by Ana Hoffman 161 comments

Ask Ana: What Would You Like to Know About Traffic Generation and SEO?



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traffic generation, seo, other questions

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Today I decided to give up blogging about what I THINK you’d like to know and actually find out WHAT YOU would like to know.

Yes, it’s a Q&A day at Traffic Generation Cafe.

You can ask me any question about blogging, traffic generation, SEO, social media – anything and everything that’s on your heart and I’ll take my best shot at answering you.

One request though: let’s stay away from generalities.

For instance, “How do I generate more traffic to my website?” is a loaded question with no simple answer. However, asking “Can I generate traffic using social bookmarking sites?” is a great way to go.

Also, if I find it that your question is interesting and deserves an answer in a separate blog post, I will let you know when that post is published.

So… What are good questions to ask?

  • Should I try paid traffic generation methods?
  • Is article marketing still a good way to generate traffic?
  • Is it OK to change my posts after they’ve been published?
  • What is the best link building method?
  • How do I find great blogs to comment on?
  • What SEO plugins do you use on your blog?
  • How do I know if my posts are getting indexed?

I am sure you already have something on your mind for me to answer, so the floor is all yours.

ana hoffman traffic generation


traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 161 comments }

Inge Woudstra October 5, 2011 at 6:03 am

Hi,
Thanks so much for this opportunity. I am currently working with Adwords to drive more traffic and get my SEO up. I have very little visits a day, and am really hardly found by Google at all. I have a fabulous site though! Now the Adwords, seem to also rank some of my pages very low quality. I built my site in Wordpress, and the articles do well. Is it possible that Wordpress pages aren’t ranked or indexed so well for some reason? And what can I do about it?

Ana Hoffman October 5, 2011 at 11:27 am

Took a look at your blog, Inge, and looks like you need to start from SEO basics: on-page optimization and link building.

Those are the two things that will eventually bring your blog up on Google ranking ladder.

The best way to learn about both is to get my free SEO guide, if you haven’t already: http://www.getfreeseoreport.com/

I’d ditch Adwords altogether; you’ll go broke before you see any results.

Inge Woudstra October 5, 2011 at 12:52 pm

Thank you so much, and such a fast response too! You really are amazing. I did indeed get the guide, and had a quick look through. I guess I will now have to knuckle down and go and do it, page by page. Not looking forward to that. But…I never looked forward to building my site, and now I am very proud of it. Thanks again!

Ana Hoffman October 6, 2011 at 1:45 pm

One good thing about SEO is once you get it, you are golden, Inge. After that, it just takes upkeep, like anything else I suppose.

Daniel September 29, 2011 at 8:10 am

What are the greatest challenges you have faced in regards to SEO in estimation and do you forsee any game changers in the near future regarding SEO strategy?

Ana Hoffman September 29, 2011 at 9:23 pm

Quite a question, Daniel!

I think the most challenging thing about SEO is how unpredictable and unstable it is.

Yes, there are some cornerstone strategies that have worked in the past and will probably work in the future, but in the end we are all at the mercy of search engines.

mark from: newbies money making online September 19, 2011 at 3:15 am

I think im gonna follow this one :)

1. Guest posting
2. Blog commenting

My favorite is blog commenting because I gain two things. One is knowledge on the post that i was reading and second is a backlink that points to my site.

I will be reading all your post here, hoping that i will gain enough knowledge to start a real website. Thank you for all this information madam.

Fiona Cooper September 10, 2011 at 1:36 am

Just wondering if anyone has ever had any dodgy goings on on their list. I’ve suddenly had an influx of bizarre email addresses sign up to my list. A couple of them might be legit, but most look really strange e.g. a4056bf2 [at] 987.com with the name cgunnigljust (I’ve changed the numbers a bit). What is this? Why would anyone spam-join a list? Seems so odd to me. What should I do? My thought was to email them all and ask them to send a response to confirm their membership – or I could just assume they’re all duff and wipe them off, but that may still leave me with an ongoing problem…. Cheers F

Ana Hoffman September 11, 2011 at 3:58 pm

Never happened to me, Fiona, but that might be because I ALWAYS use double opt-in to my list. All my subscribers need to confirm their subscription before they can get on my list, or else…

I highly recommend you do the same.

Also did you see this post of mine on how to clean up your list? That might help… http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/optin-email-marketing-list-tips/

Joy August 10, 2011 at 4:16 am

Hello Ana,

I understand that Google is giving credit to the origin of the content but HOW will they determine who’s came first?

Is a WordPress post different to a webpage that only get’s crawled every so often? If someone takes my post minutes after I publish it to my own blog only to repost on theirs, how do they know which is the original?

Please clarify.

Joy

Ana August 13, 2011 at 9:33 pm

Since I am not Google – LOL – I can only explain our understanding of how it works, Joy.

Most of the times, Google is good at discerning which came first, often because any republished posts will have a link back to the original.

In those instances when the content is simply stolen and there are no links back and you notice it ranking for anything at all, you can easily report it to Google and the page will be de-indexed.

Of course, it’s possible that Google is not as perfect as it would like to be and can rank another site that republished your post ahead of yours.

Nothing can be done in this case; just hope that those who visit it will follow the links back to you.

Joy September 1, 2011 at 3:35 pm

It was really nice to receive your reply in my inbox, Ana. How did you do that? Is there a plugin for that?

Thanks,
Joy

Ana Hoffman September 7, 2011 at 12:26 pm

Yes, Joy – the plugin is called “ReplyMe”.

David August 3, 2011 at 6:33 pm

Ana,
So once again you have got me to thinking. There are 4.3 billion peoalple on the internet per year, which I’m sure that this is not new information to you. My thought is If I could get just 1 perecent of that I would consider myself a pretty good internet marketer. Hell, half that would not be bad either. I guess where I’m going with this is, I started pinging my posts after reading an article you wrote about pinging. My question is, At what point does pinging become not so useful or is it always useful and how long should it take to see results? I also found an indexing program to index my sites. Are those really useful, and at what point do those become useless? Obviously my problem is Traffic! I need more!

thanks again!
David

Ana August 8, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Wouldn’t that be nice, David!

Pinging: the truth is Google will eventually find and index most of the pages and links online. Most, but some slip through.

Do you really need to ping your posts, comments, etc? Probably not.

But I do it anyway to speed up the process.

I wouldn’t worry about indexing programs though. Google will index most of your pages on its own.

Traffic, traffic, traffic… It’ll come with time. Just need to work your rear for it – and that’s the truth. LOL

Fiona Cooper July 21, 2011 at 5:13 pm

Hi Ana – A post about Google +1 and another about Cloudflare please. You just plus1′d the latter and I’ve blindly gone and put it on my site…. but what is it…. I have a vague idea and obviously I blindly trust your judgement, but it’d be good to have more of an idea of what I’m doing lol. +1 I’m struggling with too. Seems we should be doing it, but I’m still catching up with FB and blimey…. what will be next? (yeah, I know, you can’t answer that last one, if you could you’d no doubt be a very rich lady). Hey ho. Fiona

Ana July 22, 2011 at 11:40 am

It’s on my list of post to do, Fiona. :-)

Google +1 is pretty much like a Facebook “Like” button. When doing a search in Google, you will see the posts that were “+1-ed” by your friends and that will tell you that you’ll probably like it too.

Fiona Cooper July 19, 2011 at 2:07 am

Hi Ana – Great post – and as I’ve been suspecting for some time, I need to get a grip on FB…… darn – only just mastered Twitter!!! ;-(

Ana July 19, 2011 at 11:43 am

And then there’s Google+ :-)

Christopher@Technology Blog July 15, 2011 at 3:05 am

Could you post the traffic report for your blog, for a month (or any time period) that you are particularly pleased with, saying why you believe you got so many visitors in that period?

Just an idea :-)

Ana July 16, 2011 at 5:06 pm

Interesting request, Christopher – I’ll consider it. Thanks for the idea!

Arturo@Starting Your Own Business July 14, 2011 at 1:58 am

Ana, you’re an example to us all of how to give and give before ever asking for anything. You’re quite an inspiration.

My question: If for a span of 3 months you had to choose between using a combination of Tweet Adder and MarketMeSuite to generate a BOOST in traffic vs. a combination of guest blogging and optimized content generation, which one would you choose, if your goal was to develop a dialogue with your visitors to convince them to join your mailing list within those 3 months?

For whichever of your choices, could you explain why?

Ana July 15, 2011 at 6:21 pm

As much as I love Twitter marketing, Arturo, I would go for guest blogging because it produces far more targeted traffic – the kind of traffic that is more likely to join your list.

Bob Crane July 5, 2011 at 6:02 pm

I wanted to ask the question you suggested “Does article marketing still work..does it?

Also, on your blog I read something about network marketing…do you do network marketing? I have been having a debate with a friend of mine as to whether network marketing is a sustainable business. You spend a lot of time and money growing a NWM business..does it really pay? What is your take, Ana?

Thanks,
Bob

Ana July 6, 2011 at 12:43 pm

Article marketing: I haven’t seen it work for a long time, Bob.

There was a time when people were reading articles and clicking on the links, but it’s been a while since you could really generate any sizable traffic from publishing articles.

Since the recent Google Panda update, article marketing was even further discounted, if it were at all possible – even the links that come from article marketing don’t carry that much value.

So I wouldn’t waste my time with it.

Network marketing: no, I am not in a network marketing company currently, no do I plan on joining one.

I do have network marketing to thank for my online career though: that’s how I first started, and after failing again and again, I dedicated myself to learning how to do it right and how to do it well. That’s how I started Traffic Generation Cafe.

Do I believe it’s still a viable way to make money? Tough one. I’d say that for the majority of people entering this particular industry succeeding in it equals to trying to fill a leaking bucket: the more people you recruit, the more people leave your downline, and so it continues. Only select few truly have the stamina and stubbornness to continue – and yes, those people still succeed.

To me, it wasn’t worth it.

And, by the way, I am with a top-tier business right now called YourNetBiz – better business model, better money, but still working just as hard. :)

Mavis Nong | Free Marketing Training July 5, 2011 at 10:52 am

Hey Ana,

Great idea this is :)

My question: what do you think of the use of TribePro/OnlyWire which give you a crazy number of instant backlinks when you submit your content? I mean you can get 2000+ right away!

Google’s whole point regarding backlinks is that they appear natural… I’m thinkin’ that will be hard to do with +1000 per article instantly.

Would there be any penalties from Google?

With other services like IMAutomator or Social Monkee, you can spread your submissions over several days.

Thanks in advance, Ana!

Warmly,
Mavis

Ana July 6, 2011 at 9:44 am

According to the latest SEOmoz search engine rankings report, when it comes down to links, quality and relevance definitely outweigh pure quantity, Mavis.

I don’t use any service that creates thousands of backlinks – shows an alarming pattern and yes, can get you penalized.

I do however use services like OnlyWire, which distributes to up to 40 services (I am not aware that they could do anything more than that) and IMAutomator, which submits to, I believe, 15 services with their free version.

In other words, I do reasonably bookmark each and every post, but that’s it.

I don’t truly believe it gives me a real edge, but I do it anyway for faster indexing and just because I am in habit of doing it. :)

Hope this helps!

Mavis Nong | Free Marketing Training July 11, 2011 at 4:18 am

Thanks very much, Ana. It does help.

For some unknown reason, your reply didn’t get delivered to my inbox as usual. So, I came to search for it :)

All the best,
Mavis

Mavis Nong July 11, 2011 at 4:55 am

P.S. You’re right, Ana. OnlyWire does about 40 services. However, when you have 40+ fellow tribe members auto-syndicating your content to 30+ locations (set in their OnlyWire accounts), you end up with thousands of instant backlinks.

Ana July 11, 2011 at 7:03 pm

That’s true, Mavis.

I wonder why you didn’t get my response; wonder if my reply plugin is working properly.

Would you please let me know if you get this one? Thanks!

Mavis Nong | Free Marketing Training July 12, 2011 at 12:07 am

I got this one, Ana. Cheers!

Ana July 3, 2011 at 5:31 am

Great tip Alex! :-)

Shinarix, there are many tips on my site about bringing more visitors to your blog. You can use those tips to do so and by making your blog more interesting to users. Perhaps you should find a different niche.

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