This is a quick little blog post, with a big punch!  I have been experimenting with different ways to increase the traffic to my blog recently.  Of course, I have the usual connections to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts to drive traffic back to my blog and website.  Those were sending a nice amount of visitors to my site, but one day my friend Nick of Nick’s Traffic Tricks mentioned StumbleUpon as a great way to drive traffic back to your sites.  So I tried it.

I couldn’t believe it!  It was like magic! I had doubled the amount of visitors from the other referring sites with that one little click to StumbleUpon.  So I kept sending my blog posts and occasionally would Stumble one of my static website pages and I continued to get the same incredible results.  I love it!

To take my little experiment a bit further, I am part of a Social Media Tribe, where the members help promote each others events, websites and blogs through social media marketing.  I selected one of my tribe members and Stumbled her blog post.  I checked in on her the next day and that one act provided her with more than 70 new visitors to her blog that day.  Amazing!

Here is a link to some StumbleUpon stats and how it’s now ranking #2 globally just behind Facebook.  Give it try!  Do your own experiment and I’d love to hear back from you on how it worked for you and your sites.

Do you have other great secret weapons to drive traffic?  Share them with us on the comments section below.

If you enjoyed, “Using StumbleUpon to Increase Site Traffic” please share it with your friends by clicking the links below and Stumble this post for me!

Writing has always been a popular means of expression. The advent of internet use has seen the evolution of writing from traditional pen and paper diaries to online journals or blogs. Because it is people maintained and mostly written in first person, a blog’s content is varied and diverse. Subjects may range from the absurd to the factual, and commentaries, opinions and observations on different activities, industries and mainly everything under the sun can be shared through this medium. A blog’s power and energy comes from interaction among its publishers and readers through comments and feedbacks given.

The release of automated publishing software has skyrocketed the popularity of blogging and catapulted it to the frontline as a valuable source of information because it simplifies and accelerates the process of publishing entries online. One of the most widely used blog publishing applications is WordPress, an open source software that is free to use.

WordPress is user-friendly and can be easily installed without any need for mind-boggling configuration or other technical nitty-gritties. One key feature of WordPress is its template or theme system. It can be edited, customized and personalized by simply moving or switching widgets thus eliminating the need for editing html codes.

Another practical feature of WordPress is its integrated link management. To drive traffic to your site, it is important to have it optimized in order to improve its ranking in search engine results.  What exactly is a search-engine friendly site and how is it done? The smart use of keywords will improve your site’s visibility and make it more accessible to your targeted audience. Luckily, you need not go through the daunting task of overhauling your whole website because WordPress allows every single page on your blog to be indexed. Taking time to make minor tweaks can go a long way in streamlining your site and helping it get the attention that it deserves. Don’t overlook the simple stuff like titles, description and text or content. To make your site search-engine friendly, read on and consider the following tips:

Blog Title. Adjust your title format so that the actual title of your post or article is displayed before your blog’s name or title. To catch a reader’s attention, make it short, sweet and simple. Writing a good description for your page gives the search engine and its users an overview of what your site is about before they actually visit it. Here is a great, free, resource to analyze your titles for emotionally connecting with your audience. http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Meta Descriptions. Take advantage of WordPress’ All In One SEO plug-in to type in keyword-rich titles plus matching description for your entries. Make your site description unique and relevant to the content of the page. Similar to blog titles, meta description tags are designed to provide a brief description of your site’s content. This will be used by search engines and directories for indexing.

Rewriting URL’s with permalinks. Updating and customizing the permalink structure on web URLs and making it more comprehensive enables your site to become more user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Tags can either be date and name based, numeric, or fully customized by the user.

Using breadcrumbs. Breadcrumb navigation helps give people a perspective on where they are on your site. It can be added using a variety of plug-ins such as WordPress Breadcrumbs, Yoast Breadcrumbs and so on.

Generating a sitemap. If your site has lots of pages, site maps are a quick and easy way to help users browse the contents of your site. Several plug-ins and functions can be incorporated to the template of your choice.

Use proper keywords when naming photos and images. Again, we cannot stress how important keywords are. To be search-engine smart, you have to consider everything. For example, by renaming a photo of a weeping willow tree as “weeping willow” rather than just 0001.jpg, it gets a better chance of being displayed on the search engine’s photo search results.

Avoid content duplication. Weed out duplicate content on multiple pages by using the Robots Meta plug-in.

Link to related posts. Link building is an important part of the SEO equation. Keep in mind that you should only link to sites that are relevant and complementary to your own. Spamming is a definite no-no.

To achieve presence online, you need to have an edge over the others. This comes with careful planning, excellent presentation and valuable content. SEO is just one way of gaining momentum.  To stay ahead of the game it helps if you know your niche, keep realistic goals, become adequately informed and exercise best practices. One of those best practices is to comment relevant blogs, which gives you a link back to your site.  So go ahead, let me know what you think of this post in the comment section below!

Oh and by the way, on Thursday June 3rd at 7 pm eastern, I’m hosting none-other than The WordPress Chick, Kim Doyal in my Social Media “T” Room.  Click here Social Media “T” Room for more details and to register.  The teleseminar is free, so join us!

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Getting people to your page is just the first part of having a successful and profitable site. Making them stay there, is another matter. Website statistics just isn’t about driving traffic to your site, but it’s about making people want to stay there and come back over and over again. Bounce rates, which is defined as the percentage of visitors to any given site who arrive at a page and quickly leave before looking at any other page. Therefore, the lower the bounce rate of a site, the better.

So how does one keep visitors from ‘bouncing’ away? Here are a few simple tricks to keep your audience riveted to your website.

Optimize your site

No one likes to be kept waiting, least of all people who can leave your site at the click of a button. A site that loads quickly and pulls up all the information anyone and everyone may need will make it easier for visitors to poke around your website.

Clear and Intuitive Navigation

There’s nothing worse than arriving in a new city and not know where north, south, east and west are. Think of your website as a new place for visitors to explore – make sure the roads are well planned, and road signs clear and concise. A visible navigation bar, labeled accordingly and no broken links are essential to keeping visitors to your site.

Have relevant content

According to a recent study by BBC News, an average Internet user spends less than a minute per website. How can you keep people longer than that? By giving them what they need, of course, through relevant content. If you run a website about fashion, then make sure from the homepage that your design and content reflects this.

Keep content fresh and updated

A soap opera writer once said “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry and make ‘em wait.” The same could be applied to your content – keep people interested and coming back for more. Having something new each day (or even every few hours) will keep people on your pages.

Have all the tools available

Web 2.0 is all about interactivity and socializing. Many blogs and sites make it easy to share links and content to their own social networking profile and interact with other users. You can install some simple tools directly on your website. Skysa, for example, installs a non-intrusive navigation bar on your site that lets visitors quickly access sites like Facebook and Twitter right on your site, without directing them away. (see mine below)

By making these few simple changes, you’ll see less visitors bouncing and more people sticking around your website.

I found this great short video on how to get indexed faster on Goggle.  (Thanks to my friend Nick Stewart from Nick’s Traffic Tricks for the link)

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I’m still at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) in Atlanta, GA and yesterday was full of great speakers and valuable content for everyone attending.  Here are some of the highlights of Day 2 on my journey to Making Money on Auto Pilot!

The day started with Mark Hendricks setting the stage for the attendees by revealing to us that our subconscious mind is our Secret tool to our success.  And it’s yours too!  He sang a song for us and then had us sing with him and the song was called, “One Step at a Time” and the second line is Makes all my Dreams Come True!  So we all were charged up and ready to grow our businesses, one step at a time.

The rest of the day was full of great social media instructions, questions, answers and strategies from 5 top Internet Marketing gurus.  The purpose of this session was of course, to teach the participants about social media strategies and using this medium to build your online business, but also, they recorded the entire session and gave it to us to make available to you; our readers!  Here’s the link for you to read all about the session and see if it’s something you would like to add to your marketing education Strategies 4 Social Marketing. (ps, I’m on the video, so be sure to watch it!)

Bob Jenkins of Bob the Teacher is so great and just gave an enormous amount of great quality information.   Some of the topics he covered were:

• How to Stand out online
• Top 7 social media platforms
• Top 20 social media traffic tactics
• Super ninja traffic secret

Here’s a video snippet of Bob in action.

Joey Smith shared his Twitter Cash Machine with us and how to use Twitter for affiliate marketing.

And I ended my day making some great new friends and potential JV (joint venture) partners during dinner.  One of the great things about attending conferences, workshop and trainings is the people you meet and the relationships you build at them.  I was lucky enough to win a prize at NAMS.  I won a great CD from Denise Wakeman.  Here’s a photo of Denise at I at the workshop.

Denise Wakeman & Terri Brooks

Be back tomorrow with all the great happenings of today.  Actually, Denise is doing a blog session and is currently putting up three blogs in the “hot seat” and telling us what’s good, bad and…not so good about them.  It’s a great learning tool for all of us.

Be thinking about attending NAMS in August!  It will be one of the best investments in your business you could make.  I will have a link for you to get registered tomorrow.  NAMS sells out very quickly, so if you want to attend, you need to register as soon as I share the link with you!

Please ReTweet this post and share it with your online friends by clicking the buttons at the bottom and the ReTweet button to the right.  Thanks!

5 Top Internet Marketing gurus reveal secrets for driving massive traffic and money through social media.  You can get the entire session now by clicking this link Strategies 4 Social Marketing.

I was in this session and the secrets that were revealed are life-changing!

Grab Your Copy Now!

Strategies 4 Social Marketing

Free Traffic-Getting SEO Plugin that’s what Jeff Johnson calls it.

It’s his newest free SEO software that you can use to grab more free traffic from the search engines. Version 2.0 was just released and it is WAY more powerful. All you have to do is plug it into your blog and his software does all the rest.

Plus, Jeff gives you dozens and dozens of Free Traffic-Getting Tutorials that show you how to…

Grab more Free Traffic from Google

Get your free SEO blog software here:

http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com/go.php?1089784

Don’t worry: If you already have a WP blog you can simply plug it in and let it work its Traffic-Getting magic.

And if you don’t have a blog Jeff shows you how to install a free one in as little as 2 minutes using a secret “push a button” technology that even the newest of newbies could use. The great thing about Jeff’s brand-new Free Traffic-Getting SEO Plugin is that it is 100% free and Installs in minutes.

Grab your Free SEO Software and Traffic-Getting Tutorials here:

http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com/go.php?1089784

Enjoy!