Let's Talk - Where Are You With Your Online Business?

[Lynn Terry]

I'm still going round and round with traffic. That ppc is driving me insane! I do blog, but my website is not getting much action! Only a few clicks---no sales! How many blog posts do you suggest I make in a week?

Hi Crown,

I focus on organic traffic, which means using SEO to properly optimize content and also sharing via social media channels. What are you currently doing (besides PPC) to drive quality traffic?

The more you blog, the more the search engines will crawl your site (their frequency will ultimately match yours). Also, the more pages you have, the more high rankings you can potentially have - broadening your market reach, if each page targets a specific keyword phrase.

Let me know where you need help in all of that.

[CKCdeBaca]

Gah! I'm having one of those days when I get frustrated at how slow things move..I've come a long way since I started last year but I think I'm missing something. My Alexa rank keep getting better every week, I got into the high 300,000's then it just started dropping like a stone and I'm in the mid 500,000's. I have no idea why. I feel like I have to herd people to my site from facebook and twitter and if I don't constantly stay on social media, then my visitor count goes way down. *Sigh* I try to bring value and great content in my niche but I make pennies a day in revenue. I won't give up, I'm just frustrated and need to get a little guidance, I think.

[Lynn Terry]

Welcome to ClickNewz

First, Alexa is a meaningless metric, so don't waste time or energy worrying about that one - or PageRank either. Neither are accurate indicators and are just meant to drive you nuts. LOL.

Are you doing any SEO, for passive natural traffic??

[CKCdeBaca]

Thanks for the welcome!

I've been using my Alexa rank as a measuring stick for my progress, so to hear it's not that important is a relief = ) I'm doing some things for SEO like linking to my own pages, using keywords and phrases & linking to other websites.

I also comment on other sites that pertain to my niche. I have giveaways and post those on sweepstakes/giveaways sites to bring in traffic as well. And I'm using a theme that I purchased that is supposed to have built in SEO. I do have one or two phrases that I rank really high in search for as well.

I started another site that is in my niche but in a broader version of it and I linked both of my sites physically and I also use them to cross promote posts.

[Lynn Terry]

You'll want to target very specific (longtail) keyword phrases, and get quality relevant backlinks to each optimized page.

Here is a tutorial to help you start getting free, organic traffic on an ongoing basis:

http://www.clicknewz.com/2759/10-optimize-your-site/

Start there, and then start a thread in the main forum if any questions come up.

[CKCdeBaca]

Thanks Lynn!

[Blueridge]

Hi Crown,

I focus on organic traffic, which means using SEO to properly optimize content and also sharing via social media channels. What are you currently doing (besides PPC) to drive quality traffic?

The more you blog, the more the search engines will crawl your site (their frequency will ultimately match yours). Also, the more pages you have, the more high rankings you can potentially have - broadening your market reach, if each page targets a specific keyword phrase.

Let me know where you need help in all of that.

Hey, Lynn!

After a bad year of being sick, sick, sick, I'm getting back to building a business. You helped me so much back then when I was Elite for just such a short while, I look forward to joining back in, very soon!

I have been wondering about using Pages vs Posts with WordPress.org? Or even a Page for Posts? (for anyone wondering, this is in your WordPress dashboard, under Settings, and then Reading, and you can set a static home page)

Is there really any good or bad in using any particular set up for most of your website's content?

And if using posts for the majority of your content, can comments on them affect your SEO negatively?

The past year I had lots of time (mono back and forth) to think about how I want my life to turn out, so instead of doing a website on weblifetoday, I'm doing one on quitting smoking, caffeine (which I have done now for the past 5 months) and now on to lowering my cholesterol and getting my 19 year old waist back.

I can write about that for ever, as well as what it can turn in to with my love of cooking and grocery shopping.

This pages vs posts thing though has got me wondering, though. Do you have any take on it at all?

Joel

[Lynn Terry]

This pages vs posts thing though has got me wondering, though. Do you have any take on it at all?

Great to see you back, Joel! I don't know how I missed your reply - sorry about that.

To clear things up, anything that resides on it's own URL is a "page" in the eyes of Google. So a single tweet (which has it's own URL) is a web page. That said, you want to determine what would be best for your visitors - those that land on your main page - and design from that standpoint.

Comments should be moderated. I recommend activating Akismet and also setting it so that any first-time comments are moderated (held for moderation). After that they're comments will automatically be approved. That's in the discussion section of wp-admin. Spammy comments could cause merchants, advertisers, and even Google Adsense to drop you from their programs.

[megan328]

Well - I'm just getting started so it remains to be seen which category I fall into - I've been following Lynn for years, totally inspired by what she does and especially how she does it, but earning my bread making other peoples dreams come true (freelance programmer) but now I finally "retired" (mostly) from that and am starting work on my own projects - part of that is creating places where small business owners can help promote their business, e.g. http://www.childcareetc.com - I really feel excited about this brand new year of 2012 :-) megan

[Lynn Terry]

Excellent, Megan!

Glad to hear you're moving in the direction you WANT to go this year! ;-)