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Top Tips to Trigger Traffic
- 1. TOP TIPS TO TRIGGER TRAFFIC CHRIS AND CHRISSIE POLLOCK #WCTOGA http://www.slideshare.net/christinepollock1 @TechieFamily http://www.techiefamily.com chrissie.pollock@automattic.com IMAGE COURTESY OF GEOFF ROGERS 1
- 3. HOW DO I MAXIMIZE MY SEO?
- 7. Panda was the name of a site ranking algorithm change Google implemented in 2011.
- 9. .COM .ORG
- 10. WORDPRESS.COM EXAMPLE ‣ Notification Bell‣ Reader Option
- 11. WORDPRESS.COM EXAMPLE ‣ Notification Bell‣ Reader Option
- 12. WORDPRESS.COM EXAMPLE ‣ Notification Bell‣ Reader Option
- 13. SELF HOSTED SITE ‣ No Reader Option ‣ No Notification Bell
- 14. SELF HOSTED SITE ‣ No Reader Option ‣ No Notification Bell
- 15. SELF HOSTED SITE ‣ No Reader Option ‣ No Notification Bell
- 21. TITLE
- 22. TITLE POST
- 26. WordPress offers the tool called After the Deadline to highlight grammar issues.
- 27. ‣ Readers often want to connect with a writer so it’s also important to have an “About” page and a menu that lets readers move around your site with ease.
- 33. IT’S TIME TO GET SOCIAL…
- 35. BLOGGING UNIVERSITY SOURCE: DAILYPOST.WORDPRESS.COM/BLOGGING-UNIVERSITY “This has been a ME changing experience as I have realized that no blog is an island. We have so much in common and this ‘common heritage’ (if that’s what it means? :)) is only discovered by sharing, visiting, commenting. I’ve met some amazing bloggers and hope to meet more in the months ahead.”
- 36. GUESS WHEN SHE STARTED TAKING THE COURSE…
- 44. ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO FOLLOW YOUR RSS FEED… …OR SHARE OTHER SITES YOU RUN.
- 51. WHAT’S NEXT?
- 52. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY
- 53. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content
- 54. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public
- 55. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts
- 56. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info
- 57. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar
- 58. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing
- 59. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing • Keep posting. Set up an editorial calendar and schedule posts
- 60. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing • Keep posting. Set up an editorial calendar and schedule posts • Get social - comment and invite comments; join a class
- 61. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing • Keep posting. Set up an editorial calendar and schedule posts • Get social - comment and invite comments; join a class • Add tags and use the Reader
- 62. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing • Keep posting. Set up an editorial calendar and schedule posts • Get social - comment and invite comments; join a class • Add tags and use the Reader • RSS and External Follow
- 63. THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY • Create unique, quality content • Check your privacy settings to make sure you are public • Check Title, Tagline, and Posts • Fill in image info • Make sure you’re using proper grammar • Make sure posts are readable -font and paragraph spacing • Keep posting. Set up an editorial calendar and schedule posts • Get social - comment and invite comments; join a class • Add tags and use the Reader • RSS and External Follow • Be CONFIDENT and advertise yourself!
- 64. TOP TIPS TO TRIGGER TRAFFIC CHRIS AND CHRISSIE POLLOCK #WCTOGA http://www.slideshare.net/christinepollock1 @TechieFamily http://www.techiefamily.com chrissie.pollock@automattic.com IMAGE COURTESY OF GEOFF ROGERS
Editor's Notes
- Hi there! My name is Chrissie Pollock. For almost two decades I worked as a writer/editor, specializing in children’s media and writing for parenting magazines and sites such as the Coalition for Quality Children’s Media — KIDS FIRST! and Journeys in Film. A key part of my job was writing content that would draw people to the websites.
- Now I work as a Happiness Engineer for Automattic, helping people with their WordPress sites. I work on the live chat team so I get to talk with WordPress users daily. This session is geared for beginner personal bloggers and business owners who want to gain publicity and draw viewers to their sites.
- When I talk with WordPress users throughout my work day, there are a two questions I get asked on a regular basis:
- The first one. Can you relate?
- Great question. Experts believe that there will be over one billion websites by the end of 2015. This page shows how many websites were online on June 16 when I made this screencast. So how WILL you be seen?
- The second question I get asked frequently is similar. SEO. What in the world is that?
- Another great question. SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization. It’s used to get people to your site. There are different techniques you can implement in order to have your page show up in a higher rank placement for search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and the one people are generally most concerned with — Google. It’s important to note that SEO strategy is always changing since the search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms.
- Once upon a very real time, approximately four years ago, a company I wrote for battled a panda, and the panda won. Panda was the name of a site ranking algorithm change Google implemented in 2011. When Google changed its algorithm, the site I worked for lost over 80% of its SEO visibility within the first weeks then continued to decline from there. What did this teach me? It taught me to work outside the SEO box, drawing viewers to my site using a variety of tools and methods. I still use SEO, but I don’t totally rely on it.
- Before we go further on this, it’s good to note whether you have a WordPress.com site or a self-hosted WordPress.org site. If you aren’t sure which you have, check out your dashboard. The self-hosted site will have a plugin option.
- Now onto our tips. The most important tip of all is create unique, quality content. Without that, it’s almost not worth taking other steps to draw viewers to your site.
- Although this might seem basic, the next most important step to drawing viewers is to double check your privacy settings. If you have a self-hosted WordPress.org site, then make sure you don’t have any privacy plugins running. If you have a WordPress.com site, go to Dashboard>Reading>Settings. Make sure your site is not set to private. Scroll down and save any changes you make.
- WordPress.com has SEO built in so you don’t have to worry about the SEO tools. If you have a self-hosted site, you can use plugins to increase the search engine optimization for your site. If you have plugins, make sure they are updated. It’s important to always keep plugins updated for security reasons. Some popular plugins include: WordPress SEO by Yoast and All in One SEO Pack. The Jetpack plugin also has SEO. * Note - If you browse through plugins looking for one to install, don’t just check out the ratings. You also want to check out how many downloads the plugin has and when the plugin was last updated.
- Once you set your site to public, have patience - You aren’t going to show up immediately on a search engine. As stated before, experts believe that there will be over one billion websites by the end of 2015. Search engines have programs called spiders that “crawl” through all these sites looking for specific content, which they then index, store and put in databases. Then when people search for a topic, the programs grab the info from the databases.
- People generally go to sites because they are interested in a certain topic or style. Make sure your title clearly defines what your site is about, and make sure you posts reflect the title. The same holds true for the tagline. If you call your site a cooking site then you start writing articles on car engines, you will lose readership.
- Here’s how you change your Site Title and Your Tagline. Go to Settings then General. You can also change your Blog Picture there if you wish. That gives your site more recognition as you comment on other sites around the web. Kind of a product placement/name recognition tool.
- When you add images to posts and pages, also add details to your images so people with slower internet can get an idea of what’s happening on your site and so search engines can pick up the info.
- Use proper grammar. I know many writers speak several languages. WordPress offers the tool called After the Deadline to highlight grammar issues. See my error? moreWith If you have a self-hosted site, you can get this tool as part of the JetPack plugin.
- Readers often want to connect with a writer so it’s also important to have an “About” page and a menu that lets readers move around your site with ease. You want to make sure your site is visually appealing. Avoid bulky paragraphs. Use readable font - not too small and not too bold. If you find a theme you love, and the font isn’t ideal, that is something you can change with CSS (part of the Premium upgrade for sites on WordPress.com). You can change the CSS without upgrades for self-hosted sites.
- CLICK Update Posts Regularly - you might want to make your own editorial calendar and schedule posts. This is really nice for times when you plan to travel, and many find that it’s helpful to “get in the mode” writing numerous posts at once. You can always add posts if you have new ideas, but this way your bases are covered and your site will stay updated even if things come up to distract you in life. Here is how you go about scheduling posts.
- 6. Next you might want to consider getting social. There are different ways to get social with other bloggers: Comment on other sites and ask questions of your readers so they are encouraged to comment on your site. Add links in your posts - to others and to yourself.
- My husband, started his blogging last fall, posting regularly until snowboarding season hit in mid to late January:) These are his WordPress.com stats (The WordPress.com stats are really great). You can get stats like this with a self-hosted site by using the JetPack plugin. Or you could use a plugin such as Google Analytics by Yoast. He tends to interact with others in fits and spurts, and his stats reflect this. He has really been focusing on posting more and interacting with others for the past month. Can you tell?
- One way you can do this is to sign up for a class where you mingle with other students. For example, WordPress offers courses through the Blogging University. The site is for all WordPress users, both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites. You can take classes in writing, blog setup or photography and meet other bloggers who will want to check out your site, too. My 70+ year old aunt just took the Blogging 101 course. She loved it and her biggest complaint was the fact that she now has so many great sites to read that it’s hard to pull away from the computer.
- Guess when she started taking the course?
- Add interviews to your site. And don’t be afraid to ask people for interviews. It’s a Humans of NY concept. Find people on the street. People just want to connect. When I worked with children’s media, I frequently did celebrity interviews, yet some of my most interesting articles came from people behind-the-scenes. People who know the interviewee will come to your site to read the interview, and they might want to read more. (Bonus tip - It’s good to have links to archives on your site as well as search tools so people can see your other posts). Ask people to guest post on your blog, and offer to guest post for others. This site was created by a 15-year-old who I met in Blogging 101. He puts up all his rules then uses the contact form so potential writers can contact him.
- Encourage people to follow you in the Reader on a web browser or in the WordPress app. They can follow by email or notifications. These images show the Reader on an Android app and on an iPad app. You can also access the Reader from your WordPress.com website. If you have a self-hosted site you can use the app or get a WordPress.com account for free so you can read it on a computer.
- CLICK Y ou can also get new Readers by adding tags if you have a WordPress.com site. This is how you can go about adding tags: (talk through the slide)
- Encourage people to follow your RSS feed or share other sites you run: RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. When people subscribe to you, they are notified every time you add a new post. A RSS feed is software that allows you to grab information from various sites. The software displays the sites for you to read. WP RSS Aggregator and WP RSS Multi Importer are popular plugins for self-hosted sites. WordPress.com sites let you embed RSS feeds or use an RSS Widget.
- You could also add an external follow button to your site. You can do this for WordPress.com sites or a self-hosted site with the Jetpack plugin installed. Once you have the code for your Follow Button, you can add the button to other sites such as other sites you run or encourage others to advertise your site. For example, if you work with other organizations, they might be willing to link to you, and all you have to do is share this code with them so they can add you to their sites. Nice and easy.
- CLICK Advertise yourself. * Add your site to your email signature. Create business cards with your site listed on them. Use Publicize and Sharing tools. This takes interacting with your site far beyond the “Like” button. CLICK These tools make it possible to have your site automatically post to social networks and allows your readers to share your work or print it out. You can also get social sharing plugins for self-hosted sites.
- Be Confident. You’ve worked hard on your site, and you have good things to share. * Know your site url so you can easily share it with others. Figure out a short blurb you can tell others about your site. A site tagline might be all you need. Be bold when you ask for interviews and guest blogs (and when you ask to guest blog on other sites).
- So are you ready to get more traffic? I’m about to go Old School on you now (get out CARDBOARD and MARKER): What are some steps you can take tomorrow to bring people to your site? GET ANSWERS Wonderful. And there is even better news. You don’t even need to wait until tomorrow. You can start getting more site traffic right now. For the next few minutes, talk to the people around you. Introduce yourself and talk about your site. Share information. Nobody has to feel pressured to follow anyone, but we can all learn about new things out there, and you might find someone you WANT to follow (or who wants to follow you). After we do this, we will have some time for questions.