Lately, there has been a lot of discussion on how Google has ranked low quality content farms and websites filled with ads over websites that contain higher quality content. People who own these content farms and ad sites have got sophisticated with their SEO methods and techniques allowing them to consistently rank their websites higher than genuine authoritative websites. Google has said that it will get tough with these content farms that are setup primarily to make money via pay per click ads.

But, it looks like things haven’t improved much. For example, search for the text “cricket world cup 2011” and look at the sites that are listed first on the search engine result page. The very first website is a site fully loaded with Adsense ads and other affiliate links. The fact that this website’s domain name matches the exact search phrase could have boosted its rankings to claim the number one spot. This is absurd!

The official website of the ICC Cricket World Cup is listed on a distant seventh place!

Many of you have heard about the new search engine Blekko that has made headlines in the recent past. Blekko promises better quality searches using slash tags. In a nutshell a slash tag allows one to refine and narrow their search. For example, instead of just searching for the term “ipad 2”, you could search it with a slash tag. For example, “ipad 2 /techblogs”. In this example, we have narrowed the search to only technology blogs.

So, I decided to use the slash tag ‘”cricket” in my blekko search and performed the following search: “cricket world cup 2011 /cricket”.

The results returned by blekko were much better in quality than the Google search results. Blekko gave importance to high profile websites such as cricinfo in the search results. But, Blekko too listed the official website at the exact seventh spot as Google.

So what do you think? Has Google’s search quality gone down the drain? Love to hear your thoughts.

The success of your blog depends on how well you are able to attract targeted traffic. In this article I present 33 proven methods to bring more visitors to your blog. After reading this article, you will know how to get more visitors than the number of penguins in the above penguin colony . If you found this article useful please Re-Tweet on Twitter. Thank You!

#1 Google Analytics, Get it Installed!

Before you start trying any of the methods mentioned in this post, it is important that you get Google Analytics installed on your blog. By using Google Analytics you can measure your progress as you bring more and more visitors to your blog using the methods below.

#2 Create Link Baits

Content that is written with the primary objective of attracting back links is know as a link bait. There are various techniques that you can use to create a link bait. For more information on link baiting techniques read the post titled 9 Link Bait & Content Hook Strategies. Links baits will improve the page rank of your blog. An increased page rank means you will get more traffic via organic searches.

#3 Reduce Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of your website will tell you what percentage of users left your site from the entrance or landing page. Lets say you have a 10,000 visitors per month and your bounce rate is 60%. This means 6,000 visitors leave your website from the landing page without exploring any other pages. That is disappointing! Only 4000 visitors decided to explore more pages in your blog. By reducing the bounce rate you can get more visitors who will spend more time reading your blog. For tips on reducing bounce rate please read the post titled How to Reduce Bounce Rate.

#4 Get a Keyword Rich Domain Name

A keyword rich domain name can bring you substantial traffic from search engines. Google always tends to favor websites with domain names that have the keywords matching the search phrase. For information on choosing a good domain name you can read the post 18 Tips for choosing a good Domain Name.

#5 Give Away Something for Free

Create ebooks, WordPress themes, Wodrpress plug-ins etc. and give them away at no charge. For example, you can hire a developer to create a cool WordPress theme and give it free. Giving away free stuff always bring more visitors to your blog. If you are not convinced with the Power of Giving, you should certainly read this article that appeared on Problogger:  How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50.

#6 Hold a Contest and Reward Your Readers

Contests are always popular and they can drive a lot of traffic to your website. Recently, Lax at TechZoomIn decided to host an ongoing contest where the Top 5 commentators will get paid $100 in cash each month! His post titled Comment and WIN $100 Hot Cash Every Month attracted 167 responses! I am not sure whether this is the best way to attract comments. But surely the contest did attract a lot of visitors to Lax’s blog!

#7 Customize the 404 Page

The 404 error page is displayed whenever a user comes to your website via an external link and the resource pointed by the link is missing in your website. Majority of the users who come to a dead end 404 page will return back to the site they came from. By customizing the 404 page with a user friendly message will encourage the user to check other resources in your blog. An example of such a message would be “Sorry, the information that you are looking for might have moved to another location. But hang on, you might find the following other articles useful”. Maki at DoshDosh.com wrote an article on customizing the 404 page: Blogging Tip – Customize your 404 Error Page.

#8 Comment on Blogs

By leavening valuable and insightful comments on blogs you build a good reputation among fellow bloggers and commentators. From my personal experience I have seen leaving small and brief comments do not bring much referrer traffic. But when you add larger and descriptive comments that really add value to a blog post, you will find many people cared to visit your website after reading the comment.

#9 Be the FIRST to Comment

The first comment on very popular blog posts will attract a large number of visitors. If you are not still convinced you should read post by Marko Saric at howtomakemyblog.com: How one blog comment can bring you 230+ unique visitors.

#10 Comment on Dofollow Blogs

Dofollow blogs are blogs that do not use the NOFOLLOW attribute for comment links. By commenting on these blogs you can get some link love. For more information on Dofollow blogs and link love, read the post Commenting smart on dofollow blogs.

#11 Become a Guest Blogger

By guest blogging on popular blogs you get better exposure. In addition you’ll get valuable back links from those high ranking blogs.

#12 Allow Others to Guest Blog

When someone guest blogs in your blog she will promote her post to their own readers. As a result you get more traffic to your blog!

#13 Volume Blogging

Volume blogging refers to the concept of churning out more content for your blog as often as you can without focusing your attention on other things such as SEO, creating link baits etc. The basic premise of volume blogging is more content means more readers.

#14 Niche Networking

Network with fellow bloggers and webmasters in your niche and build a prospects pipeline. Instead of email pitching blindly, pitch to the prospects in the pipeline.

#15 Content is King

Creating quality content that is valuable, engaging and unique will bring more visitors to your blog.

#16 Build a community

Build a community around your website. Make readers to interact with you and one another. Forums are great for building a community. Darren Rowse at problogger.net created the problogger.com forums. Check them out! 

#17 Start an Affiliate Program

If you have a product or service to offer, make the product or service available on an affiliate program. Let others market your product and drive more traffic to your blog!

#18 Link to Internal Pages

Not linking to posts that you wrote in that past is a basic mistake that many bloggers make. Internal Linking will increase your page views, they also provide a better reader experience. Make sure to visit all of your old posts with high page rank and link to new posts. This way you can give more link juice to your newer posts.

#19 Branding – Unique Logo

Create a unique logo, one that can be easily recognized. A logo will allow users to remember your blog and visit you again.

#20 Branding – Tagline

A tagline can succinctly describe the purpose of your website. It allows first time users to know what is your blog is all about in few words as possible. Taglines are great for Elevator Pitches as well.

#21 Branding – Gravatar and Fav Icons

Signup for Gravatar. Globally Recognized Avatar is a small image that is associated with your email address. Whenever you perform some activity at a blog using your email address (ex. Leave a comment on a blog) your image will appear in that website. Having a consistent Gravatar image will enable others to easily identify your brand. Create a Fav Icon, if you do not have one. A good Fav Icon will enable your website to be easily identified from bookmarks or favorite list.

#22 Build Social Media Outposts

Use social media sites as Outposts to drive traffic to you blog. For example, if you have a blog about photography, put your photos on FlickR. You could either watermark your domain name on the photos or provide the photos with creative commons license. So anyone who uses the photo will link back to you in the form of attribution.

#23 Build an Email List

Build a email list of your readers. A list is the most essential marketing tool to promote and sell your products and services.

#24 Use RSS

Make sure that you actively build your RSS reader base. More and more people are using RSS in order to keep track of the numerous blogs they read.

#25 Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is a service provided by Yahoo where people can post questions and get answers from other users in the Yahoo community. By answering questions you can establish yourself as a trusted and credible source allowing you to get more visitors to your website. For tips on using Yahoo Answers to drive traffic to your website read the post titled 10 Steps to get Traffic from Yahoo Answers.

#26 Talk About High Profile Bloggers

By talking about high profile bloggers in your niche you can attract their fans to your blog! You could either agree or disagree with a high profile blogger. When you promote a high profile blogger’s work, chances are that she might mention you to her readers. You can also attract visitors to your site by disagreeing with a high profile blogger. If you disagree make sure to provide your arguments or justifications. Now you are in the spotlight! You have to use this technique carefully to make sure it does not hurt your reputation. Another way to attract visitors to your blog is to to publish interviews with high profile bloggers.

#27 Create a Squidoo Lens

Squidoo Lens is a more or less like a single page mini website that focuses on a very narrow topic. Since your lens addresses a very specific topic you will attract traffic from search engines as well as other users on the Squidoo community. From your lens you can link to your blog and divert some of that traffic to your blog.

#28 Forum Links and Email Signatures

Place the address of your blog on forum links and email signatures. If you take part in forums in your niche, you can get a lot of quality traffic from signature links that appear below your message on forums. Many forums only permit links to be displayed below the message you post. If the forum allows you to post your link within a message, please make use of this feature as well. It will help you with building back links.

#29 Using Mini Websites to Funnel Traffic

Mini websites that target a specific set of keywords can bring substantial traffic. This is because with relatively little effort in link building you can bring your mini website to the top position in Google. These mini sites can be used to lead the traffic to your main website. A collection of such mini websites can bring you massive amounts of traffic.

#30 On Page SEO & Keyword Targeting

On Page SEO refers to any technique that you do within a webpage to make it more SEO friendly by keyword targeting. For more details on keyword targeting you can read the post 10 Spots to stick your Keyword.

#31 Link Exchange

We all know that Link Exchange does not help us in search engine ranking as it used to do in the past. But, still exchanging links can help us to increase direct traffic (via links). If you exchange links in your niche it can bring you a lot of targeted traffic.

#32 Write Catchy Headings

Writing a good headline is very important to attract visitors to your blog. The reader of your blog may have subscribed to dozens of other blogs. As the reader scans through posts on her RSS reader, the only way to get noticed is by writing a killer headline that will grab the reader’s attention. For tips on how to write a catchy headline, you can read the post titled 3 Simple Tips for Writing Catchy Headlines.

#33 Tag Images Properly

Searches for images on Google and Bing can bring substantial amounts of traffic to your blog. Make sure to put the best descriptive keywords on the image file name and the image ALT tag.

Photo Credit: Geophaps’ photostream

All of us want our new websites to be indexed by search engines as soon as possible. But there are instances when we do not want our web pages to be indexed by search engines. For example, if you are developing a new section to your website and the web pages are still under construction you do not want the search engines to index any incomplete web pages.

Some folks have a duplicate copy of their website or blog under a sub domain name (example testing.techthinker.com) as a testing site. If Google discovers this site it might penalize you for having duplicate content.

Therefore it is best to tell search engines not to index any web pages that are currently under development or testing. This is where the robots.txt file becomes very useful. The robots.txt file is placed under the root directory of you web server (i.e that is the directory where the domain is pointing to). For example, my domain name TechThinker.com points to the directory /www/techthinker on my web server. This is the directory where you will place the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file cannot be placed in any sub directories (example /www/techthinker/images).

Let us look into the steps involved in creating a robots.txt file:

1. Create a file called robots.txt using a text editor (such as notepad).

Please note that the file has to be saved in text format. If you use a non-text editor like Microsoft Word make sure that you save the file in text format.

2. Add the necessary commands

Based on what sections of the website you want to block you  have to type the following lines of commands in the robots.txt file.

The general syntax for commands are as follows:

User-Agent: [Name of search engine Spider or Bot]
Disallow: [Directory or File Name to be BLOCKED]

Example 1: Prevent Google from indexing the page called “newpage.htm” under the directory “newsection”

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /newsection/newpage.htm

Example 2: Prevent all search engine bots from indexing any files which are stored inside the directory “newsection” (i.e block the entire directory).

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /newsection/

Example 3: To block the entire website from search engines.
WARNING: The following command will totally block the entire website from search engines.

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /

3.Upload the file

Once you have added the necessary command to the robots.txt file you can upload the file to your web server. As indicated earlier, the robots.txt file has to be placed in the directory where your domain name is pointed at.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section.

An introduction to On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On-page SEO refers to any technique that you perform on your web page (on-page) to make the web page rank well in search engines. In this post I explore the various parts of a web page where you can stick your keyword. Please use your keywords naturally when needed. Do not over use them and do not let the keywords drive your content.

I assume that you have already done some basic keyword research and have already picked the keywords you want to use.

• You can put your keyword in the page title. The page title text will appear on the top of your browser window.
• You can put your keyword in the Meta Description tag of the page.
• You can also make the keyword available in the Meta Keywords tag.
• You can use the keyword in your web page file name and style sheet files (CSS).
• Make sure to use the keyword in your header (h1,h2 etc) tags.
• As you start writing your first paragraph, mention your keyword. Putting the keyword in the top part of the page grabs the attention of the search engines.
• Use the keyword in the middle of the body text. Bold the keyword. Italicize the keyword. Underline the keyword.
• Use the keyword in internal links as anchor text.
• Use keyword in image file names and the ALT text.
• Use the keyword in the last paragraph.

Do not over use the keyword unnecessarily. You are writing for humans and not for search engine robots.