My friend Will Swayne on his blog asks whether blogging is the killer SEO tool for businesses?

As I’ve written about previously the number one goal if you are working on your blog’s search engine optimization, is to gather all those incoming links from authority sites. Will proposes that some of the old fashioned ways of link building - namely directory submission, link exchanges, article marketing, etc - are just not cutting it anymore, and that blogging potentially could be the best way to encourage incoming links from authority sites.

Why is this? Because blogs are natural conversation starters and if you particularly seek out communication with other bloggers, the incoming links can really start to flow.

What is one of the best ways to get the incoming links flowing? I’ve said it before - start sending out the links from your blog if you want them returned to you, but do it in a conversational manner so that it makes sense. This post you are almost finished reading is a fine example of sending out a link when it makes sense to.

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It’s time for an update on the Blog Traffic School course. In between traveling from Australia to Canada I have been working with a web developer to get the membership back-end system up. Originally I was going to deliver Blog Traffic School through the AMember membership management system, but a few months ago I changed my mind and opted to use the Butterfly Marketing system (aff) instead.

Butterfly Marketing has a lot of extra features I wanted and I felt I wasn’t too far in development with AMember that I couldn’t make the change. However I realized due to other commitments and lack of technical skills I needed help so I brought in a Butterfly Marketing specialist to help with the implementation. We have been working really quickly together and it’s basically ready to go, I just need to get busy writing some content like the sales page.

One of the main features of the new system that I really like is the ability to offer different levels of membership. This allows me to offer an introductory free membership, which is what all members of my Blog Traffic Tips newsletter will receive after signing up.

The main feature of the free membership will of course be the traffic tips email newsletter, which you can already join now by filling in the form at the top of this blog - there just isn’t a membership system behind it yet. I am also going to collect all the resources I have ever released about blogging, including podcasts and articles, and make them available to free members. Most of the content you can already get online elsewhere but it will be great to bring it all together under one blog specific membership system, so even free members will receive tremendous value. No doubt over time I will continue to add more to the free resources section.

The system allows members to upgrade from a free member to a full member at any time by paying the course tuition. Paying for the upgrade will grant access to the full set of course resources, including the Blog Traffic School course. Over time I can add additional courses, products and related tools and have different memberships for each. The Butterfly Marketing system makes it all very easy and best of all it’s a super clean interface. I get complete control over the design and I’m well aware that simplicity works best so look for basic text to be the main feature, with a basic navigation system too. Blog Traffic School is about strategies, so it’s the content that matters the most.

Look for more launch news soon!

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic King

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Many bloggers aiming to use blogs as a means to make money online are constantly thinking of new blogs they could start. It’s like the entrepreneur curse. If you are a creative person, someone who likes blogging or who has tasted income from a blog, you may find every day activities stimulate new concepts for blog topics, just like an entrepreneur who comes up with new business ideas on a daily basis.

Most good entrepreneurs - and I mean those who move forward from the idea stage to the running a successful business stage - learn a lesson. It’s called focus. Focus is what turns a start-up business from a shaky idea into a stable company, and the same applies to blogs.

Opportunity Niche Blogging

It’s true many bloggers out there are having tremendous success by coming up with niche topics, setting up a blog for each one and filling them with content. However most of these bloggers are really Internet Marketers who simply use blogs as a tool. They will often outsource, buy and generate the content for their blogs and aim to replicate a successful formula to make money. They don’t necessarily care that much for the topics their blogs are covering - they just want to fill gaps in the marketplace and make a profit doing it.

There is nothing wrong with that but my advice in this article isn’t for those types of bloggers. I want to teach bloggers who consider their blog topic their passion. They probably write their own content and do most things manually. This doesn’t mean that they don’t come up with ideas for new blogs on a regular basis. In fact they may even go so far as setting up multiple blogs and buying up domain names for “future ideas”. Unfortunately these bloggers quickly build up a graveyard of neglected blogs since it’s hard for one blogger to keep multiple blogs full of fresh content if they are the only author.

Focus On What You Are Good At On Just One Blog

In most cases I believe, and I’m speaking from experience as someone who has started new blogs and shut them down just as quickly and learnt a hard lesson about stretching myself too thin across multiple blogs, that you should stick to writing for one blog and make it special. If you pour all your energies into one blog that blog will have the best content, the most traffic and be as good a blog as it can be.

Consider you have the ability to write ten blog articles per week. Would it be smarter to produce five blogs and post two articles to each one, or post all ten articles to the one blog?

I am convinced that having one “best” blog, your showpiece, is the best plan for a solo-blogger with limited blogging time.

I say limited blogging time because there are those out there (I won’t name any names - Darren Rowse, cough cough…) who can produce phenomenal amounts of content each day. For these individuals writing to multiple blogs at once is more realistic since they are capable of regular and consistent high quality output - in fact too much output for just one blog - they would drown their blog in content if the 50 articles per day they are capable of all went to the one place. These types of bloggers are rare though and most likely you are a 1-2 articles per day at most kinda person.

Clarity Of Purpose

There’s another reason to focus on making one really great blog - clarity of purpose. If you have just one baby you can put all your time into nurturing it, guiding it, responding to comments and making it the best it can be. I don’t know about you, but having only one thing to worry about, with a clear direction means I can really do a good job. While in general it’s not good to have all your eggs in one basket sometimes in blogging terms that’s the best strategy - you can always diversify *within* the one blog.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to focus your energies on one blog is the search engine rankings. If you keep writing to a blog consistently over time - about 12 months should do it - your rankings will start to really improve. If you have been following my SEO advice, in 12 months time you could have a search engine powerhouse of a blog, instead of three blogs with sub-par search rankings because your energy and promotional efforts have been divided across multiple blogs. And let me tell you something - if you can dominate the search engines the traffic can be huge!

Blog With Other People

If you simply must start multiple blog projects then plan to outsource, hire or partner with other bloggers to ensure you don’t divide your time and attention across too many focuses. This is a lesson I have learnt recently as I have converted my blog, Small Business Branding, into a multi-authored group blog - and it was one of the best things I have done. Now Small Business Branding is growing nicely with the help of many great writers and it may very well one day take over my current main blog - Entrepreneur’s Journey - in terms of traffic and popularity.

Here’s to your blogging success,

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic King

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As I write this article I have already finished two other articles for this blog and I haven’t been blogging for 20 minutes yet. I’m heading overseas next week you see, so I want to have some articles cued up ready to go for while I’m traveling. In fact if you are reading this article you have already read two articles I wrote last week along with this one and you will probably read the next one later in the week - all of which I wrote in one session.

I won’t lie to you - I do enjoy writing and I can easily sit down and pump out 2000 words in a matter of hours. This may not be how you feel about writing, that’s okay, you don’t have to set the same goals as me or follow the same writing patterns.

Leverage Your High Energy Moments

The lesson I want to teach you is to take advantage of those times when the words flow from you easily. I generally find that I write best in small bursts of creativity or inspiration. It’s as if the ideas have to come out of me.

I bet you are probably the same.

There are clear times when writing is not difficult while at other times it’s painful or a chore and you just don’t want to do it. My advice, if you don’t feel like writing, don’t. I have a rule of never forcing myself to do anything I don’t want to do unless it’s necessary to help me meet a goal I really want to achieve.

What you need to do is focus on those times when you have a heaps of energy and your fingers are just dancing on the keyboard. When you feel that you are in the “zone”, leverage that time for all it’s worth and don’t just write one article, write several. Later in the week when you don’t feel like writing you can just publish one of the articles you have written earlier or if you have cued them up like I have with this article, you can sit back and let your blog publish itself.

It’s important to remember you are human so you need to consider your human needs first. That means food, water, shelter and all that - and also your emotions. When you are well aligned and your feeling happy and energetic make the most of this time, so when you are not feeling quite as good or productive you can let yourself do other things which will likely speed up your transition back to being happy since you don’t feel obligated to always “be your best”.

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic King

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I recently wrote a newsletter article for my blog traffic tips email list (to subscribe just fill out the form at the top of this page) about choosing the right target traffic. I received some feedback about traffic targeting and I realized people were struggling to clearly define what kind of traffic they want.
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Targeting is a complex problem. In business one of the most difficult aspects to get right is your positioning. I’ve spent years refining the positioning of some of my projects and my blogs are the same. In fact just the last few months I’ve been yet again re-defining why I blog at my different blogs.

I guess in a lot of ways it’s okay for you to blog without a specific goal in mind. It helps to know why you blog and really get into the specifics, but for some people this just won’t be possible from day one. Targeting is something that takes refinement and often you can’t start the process until you have some feedback from the market. In our case, some actual feedback from the our blog - who is reading, why are they reading and are they the right type of people to help you meet your blogging goals.

In Blog Traffic School I do more extensively cover targeting traffic but for the time being I want you to do one thing right now - write down on paper (or digital paper) some dot points outlining your goals for blogging. Try and be as specific as possible.

Here’s what your list might look like:

• Earn $1000 a month from AdSense
• Earn $500 a month from affiliate income selling products X, Y and Z
• Get up to 1000 daily readers
• Attract an audience in their 20-30s with middle range incomes who purchase products online
• Define your niche (for example this blog’s niche is “blog traffic”)
• Use blog to build an email list of 2000 people by the end of 2006
• Write at least 1000 articles of 1000 words each to compile into an ebook on the niche topic

Not everything there describes your target market, however everything in that list, and anything else you can come up with regarding your goals and motivations, helps you to define your target audience.

I promise you, once you have a clear picture of why you blog, regular blogging becomes a lot easier because you have some nice clear goals to run towards. It’s much easier to appreciate the little steps when you know they are taking you towards the big picture.

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic King

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Here’s a quick blog traffic tip for today. Try and make it a regular pattern to link to and even focus on another blogger’s blog. Spend some time continuing the discussion they started or recommend an article they posted to your readers. In other words, send some link love.

In life you will learn in order to receive you first have to give. Blogging is the same. In order to receive traffic from other blogs you need to send some traffic. Bloggers love to return the favor and this is essentially how the traffic flows from one blog to the next.

If at first it doesn’t succeed, be patient and try another blogger. I can promise you if you keep linking to other bloggers it will come back at you…eventually. Of course don’t spend 100% of your blog posts doing this otherwise no one will have a reason to link to you. You need to keep up your pillar article writing as well.

Stick it on your “To-blog” list now!

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