.e. Twitter. I also realized that for this to be successful, the content has to be of high quality. I couldn’t write about any sub-par sites with such a short list.

(4) 50 Free Sites to Watch Movies & TV Online Part 2 (Sep 08) – This was the 2nd part of my 5 part series and was one of my first posts. I used this 5-series post to share some of the free movie sites I use, along with many others I would find. This started out as 20 Free Movie & TV Sites, but as time passed I kept finding more great sites to add and it eventually grew to 50 Sites.

Page Views: 52,479
What I’ve learned: 50 sites, or perhaps a 5-series post may have been a bit too much, as the majority of visitors stopped viewing after part 3. As I continued to get more hits, I decided to focus on improving upon the post, replacing dead links and adding a personal rating to each. I also created a few spinoffs, mainly with Free Movie Sites A to Z in June of this year, which has exploded and is already my number 2 post of all-time. Interesting enough, I have more hits on Part 3, than I have on Part 2.

(3) 50 Free Sites to Watch Movies & TV Online Part 3 (Oct 08) – This was the 3rd part of my 5 part series and was one of my earliest posts. I used this 5-series post to share some of the free movie sites I use, along with many others I would find. This started out as 20 Free Movie & TV Sites, but as time passed I kept finding more great sites to add and it eventually grew to 50 Sites.

Page Views: 720,049
What I’ve learned: 50 posts, or perhaps a 5-series post may have been a bit too much, as the majority of visitors stopped viewing after this posting, art 3. As I continued to get more hits, I decided to focus on improving upon the post, replacing dead links and adding a personal rating to each. I also created a few spinoffs, mainly with Free Movie Sites A to Z in June of this year, which has exploded and is already my number 2 post of all-time. Interesting enough, I have more hits on Part 3, than I have on Part 2.

(2) Free Movie Sites A to Z (Jun 09) – This post was recently published as a bit of a spinoff of my most successful post, 50 Free Sites to Watch Movies & TV Online. Having an easy to view list of Movie sites, along with short descriptions, would provide an easy to use listing for readers on one page.

Page Views – 103,022
What I’ve Learned: Not only have I learned that making improvements to older posts can bring additional success, but I’ve learned that you can expand upon your success of a posting, by writing similar posts or expanding the original. In approximately 2 months, I’ve gotten over 103,000 hits for this post alone.

(1) 50 Free Sites to Watch Movies & TV Online Part 1 (Sep 08) – Just a few posts into my young blogging experience, I decided to share some of the free movie sites I use, along with many others I would find. This started out as 20 Free Movie & TV Sites, but as time passed I kept finding more great sites to add and it eventually grew to 50 Sites.

Page Views: 520,764
What I’ve learned: 50 posts, or perhaps a 5-series post may have been a bit too much, as the majority of visitors stopped viewing after Part 3. As I continued to get more hits, I decided to focus on improving upon the post, replacing dead links and adding a personal rating to each. I also created a few spinoffs, mainly with Free Movie Sites A to Z in June of this year, which has exploded and is already my number 2 post of all-time.

Blogertize World Launches & Kicks off With a Macbook Pro Contest

Brian Mongold — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:11:49 +0000

Today, Blogertize World officially launched and is kicking things off with a Macbook Pro Contest! Winners will be announced October 1st. I’ve covered Blogertize World in the past and have even held an interview with it’s CEO and found, Mr. Dushyant Bhatia, so wanted to give everyone a heads up about the launch. I’ll keep this short, but wanted to share a few screencaps to give you a glimpse of the new Blogertize World site and blog which just launched today.

Don’t forget to submit your entry to win a Macbook Pro.

To stay updated with all the latest news with Blogertize World, be sure to frequent the Blogertize World Blog.

Get In-Depth Demographic Information About Your Readers with Quantcast

Brian Mongold — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:11:33 +0000

When I began blogging about a year ago, I thought Google Analytics was all I needed to successfully track the statistics of my blog readers. I soon found Google Analytics is very valuable, but a bit limited in finding more information about your readers. This is where Quantcast comes into play. Quantcast is a free site that provides a ranking for each site and tracks general information such as page-views, visits, page-views per person and cookies. However, the value is in how Quantcast analyzes your specific audience. It tracks information such as age, children per household, education and income levels, male vs. female, business visits vs. home visits, businesses who access your site, etc.

I probably only visit Quantcast every few weeks, but learn something new about my visitors each time I visit. In fact, I just found something quite interesting! I’ve had 2,779 visits from Research in Motion (RIM), from 124 unique users. This is very cool! RIM is the developer of the BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry App World and is a very large and successful company. Since covering BlackBerry Apps is one of my priorities, this is a very intriguing.

Quantcast gives you the ability to embed various charts or even download all statistics into a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet. I’ll cover a few of the charts below, which I have used printscreens to capture for your reference.

This chart provides information on your choice of daily, weekly or monthly visits and you can select the range and get an overall view or make it specific by segment, by gender, age, ethnicity, household income or by using a combination.

The chart below is perhaps the most informative! I get US demographics for my visitor’s gender, age, ethnicity, kids, income and educational levels. This chart is quite valuable if you’re looking to target to a specific audience and advertising.

The next chart shows you where visitors are accessing your site from, their business or home.

Most of this information for all the websites can be seen from the public view, but you can get even more in-depth information from your publisher view once you’re logged in. Quantcast also measures the top 1 million sites. Here is a printscreen of the top 25, along with information regarding the type of audience each site attracts. For example, Facebook is number 3 on the list and has “94M+ U.S. monthly people. The site appeals to a more affluent, teen and young adult, very slightly female biased following.”

As you can see, Quantcast can be very useful to publishers and advertisers. If you are interested in getting your site quantified, you can start by visiting Quantcast and creating a free login. You can then generate a tag, copy and paste it onto your site, then have your site scanned.

Twitterize Your WordPress or Blogger Blog with These Great Tools

Brian Mongold — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:21:15 +0000

Twitter is the latest fad and arguably the most attractive social networking site among the group. If you’re a Twitter user and a Blogger, this post is for you. Twitter is a proven method sharing content with your friends and engaging in the community of Twitter users. It’s also a proven way of obtaining additional Blog traffic when used correctly.

Integrating your Blog with Twitter can enhance the potential for your content to be thrust into the Twitter community. Once your content is tweeted by someone who likes your link, they can Tweet it to their followers. If any of their followers like the content, they may retweet it to their followers, etc. You can see the power of duplicating the availability of your content through distribution. Below you’ll find some great tools to fully integrate your Blog with Twitter, whether you use the WordPress or Blogger Platform.

Also, don’t forget to follow Eazy Cheezy on Twitter and if you like this or any other post, feel free to give a little Tweet-Love.

WordPress

Tweetmeme – Very cool button to add to your WordPress Blog. Enables readers to tweet or retweet your content. I’m currently using this plugin on the site.

Twitter for WordPress – Displays your latest tweets in your WordPress blog. You can add it as a widget or add the code to your template.

Twitter Widget Pro – This widget properly handles Twitter Feeds, @username and link parsing. It enables you to display profile images and has the ability to further customize. Requires PHP5

Twitter Style Links - Twitterizes your blog comments. When you type @username, it will search for the users previous comments and convert the name into their url.

WP to Twitter - Posts status updates from your blog to Twitter. Utilizes the Cli.gs URL shortening service for your blog links.

Top Twitter Links – Posts top Twitter Links directly onto your blog.

Thread Twitter – Grabs your Tweets and displays them in a threaded format on your blog.

Add a Tweet This Link – Use the code and tips displayed in this article to add a Tweet This link. Instructions for WordPress and Blogger.

Blogger

Twitter for Blogger - Select your number of updates to display, type in your title for the widget and add it to Blogger. It displays your most recent tweets directly on your Blog.

Customized Twitter Widget - Follow these instructions from Blogger Buster to add a nice customized Twitter Widget to your Blogger Blog.

Add a Tweet This Link – Use the code and tips displayed in this article to add a Tweet This link. Instructions for WordPress and Blogger.

Twitter – Adds a Twitter Follow Link to your Blogger Blog and enables you to display your recent Tweets.

Install Twitter Widget in Blogger- Tutorial to install a Twitter Widget in a Blogger Blog.

Visitor Demographics – February 09

Brian Mongold — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:41:00 +0000

Yesterday, I posted about the top 10 Eazy Cheezy Posts in the month of February. This entry takes a deep look into the demographics of Eazy Cheezy. Utilizing Quantcast, I was able to identify visitor demographics. Quantcast is a very cool site that concentrates on projections and categorized demographics. I currently use Quantcast in addition to Google Analytics. Let’s take a look at what Quantcast can show us;

Projections
Eazy Cheezy is currently projected to reach an average of 30.2 thousand readers globally each month. 66% of the readers will be from the US.

Demographics
Though more males view the site than females, I’m satisfied with the ratio. Overall, it’s pretty close. My goal is to appeal to both males and females and it looks like I’m on track.

The age group demographics were quite interesting to me. I never would have guessed that 19% of my visitors are 50 or older. It’s great that the site is appealing to so many different age groups. I’m pretty comfortable with these stats.

I love the diversity of my readers and the many different viewpoints and input each provides. I don’t know how to improve upon these statistics, but hope to continue to appeal to each ethnicity.

Two more sets of statistics that are quite interesting. I’m blown away by the educational background of my readers. 56% have either attended college or grad school.

Below is a nice snapshot to show regular visitors, vs. passers-by. I would love to get more regulars. Perhaps the increased regular visitors would lead to increased visits, which could then lead to a few more addicts.

I hope I’m not boring you with my statistics. I like to share some of the features of Quantcast and my thoughts on each result. If you haven’t tried Quantcast, I highly recommend it. It’s free and you’ll begin seeing some statistics within a week or so of adding the code. Your site will also receive a Quantcast Ranking. Eazy Cheezy is currently ranked one spot above feminist.org and one spot below torah.org. It’s quite interesting to see the entire rankings.

Search Engine Optimization: SEO Hacks for Blogger Blogs

Brian Mongold — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:45:00 +0000

I’m sure many of you have heard about SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization. This is one area that I am still learning & looking to improve in. If you’ve been reading Eazy Cheezy, you know that when I learn something, I like to share.

SEO is the process of improving your site’s results in search results, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. Optimizing your content and site for search engines helps to increase the likelihood of your content displaying closer to the front. i.e. Prior to optimizing my “Free Sites to Watch TV, Movies & Sports Online” post, if you typed in “free sites to watch movies” into Google, you’d find it positioned on page 4 or 5. With the SEO techniques I applied below, the same string of characters will now let you find the same post on page 1 of Google’s search results.

Strong Article Titles
+ Effective Keywords
+ SEO
= Better Results in Search Engines, which lead to More Visitors

Below, you’ll find a few SEO tips I’ve learned and have already applied. Tips 3 and 5 aren’t necessarily SEO tips, but ones that improve upon the site’s functionality & usability.

1. Inserted Meta Tags utilizing tips from Our Blogger Templates. I added the blog name, my name and my blog description (full sentence, but heavy on keywords).

Meta tags are very significant to SEO since they help Search Engines more accurately index your pages. I look at Meta tags as a translator for Search Engines. We plug in information to Meta Tags and the Meta Tags translates the information so the Search Engines better understand.

2. Added “Alt Tags” & clickable links to images referencing Techknowl. I uploaded some of my pictures to Photobucket and added “alt tags” & a clickable link. Then re-added those images to Blogger, using the HTML/Java Widget.

Alt tags are important for a few reasons. If there’s a problem displaying your image, it will look for alt tags to display as a backup. It can also help those images appear in search results.

3. Changed reference link of uploaded screenshot images so they point to the site they were referencing. Before if you clicked on the image, you’d just get an enlarged version of the image on a blank page, which added no value. Now, click on the image and it will take you directly to the link. I used this doobix entry to help with the code.

This removes an annoyance & improves the usability of the articles. I doubt I’ll ever have the time to go through all 200+ posts I’ve had & apply this, but I’ve implemented it with newer and popular posts.

4. Optimized My Header Image using tingsplick. I uploaded my original header image to Photobucket, added “alt tags” then utilized the tips within the link to remove my header.

This enabled me to replace the standard Blogger Header. You’re limited with the Blogger Header and unable to add Alt Tags.

5. Added a “Related Articles” Widget to my Blogger site, using Hoctro’s New & Improved “Related Articles” Widget Using Google’s Ajax API.

This took a bit to get right, but now that I figured it out, it works pretty well. I still need to figure out how to move the Related Articles Widget above my comment section, but the Widget works quite well and will save me time since I will no longer need to manually search for Related Posts. It displays related posts, based on the “Labels” you add to your posts.

Resources
Search Engine Optimization for Blogs
SEO Training
101 SEO Tools
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website
102 Ways to Make Your Site a Backlink Superstar
Top Search Engine Marketing Tools
D-List 200+ sites that have their “no follow” link disabled
How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog

I hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a bit from the hacks that I’ve provided above. As I touched upon earlier, I’m definitely no SEO expert, nor do I claim to be. Like many of you, I’m learning all I can to better improve upon my site. Do you have any SEO tips or hacks you’d like to share? Have you attempted any of the ones above? I’d love a good SEO discussion, since it can help us all learn more. Feel free to share your input.

If You Write It They Will Come Back

Brian Mongold — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Friday addition of Eazy Cheezy. My name is Brian and I am the creator of The New Author. Like all the other guest bloggers I would like to give a big thank you to Brian for the opportunity to share this article with all of you. Today we are going to look a little closer at generating traffic and followers.

The number of blogs that are out there is amazing and it is equally amazing how many do not get read. Then you have those blogs such as Eazy Cheezy. These blogs grow with a steady pace and evolve into something great as they extend their reach and more people join their community. How did they do it? How did the creators of these blogs generate the traffic and reach that many strive for?

I, like many of you, have seen, rather often, a question similar to these in forums or left in comments about generating traffic. Whether you have a blog or thinking about starting one at some point in time you have thought “will people read it? How do I get people to read my posts and follow my blog?” That is the main goal in blogging; to share your thoughts with others about a topic you are passionate about and develop a community of like minded peers.

Sites such as Blog Explosion and Link Referral are good places to expose your blog to first time readers; however, we want to build a community. We want readers to return because they enjoy our articles and enjoy sharing their thoughts with us about those articles. How do we build that community? How do we get readers to come back and read more?

Registering your blog to blog directories and the above sites will generate first time readers and that is the first step. The second step is for you to take. The content you post on your blog is the most important aspect that will draw readers back. What a minute Brian. What about the layout? We need to have a really great layout right? Not necessarily. A nice layout is pleasing to the eyes but the main draw is what you write about and how you write it. I have seen a fair number of blogs that are very simple in layout with a large number of followers because of their content.

So what should we write and how should we write it? Half the battle is already won. You started your blog based on an idea that you are passionate about and you have something to say about that topic. With your subject and topic covered we should focus now on delivery. I am sure many of you have sat through a meeting or lecture where the speaker talked in monotone and had a dry delivery. I think it is safe to say that we were all bored to death. This is not how you want to deliver your content. Be energetic with your writing, engage the reader and be positive. Even if your subject is dark, sad or angry be energetic about it. Make the readers relate to those emotions by pulling them into the article. Give them reason to think about the topic of the article by asking questions of them. Include the readers in the article. Once you give the readers something to relate to and grasp they will come back.

Take for example this site, Eazy Cheezy; Brian delivers tips, information and technology resources that are very helpful to bloggers and people interested in the Internet. What makes this site stand out is how he delivers that information. He is upbeat, energetic and positive. When you read his articles they are fun because you can tell he had fun researching and writing them. With that in mind, go out and have fun with your blog. Add that excitement and energy you feel towards that topic. Engage your readers as peers that enjoy the same subject as you do.

It is my hope that you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Have a good weekend.

January Traffic, Visitor & Content Analysis

Brian Mongold — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:30:00 +0000

If you’ve been following Eazy Cheezy, you probably know I love statistics and analyzing the various aspects of my traffic sources and visitors. In November, I published the 2008 Visitor & Traffic Analysis and will now be publishing a monthly post to fulfill my obsession with statistics and better analyze my weak spots.

Using data from Google Analytics, I’ve created graphs and charts to display my current statistics. It’s definitely helping me to get a better understanding of where my visitors are coming from, how many of them are returning, etc. I’ve used NCES free Graph Creator to create the following charts. Hope you enjoy.

Traffic Overview

Overall Traffic Sources – Overall, I believe the traffic results in January were satisfying, but there’s still plenty of room to improve and better balance my source of traffic. This first chart displays the 3 different categories that visitors used to get to the site. As you can see, I’m doing quite well with the referring sites (i.e. social networking, other sites, etc.), am happy to see my Direct Traffic (those going directly to my site, rather than clicking a link) increasing, but really still need to improve upon my search engine traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be a priority to help me improve the search engine visitors.

Top 10 Traffic Sources – Social Networking sites have been my primary source of traffic. In January alone, Stumbled Upon accounted for 53% of my overall traffic. As mentioned before, I really would love to see some other Search Engines listed in my Top 10.

Top 10 Social Networking Traffic Sources – As you can see, Stumbled Upon has blown away the competition yet again. I would love to see some improvements in Twitter and Facebook, but it’s good to see Delicious and a few other sites are bringing in some visits.

Visitor Overview
Visitors by Country – When I first began blogging, I really never realized just how connected the world really is. The fact is that in January alone, Eazy Cheezy had visitors from 134 different countries/territories. Now, I work to expand my focus to hopefully continue to increase my site visitors from countries outside the US. One important step was inserting a Language Translator to enable visitors from any country to read the content in their language. The US, Canada & UK have consistently been in the top 3, but the Philippines have jumped the charts as I saw 751 visitors from the Philippines in January.

Visitor Loyalty – Stumbled Upon brings in so much traffic, but it doesn’t always convert to return visitors. I had 36,942 one time visits, but it’s interesting that I had 101 visitors who returned between 101 – 200 times in the month of January alone. The goal will be to continue to try and push high quality content and hope that more one time visitors will become return visitors.

Content Overview
I personally think I’ve improved upon my content from when I began blogging in September. With that said, 6/10 of my most visited posts in January were published in 2008. The biggest traffic hit I’ve had in January has been 7 Free Sites to Watch Live Sporting Events, which has had a total of 14,359 views since being published on Jan 22nd. Below are the top 10 posts in January, based on page views.

Top 10 Traffic Posts (Date Published)
1. 50 Free Sites to Watch TV & Movies Online (Sep 23, 2008)
2. 7 Free Sites to Watch Live Sporting Events (Jan 22, 2009)
3. 30 Lessons Learned From a Newbie Blogger (Jan 01, 2009)
4. 10 Popular Sites – How They Once Looked (Nov 21, 2008)
5. 20 Free Music Sites You Should Know About (Oct 17, 2008)
6. 35+ Blackberry Resources (Dec 13, 2008)
7. 10 Questions with Mr. Dushyant Bhatia, CEO of Blogertize (Jan 08, 2009)
8. 20 Easy Ways to Change the World – Small Footprints (Jan 05, 2009)
9. Top 10 Popular Eazy Cheezy Posts in 2008 (Dec 24, 2008)
10. 5 Best Tools to Clean and Speed Up Your PC (Nov 28, 2008)

I hope you’ve enjoyed the analysis. I learn more and more about my traffic sources and visitors each time. I have some goals to better balance social networking, direct and search engine traffic. My biggest weakness is once again in the Search Engine department. SEO techniques can help with this, but I personally need to further my learning as I apply these various approaches.