In the same fashion as any other occupation, there are certain skill requirements that must be met. Almost every industry blog site has published an article about how blogging can improve your career, and then proceeds to convince the majority of readers that being a blogger is the way to go for them. However these articles, for the most part, are all missing one key aspect to them. Somewhere before, or after, informing the readers about the benefits of being a blogger, there needs to be time to reflect on why one shouldn’t be one.

Not too long ago I had an article published questioning the current state of the blogging industry. In it, one of my main concerns was the quality of work currently filling up most blog pages. That is where this article comes into play. Below you will find a set of questions that need to be addressed before taking on the role of a blogger.

Do You Write Well?

*Image Credit: jjpacres

There is nothing more embarrassing, or hurtful to your career, than having an article published that is structured badly and filled with grammatical errors. Automatically you’re going to have people eager to criticize every little grammatical mistake you make in your articles, that’s just something you have to come to expect as a blogger. Imagine finding an article that interests you and then realize that it is not written well enough for the actual message to be clear. It’s understandable why readers of articles like this voice their frustrations in the comments.

Don’t think that because in school you always got top grades and/or awards for your writing that the praise you received then will automatically translate over to your blogging career. A good writing style and ability level for a blogger allows for any topic to be written in an easy to understand and follow article.  This is not something that comes easily if it is not your natural style of writing.

Are You Going to do the Research?

*Image Credit: UGA College of Ag

Although being a top writer in school may not have much to do with your blogging career, how you went about researching your essays and papers does. For the most part, the average blogger gets started by writing about topics they already know a lot about. This allows them to showcase their knowledge, and is an easy stepping stone on the path to their new occupation. Once the topics they know about dry up so to speak, what then?

This happens a lot in the blogging world sadly. It is a regular occurrence to see a blogger write pretty good articles at first based off the knowledge they already have, but after they start digging into topics outside of that they kinda flop. This is starting to happen more often because there are a lot of bloggers who are not putting in the proper amount of time in the research phase of their writing process.

Do You Care about Your Readers?

*Image Credit: familymwr

Personally, I’m always asking myself and wondering how my readers will react to anything I write that gets published. Questions like “Are they going to understand my reason for writing this?”, “Could I have given that little bit of extra effort to make better?”, “Did I spend enough time on it?” or any number of  other questions. To be a good, well received blogger, you need to ask yourself these types of questions somewhere in the back of your mind. Even the bloggers who claim they only write to please themselves, somewhere along the line will start to if they are building a fan base for their work.

As a blogger your job is to provide quality content FOR your readers.

Do You Enjoy Blogging?

*Image Credit: kiki follettosa

Being a blogger takes up an awful amount of time if you’re doing it right, whether you’re being paid for it or not. The level of joy you have in your chosen topics, and blogging in general, will clearly show in everything you write. If you’re interested in your topic, you’ll probably write a good article. However if you’re is uninterested in the topic you’re writing about, and enjoyment is not a factor, then its going to be harder to produce quality content on a consistent basis.

Are You Going to Give Readers What They Want, Or Need?

*Image Credit: United Way of the Lower Mainland

For the most part, the majority of people who find themselves blogging come from career backgrounds with their daily work always leading towards pleasing someone whether it’s a supervisor, client, board director, or the end-user. It doesn’t really matter who, in the end their job is to do something that pleases someone else.

Blogging is a lot like this, because the one way a blog site can come up in the ranks fast, and keep a consistent strong readership, is to create content that they feel readers want. This of course will get you a ton of sharing of your articles, but will you be doing the community of readers who come to your articles proper justice?

A good blogger should always remember that people don’t always get the best results from receiving what they want. It’s more vital to instead get what one needs.

Why?

*Image Credit: B Rosen

This is a simple question, yet puzzling. Before embarking on this occupational journey you should ask yourself why? Whatever reason it may be, you need to be 100% sure of yourself. If you’re only looking for the possible internet fame associated with the job, then maybe you should just max out your potential in something you’re already doing. If you just want a nice and easy way to make a little extra money, you should ask yourself the previous questions again. Probably missed something important.

In Conclusion

Being a blogger is one of those areas where your interest level in what you do shows very easily, and your reputation rests with your worst article sometimes. It’s not easy, there is not a set amount of hours or days you will be working, and you’re not going to become some overnight sensation. This is a hard job to do, but the rewards greatly outweigh that if you’re really interested in blogging.

Google Panda Has Killed Low-Level Affiliates

Many affiliate marketers whine that Google Panda has destroyed the Internet and ruined the affiliate marketing industry. This isn’t true. However, those sites that peddled low-level content have watched their earnings dwindle in recent months.

Art by likwtf123

However, Google Panda can actually help make your affiliate site more profitable. If you think about it, every low-level website that got knocked from the front page was replaced by a higher quality site. If you maintain a high quality site, you can thrive as an affiliate.

If you are going to write a post, you want it to sound professional and authoritative. Google Panda is slapping any sites that just regurgitate content without offering anything of value. The founders of sites like Suite101 were shocked when their search engine traffic dissipated. I had some old Suite101 articles published that lost almost all of their traffic after Panda. As discouraging as this was, it came as no surprise. The content farms are filled with articles that are typically written by people who clearly have no understanding of the subject they write on. If you want your site to be different, then you need to make sure that you are going to be able to speak intelligently on the topic.

You are also going to need to go out of your way to make your content more engaging and interesting to your readers. Google is relying heavily on social networking sites to understand what the Web community thinks of the content. If you get a lot of tweets and shares, then Google will believe you have trusted, valuable content and will rank you higher in the search engines. Therefore, you want to make sure your site is optimized for social media as well as your target keywords.

Laws Associated with Affiliate Marketing

There are a number of laws which have changed the way affiliate marketing is being run around the world. Many government jurisdictions have started cracking down on unethical affiliate marketing practices, which may seriously compromise the way that affiliate marketing is going to be done.

These laws tend to be more concerning for marketers in the United States and Europe. The United States Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on how entrepreneurs can promote products. For example, they now require that websites provide disclosures when they are promoting affiliate products. Also, they are being much more proactive in ending fraud around the country. A number of affiliate marketers have been charged for promoting a series of health products using unfair marketing tactics. In these cases, they pretended to be unbiased journalists analyzing the product but they were clearly going out of their way to promote the products.

If you live in the United States, you need to formally understand all laws covered by the FTC. Most importantly, make sure you understand the need to provide disclosures and be honest with your customers. That’s not to say that you need to emphasize the flaws of the product. You are still a marketer and want to place your products in the best possible light. However, deceptive tactics that were not taken seriously five years ago could get you in a lot of trouble.

Even if you don’t live in the United States, you may still feel the sting, particularly if you are using hosting in the United States. Also, many entrepreneurs outside the United States have been charged by the FTC for violating laws. I am not an attorney and cannot advise you when or how these cases emerge. However, it may be a good idea to know what these laws are and how they will affect you. The United States works closely with other competition agencies overseas such as the Competition Commission in the UK. Although smaller affiliates may not be affected by the laws, larger affiliate may really feel the sting.

The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to ever reach the desk of the U.S. Congress. If this law is signed, then it will create major problems for affiliates all over the world. Affiliates who tried resorting to tactics such as content scraping and using article spinners can watch their websites get taken completely off of the Internet. Although I never condoned those practices to begin with, I must seriously emphasize how important it is to refrain from using them.

European affiliate marketers have a number of different challenges to face as well. The EU Cookie Law is one of the biggest changes to affiliate marketers and took place in May of this year. This law states that websites must gain consent in order to use cookies on their websites. Violating this law in the UK can result in a fine of 500,000 pounds. This is one of the biggest challenges to affiliate marketers and many speculated that it would be the death of affiliate marketing entirely.

However, there are still plenty of ways that affiliate marketers can thrive in the UK. If you are an affiliate marketer, you have two options. First of all, there are different technologies that can allow you to track cookies. One alternative is to use hidden form variables to track your sales. Secondly, you can consider asking your users for permission to enable cookies on your website. As long as you have their permission, then you are in compliance with the EU Cookies Law.

Although some of these laws are necessary for our protections, others may be a little excessive. Regardless, you want to make sure that you understand the policies before you get seriously involved in your affiliate marketing company.

The Road Ahead

The landscape of affiliate marketing has changed dramatically. Before you get too integrated into your affiliate marketing strategy, you need to consider the new challenges that you are going to face. Make sure you address the problems that you are going to be dealing with before you watch your affiliate business fall apart.

The biggest thing to do is follow laws developing throughout the world. Many jurisdictions are cracking down on affiliate marketers they feel are not operating ethically or responsibly. Search engines are also trying to purge the world of spam. As an affiliate, the rules have changed substantially. You are going to find that you are going to have to work very hard to develop quality content and never give even the slightest appearance of impropriety.

Look at any professional in this industry’s social profile, 10 times out of 10 you will find it mostly made up of links leading to different blog articles that they found useful. That is because blog articles have a lot of information in them, and it would be a shame to waste good info by not sharing it with others. Of course this brings quite a bit of fame to the author of a blog article frequently shared, and a little bit of money too. However, has all the benefits associated with being a blogger in our industry overshadowed providing thought-provoking quality to readers? Is it now more important to a blogger to make money and gain community fame, versus taking risks on changing the industry through the articles we write?

The Signs of a Downturn

*Image Credit: iamdat

Before any industry starts to embark on a downturn of any kind, there are always clear signs that get tossed under the rug so to speak. Instead of taking action, people allow them to enter into their culture. Sound familiar? Lets take a look at some of our signs, shall we.

Blind Sharing

How about everyone that actually reads an article before they tweet, share, like, or plus it raise their hand. It is sad that the truth is that a good percentage of people spreading articles on their preferred social network don’t actually read them, its kind of expected when barely anyone adds comments on an article in addition to them spreading it.

The Discussion Stopped

There have been many articles on the current state of the discussion aspect on blog articles today, including one published on 1stwebdesigner. Unlike the quality, discussion rich, past of our industry, today things are a lot more quiet. So quiet that unless you’re doing a list article and its a thank you, or you are being published on Smashing Magazine, nobody really expects too many comments. Honestly this is my favorite part of being a blogger, getting to read the comments of the people who took the time to read one of my articles and then interact with them.

The Money Got to Us

This reason is understandable to everyone who has an understanding for the professional make up of our industry, for those who don’t I’ll break it down right quick. Okay, in the web industry you have three different types of professional levels. These being full-time in-house, freelance, and hobbyist who earns some extra income. Now for the most part, the majority of us can be found in the freelance spectrum of things. Where we all have horrible client stories that could make a grown man tremble in terror, and give toddlers nightmares. For the average freelance professional money is never certain, your career will have ups and downs. Becoming a blogger is a great way to make some extra money to be better prepared for those down times. However, the blogging aspect of our community has become an industry of its own. An industry where a professional blogger can rise to a point where they do not even have to be a designer or developer anymore to make an adequate amount for comfortable living.

The Quality is Slowly Going Down

Coinciding with the last mentioned sign, for many bloggers being one is more about making some money off the knowledge your career has given you. So of course it becomes more important to write an article that people will like and quickly share, rather than one that takes a lot of research and may go over the habitual skimmers most of us have become. With that mindset would a blogger like this stay focused on trying to take some crazy idea not many think will work out and turn it into a great work, or make a quick list article that will surely spread like wildfire in the first hour or so of being published?

Instant Gratification

When a reader can get everything they’ll ever need at no cost on their part, besides a few ads, its easy to treasure an article less. However, we have gotten to the point where a lot of us look only at how much interest a title can give us and decide on reading it based off that. Everyone does it, I’ve done it too, no need to get yourself all worked up because its being brought to light. Since that is a big deal to readers, bloggers start to put more of their time into articles idea that can be quickly understood and that deliver value right from the short intro.

Bloggers Steal Ideas

We all have read an article on one site, and after it became popular you’ll see it on another site. This necessarily isn’t a bad thing for list type articles, which make up most of the articles published, because it’s always good to shed different types of light on things like these. Makes sure nothing is overlooked. However if someone were to steal an idea that clearly was highly original, and took an awful lot of time in researching, that is criminal.

Do We Want Things To Change?

*Image Credit: Lee Wild

Everyone has talked about this at one point, but its funny to find with all that talk we still continue doing the same things that are contributing to the current dilemma. It is very easy to write-up a bunch of different ways everyone can pitch in and add some life back to blog articles, but what would that do? Its been done by many people before me, and the results of their efforts have shown to be ineffective. I’ll choose to end this article with a couple of questions. Are we happy with how things are? Do we really want things to change?

Analyze Your Website on a Quarterly Basis

Tools like Google Analytics allow you to check your website traffic data as frequently as you’d like. I definitely recommend keeping an eye on your Google Analytics reports daily or weekly. With that said, we all know that checking your reports and actually taking time to analyze them are two different tasks. This is why I recommend that every website owner take a full day each quarter to analyze their reports and implement any needed changes to their website based on what the data is showing.

What Website Data should I be Paying Attention to?

It’s easy to get lost in Google Analytics. There is SO much data that you can analyze. Not only is there a ton of data, but the ways in which you can slice it up seem almost endless. Every website owner is going to have different reports to focus on, but there are a few main data points that all website owners should be aware of during their quarterly reviews:

• Traffic Sources – Keywords: Knowing which keywords are driving the most quality visitors to your website is crucial. You can begin optimizing more of your website around these keywords in order to capitalize on those searches.
• Traffic Sources – Referring Sites: Understanding which websites are sending the most quality traffic to your website will allow you to focus more effort and time on those sites, and less of your time on under performing websites, moving forward.
• Visitors Overview: How much of your website traffic is new visitors versus returning visitors? Knowing this might help you phrase content different or run certain marketing programs geared towards one type of visitor versus the other.
• Content Overview – Top Pages: Having an idea of what pages are performing best will tell you what content your visitors are interested in. Produce more of that!
• Visits: What days do you have the most traffic to your website? Knowing what days visitors are coming to your website allows you to publish new content or launch promotions on those days in order to capture the most attention.

Now that we have an understanding of some of the most important reports to analyze for your website, let’s dig into each of them to provide examples on how you can use the data to make real impactful changes to your website and website marketing.

Use Keyword Reports to Optimize Your Website

Knowing which keywords to optimize your website with is crucial in attracting the right visitors. Here’s how you can utilize the Keyword reports in Google Analytics:

1. Go into the Traffic Sources Overview section of Google Analytics
2. Find your Top ten performing keywords and make a list of those keywords
3. Go back through your website and begin infusing them into your website content
4. Use them as anchor text for your URLs
5. Name your images with your top ten keywords
6. Add title tags and Alt tags to your images using your top ten keywords
7. Create a list of new blog topics that you want to write about and be sure to infuse your top ten keywords into those articles

By analyzing your Traffic Sources – Keywords report and following the steps above you will significantly increase your website traffic for those specific keywords.

Once you have completed this first main Keyword optimization during your Quarterly review, go BACK through your Keyword report and sort the results by Average Time on Site. Find five keywords that might not be driving a lot of traffic to your website right now, but the traffic that is coming to your site from those keywords tends to spend a lot of time on your site. These are your “growth keywords”. Repeat the steps above using these keywords to see if with a little more use throughout your website they can produce more traffic.

Spend more Time on the Websites that Refer the most Traffic to Your Website

Knowing which websites (or social media channels) around the web that are referring the most traffic to your website is critical. As a website owner you only have so much time in the day to market your site. It’s best to use that time wisely. Follow these steps in order to analyze your traffic sources and make impactful changes to your website marketing:

1. Go into your Traffic Sources report within Google Analytics and review the Top Referring Sites data
2. Ask yourself, are these the websites that I assumed would be near the top? Are these the websites I’m spending the most time using in order to drive traffic to my website?
3. Start trying to figure out why some sites are near the top of this list, while others are near the bottom. Perhaps one of the websites near the top is a site that you recently wrote a guest blog article for. Contact the owner of that site and see if you can write another article for them.
4. Is LinkedIn outperforming Facebook? If so, you may want to tweak the amount of time you spend on both social media sites, with more time being devoted to LinkedIn next quarter instead of Facebook. This strategy can be repeated for all social media sites that you use.
5. Is Banner Ad ‘A’ outperforming Banner Ad ‘B’? If so, perhaps you want to cancel Banner Ad ‘B’ and ask for more space on the website that’s hosting Banner Ad ‘A’.
6. Is there a website that you don’t recognize that’s currently sending a lot of traffic to your website? Reach out to the owner of that website and see if you can partner with them in some way in order to capitalize even more on all of the traffic they are sending your way.

Using the Referral Sources report in Google Analytics will help you become more efficient with your marketing time and more effective at driving traffic to your website.

Run a Contest for New Visitors, Say ‘Thank You’ to Returning Visitors

Analyzing your Visitor Profile through the Visitors Overview report in Google Analytics will let you know how much of your traffic is composed of ‘New Visitors’ and how much of your traffic is composed of ‘Repeat Visitors’. You want to encourage new visitors to become return visitors, as well as, continue to attract even more new visitors. Here are a few ways that you can take your data from the Visitors Overview report and actually use it to improve your website:

• Post some sort of a ’Thank You’ message somewhere prominent on your website for returning visitors OR send out the periodic ‘Thank You’ email to your email list just letting your supporters know you appreciate them.
• Do you have an e-Commerce website? Give repeat customers a discount on their next purchase.
• Create a ‘FAQ’ page to help new visitors quickly understand your website and how to use it
• Make the ‘Contact Us’ page as prevalent as possible in case new visitors have questions and need to contact you
• Create a survey for returning customers to capture information that you think will help you provide more value to them in the future
• Run a contest to encourage new customers to get engaged with your website/brand

Produce More of the Content Your Visitors Like

Understanding what content is resonating with your visitors will help you come up with new content topics for the next quarter.

1. Go into the Content Overview section of Google Analytics and navigate to the Top Pages report
2. Find the top 5-6 pages visited over the past 3-6 months
3. Think about what information is displayed on each of those pages and determine what information the majority of your visitors are looking for
4. Develop a Content Plan for the next quarter, comprised of topics that you think are most relevant based on your findings above. A few ideas might be:

1. Write blog articles around popular topics
2. Focus social media efforts in promoting those top pages or discussing those top topics
3. Write an eBook expanding on some of those topics that your visitors are finding valuable
4. Shoot YouTube videos around those topics and embed them into your Top Pages

Producing more of the content that your visitors are finding valuable will keep them coming back, get them to share your website with their friends, and attract new visitors.

Publish New Content, Contests, and General Website Updates on High Traffic Days

Are the weekends a popular time for your website or do most people visit your website during the week? Knowing what days are high traffic days for your website and what days are low traffic days for your website allows you to be much more strategic in regards to publishing new updates to your website. By analyzing the Visits report in Google Analytics you can see which days seem to generate the most traffic. Make a list of your high traffic days and then start taking advantage of those high traffic days in the following ways:

• Publish blog articles on those days
• Begin and end contests on high traffic days
• Spend time on social media during those days
• Publish events to your website
• Make architecture or functionality updates on low traffic days

Knowing when, and when not to, publish new information to your website can drastically alter the number of views your new updates receive. Be smart about when you publish new content, news, events, etc. Use the Visits report in Google Analytics as your guide.

Turn Google Analytics Reports Into Impactful Changes for Your Website

Google Analytics is great. The website data provided by Google Analytics can help website owners learn a ton about their website. With that said, unless website owners take time to review and analyze their reports on a regular basis, and then take time to use that data to make changes to their website, they are missing out on the biggest advantage that Google Analytics provides. Google Analytics provides you with a blueprint for giving your visitors what they want, when they want it. Be sure to take advantage of that.

But FAQ’s are a different type of content. Just like search and sitemap, it has its own particularities and things that you can do to improve user experience. You have to keep in mind, for instance, that users don’t go to FAQ pages, you have to lead them there.

Here we’ll see a couple of thoughts about it, good practices, inspiration and tools.

So, let’s rock!

7 check points

1. Keywords

Ok, first thing you need to keep in mind: Users don’t read on the web. They scan the page trying to find main keywords about something that may be important to them (just like 90% of you are doing right now). So use good headlines and questions keywords, avoid clichés and keep them short.

If you can, outline main keywords, like searched terms, or main topics.

2. FAQ or WAQ?

For a long time FAQs have been misused, instead of real and relevant content, companies put questions they “wished” users would ask (WAQ, Wished to be Asked Questions).

It’s very important to put users needs first, just cover topics that are really important to them. Otherwise it’ll be just another page trying to hide the solution from them. Which, by the way, won’t solve the problem at all, leading to future problems, like unnecessary support requests, or lost sales.

3. People don’t go to FAQ pages

People don’t go looking for FAQs. It’s not a common workflow thinking “Hey, I need to know about their refund policy.. Let’s go to FAQ”. Sounds strange, huh?

So you have to interlink it wisely in places where users may need help. Like using them along with search pages. Or using them as a “wall” before chat with real attendants: Ask the user what kind of problem they have, then suggest a few FAQ searched items based on the users keywords.

4. Sometimes you don’t need to lead them to FAQ, just use tooltips instead

FAQ are great to provide complete answers, but if you just want to tell users how features work, or which type of data they should put in a registration form just go with tooltips or something like that.

Oh, and don’t forget to make it easy and mobile friendly, or in other words, don’t use just a simple hovering element or title attribute. You may use a plugin or add it as a plain text right above your field or button.

5. Do you really need an FAQ?

I know I’m saying that it’s important, but it has its place in websites. It’s a good idea for sales websites, services, apps… But if you have a simple blog or simple company website, just create an “about” page and you’ll be fine.

6. SEO

Have you ever thought about it? If you have a single page with good keyword density about your product and link it in several places inside your website, it can be a really good landing page.

So, think carefully about it, it may lead a lot of users to your website.

7. KISS

Again, Keep It Simple, Stupid my friend .You don’t need to clarify every single question that may pop up about your product. You may categorize questions (if you have a huge amount of them), show content just when users need it.

Just keep in mind that landing page idea, you have to talk about the most main topics and solve users problems fast, if not they will just leave website.

Implementation tips

jQuery / Javascript enhancements

Like I said above, you may hide content by default and just show it when a user wants/requires it. You can use, for instance, jQuey Collapsible panels plugin and create dynamically collapsible panels. You can also use jQuery accordion plugins.

Another good thing to do, is add a “Table of contents” with smooth scrolling, so users can reach what they want easily and with a pretty cool effect.

Scrolling like a boss

You may use smooth scrolling scripts or something like LocalScroll so you’ll get a better organized and easier to use FAQ page.

How about reading a tutorial on it?

Well, Matthew Corner wrote a tutorial with smooth scrolling, table of contents and good looking, and you can just download and edit it to better fit your needs.

Doing the right markup

Although many people use simple headings (h2,h3) for questions and paragraphs for answers, I think that it’s much more semantically correct using definition lists for them. So you may use definition title(s) and definition description(s) to wrap them up accordingly.

Another option, really good one actually, is to use the <details> HTML5 element, which gives you those good looking collapsible panels by default (with browsers that support it, of course).

Nice examples out there

Search + FAQ

Paypal uses a really good system where users can see their FAQ or search by keywords, as well.

FAQ preventing unnecessary support

It pretty common to have users asking you really dumb questions. Don’t get me wrong, but sometimes they could easily find the answer themselves, if we gave them a chance.

Doing the easy way

Did you know that we have a tool for FAQ development? Pretty cool, huh? It’s called FAQme, and worth trying!

FAQ, the Social Way

If you’re more of a social company, why not use a tool that integrates questions and people? Well, I’ve seen a couple of (young) companies using FormSpring as a simple way to answer real questions and let them be easily accessed by other clients

What is Paper.li?

Paper.li is a fairly new automated tool that allows users to create their own online newspaper. It’s a great way to provide relevant online content about the same topic as your website. Paper.li newspapers provide valuable information to your online community about a specific topic. Over time creating a daily newspaper that goes out to your online community will help drive more readers to your website. Website owners can use Paper.li to drive more traffic to their website.

How Does Paper.li Work?

Paper.li allows users to create their own online newspaper through links shared on Facebook and Twitter. Once set up Paper.li automatically collects links from within Facebook or Twitter, organizes them into an easy-to-read newspaper format, complete with imagery, headlines, and article descriptions. Subscribers receive their online newspaper each day filled with top stories around the same content topic as your website. It’s a great way for you to automatically aggregate online content relevant to your website topic and push it out to your online community.

On a daily basis a new paper.li newspaper is created around your topic. If you’re on Twitter, you can configure the system to tweet your Paper.li newspaper automatically. You can also promote your newspaper manually by promoting the URL on your social networks. For full integration we recommend that you embed your online daily newspaper into your website.

Benefits of Using Paper.li

Paper.li offers many benefits to website owners interested in finding new Content Marketing ideas to help build brand awareness and increase website traffic. Below are a few of the benefits to using Paper.li:

• Paper.li is an automated Content Marketing tool. Set it and forget it if need be. We recommend you actively promote it each day as well OR embed it into your website for increased exposure.
• FREE to use! You can create up to 10 online newspapers with the free account.
• Provides a valuable educational resource to your online community. Helps them learn more about the topic of your website. Positions you as a thought leader around your topic.
• Allows for cross promotional opportunities with the other authors who are featured within your Paper.li newspaper. When you tweet it, you include the Twitter names of those who are featured. Many of whom will retweet your newspaper to their online community, thus bringing more new eyeballs to your Paper.li newspaper.

Create a Paper.li Newspaper for Your Website

Paper.li newspapers are easy to create and the benefits are numerous, so we definitely recommend that you consider creating a Paper.li newspaper around the same topic as your website. If you’d like to move forward in creating a Paper.li newspaper for your website follow the steps below to get started.

1. Navigate to Paper.li and sign in with either your Twitter or Facebook account
2. Click ‘Start your paper’
3. Select the option to “create a paper based on a specific topic or list of people”
4. Create a Title for your Paper.li newspaper
5. Add up to 10 content streams from which to pull article links from. Add as many as you’d like (up to 10). You can organize them in the order of importance. If you choose a Single Twitter User and a Twitter Keyword, you can rank them in order of importance of where Paper.li should pull articles from first, second, third, etc. The options include:
   • Single Twitter User
   • Your Twitter Stream and the people you follow
   • Twitter List
   • Twitter #Hashtag
   • Keywords on Twitter
   • Keywords on Facebook
   • RSS Feed
   • Single Google+ User
   • Keywords on Google+
6. Select a language for your Paper.li newspaper
7. Select the ‘Covered Topics’. Covered Topics are the ‘Sections’ that you’d like to appear in your Paper.li newspaper.
8. Click ‘Publish’. Your Paper.li newspaper will be updated every 24 hours.

It’s that easy! You now have an automated content marketing tool to use every day for educating your online community on your website topic and for driving traffic back to your website. Before we let you go, let’s go through each of the different content options that you can use to construct your Paper.li newspaper. We will discuss why you might want to use each different content option.

How to Get Noticed

Getting your Paper.li newspaper noticed by relevant readers is the key to attracting subscribers. It’s important that you use all available marketing channels to help you promote your Paper.li newspaper. Here are a few creative ways to get your newspaper in front of the right people:

• Set up an automatic feed to Twitter
• Post your Paper.li newspaper on Facebook
• Post your newspaper on Google+
• Embed your Paper.li newspaper on your blog or website
• Leave comments on each of the sites from which you pull content from and add a link back to your Paper.li newspaper
• Reach out to the author of each article in your newspaper to let him/her know you used their article in your newspaper. Hopefully they will help you promote your newspaper by sending it out to their online community.
• Add a link to your Paper.li newspaper to your email newsletter
• If you are a business and have a physical location, put a flier or window cling in your store with a link (or QR code) to your Paper.li newspaper
• Add the URL of your newspaper to your business card
• Add the URL of your newspaper to your email signature
• Promote your Paper.li newspaper on LinkedIn

Obviously you might not have time to do all of these things every day, but find a combination that works well for you and your audience and stick to it as best as possible. The more you promote your Paper.li newspaper the more subscribers you will attract.

Crafting the Perfect Paper.li

At first glance it might appear that crafting a Paper.li newspaper is a fairly standard process whereby you don’t have to put much thought into it. Unfortunately too many Paper.li editors go this route. The Paper.li editors who are successful are the ones who take some extra time to craft the perfect Paper.li newspaper. Here are a few tips for crafting a top-tier Paper.li newspaper.

• Customize your Paper.li newspaper as best as possible. A good way to do this is find experts on your topic and pull content directly from them as a ‘Single Twitter User’ or by adding a RSS feed from their blog.
• Organize your content streams with the ‘Single Twitter Users’ at the top and the more general content streams like ‘Twitter, Facebook, & Google+ Keywords’ near the bottom. This way your Paper.li newspaper will be filled with content from the experts you’ve chosen and any extra room will be filled with content from random publishers. This ensures your subscribers will get the best content each and every day.
• Add 10 content streams. Paper.li allows you use to use 10 content streams so you should take advantage of them.
• Use the Editor’s Note section to add a link to your website
• Include one or more hashtags in the Title of your Paper.li newspaper. Paper.li newspapers can be automatically published to Twitter, so having a highly searched hashtag in the title of your newspaper will attract more readers.

5 Top Paper.li Newspapers

Here are a few examples of some of the best Paper.li newspapers. Each of these newspapers have thousands of subscribers. Take a look at each of these to see what they do well. Be sure to incorporate some of the things that these Paper.li editors do with their newspaper into your Paper.li newspaper.

• The #socialmedia Daily
• The most-influential-in-tech Daily
• The public-relations Daily
• The @HP #Touchpad Daily
• The Don Tapscott Innovators Daily

Will You Create a Paper.li Newspaper for Your Website?

After reviewing this article, Paper.li, and all of the benefits it can provide to website owners, do you think it’s worth the time it takes (which is minimal) to create one for your website? We definitely think those who do move forward with creating a Paper.li newspaper will be happy they did.

Have you already created a Paper.li newspaper to help build brand awareness and increase website traffic? If so, how has it been working? Please share your comments below.

1. Turn Blog Comments into New Blog Articles

Do the readers of your blog actively leave insightful comments? The best blogs are the ones that engage readers so much that they are compelled to leave a comment after reading the article. Many times readers bring up a point that the author may have missed. Other times readers challenge something in the article and bring up an opposing viewpoint that makes for a good discussion. Every once in a while, (depending on how many comments you get on your blog) a reader will leave a comment that the blog author can use to write an entirely new blog article.

If while reading your blog comments you come across one that sparks an idea for a new blog article, here’s how you should go about the process:

• Take time to think about your idea and make sure it’s valuable enough to write about
• Contact the author of the comment to seek his/her permission to write an article based on his/her comment
• Write the article and provide credit to the person who left the original comment that sparked your idea
• Send a link to the article to the author of the comment to let him/her see how the article turned out

2. Transform Ebooks into Blog Articles

Ebooks are fantastic marketing tools for website owners. Ebooks can provide the following benefits:

• Provide valuable information on a specific subject to your audience
• Allow you to provide more details than you normally would if you simply wrote a blog article on the topic
• Great for SEO
• Position the author as an expert on the subject matter
• Can be used as an offer for collecting information from your audience (ie. Provide me with your name and email address to download our free eBook)

As you can see, if you haven’t already written a few eBooks, you might want to get started. Another benefit that eBooks can provide website owners is turning existing content into new content. Once an eBook has been published for a period of time you can then start to turn sections of the eBook into blog articles. Obviously you don’t want to use the copy verbatim, but you can take certain areas of the eBook, expand on them, and publish them to your blog. If you want to turn your eBooks into blog articles, here’s how you should go about doing so:

• Re-read your eBook to find what sections might make for interesting blog articles – look for areas that can be expanded on or sections where something in the industry may have changed, thus you can update the information and re-publish it as a blog article, etc.
• Break out each section that you want to turn into an article and come up with a title for the article
• Start writing – Either expand on the topic or modify the existing content
• Optimize the new article for Search and publish it to your blog

3. LinkedIn Discussions Become Blog Articles

Have you ever participated in a LinkedIn Group Discussion? LinkedIn Groups are a great place for interacting with people who share similar interests on a given topic. Within LinkedIn Groups any group member can start a discussion on any topic related to the overall group topic. For example, if you were in a marketing group on LinkedIn, you might start a LinkedIn discussion about the latest Twitter features or foursquare marketing strategies, etc. Once the discussion is started anyone in the group can leave a comment with their opinion on the discussion topic. The result is an open dialogue about a certain topic. Most people usually leave it there. Creative website owners use LinkedIn discussions to generate ideas for new blog articles.

During LinkedIn discussions ultimately someone brings up a point or makes a comment that lends itself nicely to being expanded upon. For you creative website owners, this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. You can take that LinkedIn discussion and turn it into a blog article for your website. Here’s how:

• Review the LinkedIn discussion and make sure there’s enough for an entire blog article
• Reach out to anyone who participated in the discussion and get their permission to reference them
• Write the article and reference the LinkedIn Group, the discussion, and the participants
• Publish the article, go back to the LinkedIn discussion and add a comment with the link to your article
• Thank the LinkedIn discussion participants for allowing you to use their comments in your article

4. Turn Blog Articles into Web Pages

Do you have two or three blog articles that constantly outperform the rest of your online content in terms of visits? If so, have you ever considered turning those articles into pages on your website? Depending on the topic of the article, some articles would make for great pages on a website. Here are a few examples of article topics that could be transformed into web pages:

• Tips articles
• Usage instructions
• Complimentary product or service recommendations

Many times website owners write blog articles on the topics like the ones above and those articles start to capture a lot of website traffic. It’s up to you, the website owner, to understand that these articles are highly valuable to a lot of people who visit your website. Your visitors who are not finding these articles might be better served if the articles were more prominently featured on the website. This is where turning articles into web pages come in. If you have a few articles that you want to convert into a web page, here’s how you should handle the process:

• Pick 1-2 articles that currently garner more search traffic than other articles AND that have a topic that makes sense as a web page on your website
• Create a new page on your website and paste the copy into the new page
• Go through the new page and reformat the article to look and sound more like a web page
• Test the page and hit the ‘Publish’ button

5. Create Online Videos from Blog Articles

Are you considering using more online video this year? The costs and time involved in producing professional online video have both come down dramatically from just a few years ago. It’s easier than ever before to create online video for your website and I recommend that everyone reading this article at least consider using online video is some fashion on your site.

So, you’ve decided to create more online video for your website. Great! Now, what topics should you create videos around? Good question. Like writing blog articles, many website owners struggle with coming up with topic ideas for online video. One of the best ways to solve this issue is to go back through your existing blog articles  and search for articles with topics that would make interesting (and short) online videos. Recycle and recreate those blog articles as online videos.

If you want to turn blog articles into online videos, follow the following steps:

• Search your blog for articles on topics that would make for interesting online videos
• Review each article and determine where you want to focus the attention of the video
• Cut out any unnecessary sections, as you want to keep your online videos between 30 seconds to a minute (if possible)
• Create a script from the blog article
• Prepare your video equipment and talent
• Set a date/time for the video shoot
• Record your video
• Edit your video
• Publish your video to YouTube or to your website

6. Turn One Blog Articles into a Series of Blog Articles

Do you ever find yourself writing really long blog articles? I know I do. Most of the time I feel like I have a lot to say and that everything is important. I think a lot of people are probably the same way. I’m sure that if you looked at your blog right now you might find a few different articles that fall into the “way too long” category. You’d probably find a few articles that fall into “I could have done more” category as well. Why not take advantage of this by turning one blog article into a series of blog articles?

What’s great about this strategy is that you can go back through all of your old articles and start breaking out some of the longer articles, adding some new content to each new article, and publish each of the separately. You can also go through your blog and find a bunch of articles that you can expand on. For those articles, instead of updating the existing article, simply make a blog series out of it and write one or two follow-up articles to the existing article. Here’s how you can do it:

• Make a list of all of the articles that you think you can expand on
• Come up with 1 or 2 additional topic ideas that relate to the original article
• Write the articles
• Publish one and schedule the other to go live on a future date
• Go back to the original article and add a links to parts 2 and 3 once they have gone live; this way you can drive traffic from article 1 to parts 2 and 3 as well.

7. Transform Tweets into Blog Articles

Are you using Twitter? You should be! Twitter is an excellent tool for building relationships with website visitors and prospective website visitors. It’s also great for driving traffic back to your website or blog! What I’ve found is that Twitter is a breeding ground for new content ideas. Whether it’s a tweet that I send or a tweet that I read, many times I’ll stop and think, “hmmm, I should write an article about this”. Twitter is all about information sharing and when it comes to information sharing a lot of new ideas are formed. The best way to take advantage of this is to turn tweets into blog articles. If you’re looking to do so, follow these steps:

• Review the tweet a few times and really think through if there is enough there to write an entire article on
• If it’s not your tweet that sparked the idea, reach out to the person who tweeted the information and ask him/her if you can write an article while referencing his/her tweet
• Write the article and give credit to the person who tweeted the original information
• Publish the tweet and send a link to the person who you pulled the tweet from; say thank you

Your Turn!

What are some other ways to transform old content into new content? Do you have any tips that you can share for our readers who might be suffering from writers block? If so, please share your ideas by leaving a comment below.

In this article, we shall attempt to compare TextPattern and WordPress and see which one emerges victorious.

Before proceeding further, a short disclaimer: the division of this comparative review under multiple headings does not essentially have a logical explanation – I’ve simply attempted to compare it using four basic, but very important, categories, functionality and usability, mode of operation, extensions and plugins and finally, community and support.

Furthermore, I guess many users of WP and TXP will either agree or disagree with my views. To be honest, using a particular CMS also requires a certain amount of personal choice, what might work for me, may not work for you, and vice-versa. Differences in opinion are always welcome!

So without further ado, let us begin with our comparison.

Functionality and Usability

When it comes to functionality and usability, WordPress seems to win easily. While this does not mean that TextPattern is, in any way, less functional than WordPress, WP simply beats TXP in terms of ease of use! With the advent of version 3.x and higher, WP now boasts of a super organized administrative panel that lets you manage your website with ease. Don’t believe me? Take a look at WP’s admin panel. ‘Dashboard’, ‘Posts’, ‘Pages’, ‘Settings’ – which of these sections are not self-explanatory? Customizing the blog becomes a matter of few clicks. Take a look at the ‘Settings’ page of both the CMSes.

WordPress Settings Page

On the other hand, TextPattern’s administrative panel, though equally capable and powerful, seems ‘outdated’ in comparison to that of WordPress. Of course, TXP is equally robust in its admin panel, but overall the interface is not as easy to use and may even be confusing for beginners.

TextPattern Settings Page

Availability of Custom Plugins/Extensions and Themes

Apart from ease of use, the next thing that defines any piece of software is the availability of extensions for it. However, more often than not, there is a spiral between ‘ease of use’ on one hand and ‘extendability’ on the other. For instance, when it comes to mobile operating systems, Android is more popular than Samsung Bada. While this does not demerit Samsung Bada itself, Android’s popularity can be attributed to its ever-growing app market, which in turn is increasing because developers take an interest in it due to its easy extendability and wide usage, which ensures their efforts will not go unnoticed. Again, due to developers’ keen interest, the apps keep growing, and the users keep coming to Android.

Both WP and TXP support themes and templates as well as multiple plugins and extensions. However, WP has more themes and plugins then TXP. While this may or may not prove WP’s superiority, it surely plays its role in contributing to WP’s user base. Since many commercially viable tech blogs and websites are powered by WordPress (not to mention the millions of blogs at WordPress.com and Blog.com), it is but natural that WP has a large number of themes and plugins. Certain providers, such as WooThemes, offer themes for both WP and TXP. Yet, in this case too, WP dominates TXP in terms of the number of available themes.

If you have exemplary coding skills, fret not! You can easily tweak TXP and design your blog or website the way you wish to. But if you are an end user just looking to get a blog or website up and ready with as little technical expertise as possible, WP should be your safest bet!

Mode of Operation

Modus Operandi is by far the most debatable topic when it comes to comparing any two CMS’s, let alone WP and/or TXP.

To begin with, WordPress comes with a WYSIWYG Editor that makes editing posts and articles extremely simple.

WYSIWYG Editor in WP

TextPattern, on the other hand, has an equally awesome (though not so end-user friendly, as it takes some ‘getting used to’) editor, which can do almost anything you want it to, but will surely leave many beginners confused. In TXP, Textile and other related features can either be your best friends or your worst enemies.

Article Editor in TXP

In the admin back end as well, you will notice that mundane tasks such as updating the CMS, installing themes/plugins, or even navigating the back end – all seem easier on WP rather than TXP for a novice. However, the confusion vanishes once you get accustomed to the interface.

Community and Support

A CMS is only as good as its user base. Both TXP and WP have a good and fairly active community and many forums where you can seek support and advice.

In terms of documentation, TXP seems to win outright. WP is well documented, but it comes nowhere close to beating TXP – apart from the usual website, TXP also has its own User Documentation Website and another TXP Resources site.

Speaking of support, WP is updated on a more frequent basis as compared to TXP. However, this can be interpreted either way – supporters of WP will consider the frequent updates as higher level of activity at their developers’ end, while supporters of TXP can attribute the lesser updates to a sign of maturity of TXP in itself.

To sum it up

Before coming to a conclusion, let us recap each CMS’s pros and cons:

TextPattern:

Pros:

• Textile is a wonderful component, and if you get used to it, you will never, ever, miss WP.
• You can tweak your website as much as you want. There is negligible encapsulation done.
• Extensive documentation.

Cons:

• Admin back end looks outdated.
• Interface confusing for beginners.
• Lesser number of themes/plugins (as compared to WP)

WordPress:

Pros:

• Perhaps the easiest CMS ever
• Several themes/plugins
• Excellent update mechanism

Cons:

• WP is intended to power only one blog at a time (unless you’re using WPMU)
• With plugins/extensions, it may becomes bloated
• Editing article meta data is difficult
• Notorious for frequent security bugs and issues

And the Winner is…

As I stated above, using (or not using) a particular CMS is a matter of personal preference too. More often than not, our choice for a CMS is governed by our needs (and, perhaps, bias towards a personal favorite).

WordPress and TextPattern are both great at what they do! If you need a CMS just to power a blog or a small website, look no further than WordPress. If, on the contrary, you wish to run multiple blogs, or prefer to tweak your articles before posting them (or simply like to do things the geeks’ way), TextPattern might be your ideal solution. In simple terms, TXP should be chosen if you wish to define the dynamics of your website just as if you were ‘programming’ software.

Have you used WP and/or TXP earlier? Do share your experiences with us in the comments!

Today, we will try to dig into some of the new tactics that are slowly emerging as must learn ways for webmasters if they want to survive in this world of Search Engine Optimization. This discussion will try to graze through the still unreal modern-day SEO practices.

Target Local SEO

Look at those search results. Sights like these are common on Google’s SERPs and they are frightening for webmasters. It is very obvious that searchers will prefer the jungle of Google Places results and hardly any of them will scroll down to check different blogs (if any) and various websites.

What do we do in such situations? Well, the answer is pretty simple. One must expand the SEO horizons to Google Places which seems to be the next big thing when it comes to local SEO. Note down these quick pointers:

• Your business on various services: Hire someone or keep some time aside for this activity as this is going to take some time. You will have to make a list of all the services that acts as Yellow Pages in your niche and in your locality. Start registering in all of them and list your business along with the other necessary details in all of these. If they are worth the money then don’t hesitate in paying for such services. Also, remember to be consistent with the content on all the services where you are leaving your details. Lastly, remember to do the most simplest thing. Publish your address on Google Places, Google Maps and the like.
• Optimize the Google Places Page: Try to point your Google Places page to a landing page which leaves the visitors in awe. Spend time on your Google Places page and see to it that you have done your bit to give out the information that visitors are looking for.
• Get Reviewed: You have your landing page, your Google Places page and your business details listed in almost all the listing services. Now what? Well, it is time to get yourself reviewed from some of the recognized critics that increase your rankings and Google’s trust in your listing.

So, as the discussion above suggests, it is time to move out of the world of backlinks, keywords, tags etc. It surely is time to expand your reach into the modern world of SEO. If you don’t start now then you are bound to be lost in between all the competition.

Integrate Your SEO Strategies Smoothly with Social Media

Gone are the days when SEO and Social Media Marketing were two different approaches for traffic. Today, you will find Twitter handles and Facebook fan pages on huge bill boards and on screens before a movie starts. It has become so obvious for every business to be present on Twitter and Facebook for starters. You aren’t hip if you aren’t on Twitter.

One good example of integrating Search Engine Optimization for a business with Social Media Strategies is the #BeatCancer hash tag. An Atlanta-based Social Media Communications company launched a campaign to raise funds for various non-profit cancer organizations. The idea was that the sponsors (eBay/PayPal and MillerCoor Brewing Company) will donate $0.01 to charity whenever the hash tag #BeatCancer was used somewhere in a blog post, Facebook page, Twitter or any other platform on the Internet. Surprisingly, the idea resulted into $70,000 being donated to different charities. Also, the amount of hidden publicity that it brought to the campaigners attached with the same was innumerable.

Social Media giants like Twitter and Facebook can play a huge role in your search engine rankings if the approach is planned and help from someone with expertise isn’t ignored.

Start Targeting Humans Instead of Robots

As I said before, enough of SEO for bots. We have tried a lot of keywords and pushed multiple tags. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could ignore search engines, programs, algorithms etc. and start writing for humans? For our real readers? For the people who make or break our business? I am not asking you to follow this approach because the older methods of SEO are failing but because Google has started to move towards real-time results that are appreciated by the general searchers. And, there is no room for blackhat SEO tactics in these results. Either you start listening to Google or get left behind.

Remember that people come to Google because they are looking for something authentic. If you give them goofed up content just by tricking the algorithms then you might have won for that particular search query but in the long run you just lost a visitor because of the stupid content.

Again, No More Love For Backlinks

I am trying to emphasize this because this point is very important. You cannot fool Google. Just accept this fact and stop trying the silly tactics that you think can break Google’s algorithms. As of now Google has started a very human approach with their search results which does no longer looks for keywords only. It is about the authenticity of content, the value of the same to the searcher and various such considerations. It is impossible to trick this approach.

They will know when you bought a backlink and if they do then life ahead will be killing for you. It will be better if you don’t take such risks that can actually see your business being kicked out of Google’s SERPs.

Use Schema.org to Check the Authenticity of your Efforts

If you haven’t yet heard of Schema.org then you surely have been sleeping. Although Google is the boss it was generous enough to sit with the minors like Yahoo and Bing to come up with standards that help search engines understand a website better. These results help such search engines read the particular website better and index it as per its features.

Like, if a website starts using rich snippets then it has the ability to inform Google that the SERP will have product reviews too along with the usual website link. Do you see the reviews in the image above with rich snippets enabled for a particular website? It is possible to show those in your search results if you too start using rich snippets. Also, you can test your approach using the Rich Snippet Testing Tool.

Analyze. Rinse. Repeat.

Theory is good but it is the numbers that matter. So, analyze your results and gauge your efforts. See where you are heading. How many visitors come to your landing pages and how many of them actually stay there for more than 2 minutes. Optimize your efforts as per the results and keep trying new things. Remember, it is not just the keywords that matter but the overall effort of the modern-day SEO practices. It requires a lot of planning and smart execution.

Conclusion

What I discussed was just a small section of Modern Day SEO. Google is drastically changing its approach and we have to keep up with these changes if we want to be in this game. What do you think and what are your new strategies towards SEO?

5 Reasons Why Holidays Lead To Increased Traffic

There are a number of reasons why holidays lead to increased website traffic, but here are the top 5:

Holidays are fun

Holidays are fun events for people. Fun leads to people being happy. When people are looking forward to fun things then they tend to spend more time focusing on those things. For most people, holidays are fun days throughout the year that they look forward to. When people look forward to something thye tend to spend time online looking for ideas on how they can get the most out of their holidays.

Time off from work

I think we can all agree that the more free time someone has the more likely his or her time spent online will increase. These days many of us work so much that we don’t have a lot of free time to spend searching the internet. All of that changes around holidays. Many people have time off from work, which allows them to spend more time doing other things, one of which is searching the internet.

Get together with friends and family

The holidays provide an opportunity to get together with friends and family. Whenever friends and family get together it usually means that they’ll be spending the day together, possibly eating, drinking, playing games, etc. When people get together a lot of times each person or family brings something to the party. If you’re in charge of one aspect of the party, then you might spend time online researching how to make that aspect of the party the best it can possibly be. If you need to make a certain dish for dinner, you may search for a recipe. If you’re in charge of entertainment, you may search for fun family games to play. The list goes on…

Planning leads to researching

Holidays require planning. Whether that means buying presents, decorating, preparing food, etc. many people must plan for upcoming holidays. Anytime someone needs to plan for an event like a holiday it usually leads to increased time spent online.

Traveling makes people look for something fun to do

Have you ever been on the road on or around the holidays? Traffic is horrible! That’s because many people travel on the holidays. When people are traveling, especially long distances or to places they have never been before, they usually spend time online researching their trip. It could be that they are looking for fun things to do near the place they are traveling to. It could be that they want to find places to stop along the way. Whatever it is that people are looking for, the key is that they are online looking for something. Knowing this provides an opportunity for website owners to capture some of that search traffic.

Now that we know the reasons why holidays can lead to increased website traffic, let’s review the best holidays for generating more website traffic.

3 Holidays To Take Advantage Of

All holidays provide an opportunity to generate more website traffic. With that said, over the years I’ve seen that some holidays provide better opportunities than others. Below are the top 3 holidays that you should take advantage of for driving more traffic to your website.

Christmas

Christmas is the number one holiday for organic search. People are performing searches to look for gift ideas, for travel, to find fun things going on in their community, etc. Be sure to have your Christmas content up no later than December 1st. Usually people start searching for Christmas-related information right after Thanksgiving.

Independence Day

Independence Day is a HUGE website traffic driver. Friends and families are always looking for fun things to do on or around Independence Day. A big factor is that July 4th is a Summer holiday and people love to spend it outside with friends and family. People are searching for fireworks displays, fun local events, holiday sales opportunities, and much more. Coming up with a fun July 4th promotion, giveaway, or even a safety tips blog article would do wonders for increasing your website traffic.

Halloween

Halloween is another fantastic holiday that should be leveraged to increase your website traffic. Being that it’s a holiday for young children you get a lot of parents searching the web for the latest costume ideas, hayride and haunted house information, events, ghost stories, and much more. Halloween is relevant to so many different types of websites that it’s almost impossible not to be able to come up with some sort of tie-in. If all else fails, just come up with a spooky story for your blog.

All holidays present a great opportunity to increase your website traffic, but Christmas, Independence Day, and Halloween are the top three holidays to take advantage of based on my analysis over the past few years. If you cannot come up with content ideas for ALL holidays be sure that you at least take advantage of these three.

Planning For An Upcoming Holiday

In order to capitalize on holiday web traffic, you must come up with a solid plan for how you will go about capturing some of that traffic. It’s important to start your planning well in advance of the holiday. Here are a few questions that you should answer when planning for an upcoming holiday:

• How can I tie-in the upcoming holiday to my website topic?
• What type of person am I trying to attract to my website?
• What can I create on my website that might interest the type of person I’m trying to attract?
• What keywords should I use within my holiday-related website content?
• What other tools can I use to attract more website visitors (ie. social media)?

By answering these questions you will start to form ideas for what promotions or content you’ll produce for the upcoming holiday.

10 Tips To Boost Traffic During Holidays

Understanding that holidays are great for increasing website traffic is important, but now that we know that, it’s time to start coming up with ideas for taking advantage of holidays. Remember, with a little creativity, almost ANY website (no matter your website topic) should be able to come up with ideas for taking advantage of holidays. Below are 10 ideas for taking advantage of holidays to help get you started. Not all of the ideas below will be relevant to your website, but you should be able to take advantage of a few of them OR modify any of them to work for your website.

1. Simply offer a holiday discount on a product or service
2. Run a holiday-related contest. If you don’t sell a product or service you can buy a Visa or American Express gift card (or any other cool prize that you think your readers will value) to give to the winner.
3. Write a story on your blog about the upcoming holiday. Ideas include, but are not limited to, the history of the holiday, a little known fact about the holiday, a personal experience, etc.
4. Provide a list of fun things to do with friends or family during the upcoming holiday.
5. Write a short E-Book about the holiday and make it available for free download in exchange for readers’ email addresses and an opt-in to your newsletter or for future email communications.
6. Publish a favorite holiday recipe.
7. Gather Sales information from local retailers and publish it to your website as a ‘Savings Guide’ for your readers.
8. Partner with another website to run a contest or giveaway. This cross-promotion technique can attract organic search traffic, but it also allows both you and your partner to share website traffic (increasing traffic for both parties).
9. Publish a list of local events going on in your geographic area related to the holiday.
10. Create a list of volunteer opportunities that people can participate in during the holiday. Volunteering information attracts a lot of website traffic around the holidays and you can definitely take advantage of some of that traffic by coming up with a list of volunteering opportunities that’s relevant to your website topic.

Again, not all of the ideas above will work for your website, but there should be a few that do. The important thing to remember is that holidays are great for increasing your website traffic. With a little planning and creativity, no matter what your website topic is, you should be able to take advantage of one or more holidays throughout the year in order to increase traffic to your website.

Are you currently using holidays to increase your website traffic? What are some of the things that you do in order to capitalize on holiday website traffic? Leave your comments below.