Those in the online marketing industry aim at least half of their efforts at bringing traffic to ecommerce product catalogs.

Product quality, functionality, the aesthetics of the website, and good advertising are some of the requirements for bringing users to an online store.

But often people’s marketing strategies do not include the publication of valuable content, at least outside of product descriptions. Neglecting content is a very serious mistake for at least three reasons:

• without quality content, the website will have a hard time ranking well in the search engines
• visitors will bounce in and out of your ecommerce site quickly without focusing on researching more insights, which could lead them to purchasing
• specific content related to the available products might be why users enter the site and end up buying something

Enriching an ecommerce site with good content is essential to increasing traffic that can turn into sales. But what are the most effective and stimulating content strategies for an online store?

Relevant Keywords

The first rule is to add highly relevant keywords to the site’s content, which should be relevant to the company and its products.

For example, if you sell children clothing, then you will create content with keywords such as “children’s clothing”, “kids clothes,” or even “baby clothing trends 2017-2018.” Any content you create for your online store should always include the most relevant keywords.

Video

Adding videos to your product pages can really help to increase engagement with users. Once they have watched a video, they can post their comments, share stories, or ask questions.

You can use videos to compare your products with those of your competitors. You can also use videos for showcasing your products or even taking advantage of search engines. Google and YouTube will index an optimized video (meaning one with your keywords included).

SEO optimization will ensure you have extra visibility in front of shoppers looking to learn more about your products.

Images

Images are one of the most important aspects of a successful ecommerce endeavor. Like videos, properly optimized images can help you get more search engine visitors. Of course, high-quality product pictures can help potential customers decide to complete an online purchase.

But you can also use other graphics. For example, an infographic about a product comparison can help you market your online store.

Product Guides

People do not buy a product; they buy the experience surrounding it. So great content is just what deepens a product’s opportunities for use. It should educate people about the use of a product’s functional features and especially the situations in which people can use it.

For example, if you sell ties, it might be interesting to have an infographic with all the possible knots for a tie. You could explain how to create a papillon, present the most typical fabrics and designs, or illustrate the best shirt and jacket pairings.

Success Stories

What did customers do with your products? What were the benefits for the people who used them?

Don’t tell your shoppers how to use your products: show them. Telling short, incisive, and special stories is a great way to convey the idea that the product has value and that people appreciate it.

Whoever is reading the content immediately connects the product to a positive experience. This association increases the interest around the product, which people will no longer perceive as an object. Instead, they will see it as an opportunity to turn the purchase into a pleasant situation.

Case Studies

Once again, the use of the product is our main theme. But in this case, the subject is a special occasion or a particular problem people need to solve. Here, we’re talking about a specific context in which something needs to happen.

In essence, rather than starting directly from the product features, you create a case study that explains its benefits in a specific circumstance. The product then becomes the tool to solve the problems that the situation presents.

For example, if you are selling ski equipment, you can propose a case study that describes the use of a specific product for a difficult path in a ski resort. Then offer the skis that best suit this situation.

Related Products

People almost never use a product out of context. Usually, it is linked to other ones with similar features.

To increase the interest and value of your ecommerce items, you can talk about related products in contexts where they make the most sense.

Questions and Answers

Prepare content in which you summarize the main questions your customers are asking, as well as your answer. Doing so is a nice way to attract attention.

You will be successful with this strategy because you are writing about the issues potential buyers are hoping someone will clarify. Once again, you can use a lot of keywords that will help increase traffic and visitors in the specifically ecommerce area of ​​the site.

Emails

Collecting emails and sending messages to your current customers is an effective way to increase returning visitors and improve sales.

Keep in mind that these emails do not have to be merely promotional. You can also use them to offer valuable content, such as the latest blog posts, case studies, or success stories.

Email marketing really helps to keep your users engaged. So remember to ask your new customers to subscribe to your mailing list once they register with your site when they make their online purchase.

User Generated Content

Finally, here’s some great news: you don’t have to create all your content! There are lots of methods for getting users to help you with some of the hard work.

For example, you can ask for reviews and feedback. There are many ways to do so, depending on the platform you are using for your ecommerce store. You can also reward your customers once they have completed a certain number of reviews.

Keep in mind that this kind of content will not always positive, but it will always be helpful for your audience.

Over time, you might find benefits from user-generated content. User-generated content will help you to improve your ecommerce products by revealing your low-performing items and helping you to test new ones.

Final Words

An ecommerce site is not an online magazine. So it typically does not have much content other than product tabs.

However, your site does not need to have so little content on it. First off, you can create a blog that you link to your online store. In your blog, you can publish almost any kind of content. If you implement your content strategy well, you can even become a benchmark in your industry.

You can also decide to create specific sections on your site where you provide general technical information about your ecommerce items.

Now, it’s up to you.

Are you running an ecommerce website?

What’s your experience with it?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Now if you search online, there is a lot of conflicting advice on the subject – some of it good and some of it bad.

The only tips that you should be following are the ethical SEO tips that actively help your site, without abusing the system.

SEO Has A Bad Name

For some people, SEO has a pretty poor reputation online.  It can be seen as a way to somehow “cheat” the system or gain an unfair advantage over rivals.

This isn’t helped by the fact that there are some people (a small minority) that do try to abuse the system to further their own cause.

This has led to some to even suggest that search engine optimization be called something different.

It Can Actually Be Good, When Used Right

The simple fact is that SEO can actually be used ethically when done right.  Search engine optimization is simply a way of getting your content to the most people possible.

Search engines are the number one method of driving traffic to a site, so it makes sense to make the most of them.

People have given a bad name to SEO by using negative techniques (or Black-Hat SEO) that abuse search engine rules, such as; keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, etc.

They do this to try to boost their rankings quickly, but the joke is on them as these methods only tend to work for the very short term, if at all!

Thankfully, Google and others are cracking down on websites that abuse these rules, which is great for the rest of us that pride ourselves for following the rules.

You have to remember that search engine optimization is a long term strategy for your site.  There is no “quick” way or “short cut” to success, so you are better off optimizing your site for long term results.

So What Is Ethical SEO

Ethical search engine optimization is a term to describe all the good techniques and tips that you can use that are not in breach of search engine rules (or White-Hat SEO).

There is nothing wrong with optimizing your posts and pages to rank higher, as long as you do it right.

All search engines want to do is provide the best quality content to their users, as this is how they make money.  To do this, they need to look at sites (by crawling them) and establish what a post/page is about.

Optimizing your pages helps search engines to identify what your content is about, therefore enabling them to show it to the right people who are searching for it.

Ethical SEO Tactics

So now we know that ethical SEO is the right way to go, how do you go about optimizing your posts?

One of the key aspects of SEO is keyword placement.

Placing keywords and keyphrases in certain places of your site helps search engines to identify what your post is about. This is called ‘on-page SEO’ and can refer to things like;

• Page Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• Subtitles (H1, H2, H3 Tags)
• URL Address
• Image Alt Tags
• Internal & External Link Anchor Text (and the links themselves)

Whilst these are all good places to include your keywords/keyphrases, it is VITALLY important that you don’t overdo it.  Don’t place too many keywords in these places, as you risk keyword stuffing, which is bad!

A good rule of thumb is that keywords should not exceed about 3% of your overall article.  Think of your keywords as simple sign posts that help tell people what your post is about.

That way, you don’t need to go overboard with using them.

A great WordPress plugin that you can use to help you monitor your keyword density and other on-page SEO is the ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’ plugin.

Now SEO is not all about keyword placement.  Search engines also look at things like post frequency, social media interaction, and PageRank.

But for the purpose of this post, this is what I will be focusing on.

It’s All About Being Relevant

Another good ethical rule to remember is that things should always be relevant to your content.  Whatever keywords, keyphrases, internal links, external links, videos, images, etc. that you include in your posts, they should be relevant to what you have just written.

For example, if I were to write an article about a certain actor, let’s say Matt Damon, then linking to reviews of movies that he has been in would be totally relevant, therefore justifiable.

If on the other hand I started including links to some car selling site, that wouldn’t be very relevant.

Search engines look at the terms, phrases and links that you use in a post to see if they are all connected in some way.

If they aren’t (as in the example that we just looked as) then they may suspect some dodgy behaviour going on on your site.

If you think about it logically though, you only want to be providing the best quality content to your visitors anyway, so why would you use/link to unrelated things.

Summary

Ethical search engine optimization isn’t too hard to get your head around.  Just remember to follow search engine guidelines and not abuse the system.

It can actually be more beneficial to concentrate solely on writing for your readers, as ultimately it is them that will determine whether your site is a success or not.

Plan out a long-term SEO strategy for your site and work at optimizing your site ethically.  It is much better to work with Google rather than against them!

What other ethical SEO tips do you use that I haven’t mentioned here?  Do you even do SEO on your site and if not, why?

Do you have a positive or negative view of SEO?  Please let us know your views by leaving a comment below!

Add Pinterest Buttons to Your Website

Time management and efficiency are important for small-business owners. You can support both of these by having your customers help you pin new items on Pinterest. Add embeddable Pinterest buttons to your website and blog; their presence will encourage visitors to share any images or information they find interesting and useful. As Pinterest users pin your images, you’ll benefit from the ripple effect that takes place as other users repin the images.

Must Read: How to Use Pinterest in Your Marketing Strategy

Tease Followers

Don’t give users the whole enchilada in one Pinterest image. Instead, provide teasers that make them want to find out more. Pin images of your products or of things related to your services, and invite users to visit your site to learn more. Ask questions and encourage answers and feedback on your company website blog.

Connect with Your Business Blog

After you embed Pinterest buttons on your company website, be sure to add them to your business blog. Having those red Pinterest buttons on your blog will encourage subscribers to pin blog posts to Pinterest for others to see. Likewise, you can pin a new blog entry on Pinterest to attract new followers. Blog posts that offer tutorials or other useful information are very popular when pinned on Pinterest.

Point Them in the Direction of Further Information

Pinterest users scan over images quickly, looking for things that catch their eyes. Although you can inundate users with copious amounts of text information, it’s better to pin a really great image and lead users back to your website for further information.

Deliver on Promises Made

If you promise to provide more information on your website or engage in conversation with users, be sure to deliver on those promises. Be genuine and authentic with your pins to avoid misrepresenting your business to potential customers. Ensure your pins relate to your business and your community involvement. If an image or pin has nothing to do with what your business is all about, you’re better off looking for a more appropriate image.

You can fool a potential customer one time, but you won’t fool him or her twice. Once you’ve caught Pinterest users’ eyes with your recent pin, you get only one chance to capitalize on the interest you’ve sparked. Divide your focus between posting attractive, relevant, useful pins and making sure you have a website that is also attractive, relevant and informative. The two go hand-in-hand, and if you don’t have a good website to draw customers to, then you’re sending them on a wild goose chase they’re not likely to repeat. Consider these five tips when adding new pins to your Pinterest boards to help you convert followers into customers.

You may be interested in reading: How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Blog isn’t just a custom research paper you can write and forget about. It’s like an organism that need attention and care of the web-master and readers.

Nevertheless, there are diverse ways to drive and increase the traffic of your blog both online and offlin. This article will identify 10 different ways to increase the traffic of your blog online and offline.

Online Ways to Increase the Traffic of Your Blog

Surrender Your Blog to Search Engines

As a matter of fact, submitting your blog to search engines including Google, MSN and Yahoo is the first action you must take when you create a new blog. Without submitting your blog to search engines, it will not be recognized. All you need to do in this case is to submit the URL of your blog to them just to notify them of your newly created blog for them to include your pages in their results after search engine must have crawl the blog.

However, submitting your blog to search engines does not signify that your pages will appear on number 1 of Google search results but the implication is that your blog will be included and have the opportunity of being picked up, whenever the search engine crawl it.

Put In Excellence Content Continually

One of the notable ways to increase the traffic of your blog is to frequently update it with relevant, quality and useful content. This is to invite visitors to the blog and make them willing to visit your blog always as they are sure that whenever they get to your site, they will get whatever information they need. To keep your visitors loyal and keep visiting your site, feed them with meaningful information.

At the same time, post content to your blog as frequently as you can, for your blog content to be noticed by search engines.

Exploit the Power of Comments

It is essential to exploit the power of comments if you want to increase the traffic of your blog. This is because; commenting is such a simple and vital tool for increasing the traffic of your blog. To implement this successfully, respond to comments left on your blog first to tell your visitors that you appreciate their options.

On the other hand, visit other bloggers sites and leave your own comments to drive new traffic. When you do this, ensure that you leave the URL to your own blog in your comment so that you will create a backlink to your blog.

Get the Content of Your Blog Syndicated with RSS Feed

All you will do in this case is to set up an RSS feed on your blog to make it unproblematic for your faithful readers to know when you publish a new content as well as read your blog.

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be described as a technique of advertising your blog or website on the internet in order for it to receive the attention of more visitors. Add links and relevant keywords to your content when optimizing it for search engine but do not overcrowd your posts with a lot of relevant or even completely irrelevant keywords to avoid spamming.

Add Images to Your Blog

Always remember to add images to your blog as a way to increase the traffic of your blog. Apart from the fact that images will make people locate you in search engine listings, it will also beautify your site. You can use images search alternatives from Yahoo, Google and some other search engines. Identifying your images with search engine optimization in mind will increase the traffic to your blog tremendously.

Surrender Your Blog Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

It is equally important for you to submit your blog best posts to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit among others to increase the traffic of your blog.

Offline Ways to Increase the Traffic of Your Blog

Basically, that are not all things you have to do online. There are also some things you can do offsite concerning your online business. Hence, there are ways to increase traffic to your blog offsite.

Use of Business Cards

Business cards are small cards that you can use to introduce yourself and your business for the purpose of promoting your business. Its content includes your name, your organization name or website, address and phone number. It is a great tool to increase the traffic of your blog.

Networking

Networking is a system of connecting people professionally or socially to exchange information. When you meet people, inform them about your blog and convince them on why they must visit it. This will go a long way in increasing the traffic to that blog.

Host and Attend Events

One on one meeting through seminars and other meetings is remarkably useful for bloggers who are looking to increase the traffic of their blogs. All the people you come across onsite are far more likely to lead to discussions concerning your blog.

Hosting people as well can lead to assisting one another that may yield tweets, guest posts, blog roll inclusion, shares, links and general development of your business.

And how do you get traffic to your blog?

Article will be divided into four short parts:

What works for me?

What doesn’t work for me?

What should work for me in the future?

Your recommendations about social network sites

Let’s start with it:

What works for me?

Below there are the most important social networks which drive traffic to my blog.

Triberr.com

At this moment it’s the best social network (in my opinion it’s not a tool, but exactly SOCIAL NETWORK). There are a lot of bloggers, internet marketers, SEO and social media specialists which share their content (blog posts) on Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms. I spend about 15- 20 minutes a day to check what’s interesting and what I want to share with my followers.

You may be interested in reading: How to Use Triberr – Best Social Network for Bloggers?

Twitter

I get most traffic (except direct traffic and organic traffic from Google) from Twitter. Unfortunately visitors bounce rate is the highest and time spent by them on my website is almost the shortest…

You may be interested in reading: How to Use Twitter?

Facebook

Traffic from Facebook is very interesting. Amount of visitors from Facebook isn’t impressive (in last 30 days it was 148 visitors from Facebook), but average time which they spend on my site is the longest (6 minutes 17 seconds)

You may be interested in reading: How to Get More Likes on Facebook?

Bloggers.com

Bloggers.com is a network of bloggers. You can get a lot of traffic from this source but you must be active on this platform. Especially when you will be one of three bloggers of the day (when I was featured I got 52 direct visits from this site only in two days) you can get some related traffic. What’s more, bounce rate is the smallest…

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon also drive some traffic to my blog. But this traffic, IMHO, is not very good – visitors spend about 0 minutes and 6 seconds on my site on average and it’s about 63 times less than visitors from bloggers.com

There are also some “sharing” services which I didn’t try at all, but they sent some traffic to my site and I want to mention them below:

http://inbound.org/

http://hootsuite.com/

http://www.scoop.it/

http://paper.li/

BizSugar

Some of my articles got many votes on this community and it’s driving traffic to NoPassiveIncome. There are some popular bloggers using this site and I definetely suggest you to try it.

This article is hot on BizSugar, see here.

What doesn’t work for me?

I don’t want to describe why it doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s a problem of topics on my blog, maybe I don’t know how to use it. In any case – I tried following sites without effect for my site. Maybe you have other experience? If yes you can share it in comments at the end of this post.

Reddit

I got some traffic from this site. But it’s not so easy and in most cases they prefer videos, pictures or topics not related with blogging…

LinkReferral

I spent some time on visiting and even reviewing some sites they recommend. Unfortunately without any result… What’s more, I don’t want to link directly to this site because there are some links (a few, but there are) which neighborhood may be treated as bad…

Pinterest

Pinterest is only one site from this list which I want to give another chance. But at this moment I get only few visits a month from it…

What should work for me in the future?

In this year I plan to check how following social networks work (for traffic purpose). But you can connect with me even now (if you want of course )

Slideshare

I plan to be really active here. My goal is to create at least five presentations till the end of this year. So you can connect with me on Slideshare to see my results

LinkedIn

I suppose links from LinkedIn are good not only for SEO purposes, but also for direct traffic and social proof. So don’t hesitate and connect with me on LinkedIn too.

Google+

I started to connect with some of my friends on G+ but unfortunately Google banned my personal account. I don’t know why and I’m still waiting for reconsideration. But you can connect with my website on Google+

You Tube

The last one network I plan to check this year is You Tube. At this moment I don’t know how I will find some time for creating videos, but I know that I must.

What is your recommendation about social network sites?

Okey, now it’s your turn. What works for you and what doesn’t work for you?

And what do you think about following social networks:

Blogengage

and

NetworkedBlogs

Please share your social network experience in comments below.

The idea is great, but during short “investigation” what niche I should choose and which keywords should I pick out,  the basic question appeared: “what kind of site should I create; the authority site or niche site?”

The answer on that question is very important: I don’t have a lot of time to play around with another thin niche site. On the other hand – authority site needs even more effort…

First part of this year clearly show us that we have to really think about our business model – Google Penguin overturned SERPs, Amazon closed down some affiliate programs and turned off some accounts. What’s more – there was a lot of bans in the most lucrative program for niche sites – Google AdSense. And nobody knows why…

Blogosphere was boiling with anger and site owners were shuddering with fear. Do you remember that? Did you lost some traffic or maybe your AdSense account was also banned?

Okay, no more complaints and hassles – lets go to some news and facts.

Last week there was a debate on AdSense Flippers between Steve Scott and Mike Thomas about pros and cons of niche and authority sites. Both of them have their own arguments for and against, but I have the impression that nobody wins this debate…

In this post I want to share with you my point of view about niche and authority sites and my business model. At the end I will ask you about your opinion and your preferences – niche or authority sites?

Niche Sites

Pros:

• easy to set up
• low money investment
• low time investment
• if you have experience it’s almost automatic for you to earn money from it
• you can outsource the whole process
• faster ROI (Return on Investment) –first earnings appear after 1-2 months

Cons:

• in most cases only one source of traffic: Google (you can lost it in minutes)
• in most cases only one source of making money (you can lost it in minutes)
• probably lower ROI

Authority Site

Pros:

• easy to set up
• a lot of possibilities of earning money
• at least few sources of traffic
• your online effort (authority, brand) may be used in the real world
• probably higher ROI

Cons:

• long-term ROI (real money appear after 1-2 years)
• you can’t outsource a lot of tasks related with your authority site
• huge amount of time is needed to establish your authority, social proof and brand

You may be interested in reading: Online Passive Income – 5 Money Making Ideas for Bloggers

Okay, and how about my business model?

As you know (if you don’t know it, please read section about), I have some websites on Polish market – few dozen niche sites (mostly in financial market) and one vortal (also on financial market). It works very well for me at this moment, but unfortunately a lot of traffic comes from Google. And big brother G. may change some rules in the future and … (uncensored words appeared)

On English market NPI (NoPassiveIncome.com) is my first, hopefully not last website. And I plan to make some things different than I did on Polish market.

That means:

I want to create at least two authority sites (including NPI) and around them having about 5-10 related niche sites.

I want to diversify income sources as well as traffic sources also for niche sites.

Traffic for my niche site will come from:

• SEO (organic traffic)
• Mailing list (from my authority site and from separate lists)
• Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, other if appropriate)
• CPC Ads (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads)
• Authority site (posts)

The same will be with income– below you can see main sources of income for my future niche sites

Each niche site will earn money on:

• 2—5 related affiliates programs
• My own e-product (probably ebooks or training programs)
• Ads in CPC model (Google AdSense or something similar)
• Ads in CPM model (only for niche sites with more than 10k page views per month)

I know that this model is very time-consuming and may take about one or even two years to see a results. But it should work. I hope…

And what do you think about it? Please share your business models or all of your opinions about niche, authority sites or my business model in comments below.

Each blogger has his or her own reason or reasons for doing it, but a common point for them: they want to have more quality visitors on their blog!

Here are eight tips for promoting your blog:

1)      Focus on Quality Content on Your Site

It’s the first and most important thing. Write an article for readers, not for uou or for Google or other search engines. Focus on high quality content of your post, including grammar, spelling and punctuation. The topic should be interesting and encourage your visitors to read your articles.

2)      Say Hello! to Your Blogosphere

But say it not on the first week of your blogging adventure, but after you’ve posted at least 10-15 high quality articles to your blog. After (or before) it, please prepare a list of 50-200 blogs from your niche. And don’t be shy – write a personal email to each blog owner. In 3-5 sentences describe who are you, what your blog is about and the reason(s), why he or she should read your blog. At the end of your email, you can gently ask for subscribing your blog (via RSS or e-mail list) or following you on Twitter

3)      Make Comments on Other Blogs From Your Niche

Find five to 10 blogs about your topic and try to comment each new article on them for at least 1 month. Try to be first with your comment, or at least between first 10 persons commenting the post. And remember – commenting isn’t spamming, but adding something into the discussion (do you like comments like: ”Thank you for nice post, greetings!” ? – I don’t like it).

4)      Prepare Free Ebook or Short “How to” Guide

After preparing your “golden egg” ask other bloggers to review it or comment on their blogs. But ask bloggers not from A-list (they probably will not have time for you), but bloggers from growing blogs, with comparable audience to yours. Please ask no more than 10 bloggers in one week, and not less than five . For one ebook or guide, if you are a beginner blogger, you should do it repeatedly for one or two months.

Examples of some “How to” articles are below:

How to Write an Article in Less Than One Hour – 10 Useful Tips

How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

5)      Write Guest Posts on Other Blogs

A lot of bloggers are waiting for your post… Really! Guest blogging has only advantages for you because you have access to new readers. For blog owners – because they don’t have to write a new post, they have free content. And the advantage for readers is that, they may read something with another point of view. Before writing a guest post, you should assure, that the blog owner is “ready for guest blogging”. You should also meet requirements for guest posts, which may be different for each blog. And most important tip concerning this point – try to make your guest post related to your free ebook. It really works.

6)     Prepare “Summarizing Article”

Find 3-5 interesting articles from your Top blogger list and summarize it in your article (of course linking to the source). Now it’s time to promote it – send info about it to your email list, Tweet it, tell your Facebook friends/fans about this post. After getting some comments, please send an e-mail about it to the blogger(s) who you mention in your article. And have fun for growing audience

7)      Use Your Twitter or Facebook Power For Boosting Your Blog

Tweet each article from your blog. But this tip only works, when you have lots of followers or fans/friends. If you have a few, you may be interested in http://www.reddit.com/ Promotion on this site is very simple – write an interesting article with killing competition topic and there you are – independent of numbers of your Facebook fans or if you are famous or not, you will get a lot of readers. And if you want to get more Tweeter followers or are newbie, please read How to Use Twitter – Tutorial for Beginners

8)      Be Consistent in Your Action

That means you should promote your blog daily. And don’t be discouraged with small amount of readers at the beginning – promotion is a long term action. Make at least one step a day. And whatever you do – always end with a call to action (visit my blog, follow me on Twitter, sign in into my e-mail list, etc.).

You can also read Google Penguin attacked – 50 types of links to strengthen your website

I assure you, that if you will follow these eight tips for promoting your blog, your audience will be constantly growing! But if it’s not enough for you, feel free and sign in for my newsletter to be informed about other tips & tricks in the blog promotion area.

What do you think about this list? Do you have any more tips for promoting your blog?

But every time, and it’s not important, if it was success or failure, you have to learn from it as much as possible. It’s because you must avoid wrong behavior and continue proper actions.

So today, you can find here 10 lessons learned from the first month of blogging on NoPassiveIncome.com.

In reality, this blog was started at the beginning of this year, but in January and February only some posts were published, without any marketing effort. Work on this blog was restarted in the middle of April, so the first, full time month of blogging was May 2012.

 10 Lessons Learned from First Month of Blogging

 1.       Build Great Blog First

It is one of the most important (and difficult) things – If you want to be a successful blogger, you should have great base for it. And concern not only on appearance and content of the blog – there is a lot of other things, you must care about – visibility in social media, strong relationships with other bloggers, SEO, link building, credibility of you and your blog.

If you want to have great content on your blog, please start with reading two of our articles about it:

10 Article Writing Tips, How to Write Killer Article

How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

 2.       Make Strong Relationships with Other Bloggers

As I wrote above, having great content isn’t enough –it’s only beginning. You have to build close relationships with other bloggers. Two most important steps in building such type of relationships are commenting on other blogs and guest posting. If you don’t know, how it should be performed, please read following posts:

How Commenting May Help You Build Your Credibility And Traffic For Your Blog

and

Great Guest Post and another 9 Secrets of Guest Blogging

3.       Give First, Take Later

If you really want to build great and devoted audience around your blog, you must offer them something special. So, prepare for giving, not for taking. For example you can create some series of killer articles or lists, where you can link to other sites, blogs and resources. Below you can find two killer lists, which may be helpful for every blogger

Top 100 Websites for Bloggers

150 Great Topics and Ideas for Bloggers

 4.       Participate in Social Networks

There are a lot of social networks. We have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest,  LinkedIn and lot’s more. Even for bloggers we have plenty of networks – for example Bloggers.com or Networkedblogs.com. It’s almost impossible to participate in all of them, but you must try to be here Relationships make on social networks are almost as valuable, as direct relationships with other bloggers. In May I concentrated my effort on Bloggers.com and on Twitter. But except networking, you should make something special, for example tutorial for chosen network:

How to use Twitter – tutorial for beginners

 5.       Don’t Consume, Create

Reading other blogs, participating in social networks or even commenting on other blogs is very good for you, especially on the beginning of your blogging way. But all of these activities are “passive” – you consume others work.

So stop consuming and try creating something new – write article for your blog, prepare guest post for others blogs or create an ebook, which may be used by you on your blog.

Spending your whole time on reading other stuff will cause, that you will waste your time for blogging. Your time is your money, so don’t waste it, because Blogging isn’t passive income

6.       Concern Your Effort on 1-3 Things at The Same Moment

Making a lot of things, at the same time, is very ineffective. As a blogger you must prepare great articles for your blog, make relationships with other bloggers and build traffic for your blog. If you don’t have enough money for outsourcing it, and you aren’t problogger, you must do it by yourself.

For good results of your work you must prioritize your activities and concern on 1-3 tasks. For example – in one week(month) concern on 1-3 social networks, comment on 1-3 other blogs, be active on 1-3 forums, etc.

7.       Fight with Distractions

Distractions are very dangerous and time consuming blockers for you and your blog. Only you know how much time you spend on Facebook, Pinterest or by reading emails. Here you can find some tips, how to fight with major distractions.

Top 10 distractions of work in online business – how to operate with them

8.       Traffic First, Monetization Later

As you can find in one of the first articles on this blog (Goals for this blog), goal of this site isn’t making money. And even if your goal is to make money from blogging, firstly you must build credibility and huge traffic for your blog. If you will do it in the wrong order, you will fail, because people will not read your blog…

9.       Monitor Your Progress

If you want to know, where you are, you must monitor your progress. You can analyze your stats, your followers, your fans or even amount of your subscribers.

I’ll give you some examples of numbers for this blog:

So you can see huge progress in Alexa rank, Bloggers.com and in Twitter followers. Amount of Facebook fans is really small , but in May I didn’t make anything to get Facebook fans (and for the next two months I’ll continue it).

And here you can see graph of stats for NoPassiveIncome.com since the beginning of this year:

You can see here, that internet users start visit my site in May

10.   Don’t Give Up

This problem concerns all of the bloggers – beginners and probloggers. Sometimes we feel tired, exhausted and unmotivated. There are a lot of reasons for that – too much work, drop in statistics, only virtual contact with other people or even noisy environment at your work place.

But you must be strong and don’t give up – you are BLOGGER, and bloggers don’t give up!

And how about your experience? What are your most important lessons learned? Do you remember your first month of blogging? Or maybe it was long time ago and you don’t remember it? Please share your lessons learned with us.

But unfortunately it’s not true at all. There is a lot of brilliant websites, which were hurt by this algorithm change and complying with White Hat SEO. What’s more, for some queries, TOP 10 of Google’s SERPs is full of spammy websites or sites with very low quality.

So, what can we do, to avoid in the future drastic drop in traffic from organic search in Google and strenghten your website?

One of the most important things (except brilliant website of course) is having a lot of good quality links.

After some days of Google Penguin rule, and short investigation, we came to conclusion, that good quality links aren’t links only from pages with high Page Rank. It’s more complicated these days…

Your linking schema should looks natural and have a lot of types of links pointing to your site.

Below is a list of different types of links, grouped into 5 groups.

I) Follow/unfollow links

1. Follow (dofollow) links. Construction of the link cause, that some part of websites’ Page Rank is passed to your site
2. Unfollow links (Page Rank is not passed to linked pages)

If you only have dofollow links, it really looks unnatural. You should get some unfollow links to your site. They don’t pass Page Rank to your site, but they pass Trust Rank.

II) Links on different places on linking site

3. Links inside articles
4. Links below articles
5. Links in sidebar
6. Links in footer
7. Links in your bio below your article
8. Comments below post or article
9. Links in advertise/sponsor box
10. Links in conversation box/posts on forums
11. Links in menu (be careful with them – Google algorithm is watching them very rigorously)
12. 301 links from other sites (so called “redirect link”)

If all of your links are only from footer, it’s strange. Isn’t it?

III) Links from different types of websites or online tools and products

In Internet you can get links for your site from many different types of websites. Please make sure, that your linking schema isn’t dominated with only one of them…

13. Guest posts on blogs in your niche
14. Press releases
15. Posts on forums
16. Articles on articles directories
17. Articles on professional websites
18. Question-answers services (for example Yahoo answers)
19. Free accounts on blogging platforms like WordPress.com20. Your Affiliates who promote your products
21. Links inside ebooks
22. Links inside newsletters
23. Links inside emails
24. Blog carnivals sites
25. Social networks (like Facebook, LinkedIn)
26. Social promotion sites (Stumble upon, Reddit )
27. Sites with your favorites  – Pinterest
28. Sites with shared photos and videos (Flickr, Youtube)
29. Discussion groups http://groups.google.com
30. Networks for bloggers blogs.com
31. Links inside tweets
32. Links in RSS feeds
33. Your other, private sites

IV) Links with different construction of the link (different anchors, different titles, etc.)

At these days Google pay high attention to anchors. It’s very important, to have links with various anchors pointing not only to main page, but also to pages deeper in your website. Following points  are examples, what you can do with anchors on your links.

34. Your anchor is selected by you – “Passive income”
35. Your anchor is title of your website – “No passive income”
36. Your anchor is title of particular page – “Google Penguin attacked – 50 types of links to…”
37. Your main, very competitive anchor – for example, for this blog it may be “making money”
38. Words like: “here”, “link”, “click”, “push”, “see” are poor anchors from SEO perspective. But your site should have links with anchor like these!
39. Your anchor is address of your website (https://nopassiveincome.com)
40. Your anchor is address of particular page (https://nopassiveincome.com/google-penguin-attacked-50-types-of-links-to-strengthen-your-website )
41. Links with/without additional title (for selecting title for you link you may follow points 34-40)
42. Shortened links http://bit.ly/JHARA3 are also links, which you should have
43. And finally, graphical links. Maybe they are weaker than text links, but they also should appears in your “portfolio of links”

V) Offline links

If you have a lot of money or you are treating your business very seriously, you can place your links outside the Internet Of course deep linking is almost impossible, but address of your domain also is a link.

Some of “offline links” ideas are below:

44. Links in newspapers and/or paper magazines
45. Links showed on TV
46. Links “spoken” in radio
47. Links in outdoor advertisements (for example on billboards)
48. Links on your business card
49. Links on leaflets
50. Links promoted during conferences, presentations, professional trainings

And what do you think about it? Do you prefer some type of links, or not? Or maybe you know another type of link, which may help to kill Google Penguin?

Photo used in this post:by katmeresin