10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Corporate Blog

March 30, 2010 By 28 Comments

Like you, I want to drive traffic to my website. Not just trickles: I want stacks and stacks of visitors! And then some.

Here are ten of the things that I do to generate traffic; maybe they can help you as you seek to drive oodles of traffic to your own site:

1. Blog with WordPress

Ever since I made the switch from ExpressionEngine to WordPress and Chris Pearson’s Thesis Theme (no affiliate link) I’ve seen my traffic rise and rise. Sure, it was a bit messy shifting blogging tool, and I lost a year’s worth of posts, but I learned my lesson and now make weekly backups. And I definitely don’t regret changing.

traffic

Still after more traffic?

WordPress is an easy blog system to use. There are stacks of plugins to help you do whatever you want with your installation and since the Scribe WP plugin (no affiliate) for optimised copywriting appeared on the scene I’m even happier. I’ve seen my site perform better in Google and that’s brought in traffic. A massive 600 percent more traffic than when I used ExpressionEngine.

If you don’t take my word for it, the Top 100 bloggers can’t be wrong.

2. Blog Often

Google seems to like it if you blog regularly. Of course, people come only back regularly if they like what you’re doing, but I’ve also started seeing my posts turn up higher than they “should” in Google since I increased from 2-3 posts a week compared with 4-5 times.

Although it can be tough to write four or five posts a week I find that a bit of forward thinking, a bit of planning, a bit of inspiration from other people and some occasional hasty scribbling seems to keep things ticking over.
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Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Scribe SEO WP-plugin Gets Almost Instant Results

March 18, 2010 By 42 Comments

Last month I wrote about Scribe – literally a month and a day ago.
Since buying this useful WordPress plugin I’ve striven to make sure the majority of my posts here at Jon Buscall.com hit the 100 percent mark, following Scribe’s recommendations.

I haven’t really spent much time checking my keywords in Google since I started working with Scribe (NB. No affiliate links anywhere on Jon Buscall.com), but low and behold, today, I discovered that one of my keyword phrases had gone from absolutely nowhere (page 7) to Number 2 in Google’s search results.

I’m not going to share exactly which words I’m talking about here, obviously, and having checked the number of projected daily hits I’ll get from this with Market Samurai (a keyword tool I also shelled out for a month ago), I doubt it will make me rich. But I wanted to give some feedback on some of the key data I’m seeing in my first month of using Scribe (in conjunction with Market Samurai) after discussing its merits with other marcom folks.

joan damico tweet

Key data

As well as my main keywords and phrases performing better, in the last 30 days I’ve witnessed:

  • a 30% increase in traffic to this site
  • a 10% reduction in bounce rate – the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site

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Johnny Spence on How to Start a Business Website

March 11, 2010 By 10 Comments

To succeed online you need a great business website. The trouble is it can be a minefield finding the right people to build it, the right content management system (CMS) to run it, and the right web strategy to help your business grow.

johnny spence

'There really isn't a wrong choice for a CMS,' says Johnny Spence

So to get the lowdown on buying a website and the more technical side of online communications, I talked to Johnny Spence, a web-developer who runs Oscarrweb! out of Barcelona.

As well as knowing his way around web code and developing great business sites, the great thing about Johnny is that he’s an awesome communicator and blogger. Vist his blog: The Freelance Rant

We chatted over email and twitter between Spain and Stockholm.

Jon: Getting started with online content marketing means you need a website. As a web programmer, what do you think a business should be looking for in a web site or CMS?

Johnny: There are thousands of possibilities for a business website with a budget to match. Rather than picking a CMS and going from there, you should ask yourself the following to start planning a website:

  • What is my budget?
  • What is the purpose of my business website (advertise, inform, both)?
  • Will I need to update my website on a regular basis?
  • Will I need to expand my website in the near future?
  • Will I need a blog?

Then the next step is to find a recommended web designer/developer and consult on a solution with the above needs in mind. Better yet, if you know of a freelance designer you communicate with on Twitter or other social media, hit one of them up.

Jon: There are SO many different kinds of CMS out there. How does a business user know what’s right for them? And how do they make the right choice?

Johnny: There really isn’t a wrong choice for a CMS whether it is a custom made or utilizes one of the widely available open-source softwares such as WordPress or Drupal. It does have to suit needs and for a website though. So, before deciding on one, you will want to have a test run with a similar CMS with a developer to see if you will be comfortable with what you will be using.

As a general rule, WordPress is great for a business website with an emphasis on a blogging platform and is the most cost friendly to implement since it is so popular. Drupal is good for a larger scale website, with or without a blog, but development costs can run higher. A custom CMS, however, can be made how you like it and is generally easier to use, not having all of the complexities of a commercial CMS.

Due to the custom and/or proprietary nature of a custom CMS, though, costs can run higher and, if you decide to migrate to a more commercial CMS in the future, you could incur more costs there as well.

Jon: Small businesses just starting out probably aren’t going to have a massive budget to develop their website. There’s always a battle between investing in the “visual stuff” and “technical stuff”. If you’re on a tight budget what’s essential if you’re looking to use a website as a place to market your company?
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Mobilize Your Marketing Communications

March 10, 2010 By 5 Comments

mobile content marketing

Does your business Think Mobile?

Your online content marketing efforts with social media and blogs should not just be aimed at people surfing the Net on their PC. It’s time you got your content and brand in front of mobile customers and started thinking mobile content marketing.

A study by web metrics firm ComScore reports that the number of mobile phone users connecting to social network site Facebook via a mobile has grown 112 percent in the last 12 months whilst the use of Twitter on mobiles has grown a staggering 347 percent.

With literally millions of people using phones to connect to social media, it’s increasingly important your business wakes up to mobile content marketing.

The popularity of the iPhone Facebook App ensures that your Facebook Fan Page is optimized for mobile access (Find out more about how businesses can optimise Facebook Fan Pages as part of an online marketing-communications strategy) but don’t forget it’s important if you’re using a business blog to offer a mobile version of your site.

Is Your Blog Ready for Mobile Content Marketing?

I personally tend to get frustrated if, say, a link on Twitter leads to a website on my iPhone that isn’t optimised for mobile browsing. If the page hesitates more than a second or so to download, especially when I’m just on a 3G network, I don’t bother waiting. Even if I’m a dedicated follower of a particular site!

What’s more, if you’re pitching yourself as a online marketing expert or online marcom blogger, you really need to think about what not having a mobile version of your site says about you!

WordPress makes it incredibly easy to offer readers a mobile version of your site with things like the MobilePress plugin.

Since installing the plugin on my site six weeks ago I’ve noticed that monthly mobile traffic has increased from 0.8% of to 2.19%. Not bad, eh?

More WordPress Mobile Plugins to Check Out

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Filed Under: communication strategy, content marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Switching to Disqus

March 7, 2010 By 20 Comments

Over the weekend I’ve installed a new comment system on this blog: Disqus.

commenting with disqusI’ve hesitated about this for a while now but the killer blow came when I discovered last week that users are commenting on Facebook on a client’s FB Fan Page instead of using blog comments. I’ve kind of deduced that users can’t be bothered to login with separate details. Hence the switch here: Disqus lets you connect and comment using your Facebook and/or Twitter login.

The other reason I’ve decided to give Disqus a spin is that it clearly encourages users to tweet comments and publicise them on Facebook.

Finally, I also like the way you can reply to a comment via email and see it automatically posted on the blog. Neat, huh?

The Drawbacks

I’m not so sure Disqus looks as nice as the CSS styled comments I had running. What’s more page load times vary a little bit because of the strain on the Disqus server.

I’ve noticed a few bugs over the weekend but I’m going to measure if I get more tweets, retweets and Facebook mentions.

The absolute biggest drawback with implementing the Disqus comment feature is that new commentators are no longer directed to my Thanks for Commenting page. I’ve got so many great responses from people for this page that it almost, nearly almost stopped me switching to Disqus.

But I figure the potential greater exposure on Twitter and Facebook is worth it. Also, Disqus enables users to do more with commenting, making it much easier to search the comments and for the comments to be found out on other platforms. Bottom line, I’m hoping Disqus will enable more people finding my thoughts about online communications.

If you have any thoughts about the switch to a new commenting system please don’t hesitate to let me know in the, er, comments!

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Content marketing just got a whole lot harder

February 16, 2010 By 6 Comments

Creating cool online content isn’t worth a thing if no one’s reading your business blog.

Scribe logoEnter Scribe – the new WordPress plugin from Brian Clark and his team.

What is Scribe?

Geared to WordPress users who run themes like Thesis, Headway and Hybrid or the indispensable All in One SEO plugin, Scribe sits in your dashboard and tells you how to improve your writing for search engines.

As Brian Clark puts it “it’s like having an SEO expert as an editorial assistant.”

The idea is that now you can write your daily blog posts with an online buddy there to whisper SEO tips as you write.

Neat, huh?

So what do you get?

After struggling with some silly sign-up issues (I’m based in Stockholm, Sweden, after all), I managed to get hold of a copy today and my first impression is that this is a game-changer.

Once you’ve signed up you get a plugin that you upload to your Plugin directory in your installation of WordPress.

After that’s done you activate the plugin and enter the API Key you received when your subscription was confirmed.

Then all you have to do fire up a new post and you’ll immediately notice a new field on the right of the WordPress composition window geared to SEO.

Tweaking a post

To test things out, I analysed yesterday’s post: 5 Reasons Your Business Blog is Failing.

My initial SEO score was a measly 72%, even though I’m pretty adept at writing SEO copy if Google SERPs are anything to go on.

Anyway, my pride intact and my interest high, I glanced through Scribe’s summary.

seo copywriting

Not quite a perfect score, eh?


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