I have absolutely no idea what I am doing...

[tenderone]

I began my *first* blog in July. my blogs are intermittent - had a rough Fall - however, I would like to know how to earn more, obviously that is what most of us are attempting to do! .

Would you be willing to share some tips and, perhaps, look at my blog (in siggie) to see what I can to do improve it?

I submit my new posts to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, IMAutomator, and StumbleUpon. I have not created backlinks whatsoever.

Thank you!

[ParentingCoachLisa]

You have to start gaining backlinks through forum posting, blog commenting and social bookmarking.

[khakigirl]

First of all, you should NOT digg or stumble your own stuff. If either of them suspect that you are submitting your own content, your opinion is penalized and you don't have as much klout, so to speak. Basically, it makes your submissions less worthy than if you were submitting other people's content. Some people say you can stumble/digg your own stuff for every 10 pieces of content you submit from other people but I have not personally found that to be true.

Secondly, if you want more readers, you need to form your titles in a way that will bring readers. I sometimes blog about freebies/deals. Rather than call my post "Look at this awesome freebie", I say "FREE <insert product name/brand>". An example from your blog is the post titled "Knuffle Bunny or Kuh-Nuffle Bunny?" A way to bring in more visitors would have been "How to pronounce Knuffle Bunny". Just that one little change will increase your organic traffic and THAT is what you want.

Like ParentingCoachLisa said, you need to start getting backlinks. One great way that I've found is creating Squidoo lenses (or Hubpages if you prefer). You can take a topic you've already discussed on your website, add more content such as images, additional information, videos, etc and then add a resources section and list YOUR website. You'd be amazed at how many viewers you'll get if your topic is searched even a little bit.

One thing I noticed your blog was missing was images. Your blog is cute and your posts are short and to the point but adding some images in the blog posts will add some pizzazz to your site. If you do add images, make sure you name them using a keyword that correlates to the topic. When someone searches for that keyword in Google Images, your image is likely to come up which can easily bring them to your blog.

Another thing you can do is start creating videos to go along with your content. Put the videos IN your blog posts and also put a link to your blog post about that topic in the YouTube description.

[KristenB]

OMG. Ok, well is there like a Blog class because I have been doing it all wrong apparently. What is a backlink? I don't even know what Digg or Stuff is. Is there some place to learn all the techy stuff?

[dlandry]

I submitted my own posts to Digg religiously when I started What's That Buzz because it wasn't getting indexed by Google. After a few weeks of doing that I started seeing it show up in the search engines. I've since stopped with Digg.

As Khakigirl said, Stumble Upon frowns upon you stumbling your own posts. As they say, it's a community to share posts "you find" with others. If you stumble your own posts too much they will penalize you by locking your account. You can though stumble your own posts as long as you stumble more posts of other people. The rule of thumb is to have a 10:1 ratio or 10 outside posts to 1 of your own. So, visit other sites and if an article interests you and you think others will enjoy it then give it a thumbs up or discover it. Follow people on Stumble and when you stumble through posts via the SU toolbar then you'll start seeing posts your "friends" stumbled. You can also accept shares from people and they can share sites with you and vice versa. When discovering a post it's important to get it into the correct category and a review goes a long way. Don't only discover posts from the same place as they don't care for that too much either. Make sure posts you stumble aren't time sensitive such as a deal that has an expiration date or a giveaway. If you do and people come across it and the deadline has passed they'll start giving it a thumbs down and that will decrease your klout or credibility and your posts or stumbles won't go far.

[earlyknowledgeforkids]

From what I understand, Google loves new content. So, it helps to write regularly. Maybe a few posts a week will help to improve your ranking.

[coachkat]

Yes, it helps to write regularly, but most people need more specifics, like...how often each week? What times of day are best? When do I start building backlinks? etc., etc., etc.

I have done over 200 case studies over the last 3 years on just these specifics and published my findings in my book, "Getting Traffic To Come To You," which is a comprehensive step-by-step guide on what to do each day, when..and what to do at the end of each week, to get 104, 255, or 500+ unique visitors a day to your blog in the next 29 days...guaranteed.

You can find the book at amazon or barnes and noble.

I hope it helps all of you!

[AmyKay]

So many things you can do! But don't get overwhelmed, just pick one at at time and work on it.

Like others said, blog regularly. Weekly is great for Google love.
Add images, too. Be sure you put keyword (or article title) as the "alt-image" name when you upload the image. If you're using wordpress, this is easy.

Build an e-mail list! As you can see, getting traffic is hard! Make the most of that traffic and work hard on your site to capture their e-mail! Most people leave a website within seconds and never come back. BUT... you can e-mail them your deals or whatever over and over IF you got their e-mail address.

I'll be doing a free webinar about this again soon. If you want more info, send me a pm. I don't think I'm allowed to post a link here.

Keep plugging away!

[Mrs. Expert]

Backlinks aren't as powerful if you don't have keywords in your posts. I know a lot of people (especially new bloggers--I did it myself) frown upon "stuffing" keywords, but that's really not the case.

Whether you do keyword research or not is up to you, but including many search terms that are related to your content is definitely a smart thing to do. Just think about the types of search terms that people might look up if they were looking for info found in your blog.

Even just incorporating a keyword into your title will help your rankings and help bring in traffic.

There are two main ways to get traffic. Through social sharing, and through search engines. You have to do one or the other to really boost your traffic. Combining both is the optimum choice.

Just don't give up. Learning this on your own isn't easy, so go at your own pace and be patient.

[khakigirl]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Expert

Backlinks aren't as powerful if you don't have keywords in your posts. I know a lot of people (especially new bloggers--I did it myself) frown upon "stuffing" keywords, but that's really not the case.

Whether you do keyword research or not is up to you, but including many search terms that are related to your content is definitely a smart thing to do. Just think about the types of search terms that people might look up if they were looking for info found in your blog.

Even just incorporating a keyword into your title will help your rankings and help bring in traffic.

There are two main ways to get traffic. Through social sharing, and through search engines. You have to do one or the other to really boost your traffic. Combining both is the optimum choice.

Just don't give up. Learning this on your own isn't easy, so go at your own pace and be patient.

Are you saying it's okay to keyword stuff? If you stuff keywords, your site WILL get marked as spam and your site will never see the first page of Google once you're caught.