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

OK. I am pumped! Come on, world, let’s get ready to rumble!

Eight days ago, I published a blog post with a targeted keyword phrase headline, Blog Traffic Techniques. (Don’t you love the “Einstein” caveman graphic?) I challenged myself to use latent semantic indexing  to boost the article to first page of Google results for that search term (blog traffic techniques).

I’ve had many #1 search rankings using this strategy with the article directory EzineArticles.com. But this is different. Net Traffic Machine is just me, not a network. It’s sure not a household name to Google. This blog has been active for 3 months. Definitely not an authority site, and probably not first-page worthy content in Google’s deep blue (robot) eyes.

Look. I don’t claim to understand how the Google spiders work, or how Google algorithms measure and brand a website in credibility or authority, or what the page rank strategy is. I’m totally mystified about many things connected with search engine optimization. For instance …

Why did a Google search show 681,000 results for blog traffic techniques on March 24, but today (April 2), the same search returns 581,000 results? Beats me.

By the way … teeheehee … guess whose blog post is #1 for this search phrase on Google today? YES YES YES YES!!

No contest. Holy crap, I get excited over this digital marketing SEO promotion stuff. (Do I sound like a schoolgirl?)

In Blog Traffic Techniques, I wrote about the productivity tactics I’d be using to try to capture a #1 Google ranking from my blog. I mentioned that my blog isn’t exactly an authority site in Google’s eyes. Don’t believe me? Do a Google search for backlinks to this website:

links:nettrafficmachine.com

The Google results page shows 340 links right now … but that isn’t accurate. If you click down at the bottom on page 3 of Google results for this search, the links end there. There are actually 25 inbound links to Net Traffic Machine.

That’s not much.

And you know what? If you join Charles Heflin’s Social Media Science member site and use his Synnd software, I’ll bet after a half dozen of your posts have been bookmarked, you’ll probably have 25 natural incoming links, too. Maybe a lot more.

OK. I’m very excited because it looked like this test was an interactive failure, which is what I expected. After 6 days, I quit checking. Today, on day 9, I googled again … and voila!

blog traffic techniques

We’re Number ONE!

And that’s not all. When I search

blog traffic

there are 46,600,000 results … and my page is #18 on Google. The competition for a keyword phrase like blog traffic is incredible … the best of the best want that one. To reach page 2 of Google results there is … surprising.

OK. So I can get one of my blog posts ranked #1 for a term that a lot of people would love to be ranked #1 for, against approximately 581,000 other results. And #18 against 46 million results for an even better keyword phrase. Sweet marketing success.

The tactics and tools performed. So now we need a real challenge. A bit of theme research turns up a chance to take on the poster child for blogging!

Ever hear of Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.com? Beautiful website. I’ll bet you’ve seen it. Darren is one of the most famous bloggers online. The guy is a content creation animal. He gives value, value, value, every time he posts. I’ve received his newsletter and downloaded a couple of his freebies. In my dreams, I’m Darren Rowse. (In my dreams, I’m 25 years younger.)

So … very popular guy, very popular website. Every blog post he makes gets a ton of global trackbacks and over 100 comments … I see one post with over 700 comments! To Google, it doesn’t get more authoritative than Darren Rowse & ProBlogger.com.

Now … the title of this post is Blog Promotion. When I Google blog promotion today, Darren’s posts are #1 & #2 out of more than 20 million results.

Number 9 on the first page of Google results is DuctTapeMarketing.com, website of John Jantsch, another popular, successful, well-known internet marketer.

I guarantee you there are plenty of people on this Google results page who have spent years getting good at this stuff, who Google really views as authority websites & blogs.

What chance does Net Traffic Machine have?

Well … here’s today’s money game strategy:

1. I’ve chosen a very competitive 2-word keyword phrase title, Blog Promotion.
2. This post has a bunch of LSI words (related to both “blog” and “promotion”).
3. I’ll be farming out the bookmarking again to the Social Media Science Synnd social networking system community. We’ll  see what kind of commotion they can kick up.

I confidently GUARANTEE you I’ll lose this one. But you know what? You & I should both be 100% thrilled if this post can get #10 on the first page of Google. What that would mean for me & for you is that with a little bit of smart work, we can compete with the REALLY big boys in this game.

Wouldn’t THAT be sweet?

My goal is to use this simple system to consistently produce pages that get ranked at the top of page 1 of Google search results. And if I can do that, you can, too.

Are you excited yet?

I’ll keep you posted on the results.

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

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

Google and the other search engines want 3 things from you:

1) They want relevant, authority articles …

2) … with relevant, authority titles …

3) … posted on a relevant, authority website.

Let’s take these in reverse order. Today, we’ll talk about that relevant, authority website.

If you look at a lot of search results, there are some websites that come up again and again and again. For instance:

• EzineArticles.com
• Squidoo.com
• ArticlesBase.com
• and several others (do some title searches and you will find them)

Why is this? Why does Google bow to these URLs as authority sites?

I think the answer is very simple: They have many tons of incoming deep links. In other words, people not only link to EzineArticles.com, but they link to thousands of individual page URLs in hundreds of different categories at EzineArticles.com. To Google, that removes any doubt that EzineArticles is a valuable authority website.

Does Google see your blog as an authority? Maybe, if you’ve done a lot of work promoting it. Probably not, though. Not yet, anyway. You can certainly build it to an authority over time - that is the objective of Net Traffic Machine, to help you do that.

But if you’re not there yet, then where do you start? I’d suggest you start with one of these websites Google already knows and trusts explicitly, like EzineArticles.com.

Choose a category and subcategory in which to publish your articles, and then focus on that sub-category. If you follow this formula, you’ll not only draw traffic from visitors to EzineArticles.com, but your articles will be ranked on the first page of Google results for years, and you’ll get organic search traffic from Google & the other search engines.

At the same time, also publish good stuff on your blog. That way when someone reads your article at EzineArticles.com, and they use your Author’s Resource box to click through to your blog, they conclude that you are a valuable resource for them, and they put your blog on their Feed Reader, so they come back again and again and again. This dedicated following will ultimately result in more deep links to articles on your blog, which will, over time, catch Google’s attention and get your blog labelled as a relevant, authority website.

Next time, we’ll talk about titles.

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

See that picture? That’s Alcatraz. If you use the social media wrong, you may as well be in Alcatraz. That’s how much chance you’ll have of building a good presence online.

You have no doubt seen many, many examples of social media online. This blog is social media. MySpace, Facebook, Digg … all social media where people get together and communicate with each other … as opposed to a static, never-changing webpage.

In many of these media, when you fill out your first form, their #1 question is something like: Are you here for

• friends?
• relationships?
• networking?
• dating?

The idea is to help tag you for others. It’s also a lesson to you about why people are there. It’s helpful to understand the “social media mindset.”

People come to these sites for friends, relationships, networking, & dating. That’s interesting. Do you notice that one category not here is …

to be advertised to

No one goes to a social media website to be advertised to. They didn’t go to MySpace so that you could change their life. No one filled out a Facebook profile hoping you would show up and preach to them about how much you love some product or company. They didn’t go out on a quest to find a bunch of people they don’t know and will probably never meet and yet, those people ask them for money.

THAT is definitely not the purpose of joining a social networking website. They don’t show up, hoping to be hammered into submission. And yet … and yet … I sure see a ton of people trying to do just that.

If you try that, the game is over. They click away. It’s not what they want. You go someplace else. And yet I see it all over - Facebook pages, Myspace, blogs. You see people who have a company logo as their photo. Or they have a product as their photo.

Let’s review …

Networking. Friends. Relationships. Dating.

To be advertised to?

NO!!! Who wants to network with a company logo? Who wants a relationship with a company logo? Who wants to date … well, you get the idea.

The value of the social media is in building relationships. And what we have found … I work closely with Charles Heflin at SEO2020.com, presenting the Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine for you to assemble and use … what Charles has found over the years in his testing is, the social media don’t really give you very good leads.

Is that a bummer or what, after all the time & effort you’ve put into it?

You can certainly get site visitors from the social media, but that is not where you get your best prospects.

However … if you tightly define what your target market wants and then do your research and uncover content your target market will really value … and you link to it in your social media … then people will connect with you. They will want to build a relationship with you, because you give value. They’ll link back to you. And they’ll promote your links to others in your target market, who will also link back to you.

You can get a lot of inbound links to your blog (Central Hub) by promoting other people’s great content from your social media sites. And as far as Google and MSN and Yahoo & the other search engines are concerned, nothing impresses them more about a website than inbound links. THAT is a site they will rank high.

So you’ll get more searches. And you’ll get more click-throughs, more people to your blog. And those are REAL prospects, people who have been searching keyword terms appropriate to your target market. Those visitors are way more valuable than the ones who come straight from the social media. But … you made use of the social media to find them. That is how it ties together.

One more time. The social media mindset is, people come to your blog (Central Hub) to be entertained, educated, enlightened. They are NOT looking to be hammered into submission. They are not looking for a salesperson.

They are looking for someone they can trust. That is key. They are on the lookout for good people in their niche to build relationships with. They want to find specialists in their niche, people who share their interest, people they can learn from.

Let that be YOU! Let someone else go to Alcatraz.

Richard Dennis

Your Central Hub needs great pollination … lots of bumblebees who will take your content again and again and spread it everywhere they go.  How do you find those bees? How do you get them to your blog?

One of the content syndication tools I’ve used over the years has been EzineArticles.com. You can become a published author very easily at lots of different article directories, but I’ve never found any that come close to the results I get from EzineArticles. It’s definitely the Big Dog of article directories.

They currently have just under 150,000 authors right now.

150,000 authors!!!

All of them publishing articles. Now, I’m sure the vast majority have just a single article. On the other hand … lots of authors have dozens of articles. Many have published hundreds of articles.

In fact, as I write this blog post … there are currently more than 80 authors who have each written & published over 1,000 articles at EzineArticles.com!!

In other words, this is a website with tons of content. The value to you is, each article gets read by people. And in each article, you put an author’s resource box at the end, with a link to your website. So if they like your article, they’ll click through to visit your site. And some of them will drop into your Sales Funnel, whatever your process is. Whatever action you want people to take, some of them will.

Now … Ezine Articles is a free tool for you. The owner is Chris Knight. And the purpose of the website is, Chris Knight advertises on your articles. He runs Google Adsense and other ads on your articles. So it’s a big profit generator for him, because he has so many articles and so many visitors. You don’t pay anything, but you are giving him free content, building his income, in exchange for the targeted eyeballs he can provide.

Ultimately, you want to build your own future and build yor own income, and be in Chris Knight’s position, where you have others helping you build your resource. That is one of your goals for your blog, your Central Hub, to be in that position. Entice visitors to bring their friends. Get them to be part of your community and share their own thoughts and experiences on your blog in the comments section. Your blog becomes like a little cross-section of Ezine Articles.

The other advantage of EA is, Google loves it. If you target one keyword phrase in an article, your article will often get first-page listing in Google for that phrase. Which means, of course, that searchers of that phrase will click your link and go to your website … more new targeted traffic.

You can’t publish the same article article both in EA and on your blog, because you’ll shoot yourself in the foot (visitors want to see new stuff on your blog). And once you have your content syndication really working, it’s time to publish strictly to your blog and put all your great content there. But getting those visitors in the first place may well make it worthwhile for you to publish to EA.

It’s really important to build your own future and your own steady stream of new traffic. So your eye to the future is always to publish almost all of your stuff on your own Central Hub. The more you do, the more valuable resource you are building for other people … and the more attractive your website will be to your target market.

No matter what changes there are in your business life, so long as there is a strong market for this resource you have created, you’ll be in good shape long-term. And the long-term view is the most important one to always consider.

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

See that sunrise? It’s the start of a glorious day. Reminds me of Wordpress.

I don’t mind telling you, I love Wordpress.

I am that analytical personality … in areas where it’s fun for me to be analytical. When it comes to writing, I am very detail-oriented. I have to stop myself from investigating every nook and cranny when I’m working on an assignment … or I will happily research forever. A famous writer once said that a book is never finished, it is only abandoned. It’s true for a lot more than just books …

However, I am NOT at all analytical in areas where it’s not fun for me. Like putting up a website, for instance. Yes, I’ve forced myself to learn some HTML code over the years. But I hate it.

I’ve actually put up some rudimentary websites, from scratch. But I hate it.

I’ve even answered questions from those who know even less than I do about putting up a website. I REALLY hate that!

And all this is why WordPress is my darling. It is now so versatile, you can do just about anything with it, and all you need to do is learn which buttons to click. No techie stuff.

I LOVE that!

I recently took a course from Dr. Andy Williams, lessons about how to do virtually anything with Wordpress. OK, it got borderline techie, but I still put up with it. I understand a lot more now about how to use the software, and that should definitely get better results. Here is a recent article from Dr. Andy about Wordpress. Be sure to watch the video, too:

Is WordPress The Ideal Site-Building Tool?

Maybe the most intriguing feature of WordPress is, it is “open source”, which means anybody can take the software and modify it. And a ton of people have created modifications - also known as “plug-ins”, to do a host of really valuable tasks.

My blogs now use about 15 or 20 plug-ins to make promotion much easier and to make writing much easier … or entering a graphic or a video or audio.

It’s very frustrating when you know what you want to do, but you don’t know how. With Wordpress, I run into that problem very rarely.

My conclusion is, whatever you want to do online, you can do it with a WordPress blog. Get your domain name at NameCheap. Get your webspace at HostGator. And then find the video in the HostGator Back Office that shows you in 2-3 minutes how to put up your Wordpress blog, and you will be on your way.

Some people think that because they are not analytical personalities, this will be very difficult for them. Believe me - I am NOT an analytical personality when it comes to putting up a web page.

If I can do it, you absolutely can do it.

Richard Dennis