Every day, people ask Google for 3 wishes … or maybe a lot more. They search for a blog marketing plan or system, techniques, a network, a guide, tips, a traffic strategy, methods, tactics, ideas, a program, a model, mistakes, advice, and tricks.

These words are magic. The hottest prospects you target for your online business products and services are searching the internet and specific directories for these very words related to your niche, in hopes of getting the exact traffic and conversion results they want.

I see many marketers in the blogosphere who do a lot of advertising optimization analysis, focused on finding the most popular keyword phrase to get ranked for in Google … usually, a “money” phrase that the Google spiders show a high number of monthly searches for. I’m sure that works … but why spend all that time in digital figure-figure on the best keyword phrase, comparing one against another, when you can generate Google clicks for 20 or 30 or 40 good phrases in a single article?

If you can publish one article and get a free listing on Google for 20 - or more - search phrases that your best prospects are actively searching for … that could be very profitable for you.

A 20-Trick Pony

Let’s focus in detail on one facet of my last blog page title, Blog Promotion Plan. Two weeks after this post appeared, here are 20 of the many Google search results which pull up this article:

All of these high Google rankings come from a single blog post! Think about the relationship possibilities … each of these phrases is a term you can realistically see one of my potential buyers keying in to their Google search box. Actually … I could probably search out and list another 20 good keyword combinations that bring up this post, too. But you get the idea. (Also - I believe that as Net Traffic Machine gets stronger, with more good content, and more links, and more authority in Google’s eyes, these keyword results will move higher in the rankings.)

It’s important to understand how Google search works. If you search

apples oranges rutabaga

Google will bring up pages that contain those 3 words anywhere on the page, in any order. So if that’s a productivity phrase that you would like to have your page rank high for in Google, then those words must be on the page.

Important: if you consistently publish quality content and also theme your page with lots of other fruit & vegetable keywords, then Google is likely to consider you an authority … and your page is likely to rank high for your keyword phrase AND a lot of other phrases, based on the theme words you included in your article.

Take a look at the above search grid again. All the words in that grid are included in my Blog Promotion Plan post … giving me much more exposure on Google than just my title keyword phrase.

Do you see a profit opportunity here for you?

Read those targeted keyword phrases again. Notice how each one is a phrase that could trigger a real prospect to actually key it into the Google search box?

Result: I can write one blog post, optimize it with theme words, run it through the Synnd Content Syndication Network, and get free advertising from Google - maybe forever, if I handle this right - under many different search terms that good prospects will legitimately search.

It’s a marketing opportunity to highly leverage the popularity of Google. Hard to pass that one up.

As a blogger, it’s important to know who your real prospects are and what they really want. If you pay attention to what they buzz about in the social media, it’s easy to go to the next step - predicting what categories excite them and which catchy phrases they will search in Google. Sure, it is absolutely a good idea to keep a list of phrases handy from the Google Keyword External search tool. But don’t make a marketing career of that list. Write articles that educate, entertain, and enlighten. Provide your target market with information they’ll find very valuable.

The effect you want to create is that when they do a search, they find your site listed on the first page of Google results. When they click through to your website, you give them exactly the answers and community network they are looking for. You want them to click to add your website to their feed reader, and to buzz about you to others in the niche.

Obviously, you can get plenty of #1 Google rankings for a lot of phrases that no one will ever search. So it’s important to know your global target market and think through exactly what they really want and what words they’ll use to search for it. If you work those branded words into your themed article, Google will give potential buyers a lot of ways to find you.

It’s a very time-effective and cost-effective method to get a lot of free advertising.

Richard Dennis
Synnd Content Network

I offer these tips as a guide to a blog promotion system strategy which I call, “Give Google a bone.” You can get 2 big advertising payoffs with these methods:

1.    High rank for search phrases that your target market is likely to actually enter into the Google search box. If you can do this once or twice a week, the branding and profit payoff can be huge. Getting first page placement in free Google search for popular keywords in your niche will create a lot more click-throughs to your website … plus, it’s easy on your marketing budget.
2.    Creating great content that generates social buzz in your community leads Google to see you as an authority site for your niche.

Results Update

It’s been an eventful 12 days since my post (1) Blog Promotion – and 19 days since (2) Blog Traffic Techniques. First the current article campaign results, and then the digital story behind them. On the left is the keyword search term and the above blog post title it is related to; then the # of Google search results for that target phrase; on the right is the current Google rank of that article:

* - Also included are the rankings of the social media pages bookmarking my blog post

Although Blog promotion is currently #16, it did make the first page of Google results and stayed there several days, in position #8. Even with all the mistakes (coming up …), the post has attracted high Google ranking against some very, very tough competition. Keep in mind that a ton of veteran internet marketers optimize for this keyword phrase. Plus, today there are 28 Adwords ads bidding against each other for this phrase, plus one sponsored link at the top of the search page. This page is valuable online real estate.

Note: It’s important to point out that this blog, Net Traffic Machine, still has a Page Rank of zero with Google! That means almost no incoming links to the pages on this site, and certainly none with any authority. Google’s ranking formula is big on authority. To achieve good Google search result productivity with lousy optimization (zero authority and a messed-up promotion - you’ll get the details in a minute) is pretty interesting performance … and if you are a new blogger, these marketing results should give you hope that attention to planning and theming can pay off for you.

Which reminds me … I’ve written a lot here about latent semantic indexing. Charles Heflin has pointed out that the techniques in these posts and in Google Drools do not really fit the definition of latent semantic indexing. LSI is actually based on a specific mathematical formula, and I’m way too “seat of the pants” for that. My #1 method is really just simple “theming.” For example, in a post like this, I have compiled a list of words related to blogging and another list related to promotion, and I use lots of those words when I write a post like this. My theory is that Google loves a well-themed article, because it is a strong indication that the specific niche market of searchers will find the article both relevant and very valuable. Google may be a robot, but its aluminum heart leaps with joy at the vision of a bunch of happy searchers who get exactly what they want.

Social Bookmarking Visitor Statistics (from Google Analytics)

1. Blog post (3/23/09): Blog Traffic Techniques

Total for the Blog Traffic Techniques article as of April 13:

• 51 Diggs
• 56 clips (Social Median bookmark)

First … since a person doesn’t have to bookmark a website to visit it, the social networks can easily generate more visitors than bookmarks. Next … obviously, not a lot of activity. The real question is … how did that Social Median burst on March 25-27 occur? And the formula is simple. Social Median has a front page section of “Hot Stories.” The Blog Traffic Techniques post received a great push from the content syndication network Synnd, so that it was displayed as a hot story on the front page of every member of Social Median. And then the push came not just from the Synnd community, but also from the Social Median community who clicked on a Hot Story. A little bit of viral.

The Digg page never got that kind of result, because it takes a lot more natural bookmarking to be hot on Digg. However … for almost 2 weeks now, the Digg page has been ranked in the top 6 Google search results for “blog traffic techniques.” That may be a big reason why the actual blog post is ranked #1. So even though the post never got noticed by the loyal Digg community, the Google results made Digg worthwhile.

Conclusion: Why not get that Social Median “Hot Story” push if you can? You can achieve that popularity by syndicating your targeted post Sunday or Monday (it may take up to 24 hours to appear). The drop-off in weekend traffic on Social Median is significant. If you publish late in the week, you greatly decrease your chances of becoming “Hot” … as you’ll see in the next section.

2. A Comedy of Errors - Blog post (4/02/09): Blog Promotion

Error #1: Everything is a test. I’ve had great success with practices like targeting short headline keyword phrases in articles published online. However … this test has made me realize that a simple 2-word targeted keyword title (e.g., “Blog Promotion”) is too risky. There are lots of articles under that same title online, including one already listed in Social Median (one of Synnd’s 3 current bookmark sites).

So the title helped sabotage navigation for the syndication community, and the result was confusion. When I put the job out to the Synnd network to syndicate the post “Blog Promotion,” the article wound up with 3 separate references on Social Median, dividing up the power of the bookmarking. So instead of a focused, profitable social bookmarking boost, submissions were divided amongst:

1. Blog Promotion (that’s the other guy’s page)
2. Blog Promotion Techniques (1st bookmarking of my BP page)
3. Blog Promotion: Net Traffic Machine (2nd bookmarking of my BP page!)

Error #2: On Saturday, the syndication system went out and stayed out for about 36 hours … so no more virtual bookmarks for that time. On the other hand, it was Saturday … probably not much to show for it anyway.

Error #3: Because it appeared to be a lost cause, I shut off the Blog Promotion syndication on April 6. I should have kept it going, because even with the above mistakes, it was a successful campaign.

Error #4: I published this post on a Thursday, which gave it very little time to gain a foothold before the doldrums of the weekend. That helped kill any chance it had to make the Social Median “Hot Stories” list, which would have given it a real boost.

Total for the Blog Promotion article as of April 13:

• 22 Diggs
• 5 clips for Blog Promotion (not my article)
• 9 clips for Blog Promotion Techniques
• 7 clips for Blog Promotion: Net Traffic Machine

Conclusion: from now on, I’ll only target a (minimum) 3-word keyword title phrase. That really doesn’t cost anything, because if Google loves my “Blog Promotion Plan” article, it will still get ranked for “Blog Promotion”, too. And it should prevent this type of mix-up.

Strategy
These results help bring a few tools in your workable, profitable blog promotion plan into focus:

• Target obvious phrases likely to be keyed in to Google search by those in your target market. However … the keyword phrase should always be 3 words or (not much) longer.
• Over time, consistently accumulate multiple first-page Google search results for popular keyword phrases. The result will be more targeted visitors, and also more credibility with Google. This means writing at least one highly-themed, very useful blog article each week.
• Find other ways to get Google to view your blog as an authority site. (More on this in future articles.)

Please use the comment button to let me know your thoughts and questions.

Richard Dennis

What do Al Capone & I have in common? Tell you in a minute. But first, about Blog Traffic Techniques …

The Bad

In a Google search for Blog Traffic Techniques, I find the Blog Traffic Techniques Digg page listed #3 of 520,000 Google results.

#3 on page 3 of Google results is a “Friendfeed” url that links to Blog Traffic Techniques through Social Median.

And yesterday was the most visitors my blog has ever had in 1 day - 93. But the BTT page itself is not listed in the first 5 pages of Google results. Time to play detective. I’ll keep you posted on what I find …

The Good
I guess in some cases, Google has to think on it awhile. On the Google Drools page, I listed 2 articles of 20 I submitted as getting no Google listing in the first 3 pages of results. Take a look at them now:

Branding Promotion Methods - now #1 of over 27 million results!

Free Blog Marketing Ideas - now #1 of over 11 million results.

Definitely brightened my day.

The Ugly
Did I ever mention that my friends now call me “Scarface” … just like Al Capone? Long story, but I definitely earned that nickname. I’ll tell you about it sometime.

Richard

If you’ve done an analysis of Google Drools, you know we have a content advertising system that can get #1 rankings on Google searches almost at will. Some search engine results really tickle me. Click on this writing niche article I submitted a couple days ago:

Plan for Writing Good Articles

It’s #1 on Google … against over 30 MILLION competing pages! But I digress.

A big part of my productivity optimization plan has been to post unique, targeted articles at a popular website with a proven strong connection to Google - like EzineArticles.com. Ultimately, you want to build your blog into that type of high quality, interactive, authority website, with lots of inbound links.

As with any marketing promotion, this one needs to be tested and measured and proven. Recently, I’ve seen a not-very-well-known blogger get high Google rank on a moderately competitive keyword by publishing a simple post with (1) good latent semantic indexing and (2) a keyword-rich title.

That tactic is pretty exciting, because those 2 performance factors are certainly the easiest to achieve. Becoming a visible and recognized authority website with a ton of inbound links will definitely take longer. If you can skip that qualification, then you can have profitable results much sooner.

And that’s the focus of this post. My blog is certainly not a branded authority resource to Google. Net Traffic Machine is still only a couple months’ old. It only has a couple dozen posts.

And so THIS post is a mission to test whether NTM can achieve high Google rank for the keyword phrase blog traffic techniques. Can this signature blog content beat out 681,000 other references for top rank for this keyword phrase? If so, that is a strong indication that ranking success can come much quicker than anticipated.

Also … the importance of a high Google listing is that:

1. You’re not paying for it, because you’re showing up in natural search, not Google Adwords.
2. The prospects who find you are pretty much your perfect audience, because you have chosen a title that demonstrates exactly what you offer them, and they are searching for that exact product or service, or something very close to it. Sounds to me like a match made in heaven.

Why This Blog Title?
Look at this data for Google searches done today (3/23/09):

Raw Results is a normal Google search for the phrase. These results contain the search words somewhere on the results page.
Exact Match means the keyword phrase was searched with quotation marks, pulling up only pages containing that exact phrase.

Conclusions:
Consider the statistics difference between “blog traffic” and the others. Obviously, more pages will contain your 2-word phrase than your 3-word phrase. Plus … more searchers will enter a 2-word phrase than a 3-word phrase. The shorter your keyword phrase, the more searchers you’ll appeal to … but the more competition you’ll have, and the more difficult it will be to be ranked on the first page of Google results. There is no chance I’d get 1st page Google results for “blog traffic.” But choosing “blog traffic techniques” thins out the competition, but still gives me a short phrase that is likely to result in substantial popular searches.

And it’s not like the competitors are a bunch of rabid football fans or political strategists or underwater basket weavers. THESE people are webmasters and online marketers. These guys know the difference between Cpanel and HTML and RSS and SEO. They’ve studied and often gotten very good at optimizing their website traffic.

But my thinking is that there is less competition for this keyword phrase than several others on the list. So I’ll test this one first … then, if successful, go after the others one-by-one.

Optimizing the Article
I feel like I’ve talked Latent Semantic Indexing to death. If you haven’t heard the audio Google Drools, then opt-in to the right of this post, get a copy of the audio, and listen to it.

There’s just no debate that Google really values proper LSI in your articles. You can’t do keyword stuffing (many repetitions of the same keyword) - you’ll get penalized for that. But using a number of closely related words in your articles is an effective way of demonstrating to Google that this is an authority article.

Creating The Buzz
The Net Traffic Machine website was inspired by Charles Heflin’s work at Social Media Science. Charles has developed software to make it easy to promote your blog posts through social networks, getting more attention. If you haven’t read Charles’ Syndication Revelation, I highly recommend it.

So … I’m targeting this blog post for a high Google rank for the phrase blog traffic techniques. Stay tuned over the next couple weeks to see how this all works.

Richard Dennis

Oh, I’m computer literate, I suppose. But no whiz, that’s for sure. Too old for that.

I had been blogging for a long time when my buddy Charles Heflin looked at my blog one day and said, “You know, Richard … you ought to use graphics in your posts.”

And in fact, I did know that. But I’m not a techie. How could I possibly do it?

Turns out I already had the Wordpress plug-in that makes it easy:

Tiny MCE Advanced Wordpress plug-in

When you upload this plugin to your blog, it’s easy to feature graphics.

So, which graphics?

Well … mostly I like to lighten things up a bit. I prefer cartoons. And I just found a great source of colorful cartoons you can use for your blog graphics:

Bucchino - The Wizard of Draws

The cartoon at the start of this post is an example of his work. You need to link to his website, but just add that link in your list of Resources, and you’re free to use any of his hundreds of cartoons.

It’s a good thing.

Richard Dennis

It’s YOUR blog. You need to take charge from the start. If you follow this short guideline, you can be the Mad Scientist and create your own winning formula.

Almost nobody comes to your website ready to buy. Heck, these days, they need a darned good reason to even give you their contact information. They’ve already signed up for ten tons of worthless, time-wasting stuff online. You’ve got to make their eyes pop to have any impact whatsoever.

And that job is up to your website content. Your visitors are looking for help when they come to your blog. If your blog post is designed to make a sale, you have missed your visitors by a mile. They are nowhere near buying.

So you’ve got to entertain, enlighten, and/or educate. Tell them something that’s valuable to them, something they don’t already know, something that makes them say, “Oh, really?”

Recent studies have shown that a vast majority of visitors to old-style sales pages hit the “Back” button immediately. If you try to sell them on your blog, check your stats. You will see a too-high number of “bounces” (people who land on your site and go away immediately). They’ll go someplace else to find the answers they’re looking for, since they can’t get any help from you.

First, you need to really understand your prospect. What really motivates them? What do they love? What do they hate? What questions do they need answered more than anything?

Next, the best strategy to create content that searcher-prospects will salivate over is to REALLY narrow your focus. Take what you know about your prospects’ motivations and create your own very small speciality area of focus where you can be an uber-expert. Set up a Feed Reader to bring you all the research you need, and publish the best stuff on your blog.

You need to really picture the value you can provide your site visitors. Never in human history has there been so much information available. Most people, even those who know what they want, get totally overwhelmed in a hurry. If you get good at searching through lots of stuff and finding what they really, really want, then you have performed a huge service … and they won’t forget you.

“Louis, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”
– Humphrey Bogart to Claude Rains; last line of Casablanca

Richard Dennis

Let’s get rid of the nervousness & insecurity today. In a couple hours, you can just lie in the sun and snooze out, let lots of experts find the good stuff for you, and then, once you wake up, just snap up whatever great pieces you see that make  your mouth water.

Do you have a Google Feed Reader? If not, go to your Google account and click on “Reader” to set it up.

A friend of mine, Jennifer Billy, wants to do a blog on how to save money at home by couponing and other means. She came up with a list of a dozen keywords. Her next step is to take one keyword at a time and start Google searching like this:

• saving money +blog
• couponing +blog
• stay-at-home-mom +blog
• etc., etc., etc.

Pick the term that’s most real to you and start with that search. Look at 15-20 blogs in that category. This is your research. When you see a blog that’s really good, great info, very useful to you and to your market, sign up for their RSS feed (usually an orange & white button on the right-hand side of the page). You’ll have the option to have it come to your Google Reader, and that is what you want.

You need to wind up with at least 50 active blogs that you really like, plugged into your feed reader. So everytime one of “your researchers” posts something, you will get it within minutes.

What that means is you have all the research you could ever possibly need for your blog project, coming to you for free every day. You will get 100 times more ideas than you could ever possibly write about.

And there goes the nervousness and insecurity.

This step is absolutely key to your success. Get this done before you do anything else. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

Richard

I’m kind of dropping down into uncharted territory here.

I’m hopeful that the video I’ve just added to the top of the right column of this page will help visitors get a complete idea of what Net Traffic Machine offers and help those who want to learn to build a following online to make a quick decision whether or not they can get help here.

And as with everything else I do here, it’s a model for you. Stats show that visitors stay at your website longer when they can immediately view a video. And other stats show that the longer visitors stay, the more profitable your site has a chance to be.

So … whether you have experience with video or not … it’s something you need to learn about, and it’s one of the subjects we’ll be talking about here.

Anyway, I would like to hear from you. I am a marketer, and so I’d like to know any negatives that video leaves you with, as well as any positives. Marketing is all about learning from mistakes and getting better. I will absolutely ALWAYS tell you exactly what I think about your website. Please do the same for me. If you find the video boring, by all means, say so. Just use the “Comments” button below.

Thanks so much.

Richard Dennis

Not a pretty thought, is it? We set a record low for the date of 14 degrees last night at the Tallahassee airport. I sure wouldn’t want my car to veer off the road and plunge into the lake in THIS weather.

Or - actually - any other weather.

And what if that car was your blog? You sure don’t want your blog drowning, either. And that graphic you see might actually help you keep your blog afloat & effective.

Studies show there’s a big advantage, consistently, to including a graphic in your blog post. More people will start to read the post, and more will finish it. With a WordPress blog, it’s easy to add a graphic in your post.

Now … about graphics.

You can’t just right-click and “Save” any graphic you see online. Most of them are copyrighted.

However, there are some really good online sources of graphics. These 3 all have free graphics and some also have pay-for graphics, that you may find worthwhile:

IStockPhoto

Public-Domain-Photos

WPClipart

You can find a lot of other resources for free images here:

Wikipedia

If you don’t know how to post a photo in your wordpress blog, look here:

how do I post a photo in my wordpress blog?

Read the listings and choose one to try.

If you have any questions or comments, just click on the “Comments” button below. Hope you enjoy and use these great resources.

Take care,

Richard Dennis

I like a Wordpress blog for a lot of reasons. There are so many ways you can personalize a Wordpress blog, so many ways you can leverage the power of that website … all while having zero or very little technical knowledge yourself.

You want a Wordpress blog on your own webspace - not the one hosted by Wordpress. If they host it, they have control over it. And we have seen them simply delete blogs, seemingly on a whim. You sure don’t want to put yourself in that position.

So, I recommend getting webspace at Hostgator.com, for ten bucks a month. You get a lot more space than you’ll probably ever use, plus you can put up 50 blogs if you want to, each with its own domain name.

What I especially like about Hostgator is that in their Back Office, you can do a keyword search for just about any online action you want to perform and find a video on how to do it. Their videos will walk you step-by-step through anything you want to do with your webspace. And if you still have trouble, just make out a “trouble” ticket. They always respond within a few hours.

One reason I like a Wordpress blog so much is … Wordpress themes. Because Wordpress is an “open source” software program, lots of people create themes for WP blogs. A “theme” is the appearance of the blog

• What does the header look like?
• Is there a gizmo column on the left or a gizmo column on the right … or both?
• What color combination does the blog use?
• What fonts?
• Etc., etc., etc.

The attractiveness and appeal of a blog has a lot to do with the theme you choose. Does it appear cluttered? Or is it more like sitting by the ocean, listening to the waves lap up on the shore?

It just makes a big difference what the darned thing looks like, no matter which blog platform you choose. But with WP, a ton of themes are free and easy to load into your blog.

You can just go to Google and search

free Wordpress themes

You get a ton of results. Take a look at a few and see what appeals to you.

I admit to being a theme junkie. I’ve tried a lot of them. I find things I like and things I don’t like about each. But for the forseeable future, I have settled on my favorite over all the others I’ve tried …

Flexibility Theme

I like it because “flexibility” is its middle name. Well, technically, “flexibility” is its first name. You have lots of different options within the theme. Heck, you even get a control panel just for this theme. It’s the first theme I’ve ever found with its own control panel … althought I’m sure there must be others. You can control & experiment with a lot of elements in the appearance of your blog.

There are also paid themes available. Here’s one I really like:

Thesis

Looks great, lots of gizmos, well-supported, about $90.

Back in high school, I read a short story by Ernest Hemingway titled, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Hemingway blew his brains out long before anyone conceived of the internet, but his short story title perfectly describes what your blog should look like. Anything less, and you will not create the impression you want your visitors to have.

Many themes you’ll find have names that describe what they’re like: magazine theme, church theme, diary theme, blue theme, etc.

Ultimately, it’s the content you offer that will determine whether your blog is successful or not. But people do often judge a book by its cover, so it’s important your theme’s appearance not be a turn-off. I strongly recommend you do that Google search and look at a lot of themes, to get an idea what others are doing.

When you set up your blog using Cpanel at Hostgator or other hosting services, your blog is formatted in the Wordpress Classic theme. Nothing wrong with that … but it’s pretty common and pretty uninspired and doesn’t have too much functionality. Yet, many bloggers just stick with it.

But there is a whole world out there, outside of WordPress Classic. You can find a dozen you like and upload them all to your blog, then sample and see what your blog looks like in each theme. So take a look and make some inspired choices.

Richard Dennis