Blogging Way of Life

As you may have noticed from the PageRank indicator on my sidebar, I have received Google PageRank 2 a month ago. I was really excited over the PageRank considering all those months without a PageRank and reading from other bloggers about the importance of the Google PageRank.

When I received my PageRank I really expected for a major traffic increase in my blog. Nevertheless the days have passed and the my blog traffic seems the same. The Google PageRank only stands for a indicator of site quality. Being awarded a PageRank won’t provide you any good unless you are trading links at your blog. Google PageRank updates 2-3 times a year and it doesn’t effect the SERP results of your page. I have checked for some keywords and the SERP results are the same before and after the PageRank change.

For increasing organic Google traffic PageRank is never enough. You have to work on ways of  increasing inbound links and creating better target keyword oriented content.

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I am using StumbleUpon for a while now and I found it a reliable source for traffic especially a boost up traffic at the first times of the page. Although StumbleUpon provides a long term traffic I never managed to get a high volume of traffic, the peak traffic I received for a page was near 400-500. The story has changed last month. I’ve published a hub 10 Science Fiction Movies Every Sci-Fi Fan Should Watch. I was getting nearly 80-90 visitors each day (which is considered as a decent traffic among my Hubs.) Most of my traffic was from StumbleUpon and I was only hoping to keep the traffic steady. One day when I checked my stats I couldn’t believe my eyes. I received 4,200 visitors in a single day. The next day was even more surprising with over 10,000 visitors. The traffic decreased to 1,000 visitors in a couple of week and kept that way for several days.

When I checked for the causes of this high traffic from StumbleUpon, I saw that it was stumbled by a Power User (A user that has thousands of stumbles) has liked my page and his vote has drawn a major traffic to my Hub and the incoming traffic voted (there were many thumb downs). Despite of lot of bad feedback the traffic kept high for a week. The major effect on achieving the high traffic was creating a page which people will react. My page was a list of top 10 sci-fi movies and it’s not a surprise to see people react when their likes and dis-likes are in discussion.

The lessons to be learned from this experience:

• Being a good stumbler brings good traffic. If you use votes to express your impressions, you are more likely to attract more visitors to your Stumbled page.
• Writing on topics which people are more likely to react will attract more people. The more your topics are open to discussion the more visitors you will get.

So be a good Stumbler and give a Stumble if you favor this post

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It’s been 15 days of blogging; building content, improving design and mostly trying to get some traffic. Even if you find and write down the solution for “World Peace” you won’t get any visitors without some effort. There is lot of “what to do” lists to drive traffic and I applied most of them (trying to stay away from spamming) and will review the short term results.

Social Bookmarking Services

-StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a toolbar which you can use to stumble through web pages people liked and it will drive traffic to your page if you have a good content. StumbleUpon is the source of the most traffic to my blog. It is superior than other social bookmarking services because it can’t be spoiled. Most of the social bookmarking services depend on you to promote your link and ask people for votes. StumbleUpon prevents such actions because it bans your account if you submit your own pages too much. If you have a good content people will favor it by clicking “I like it!” and your page is displayed to other stumblers and attract more audience. Even if you find a way to promote your page from several accounts or stumble exchanges people who stumble your page will rate it and the traffic will vanish in time if there is no good content. To benefit from StumbleUpon you must be a good stumbler and contribute to the system. (You can start being a giver by giving a thumb up for this post if you liked:) I will write a more detailed review about StumbleUpon in following days, it deserves more attention.

-Digg

Digg is another social network service which has its own ups and downs. It has good integrating with your blog and widely used system among bloggers but I think that it’s losing it’s purpose. If you are not in the first page of digg there isn’t much chance that you will get traffic and to get into first page you must ask people for diggs. I think that this service isn’t the dream service for beginner bloggers because you have to spend too much effort for getting diggs and I beleive it is better to spend this time blogging.

-Sphinn

Sphinn is a new social bookmarking service just like Digg, but unlike Digg it is not spoiled yet. There are people actually commenting and reviewing each others submits and I think it is a great place for starters. For me it doesn’t drive much traffic but better days are to come

-Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us introduced the tag system for internet searches and still widely used del.icio.us creates traffic to your submitted posts.

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Reddit is another social bookmarking service with a cute logo and they create some traffic. Compared to the effort you spend on other services this one is an easy to go service. Just use it.

Blog Networks

-Technorati

Technorati is a blog search engine working with a voting system for submitted posts and you can fave your favorite blogs. (You can favorite BloggerDollar by the image above) Technorati is actually ranking each blog by a ranking system called authority which is actually number of links to your blog. So as a new blogger you will have a low authority which means low traffic. I had one of my topics in Hot WTF’s for days but still didn’t get any noticeable traffic. They have canceled submitting new WTF’s lately so I guess there will be a change in their system.

-BlogCatalog

Although named as a blog directory, blogcatalog has a good forum like network where you can meet new bloggers or ask for diggs and votes.

- Bumpzee

Bumpzee is a more advanced bloggers network letting you use a widget for viewing the recent visitors to your blog and they have a community system like in blogcatalog.

-BlogRush

Blogrush is an eye candy widget displaying posts from other bloggers on your sidebar. You earn credit for your traffic and your posts are displayed in other blogs. They recently started cleaning out their users for a higher quality of posts. I started receiving a little traffic from them so I try to see the light at the end of tunnel. They also have a referral system so that people who sign up from your blog earns credits for you also. So why don’t you be a good boy and sign up from here (Don’t worry it doesn’t effect your credits)

Blog Directories

There are also lot of blog directories that I signed up which you can see in the side bar. Some of them require placing their link on your blog, some of them don’t (I put them all in my sidebar to share with you). They don’t create much traffic but a good way to increase your blogs visibility in search engines.

Socializing

If you are a blogger and you want attention to your blog then you must pay attention to other blogs. Visiting other blogs and commenting on their posts will both spread out your name and also motivate people to visit your blog. As I said before don’t be a taker be a giver.

Most of the listed services won’t bring you traffic immediately (Actually StumbleUpon does) but those methods will help you in long term so participate in each service and experience it yourself. If you have any other services you want to recommend please comment.

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