Blog Marketing Journal


Monthly archives for January, 2008

Does Buying Traffic from Blog and Website Services Help?



There are many blog and website services that sell traffic. In fact, they offer traffic that is dedicated to your niche. The question is, is it worth the money? Let’s dispel a few myths first.

1 – Buying traffic is a useful blog SEO tactic that can increase your Alexa Rank. This may be so, but only if the traffic coming in has the Alexa toolbar installed. I also question why you need your Alexa Rank low. Generally speaking it is your PR that matters, not your Alexa and your Alexa rank will not affect your PR.

2 – Buying traffic is a useful blog marketing tactic that increases your income. Generally speaking, most traffic programs are either paid per visit or free traffic in return programs. The surfer often ‘surfs in the background’. In other words they go about their normal internet business with the traffic program running in the background. They hardly see the page they are visiting let alone the contents. Those that do look at the contents are generally waiting for the timer to count down before moving on to the next page. They certainly don’t stop to buy or click an ad that takes them away from their click program.

3 – Buying traffic can increase your backlinks. I refer to my previous observation. The surfer is only interested in getting to the next page – not linking to your page.

Buying traffic can often be money down the drain. With few exceptions it doesn’t lead to any increase in revenue, links or Page Rank improvement. I can only think of one situation where I would consider buying traffic. That is if I needed to boost my daily visitor numbers sufficiently that I could obtain a higher price for my ad space. That really needs a campaign over several months – not several weeks.

If you are considering buying traffic, think carefully about the outcomes you are trying to achieve. Often there are far more economical ways of increasing traffic and with it revenue. There are many blog and website services that can help develop backlinks and effective marketing programs. Your dollars may be better spent with them.

Posted in Blog Marketing - Tagged Blog and webservices, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO
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Blog Marketing Tip: Are you Wasting Your 404?



This is an unusual blog marketing tip, but one that is probably not utilized by most bloggers. For the initiated, this may serve as a reminder, for every one else, you are probably asking – what is a 404?

You have probably come across 404′s before – it is simply a page not found error – and a very frustrating error. Think about it. You click on a link and get an error message. The page cannot be found. What have you done in this situation? Clicked refresh just in case; hit the back button; or just moved on? The majority of people just move on. If that was your page, you have just lost a visitor and every visitor is a potential customer.

How do you resolve the problem. For the big time bloggers, their 404 Page Not Found is a blessing – they use it to promote their main pages, their affiliate pages or their products. The easiest solution is to make sure that every link is unbroken and does not result in a 404. It is always good to have a backup for those times when you cannot repair the link, for example, a link that is normally unbroken is temporarily broken due to server errors.

It is very easy to redirect your Page Not Found to any page that suits. I will concentrate on WordPress, however the concepts are the same for any blogging package. Before moving on, a blogging tip for everyone – make a backup of the file you intend making any changes to.

WordPress normally has a file aptly named, 404.php. To redirect the browser to a page of your choice, open the 404.php for editing and add the following:

<?
header ("Location: http://your page url/");
?>

Replace the ‘your page url’ with the url of the page you want to have displayed. The best choice is either to redirect to your very best post or back to your home page. Even better, if you have the skills, is to have a dedicated page that advises the visitor that the page requested is not currently available, has a search option to find similar pages, at the same time promotes who you are, you current posts, products or services. This WordPress tip is very straightforward. For those using other platforms it is just a matter of finding your 404 file in your blog design and making the adjustments.

As a marketing tool, the 404 Page Not Found error should never be wasted – it is an opportunity to promote your business.

Posted in Blogging Tips - Tagged Blog Design, Blog Marketing, blogging tip, WordPress tip
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