Blogging – Page 8

How to get more traffic to your site

I’ve seen a few other people talking about increasing their website traffic by advertising on various sites. I suppose it could be anything from using Google Adsense, to paid link directories like the Yahoo directory or even advertising on some of the paid blogging sites.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to get more traffic to my sites. I’d like to do it without spending money if possible. Unfortunately the only way to get more traffic to your site without paying for it is to work very hard at it.

I’ve run websites, and now blogs for many years. I’ve never paid for advertising. Ever. I’ve worked very hard getting my sites listed in all the major directories and even smaller directories that suite the site. Niche directories. Where my websites are concerned I’ve made contact with other site owners and traded links, or given them permission to publish one of my articles on their site.

I’ve used similar methods for my blogs. I do think it’s a bit easier with blogs because you can leave comments on most blogs quite easily. Comment often enough on a blog and make your comments interesting, though provoking or humorous and more than likely the owner of the blog will come and visit your site. If you have good content on your site they might even add you to their blogroll or write about one of your articles.

What do you do to promote your site and get more traffic?

Move data from one blog to a WordPress blog

by Tricia

Did you know that with the new 2.1+ version of WordPress you can easily move Data such as comments, and posts from one WP blog to another?

Lets say that you want to move files from a site called mydomainA.com to another called mydomainB.com. Now it doesn’t mater if these blogs are on the same domain as in myblog.com/blog or blog.myblog.com or different domains altogether. What matters is that both must be using the same version of WordPress.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure your blogs are using WP 2.1 + and that both are using the same version – if they aren’t you need to upgrade your WordPress version first.

2. Back up your files on each blog!

You can backup your blog in two fairly simple ways:

A. Use a WordPress Backup plugin and download the backup to your computer

B. Or, If your web host uses C-Panel Login to your C-Panel and click on the icon marked BackUp. You can do a full backup of your home directory and or you can download copies of your MySql database(s).

Personally – If I’m doing a big job like a major upgrade or transferring files I backup with the plugin AND with the C-Panel backup service. Better safe than sorry is what I always say.

If you did happen to download the WordPress backup plugin I would seriously consider using it to backup your blog at least once week. My former web host shut down my account at the beginning of February without notice and for a short while I didn’t know if I could get backups of my sites. It was a very scary and stressful time. Be smarter than I was – backup your sites regularly!

Back to transferring data such as posts from one blog to another …

Now that you are done upgrading WordPress if you needed to, and backing up your sites you can begin to transfer your files from one site to another.

I’m describing this as if it’s two wordpress blogs, but WordPress has made it easier to transfer files from say blogger or a Typepad blog into a WordPress blog using similar methods. However, since I don’t use other blogging platforms I’m only going to discuss the procedure for moving data from one WordPress blog to another:

3. Open up the ADMIN area of both of your wordpress blogs

4. In the MANAGE section of mydomainA.com (this is the blog you want to move files from) select EXPORT and download the export file to your computer.

5. In the MANAGE section of mydomainB.com (the blog you want to move files to) select IMPORT, then select WordPress from the list and find the export file that you just saved to your computer and import it into the mydomainA.com blog.

If all has gone well you should have all the posts from MydomainB.com in your MydomainA.com blog. Easy eh?

If things didn’t go well at least you have the backups that you made before hand. You did make the backup files didn’t you? You can re-install your backups if needed through C-Panels MySQL section. It’s a bit complicated and since everything hopefully went well I’m not going to describe how to do that in this post.

This is one of the features that I like best about the new WordPress 2.1+ version. They’ve made it so much easier to transfer files from one blog to another, or to even use the export feature as a method of backing up your files.

I hope that you’ve found this post helpful.

Want to build your blogs audience? Read this article

by Tricia

The S R blog has a great article by Jarrod Hunt called 27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience and I think that anyone considering starting a blog, or even people who’ve been blogging for some time should visit the site and read the post.

The article talks about the importance of considering the topic of your blog before you get started. You don’t want a blog that’s just like a thousand others, you want yours to be a little bit different, unique and stand out from the crowd so that you can begin attracting visitors pretty much right from the start.

Each tip is well thought out, and when put into practice I’m certain that a blogger would be able to both build and maintain an audience. I actually think that this article could have been broken up into several in depth posts. Perhaps at some point Jarrod will do that.

One of the key points discussed is that you should be consistent in your post. Depending upon your topic you might be able to only post once a week, or perhaps your goal is to post at least once a day. Whatever your plan, make a schedule and stick to it. If you only post once or a few times a week try to do it on the same day, and even around the same time on the days that you choose to post. Your reading audience will grow accustomed to your schedule if you stick to it, and come back regularly to see what you’ve posted that day.

I’ve set up several of my blogs to automatically publish a post that I’ve written ahead of time just past midnight each day, and many of my visitors now know that if they visit my site in the early morning hours they will get to read something new.

Actually setting up automatic publishing on your blog wasn’t discussed in the article but I think it would make a great addition. When I’m in a writing mood I’ll often write several posts at once. When I do this, I can set them up to be published on different days at a specific time. If a blogger were to set up automatic publishing and use it all the time on their blog they really would be consistent with their posts. This would also be handy if a blogger were to go away for the weekend or off for a weeks holiday. Other than perhaps the lack of commenting on the part of the blog owner, the blog would still run as normal and visitors to the site might not even be aware that the blogger is off on a vacation.

The article contains a lot of great tips about promoting your site, and the importance of interacting with your audience. Another tip suggests that a blogger should be topical and timeless. By this they mean that you should aim to write posts that will still be relevant if read a year or two later.

Read the article. I’m sure you’ll learn a few things that will help you build your sites audience and get them coming back for more.

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