A key component to your blog’s success is getting organic traffic from people searching for what you’re writing about. Whether you write about a passion, your industry, or product reviews, getting targeted organic search engine traffic will help you get more unique visitors and earn more money.

In this article, I outline exact how to write blog posts (and even pages) and rank well in search engines for any topic. The steps and tips in this article are largely based on a cool plugin I use called SEOPressor, which helps me follow all these rules every time I write, without ever having to think about it. Without SEOPressor, I would barely have a clue on how to rank my content for myself or my clients.

Know Your Target

What this post will not help you do is identify your target audience or keywords. If you’re writing to rank for something, you should already know what you’re trying to rank for. Decide on your keywords and phrases. Keep in mind, the longer and more specific the phrase is, the easier it will be to rank for it. You can use tools like Google Adwords keyword tool to do this kind of research. I won’t go into much detail here as researching keywords and phrases and identifying your target market merits an entire article in itself.

With that said, here are the key points and steps to keep in mind when writing your content. Remember, SEOPressor literally makes the steps below a total breeze.

Headings With Keywords

You want to ensure that your keywords are somewhere within your header tags. You actually have to get quite specific here…

Ensure that you have your keywords in your H1 tag – this is like your title.

Have your keywords in your H2 tag – this can be any heading in your content.

Have your keywords in your H3 tag – this can be any sub-heading in your content.

You might think: If heading tags with keywords help rank my content, why don’t I just put ALL my content with keywords in h3 or something instead of a paragraph?

Simple, because Google will know what you’re trying to do, and there goes your ranking. They figured that one out many years ago.

This can be easy to forget, which is why I recommend SEOPressor so you never have to remember.

Keyword Density

You want to make sure you fall within the ideal keyword density of the terms you are trying to rank for. This means that you keywords or phrases should appear a certain amount of times throughout your content for it to rank well – not too little, not too much.

The ideal keyword density is 2% – 5%.

This means if you have a 200 word blog post, you should have your keywords appear 4 – 10 times. With any less, you’re not significant enough… with anymore, Google might think you’re sketchy.

This occasionally takes some basic math. Take your word count and divide it by the amount of times you mention your keyword phrase. You can see your Word count at the bottom of your post while writing:

Again, SEOPressor does this for you, so you never have to do any counting or even have to remember it.

Another tip on this: size does matter. There’s no specific rule for this, but generally a 600 – 800 word article will do better than a 400 word article. SEOPressor checks article length for you as well.

Optimize Your Images

You want to include your keyword or phrase in any images on your site. You do this by clicking the edit image icon and adding your keyword to “Alternate Text.”

SEOPressor will not only remind you to do this, it will actually do it for you automatically… so you never really have to think about it.

Underline and Italics On Keywords

It’s important that you underline your keywords something and put italics on them. Do the underline and italics for two separate occurrences of the keywords.

Again, SEOPressor to the rescue. Not only will it remind you, it will actually do it for you.

SEOPressor Will Rock Your World

The real key to powerful SEO is automating the process. SEOPressor does all the stuff above, and so much more, for you.

Check this out:

It literally checks everything for you, and a bunch of this stuff for you automatically. It even gives you an overall “SEO Score” and measures your keyword density. All you have to do is type in your keyword or phrase and let SEO Pressor do all the work.

This is like having an SEO Export standing next to you while you write every post or page.

Actually, it’s like having that SEO expert edit your post for you without you thinking about it!

If you already have a bunch of content on your blog and don’t want to go back through each post individually, SEO Pressor actually has a tool that scores all your posts and pages and makes individual suggestions. Check this out:

SEOPressor is awesome for you if:

• You have a niche site or blog
• You have a personal passion site, and want people in your community to find you
• You have a virtual assistant that writes for you
• You are a professional SEO consultant
• You have a web design business or you freelance
• You are totally new, and want to start off right

Anyway, I can’t recommend this enough. It will boost your ranks and save you countless hours… and help you make a lot more money in the process.

Even when I’m not particularly writing to rank for anything, but just to share, I keep my SEOPressor score in mind. It’s hard not to, since it actually tells me on every post.

What’s this thing cost?

The single site version is only $47, but I wouldn’t recommend that you buy it.

I have the multi-site version, and always recommend that it’s the version everyone buy… unless you know for sure you’ll always only have one site and domain. I use it on all my own sites and my clients’ sites.

It also comes with a 7 day trial for $7, so you can play around with it before you make a final decision. Of course… you’ll probably end up keeping it because you’ll be hooked.

Once you get SEOPressor and automate your SEO, make sure you take these other SEO practices into account as well…

• Create relevant permalinks for your posts and pages. Don’t always just rely on the title.
• Create custom descriptions for your posts, you can use a plugin like All In One SEO to do this.
• Do some external SEO. Get backlinks. Comment on blogs. And more… we’ll have an entire post on this later as a complement to this one.
• Actually follow all the suggestions SEOPressor gives you. While it automates a lot, it also tells you what you can personally tweak to improve each post and page.

If you have any questions, please comment below! Note that I’m not an SEO expert… I seriously do rely on this SEOPressor plugin to do the hard work and “research” for me.

Even if you don’t automate and simplify this process with the plugin, I hope the tips and tricks in this post were valuable for you and serve your blog!

Instead of going into a crazy long lead in with this post, I figure I’ll just jump right in with the tips.

If there’s something you’ve tried, and it worked, leave it in the comments, and I’ll be sure to add it to the list.

Let’s make this the most epic traffic getting article on the web!

1. Write Guest Posts

Probe for the opportunity, do your research on the audience, and suggest a topic as part of your request for a guest posting opportunity.

2. Create Mind-Blowing Content

Minds are not blown by reiterating the same points everyone else is. If it’s the same thing everyone else is saying, make it your own by arguing, defending, or somehow adding to it.

3. Offer Freebies

Make sure what you’re offering is high quality, and make sure it’s something people can actually use. If it’s something with an already-established price, drop that information into the offer. If not, let them know how much it will cost, after the promotion is done. If simply coming to your site is all it takes to save them a possible $20 in the future, they’ll come just to be sure.

4. Create A Course

I’ve seen this done by dozens of different companies and it never gets old. Information is valuable. Entice readers with a series of posts, videos, or even automated emails teaching them something vital.

5. Interview Influencers In Your Field

By interviewing power players you are not only enhancing your existing audience’s experience of your site, but you’re building an important relationship with someone in your field. Not only that but a slice of their audience will come your way as well, to hear what their favorite guru shared with you.

6. Tweet Often

Automated content programs are great, and have their place, but since Twitter is a social arena the best way to get retweeted is to be yourself. Share your thoughts and allow Twitter to show a bit of who you are, and your followers will be more likely to want to read your latest post or watch your latest video, not to mention sharing it with their followers. It’s what friends do, right?

7. Don’t Neglect Your Facebook Page

Assuming you have already created a Facebook page for your business, make sure you use it. Add a “like” box to your site and encourage your fans to share with each other. And remember – Facebook isn’t anonymous. A simple, personal “thank you” to the folks who share will encourage them to share in the future.

8. Create Infographics

With sites like reddit, digg, and even 9gag.com, infographics can bring you a lot of traffic quickly. Why? Because people like to absorb information as rapidly as possible, and if that information is detailed or extensive, it’s easier to stay focused if there is a strong visual aspect.

9. Compile A Hack List

Everyone has a handful of tips or tricks that they use almost without realizing it. Focus on what you do differently from everyone else and make a short .pdf or e-book about it. It may be anything from organizing a home office to editing a video in less than X number of hours. Whatever it is, put it in a document and share it with people.

10. Create Helpful Tutorials

People love DIY videos, and it doesn’t matter at all what they are about, as long as you can speak knowledgeably on your chosen subject and be interesting. Chefs and crafters have been doing this for years, but why not create a five minute video showing a part of your day that is unique to your business?

11. Hold a Subscriber Contest

This can be a one-off or a regular contest for your audience that encourages them to bring people your way.
You can track links to see how many subscribers someone has referred, or you can just do it lottery style by offering a prize to a randomly-selected member once you’ve reached a certain subscriber count.

12. Use Sharing Plugins

I can’t imagine why, in 2012, people would still choose not to add social sharing buttons to their work. Maybe they just don’t like the way it looks. Aesthetics aside, you will do more harm than good by neglecting to provide these buttons, since people hate to click away from a page. If they want to share and you don’t give them an easy way to do it, they will either simply not share your work, or they’ll click over to Facebook to post the link themselves. And once they’re on Facebook, good luck getting their attention back on yourself.

13. Connect with Your Audience Via Podcast

For awhile, it seemed like everyone forgot about podcasting. But it’s on the rise again, and with good reason. Being able to subscribe to a podcast means your audience is connecting with your voice and hearing your thoughts, which keeps your words top of mind when they are in a position to recommend you to someone else.

14. Simplify Starting Points

There’s nothing worse than referring a friend or coworker to a site loaded with information and having to tell them, “To start, you’ll want to search for this post titled, I think it was… I can’t remember, something like—” Create a page that will act as a starting point to give visitors a frame of reference within your site, and create a page that is about you or your brand.

15. Create Your Own 404 Error Page

While you don’t want people to end up here on purpose, you also know it will happen every now and again. Instead of losing their interest with a dead-end “oops!” page, revamp the error page to suggest other core content. The most effective 404 pages I have seen offer a link to the “start here” page, core content, and an archive search tool.

16. Make The Most Of Signatures

When you send an email, is your site linked to your signature? When you communicate via email, each email is an opportunity to draw that person to your site. Plus, if your email is forwarded along or shared with colleagues, your link will be right there for them, too.

17. Highlight Popular Posts

Make it easy for your audience to find and share the posts that made them think of you. So much new traffic that comes from existing subscribers is because they’re’ talking about you. You have become relevant to their conversation. Don’t bring their conversation to a halt by making them dig through your site to find a link.

18. Build Backlinks

Easier said than done, this will usually require you to either a) purchase the link or b) build a relationship with the site you want the link from. A may be quicker, but B is the safest bet in terms of search rankings. Not to mention, building relationships with influential people is just as helpful to your business as a quality link is.

19.Optimize Title Tags

If you are trying to rank for certain keywords, make sure you’re using them properly for Google to notice them. Your title should be clear and concise, feature your keyword, and not be overly short or long. Try to keep it under 70 characters, maximum.

20. Optimize for Mobile

Smartphones make up approximately one quarter of all mobile usage. Common complaints smartphone users will make about a website are: clicking an external link to a site that redirects to a mobile homepage instead of the intended article, sites that do not resize or utilize scripting that is unusable on a smartphone, and sites built so poorly that even the desktop version doesn’t fit itself to a smartphone screen.

21. Create a Forum

Managing a community on your own website may be tricky, but paid dividends in keeping conversations alive at all hours of the day or night. It’s a great way to see what your audience is really like, and a fantastic source for content or inspiration.

22. Do Your Keyword Research

Google offers an easy to use keyword research tool to test competition for key terms. By researching during the content creation process you’ll be able to fill in the gaps for lesser-searched terms as well as pursue the #1 spot for more competitive words.

23. Advertise on Facebook

Facebook is expecting to reach one billion users by August. You can advertise to your target market for a few dollars per month.

24. Advertise using AdWords

Google is literally almost everywhere online.

25. Create a comprehensive list

Not only will lists get shared when they are initially posted, they will also continue to bring traffic over time provided they do not become outdated.

26. Leave Thoughtful Comments

Spark conversation. Get people thinking. You know, that sort of thing.

27. Open The Door For Real Discussion

Most people are pretty good at providing a call to action at the end of their post or video, but it’s rare that the post actually inspires discussion. Present a divisive situation, controversial information, or a stance where opinions vary wildly and provide links to more information or opposing viewpoints. Lead the conversation to an educated place and get beyond the simple, “What do you think?”-type call to action.

28. Ask For Tips Or Advice

If there’s one thing people will share even more willingly than their opinion, it’s advice. You don’t necessarily have to need their advice to ask for it.

29. Do A Compilation of Recommended Content

Bloggers and site owners with high traffic stats frequently provide a weekly content roundup. Check out sites like marksdailyapple.com or everywhereist.com to see examples of valuable information, briefly discussed and shared with the audience.

30. Create or Join Niche Groups

Forums, Facebook groups, off-Facebook social networks: get yourself out there, put a link to your stuff in your profile, and start meeting real people who are interested in the same things you are. If you can’t find a group, create one using Ning.com, or go local with Meetup.com

31. Comment Strategically

When you choose which websites to comment on, it’s not enough that they have a high follower count. You want to find sites that have consistently high comment counts, and only comment where you will provide value. “Great post!” is not something that inspires other commenters to click, but a thoughtfully presented piece of information definitely will pique their curiosity about who you are and what else you know.

32. Link to Others Strategically

When traffic comes in from a new source, most people don’t mind finding a context for a return link in a future post. When you select a site to link to, choose one that is well-trafficked and also somehow related to the information you are providing.

33. Be Audacious

State your beliefs boldly. Trying to please everyone will turn your readers off. The ones who believe what you believe will share your work because it’s in line with their own thoughts. That’s how you find the true evangelicals among your audience.

34. Take An Alternate Position

When content goes viral, there’s always a wave of dissenters. Be at their forefront by going toe-to-toe in the same way it’s presented. Be as funny, as engaging, but most importantly: be as informative as the original, and explain why it’s all wrong.

35. Create A Competition Between Yourself and Someone Else

It’s nice if they’re in on the gag, but they don’t have to be. Look at the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter follower competition, or the success of Regretsy as it takes on a one-sided fight with Etsy.com.

36. Tell A Story

In the rush to be entertaining and provide value, storytelling is a lost art. That’s exactly why it’s such a valuable tool to encourage sharing of your content: stories appeal to a wider audience than your niche.

37. Tell A Story With A Cliffhanger

Series posts are fascinating. Not only will cliffhangers keep your audience engaged and talking among themselves about what happens next, you’ll get more subscribers when people are afraid of missing something.

38. Do Research and Report Your Findings

Simply put, provide indisputable information that is of interest to your market and explain why this information should matter to them.

39. Debunk A Myth

There’s a reason mythbusters is such a popular television show. The internet has been around long enough that Old Wives’ Tales are starting to take hold in the collective subconscious. Choose one, experiment with it, share it.

40. Switch Posting Style

By switching up your posting style you’re inviting traffic from a whole new wave of people. Do you normally write? Try a video and get the YouTube audience on board. Do you normally podcast? Create an infographic and share it with image-based platforms.

41. Continue A Thought Started Elsewhere

Take a popular post from an influential figure and say, “What this posts neglects to mention is…” Talk about the effects of putting their information into practice, reveal the process that led to their conclusion, anything. Just add more.

42. Admit A Mistake

Did you design your website poorly? Run a bad ad campaign? Give false information unknowingly? Get on the wrong side of a debate? Talk it out.

43. Summarize What You’ve Learned Upon Reaching A Milestone

Milestones can be anything from the half-birthday of your blog to the 500th post, to the 10000th subscriber. Summarize the journey that took you from point A to point B and where you hope to go next.

44. Address A common Problem In Your Niche

Rampant bad information, poor customer service, Facebook timeline: find something you can all complain about together, but don’t just end there. Present a workable solution or lead a revolution to get people really invested in sharing your post.

45. Expose Little-Known Secrets Of Your Industry

This is not so much for the insiders in your industry, who will know these things already. This is for everyone else, because gossip sells.

46. Dissect A Popularly-Held Thought Or Trope Taught By Your Industry Leader

You can disprove their teaching if you want to, or simply provide your audience with more information on it. Just because the information is already out there doesn’t meant they’ve seen it already.

47. Write A Post That Exposes The Fruitlessness Of Certain Actions

By doing this you will help people avoid wasting time, which is incredibly valuable.

48. Address FAQs

By addressing FAQs you’re skipping the background information and providing people what what most of them really want to know. The bonus here is that this can become part of your site’s core content after it’s published.

49. Elevate Something “Good” to “Great” And Defend Its Title

You’ll see this done all the time with Twitter. Take something underappreciated or mundane and tell people why it rocks, and how to make it work harder for them than they ever imagined possible.

50. Select A Blog Theme For A Set Amount Of Time

You can choose to do a 7-day spread of a month-long run on a topic. By doing so you establish yourself as an authority and create a reliable stream of traffic during that time.

51. Host A Post “Carnival”

Get other bloggers involved in writing posts on a certain topic with round-robin links to the other posts. Typically the topic is posted a month in advance and as many bloggers as possible contribute their take on the matter. The hosting site publishes all the content (or the best of the best) and links to the authors, and the authors post their own and link to other posts on the hosting site for further reading

52. Trade Links With A Select Group

Introduce yourself and your reason for being online, and arrange a shared link-trade with other folks in your niche.

53. Sponsor Things

Sponsor a tweet-up, a free webinar, a charity event, sports team, or contest with a desirable prize.

54. Add An Unexpected Dimension To Your Site

This is a chance to have a little fun and share your creative side. Add your flickr stream, a playlist of the music you listen to while working, or a marketplace of odd items you’ve collected and are now selling.

55. Make The Value Obvious

Ever seen a headline and shared the info before you even had a chance to read it, because it was that important? Make it possible for people to do that for you by being sharp, specific, and useful.

56. Move Outside Your Circle

Once you’re established in a field it’s easy to share posts with, tweet to, and create content with the same handful of professionals. this is great at first, but stagnates quickly unless you are part of a well-known power team. if you aren’t gaining or maintaining traction, expand your circle to include new folks with new audiences.

57. Increase Visibility Rapidly

Set a goal of making a splash in a few different places within a set amount of time. Fifty guest blog posts in thirty days, a video marathon, name your own price consulting offers all work very well.

58. Reply To Everyone

Spammers aside, everyone who goes out of their way to contribute to your conversation deserves acknowledgment.

59. Cover An Event

If you can get to one of the cornerstone events that happen on a regular basis, do so and share it with your audience as it happens. make use of all the tools available, twitter, photos, video, and live-blogging to get as deep into the experience as possible.

60. Report Important News

It may seem like everyone is talking about the latest thing google did or the latest stats released by Facebook, but none of them are giving it your spin. Present the info to your audience and give a commentary on what it means for you, your audience, or the rest of the world and why exactly everyone is up in arms over it.

61. Compete With Yourself

People love to see limits pushed. Set a public goal (365 project, 1000 words per day for 30 days, a one-minute video every hour for 24 hours, etc.) and then execute.

62. Be Inspiring

Tell your audience about overcoming adversity, or the mindset necessary to do so. Encourage them to keep trying, or set up a challenge that they can use as motivation to complete something important.

63. Share The Love

Sharing the best comments you’ve received encourages more interaction as well as entertains your fanbase.

64. Share The Hate

People love a good beatdown, even better if it’s presented with a dose of good humor. It’s entertaining and gets people on your side.

65. Find Your Most Influential Sharers

Offer exclusive content or news to your most influential sharers to encourage them to be proactive on your behalf.

66. Write About Companies or People with “News” Scanners

Companies with alerts for links related to their content will frequently link back, share, and/or retweet articles where they are mentioned and linked to.

67. Take A Survey

People like giving feedback, moreso if there’s an incentive. Set up a poll or survey and ask participants to leave a comment or send a tweet with your hashtag as notification they participated. In exchange, select one at random to receive a “thank you” prize.

68. “Update” A Popular Post

The internet has ramped up the speed with which things go out of date, so update your own or someone else’s post trafficked post with refreshed stats, images, and research.

69. Increase Variety With Daily Posts

Assign a post style to each day of the week. You can classify posts by the kind of information you plan to provide (research, conceptual, review, news, reader-requested) or the format in which you present the information (article, video, podcast, infographic, link roundup.)

70. Post Free Reviews

Review a new tool or popular information source. Make sure your readers know it is done for their benefit, and isn’t a paid post.

71. Do a Sponsored Post

You can solicit these from companies with varying degrees of luck or have them requested of you, depending on your notoriety.

72. Use Something Beloved As A Metaphor

Was there a great toy in your childhood whose very mention makes you nostalgic? What about a television show, a fad item, or even a movie that’s popular now? Show your audience what there is to be learned from the lovable qualities of whatever you choose and gain a level of cult appeal with your post.

73. Introduce A Newcomer

Nothing moves you up the social hierarchy than being the one to introduce someone newer than yourself. Take an interest in the work of the newbies; not only can you collaborate as their career grows, but they and their fledgling network will appreciate the exposure.

74. Interview a Veteran Of Your Field

Do your research. Everyone asks how someone got their start, what they like and dislike about their job, and what they’re working on now. Read their blog, dig deep, and get information out of them that they don’t usually get a chance to share.

75. Interview Someone from “Behind the Scenes”

Your assistant has a different take on things than you do. The small business owner you buy your coffee from has learned a thing or two about marketing, longevity, customer service. Give voice to their unique perspective on your platform.

76. Be Brief

Lengthy posts (like reports, or lists) have their place, but on occasion it’s worth boiling your thoughts down to the most critical points. This is also a great way to be quoted more.

77. Start At The Begining

You may want to attract readers at or above a certain level in the field, and the best way to ensure you find them is to create them yourself. Start at the first step and invest time in teaching them along the way. Within a few months you’ll be writing at a higher level than anticipated, and the context for people to catch up will be in your archives.

78. Post On Weekdays

Web traffic is proven to be higher during the week, take advantage of the peak posting time.

79. Post On Weekends

Since so many sites only post during the week, your content will stand out more. Don’t cheat the weekend readers with weak information, but do aim for conciseness.

80. Invent Something Unique

My new favorite obsession is ZeFrank, who is constantly offering new games, softwares, songs, and generally just engaging his audience wherever they are.

81. Make Your Work A Game

Make a theme of an ongoing game (i.e. Social Media Bingo with a “board” made of stereotypes) and do a post for each square that deserves a mark.

82. Create A Game for Your Audience

Using the Social Media Bingo example referenced above, get your audience in on the game. Send them out as scouts for articles or information that can be used in the game and have them post it on your site to participate in the game.

83. Lead Up To A Great Reveal

More involved than a story with cliffhangers, this involves setting a phenomenal endpoint that will impress, intrigue, and help your audience. Seed posts to build anticipation, throw them slightly off the scent, keep them guessing.

84. Don’t Waste Time Waiting For Epic

“Epic” content is important but if you are only willing to share earth-shattering information, your blog will be silent a lot of the time. You need traffic between paradigm shifts, so I encourage you to pursue epic, but settle for extraordinary more often than not.

85. Use Analytics To Find Opportunities

Analytic software can tell you where your traffic is coming from. They provide this information because you are supposed to use it. You may be popular in a totally unrelated field, and that’s ok – play to those strengths to bring people into the fold.

86. Update Less Frequently

Updating frequently is great, when you’ve got a multi-author site (like this one) but if you’re just one person, don’t break your back trying to get posts out once or twice a day. Instead, follow the 80/20 rule. 80% promotion/20% creation. That way, people will actually see your work.

87. Use Links Wisely (i.e., Sparingly)

If you make your readers slog through three blog posts on other sites just to understand the context that you’re writing in, you’ll lose them. They’ll get distracted, bored, or run out of time. Provide enough information to express your point clearly, with links added for support or further reading.

88. Have Patience

Don’t constantly nag your audience to share, and don’t expect that traffic will spike to an all-time high overnight. If you look for results too soon, you’ll miss them as they’re happening.

89. Get On A Soapbox

Put your support behind a cause and tell people exactly why you feel the way you do. Passion is moving and engaging, whether it’s directly related to your usual content or not.

90. Show Folks A “Day In The Life”

There are a hundred ways to do this. A cartoon panel, youtube clip, time lapse video, photo album, a playlist of your typical day expressed in songs, or a sample of your schedule. Let your audience know you.

91. Explain Industry Terminology

If your niche has its own jargon, or uses common words in an atypical way, create a list of the top ten or twenty most commonly used and explain them for your audience.

92. Update Your Mission Statement

You may or may not have posted your initial mission statement on your blog or website, but don’t let that stop you. Update it with your new goals and let it open discussion with your readers.

93. Know Your Memes

Memes are an important part of internet culture, and no businessman is so serious that an internet denizen would question his participation in a popular meme. They’re entertaining and viral by nature, and seeing a normally serious person take part in some silliness is eye-catching.

94. Encourage Digging In Your Archives

Communication styles change over time. The way you blog or create videos now is different than it was a year ago. Find snippets that are funny, terrible, unexpectedly insightful, or straight up embarrassing and quote yourself.

95. Make Something “For Dummies”

Create an e-book or how-to video on how to accomplish a complicated task or how to digest and comprehend important information.

96. Install A Translator

Some browsers come with a built-in translator, but some don’t. Grab a plugin to reach an audience beyond your native tongue.

97. Answer Questions

Participate in advice forums, LinkedIn, Quora, even Yahoo Answers. Keep your answers concise so they pack a punch, and make sure your site is linked in your profile.

98. Say What Everyone Else Is Thinking

Pretty self-explanatory. People appreciate when someone else addresses the elephant in the room. Things that are glaringly obvious in their wrongness, but go uncorrected because of “etiquette” obviously need shaking up by someone daring.

99. Be Reachable

When you create an online presence you give people the impression you’re merely an email or tweet away. Do your best to actually be that available to your audience.

100. Be Ready To Capitalize On Your 15 Minutes

Have a plan for making the most of the traffic spikes when they come. Are you going to push for sales? Subscriptions? Shares? Will you thank each individual person who RTs or comments on your work? Nail down details and make your traffic increase permanent.

101. Leverage

Traffic is not a game that just “happens.” When something good happens, like a huge guest post, or a big time interview, use that to your advantage, and reach out to other BIG names that might find value from it, and ask if you can do the same for them. Everything is a springboard for something else, so always leverage everything you can.

Are you a good writer?

The answer to that question has never been more important. Between emails, text messages, and blog posts, we’re writing more than ever.

If you own your own website, you know that good writing means more search-engine traffic, more social shares, and ultimately more customers. Bad writing means being ignored.

Become a better writer with the 20 tips below:

#1 Read More

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

Stephen King

Don’t expect to be a great writer unless you’re familiar with great writing. Seek out writers that you admire and make reading their work part of your daily schedule.

Their skill with words will seep into your sub-conscious and start showing up in your own writing.

#2 Listen to “Writing Music”

Not all music is created equal. Some music makes you dance, some makes you cry, and some makes you write.

For me, slow-tempo piano compositions make for great “writing music”.

You can put together your own writing playlist to put you in the mood when you write, but you don’t have to. Click here to begin listening to an 8tracks playlist created specifically for writing (it will open in a new window).

#3 Know Your Audience

We’ve spent so much time thinking of writing as an abstract collection rules and principles that we sometimes forget that our words are eventually read by real people.

Ultimately, it’s our writing’s ability to communicate powerfully to these individual people that determines if it’s any good.

That’s why it’s important to learn as much as you can about the people who are reading your work. Find out their average age, gender, and location. More importantly, find out about their lifestyles, aspirations, and problems.

You can do this by putting a poll on your website or simply by following up with comments and retweets. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to help them.

Photo Courtesy of Anirudh Koul.

#4 Do Your Research

I’ve never liked doing research, but I’ve always liked the effect it has on my writing.

The better informed you are on your subject, the more informative and valuable your article can be. Research thoroughly and you’ll know just what to write for every section.

#5 Write with Confidence

Do you want to impact people with your writing?

Then be direct, passionate, and unyielding. Take a stand.

Don’t hedge. Don’t use the passive voice. Don’t begin sentences with, “I think.”

Your readers deserve a confident message. If you don’t believe fully in what you’re saying, then why are you writing it?

#6 Make it Easy to Read

“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”

Enrique Jardiel Poncela

At some point in school, most of us decided that good writing had big words and complex sentences. Ever since, we’ve been cramming our paragraphs with syllables and commas.

But the best writing is so simple that it’s almost like it’s not there at all. You read a sentence and its meaning just slips comfortably into your brain.

Always choose clarity over complexity.

#7 Write Without Stopping

“Don’t get it right, just get it written”

James Thurber

Free writing is the practice of writing without stopping for a set period of time. Your fingers never stop moving. If you can’t think of what to write next, you simply continue to write the previous word until something else comes to you.

This may sound ridiculous and, obviously, the result will be full of grammar errors and run-on sentences. But there’s something powerful about the stream-of-consciousness that free writing produces. There’s also something powerful about producing a page of words in just minutes.

Give free writing a try some time and see if you’re not surprised by the results.

#8 Don’t Chase Perfection

Maybe you’ve been a great writer since you could first lift a crayon.

You’ve probably got a healthy confidence in your writing. But you’ve also probably got some unrealistic expectations. If you think everything you write needs to be perfect, then you’ll struggle to ever get words on paper.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Ernest Hemingway

If Ernest Hemingway considered himself an apprentice-level writer, then what does that make the rest of us?

Writing is impossible to master. So while your articles should be well-crafted, they shouldn’t be perfect.

#9 Take Risks

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams

Part of the creative process is adopting a mindset where anything is possible. The best writers explore these possibilities, even when the chances of them working out are slim.

For instance, it’s probably a mistake to start your article with a dialogue between two fictional characters. Then again, it could be totally brilliant. You’ll never know unless you’re willing to take that risk.

Next time you get a risky idea, explore it. Even if you don’t keep the results, you’ll likely have learned something that you can bring into your final draft.

#10 Understand that Writing Online is Different

Online writing can be multimedia, so always be looking for opportunities to enrich your article with images, audio, or video. It can also be interactive. Linking out to useful information and websites is a courtesy to your readers. Since online writing is global, you may want to avoid using colloquial expressions or relying on cultural references that will only be understood by people in your country.

One of the most commons mistakes people make while writing online is using too many long paragraphs. While five sentence paragraphs are the norm in academic writing, online readers are turned off by big blocks of text. When I’m writing for the web, I’ll rarely use more than three sentences in a paragraph.

#11 Use Your Voice

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”

John Jake

Have you ever finished reading an article and felt like you had just made a real-life connection with the author?

Voice is the word for when writers let their personality shine through in their writing. It’s more engaging to read and it helps people relate to you as a real human being. So loosen up.

#12 Record Yourself Talking

If you’ve already got a great idea for what you want to write about but you’re having trouble putting it on paper, try recording yourself talking it out.

Talking is simply easier than writing and it helps us to get to the heart of things.

When you reach a good stopping point, play back the audio and transcribe it. The result will be raw, but it will also be a great starting place for your article. It’s also a good way to give your writing stronger voice.

#13 Put Your Blinders On

Q:  What do writing and performing brain surgery have in common?

A:  Both require your full attention.

Writing on a computer can be a constant battle of distraction. But in order to work efficiently, a writer must be very focused.

That’s why, as I type this sentence, I only have one program running (my word processor) and my Wifi radio is disabled.

Yes, the Internet is an amazing research tool. But you don’t benefit from being connected to it the entire time you’re writing. Collect the information you’ll need before you begin writing and then disconnect.

#14 Do More

“Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.”

Sholem Asch

We write best from experience.

If you’re having trouble coming up with good ideas for new articles, maybe the problem is that you don’t have very much to say about your niche.

So throw yourself fully into the subject of your writing. Try something different. Learn something new. Make a new connection in the industry. The broader experience you have to draw from, the easier it is to write.

#15 Write to One Person

When we think about the thousands of different people who will eventually read our words, we tend to write very broadly so that all of them will understand what we’re saying.

That’s a nice idea, but broad writing is typically uninspiring. When you try to include everybody, you just make everybody bored.

Instead, create a single, imaginary person who represents your target audience. Write your article as if you’re talking to that one individual. Without trying, you’ll find that your writing becomes more specific and intimate. And you’ll be surprised by how many people feel like you were writing just for them.

#16 Don’t Forget About Search Engines

Your audience isn’t just people. Search engine spiders are also “reading” your articles in order to rank you for keyword phrases.

So what do Google’s spiders like to read?

They like longer content (think 2,000-4,000 words). It also helps if you incorporate your chosen keywords throughout the headings and body (without over-doing it). A little keyword research would be a good idea before you begin writing your next article.

Your human audience is, of course, more important – and their linking, sharing, and +1’ing your content will certainly help with your search rankings. But paying a little bit of attention to the reading habits of Google will help ensure that human readers are actually able to find your writing in the first place.

#17 Don’t Take it Personally

Writing is a personal thing. You’re pulling thoughts out of your head and putting them into sentences for complete strangers to read.

This is part of the reason people suffer from writer’s block: we let our thoughts about writing get tangled up with our thoughts about ourselves. But your writing isn’t a reflection of your worth as human being.

Cultivate a sense of detachment from your writing. The more separate you feel from the words on the page, the more freely you’ll be able to produce them.

#18 Trim the Fat

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Elmore Leonard

I often write whole sections to an article that I later realize were unnecessary. When that happens, I’m forced to highlight the paragraphs and press ‘delete’.

It’s difficult to cut out something you may have spent a half-hour perfecting, but it’s also necessary. If you force your audience to read something that they don’t benefit from, you’re wasting their time. They’ll stop reading – even if the rest of the article is spot-on.

#19 Read it Out Loud

Writers get very close to their writing. Maybe too close.

By the time you’ve rewritten a sentence a few times, you know it so well that you can’t read it objectively. Since you know what you’re trying to say, you’ll understand the sentence even if it’s awkward or confusing.

That’s why using just your eyes to re-read your article before you click ‘publish’ isn’t good enough.

Read over your writing with your mouth and take note of every time you stumble over your words. Then rewrite those parts so that they sound natural when you say them out loud.

#20 Only Writing is Writing

“You have to sit your butt in the chair and write. You have to do that every day. That doesn’t mean you lie on your couch and play with your navel. That doesn’t mean you go shopping when the words don’t flow the way you think they should. That never works. It means you sit your butt in the chair and get to work. No excuses.”

Harlan Coben

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I need to write. Sometimes I even fool myself into thinking that I’m being productive. But the only way to make progress in your writing is to do write – pages and pages, day after day.

You’ve finished reading. Now get to writing.

Featured Image Courtesy of Gilles Chiroleu.

Images, not Links

This point was actually the inspiration for this post, because it seems so obvious, works so well, yet no one else seems to be doing it. The idea is that instead of using your links to attract visitors, you use a relevant photo instead. This works better in three different ways.

Firstly, people are more interested in looking at photos, than reading articles, so if you can ‘trick’ someone into clicking on the photo and reading your description, you’re easing them into the article. Also, if the image is relevant (which it should be), you spark an interest in the article too. The images also appear much larger on the page too, so they’re more likely to be seen, and then clicked on.

Secondly, your links become much easier to browse. When you post a regular link on your Facebook, it’s shown for as long as it’s on the page, or in a person’s timeline, but when you add that link to an image, it stays around indefinitely. How often have you gone to view a photo, and then clicked next? That is what is happening with your links. A reader could be viewing your image and then click through the rest of them, all the while viewing your old links, and reading their way through them. As your fan-base grows and people view more images, these old links are going to get more clicks.

Finally, we have people’s news feeds and ticker. Think of how often ‘Dave has liked BLANK’s photo…’ has appeared in your newsfeed, rather than a link. Facebook tends to share that sort of content in news feeds more, and when they do appear in news feeds, people are more likely to view them. The same is true for the new Ticker, where people will mindlessly follow everything a person is doing, and stumble upon photos, such as yours.

An extra little bonus feature of using an image to promote your content is that you can always change what you’ve written about the link, by editing the description. This means that if you’ve changed your mind about something, or you’ve made a spelling mistake, you don’t have to remove the link and lose all of your likes, you can simply go and edit it.

Quotes

This is all about creating content that you know is going to be shared by many people on your Facebook, which will then find you new fans. Some content can be more viral than others, but I find that interesting quotes work really well. Again, you’re going to want to make sure that you turn these quotes into images so that they can be shared much more easily. If you make an image, rather than share one you’ve found somewhere else, add your logo too; my image below was shared from another source on the internet.

When you’re choosing a quote, make sure it’s something that appeals to as many people as possible, with an element of humour, and preferably something that annoys your reader. Remember that the idea is to get as many people as possible sharing this, and that includes fans’ friends. Focusing on an annoyance or something negative always works better than something positive, I’ve written about this before here, and I’m no psychologist so I don’t know why this is, but I do know that it works. The image below was shared on my page, when I had around 2,500 fans, and it received 118 likes and 47 shares.

Questions

The right questions typically result in lots of interaction from readers, because everyone likes to have their say, and as your page grows bigger, people will see it as a way of having one on one contact with you. My post below was put up rather late at night, but still managed to receive 86 comments and 31 likes, and even a week later, I’m still getting comments on it.

Not only did I manage to increase interaction on the Page, but I managed to learn a little bit more about my readers, what they like, and what they don’t like. You’ll notice that I’m not talking about polls here, I’m using an image and appealing to the photographer in them, to find out what they like. I’ve noticed in the past that polls really don’t work all that well, perhaps because people are less inclined to vote on them. I put this down to the fact that they show up in people’s newsfeed after someone has voted on them, and often people don’t want this.

Think about what people in your niche are interested in and appeal to them. It can be done for almost any niche. 

Share Old Content

This is great for when you can’t be bothered, or don’t have time to write an article one day, but you still want some Facebook traffic for the day. My fan base is now at 4,000 fans, but I have load of content written from the months when I was struggling to even reach 1,000 fans, but that content is still just as good. When I link to my website on Facebook, I link to the post that I’m trying to promote, not my homepage, so chances are, when I share an old post with my fans, the majority of them won’t even realise that it’s old. Not that it really matters.

Not only does this bring me the traffic I’m looking for, but it makes me feel a bit better about my writing because it means that all my old posts aren’t going to waste, which is what it can feel like when you write some of your best content, when you first start your website.

Like their Comments

Make commenting on your Facebook an enjoyable experience for your fans, and thank them for doing so with a simple Like. It’s a personal touch that costs nothing, and takes next to no time at all. Don’t go liking everything, and certainly not negative comments, but liking comments that you agree with, or are compliments, are important. This is especially important as you grow and people have less of a chance of personally interact with you. When you like what someone else has written, then you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again, which will increase your reader interaction, and in turn make your content appear in more news feeds.

If your readers asks you questions, then answer them too.

Don’t use Custom Banners

This added feature from Facebook is a little bit misleading because many people think that they can use it to make their page look better, when it doesn’t really work like that. You would have seen it before, either on fan pages or friends walls, where people have used custom banners to display a single image, such as a logo. This is something that I have looked into, but ultimately decided against.

Firstly, it’s hard to keep them in order in the first place, especially if you take my advice and use images to promote your posts. Secondly, these little thumbnails are an excellent way to spark interest in new fans, because it’s easy for them to explore the posts when they’re all listed at the top of the page. Set up the banner, and then just leave it. 

Custom Profile Picture

Most people choose a simple image as their profile picture, and whether that’s landscape, or portait, it’s still wrong. If you pay close attention to Facebook marketing, then there’s a good chance that your profile image is 180 x 540 pixels, but there’s more to it than that, and the good thing is that you can do it yourself.

The first thing to consider is your thumbnail image, which is what will appear whenever you comment or post something. If you have a look at my posts above, you’ll see that my thumbnail image is the simple logo pictured below at the top of the image. You will want to make this smaller than the width of your image, and ensure that it’s not cluttered by any other part of the photo.

I’ve backed away from using excessive writing about what I do, and I’ve opted for this much simpler design instead. My full logo at the bottom of the image, my logo at the top, and an image in the middle. It’s the image in the middle that makes this really special for me though, because I can change this whenever I want, so that I can keep things fresh an keep people noticing it. The reason I’m using my logo at the top, rather than the title of my website, is because I want to build up some brand recognition for the image. If I change my picture once a month, people will continue to be drawn to it, and in turn, the logo too. Soon enough, my website will be recognisable by the logo alone, just like many other famous brands.

Use Memes & Trends

Keep up to date with current trends on the internet, whether they’re internet memes, or funny pictures like the one below. A great example of this, was how I received 500 fans overnight, which you can read about here. It was something that I had seen twice already on Facebook, and something that I wanted to get involved in before it was too late, and people were starting to get annoyed with it.

One thing I spotted last night, was the image I’ve shared with you below. It’s referred to as the ‘six perspectives…’, where you compare six different perspectives of the same thing. There are many variations of this, and I had originally thought that I would talk about what it’s like to be a photographer, and what people thought of it, but I decided that this was a little bit more niched and people would find it more interesting, and want to share it. It took me about an hour and a half to put together, and then I simply posted it on Facebook, and over night it got, 71 like, 7 comments, and 24 shares. If the right people pick it up, then it can be a lot higher than this. If you have friends in the same niche as you, ask them to share it too. This image found me 20 new fans over night.

You can always share it more than once too, through your Google+ and Twitter too. Like I mentioned earlier, if you’re going to come up with your own original content to share, slap your logo on it so that people know where it’s come from incase someone decides to download and share it as their own, which is something that I found this morning with another photography fan page, sharing a different version of my own. One final thing to note is that you want to include your website address is the description, so that if it does go as viral as you would like, then you can always get a few more hits on your website. 

Have a look at the one we posted on IncomeDiary today. Click here to go to the image and share.

Post Interesting Facts

This is all about providing valuable extra information for your readers, which they can’t find anywhere else on your website. Have a look at the one I posted on the IncomeDiary fan page last night. It’s exclusive to our Facebook, and through that, Twitter too. This keeps our readers interested, and helps them to feel like they’re getting something that no one else is getting. Not only that, but it reassures them that IncomeDiary is a valuable resource for them to be following, and makes us more of an authority.

Ask Their Opinion

Make your readers feel like their opinion matters, so ask them what they think. Whether you personally care about what they think is one thing (I personally do), but making them feel like what they say counts is what really matters. I changed my profile picture the other night, so I asked them what they thought of it, and I got likes on both the image, and the wall post, all of which were positive. It helps you to understand your fans better, and what they like, which is all useful information for providing them with better content, and finding more people like them.If you’ve enjoyed this post, then please press like below to like our fan page.

The post did well: 100+ Tweets, 50+ comments (half mine), and Michael even told me, “when I saw it, I was like, this is what I like.”

One reason that post did well was because I followed the advice in the post (with the exception of #5).

Another reason it did well is because I followed up with many of the 10 blog post marketing steps that I want to tell you about today.

1. Schedule Instead of Publish

I always schedule rather than publish because scheduling gives me one last chance to look over the post.

I also schedule my posts to be published at midnight for three reasons:

1. So the published on time is 00:00. I’m a little OCD about it.
2. So it has the maximum number of hours with the current date.
3. So it has a few “live-hours” before Feedburner/Aweber emails out between 7am-9am. This gives it a chance to have a few Tweets, Likes and comments before it gets emailed out.

2. Read it Again

Immediately after your post is published, read it again. You should’ve already looked it over for grammar. Now is the time to look for ways to improve the final post.

If you don’t enjoy spending a few minutes reading your post one last time, then you probably didn’t do a very good job of writing it.

It’s like fixing up an old car. Once it’s complete, if you don’t spend at least a few minutes admiring it, then you know you could’ve done better.

3. Tweet it Out

Simple enough, eh?

I don’t use any auto-tweeting tools because I like to adjust the tweet and I like to be able to say, “hey world… I just now finished this post. Come be one of the first to see it.”

4. Share on Facebook

Facebook, on the other hand, is a bit more strategic.

When you publish your blog posts on your personal profile, understand that those people are primarily your friends and family. They probably don’t care too much about the content of the post but they will be interested in the fact that you wrote it. So when you add the comment to the link, include something a bit more personal.

When you post your link on your Facebook page, know that these are people who have “Liked” your blog/brand/company. So here, add a comment mentioning the benefit of taking a few minutes to read the post.

It’s important to share the article on both your personal profile and Facebook page at the same time because people who follow both are more likely to see it. It’s the same reason you’re starting to see the links that multiple friends recommend.

5. Set Up Automatic Pinging

If you’re unfamiliar with pinging, there are a number of sites and platforms (including Google, Yahoo!, and Technorati) that allow you to automatically notify, or “ping,” them when your site is updated with new content.

If you’re using WordPress, it’s easy to set up.

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Writing and scroll down to Update Services.

In that box, copy and paste these URLs:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.twingly.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bloglines.com/ping

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

I’ve gathered this collection of pinging services over the last three years. Let me know if I’m missing any.

6. Email Broadcast

Assuming you’ve started to build your email list, email out your blog post to people who have signed up for your blog updates.

You can simply write up and send out an email with a short introduction and link to the post.

Or, depending on your email marketing service, you can automate this step.

I use Aweber’s Blog Broadcast function and integrate it with Feedburner. This way, every time I update my blog, my list automatically gets an email with the blog post between the hours of 7am-9am. I chose that time so it’s sitting at the top of their inbox when they start their computer in the morning.

If you’d like to know how to set up the Aweber Blog Broadcast function, let me know in the comments.

7. Link from Old Posts

Last week I talked about interlinking by adding links to old posts before you publish a new post. You can also do the opposite.

If you’re doing a good job of optimizing and writing evergreen content, then your old posts will continue to get traffic. An easy way to get traffic to a brand new post is to dig into your archives and link from a few relevant posts to the new post with the keyword as the anchor text.

It counts as a link and a trackback. If you’re struggling to get that first comment, consider doing this because the default settings in WordPress count trackbacks as comments. I’ve found that people are more likely to comment if they see other comments.

8. Link from Other Sites

About a year ago I was considering starting a new blog by taking an existing blog and putting it on a new domain. I asked Michael for his opinion and he told me that it’s nice to have two high-traffic sites (his being IncomeDiary.com and Retireat21.com).

One reason that it’s nice to have multiple sites is that you can link between them.

Whenever I publish a post on my new blog, I search the archives of my old blog for relevant articles until I find at least one chance to link to the new blog post.

This adds a trackback, adds a link, increases traffic, and strengthens the structure of my mini network of sites.

9. Submit it to Article Directories

If you’re serious about blogging and would like to boost your SEO, consider submitting your posts to article directories.

Here’s the process:

1. Rewrite your post so it’s new content.
2. Submit it to a few article directories (EzineArticles, ArticlesBase, GoArticles, and ArticleDashboard).
3. Include a link back to the original article or one of your article directory articles.

This process takes awhile so it doesn’t make sense to do it for every post. Once a post starts getting a fair amount of search traffic, consider going through this process to boost it even higher.

10. Reply to First Comment

The first comment is the hardest to get, unless you have a site like IncomeDiary. So you want to reward that commenter by replying to their comment as soon as you can. This does two things:

1. Rewards the first commenter.
2. Shows other commenters that you listen which encourages them to leave comments as well.

For me, I choose to reply to almost every comment simply because I like answering questions and interacting with smart people. It takes a fair amount of time, but I enjoy your comments.

If this post helped you at all or taught you something new, I’d like to know. Leave a comment below and you’ll likely see my reply within a day.

Image by: Stuck in Customs

It’s a valid question, so why don’t you put more thought into it?

You hear having a Facebook Page, being on Twitter, and writing a blog are all great supplements for your business.

You’ve set each of these things up, and even craft what you think is pretty good content, but still…

No one shows.

Believe it or not, your customers aren’t just “out there” floating around in the ether of the Internet. In fact, they might be closer to you than you think. You just have to start being a little more strategic about where you find them.

1. Go Down The Rabbit Hole

Everyone including your grandmother has a Facebook.

If they’re a little more savvy, they’ll also have a Twitter, and maybe even a secret Tumblr blog.

But what are the other lower-profile sites that are hiding your customers?

I’m not talking about the really well-hidden, backchannel type places (not exactly, anyway).  Instead I’m talking about social platforms developed specifically for a smaller group of people.

I’m talking specialized forums, blogs, and ::shudder:: yes, maybe even a celebrity gossip site.

It’s not always intuitive to seek these places and join in, but that’s exactly what you need to do in order to set up camp among the folks you need to talk to and hear from.

Don’t just rely on the top three-to-five biggest social platforms to be sufficient. Seek out your customers in the other places they’re active.

If you sell lighting equipment, find photography forums.
If you sell car parts, interact with car enthusiasts on Twitter.
If you sell Facebook Pages, get active website design blogs…

See where I’m going with this?

2. Stalk People

It’s 75% research and 150% practice.

If you’re trying to catch the eye of key players in your field, you need to know who they are and where they hang.

You also need to know how they interact with each other and how they expect to be spoken to. It seems simple, but if they’re not the type to call people “dude,” and you approach them with, “duuuude!” you look like a moron.

Use Twitter to “spy” on key influencers. Watch their tweets and get a feel for their sense of humor, their workload, and most importantly places where you might be able to offer a hand.

Many influential people will vent their frustrations, or make an offhand joke about something on Twitter, so if you’re able to either A.) offer help or B.) make them laugh, that’ll go a long way in building a relationship with them.

Same goes for your customers, at any given time you should be monitoring for “Keywords” that are related to your product or service.

Lend a hand to someone in need. (without being spammy!) Use what you find in their previous tweets to get a feel for them. Do this enough and you’ll begin to identify your “ideal” customers, so you can work only with people who you will enjoy working with.

3. Be nice to the “Little Guy”

There are no “little guys,” there are just differing levels of success.

Don’t expect that you’ll only ever need to speak to the major figures in your niche: networks are full of guys like you, and guess what? They’re the ones who make you a success.

Never forget that without the support of the average joe, there would be no big names, no key players. So, don’t be a jerk just because you don’t recognize someone’s name right away.

4. Shut Up, Just Listen

Before you start pushing content in your new networks, learn to listen.

There are tools available to help you scan the “chatter” of the internet – feed readers, alerts, keyword filters, etc.

Finding and utilizing tools that aggregate fresh content for you means you’re as well-informed as possible.

You can find and absorb content from others in your field, keep an eye on key players, and locate content belonging to other contributors that you don’t mind sharing.

Listening is always more important than self promotion. You can push content on others all day long and be ignored, or you can catch the eye of the folks whose attention you want, by re-sharing their information and helping them on their way.

5. Share Others, But Be Selective

Some folks will start following you before you’ve even said anything.

Others engage with you only if you’re a team player. No one will like you if you spend all your time massaging your ego… don’t be that guy.

Be a team player by interacting with other people’s work. Retweet it, share the link, “like” it, post it in a forum… you get the idea. Be vocal in your encouragement of other folks’ work.

Show them that you’re not just here to push your work down their throats.

When you do share, do it selectively. Three email blasts a day is too much… sometimes one a day is too much if your other conversations are lagging.

And furthermore, while you’re sharing selectively, be thorough.

If you’re going to talk about your own content, make sure you’re alerting everyone at close to the same time.

There are tools at your disposal, such as an RSS feed, that can be plugged into various profiles or networks so that your message is thoroughly saturating your networks without overdoing it.

If your RSS has posted on your behalf, don’t follow it up immediately with your own personal version.

Let your tools work for you so you can focus on building important relationships.

Bonus: Be Yourself

You have to interact.

You wouldn’t buy a cellphone from a salesman who stares at you blankly while you’re asking questions out loud in the store. So why would expect your customers to do the same?

There are literally thousands if not millions of articles on how to make money online using social media to assist in growing your business. What it really all comes down to is having a network of people who’s lives are better from knowing you. And in order to know you, you must be active.

Enrich people’s lives and help them acheive their goals, and they will remember you forever.

Try to push them into buying stuff from you, and you’re as easily forgotten as everyone else who tries to do the same.

No amount of tips, tricks or tactics can teach you how to be a good person, that you have to find within.

But the tips in this article will assist you to find the right people so you don’t end up staring at the computer screen waiting for money to appear.

What do you think? Anything I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

As people get started with blogging, they think it’s as simple as clicking, “Add New Post,” typing up a few paragraphs, and clicking, “Publish.”

Then they hopelessly wait for views, comments, and tweets. No one comes. No one comments. No one tweets.

They do this three or four times and eventually write off blogging as, “not it’s all hyped up to be.”

After writing for Michael for a few months now, I can tell you that there are dozens of small blogging nuances that we work into nearly every post.

Here are 10 of the most popular SEO blog post publishing steps that bloggers tend to forget.

1. Keyword Research

Before I write a single word, I figure out if it’s something that people are asking about. And if they are, I want to know if the internet is already saturated with that type of content.

To figure this out, I do two things:

1. Google’s Keyword Tool – I look up the words I believe people would search for to find the post I plan on writing.
2. Google – I google those keywords to see the actual competition.

By now, I can look at a series of search results and determine how well I’ll be able to rank for a keyword.

I want this post to rank for “seo blog post publishing steps” (click to see how it’s doing).

For more clarification on this tip, read this comment below.

2. Fine-Tuning the Headline

Here’s my formula for crafting headlines for list posts:

[#][keyword][ curiosity-capturing phrase]

For title tag SEO, your goal is to place the keyword as near to the front of the headline as possible:

• Top 10 Motivational YouTube Videos for Entrepreneurs
• 20 Great Google Chrome Extensions for Online Entrepreneurs
• 20 Best Designed Pricing Comparison Tables

For that last one, I switched the keyword with the curiosity phrase because “Best Designed” was another phrase that people tack on to the base keyword.

3. Post Slug

The post slug is what shows up after the domain for every post or page.

When you type a headline, WordPress generates the post slug by placing every word in the headline into the slug. This clutters it up with lots of small words.

Instead, change your post slug to your primary keyword.

Default: IncomeDiary.com/10-seo-blog-post-publishing-steps-that-most-bloggers-forget/

Ideal: IncomeDiary.com/seo-blog-post-publishing-steps/

4. Images

We all know that images grab your attention, break up the content, and supplement your ideas. But they also add great SEO benefits, as long as you follow these steps:

1. Save your images as [keyword-phrase.png] before you upload them to your site.
2. Add alt text as [keyword phrase].
3. Add title tag as [keyword phrase].

These rules apply to your featured image and the images within your posts. For the images within the content, however, use other similar and relevant keywords.

5. Relevant Videos

Google understands that adding a video to a blog post makes it a more complete resource. If they haven’t already boosting blog posts with videos, they will eventually.

If blogging is a big portion of your business, start making videos for your posts, upload them to your channel, and embed them in the actual post.

If you’re still dabbling in blogging, consider embedding other peoples’ videos in your posts.

6. Subheads

Similar to images, subheadings break up the content and make blog posts easier to read. They also have big-time SEO benefits.

When a search engine robot hits a page, it reads the headline/title tag first. Then it reads the H2, H3, and H4 tags.

When you add subheadings to your content, proper HTML is:

<h2>Subhead Level 1</h2>

<h3>Subhead Level 2</h3>

<h4>Subhead Level 3</h3>

Note: The headline/title tag should be automatically wrapped in <h1></h1>.

So… Stop simply bolding and italicizing your subheads.

7. Interlinking

Another important step that most people forget is interlinking between posts.

Before you publish a new post, read through it and try to find two-three opportunities to naturally link back to relevant posts on your blog.

This keeps both readers and search spiders on your site longer.

8. External Linking

Also, look for opportunities to link to other bloggers. The SEO benefits of external linking are unclear, but Neil Patel says:

“Did you know that an external links going out to these high authority sites can boost your SEO? When search engines crawl your site and see a link and follow it to CNN or Huffington Post, they weight it as a positive. The trick is to find organic ways to link to these sites, like I did in this post.”

Linking to other sites is also a good way to build relationships with other bloggers.

I’ve received two “thank you” emails from important people because I chose to link to their sites on IncomeDiary posts.

I linked to Pat’s site on: 10 Blog Posts that Made an Everlasting Impact on Me

I linked to Giancarlo’s site on: 10 Weird Ways Big Companies Make Money Online

Bloggers notice and appreciate backlinks.

9. Meta Data

Whether or not Google still looks at meta keywords is up for debate, but the meta description is definitely still used.

In a search result, your meta description often shows up as the little blurb beneath the blue link. In writing your meta description, you need to keep three things in mind:

1. It needs to be fewer than 155 characters so Google will display the whole description.
2. It needs to include your keywords because Google bolds them in search results.
3. It should be an actual sentence from the post because people look for that sentence once they arrive.

I always summarize the post with the keywords in the last sentence of the introduction and use that as the meta description.

10. Call to Action

The final step is the call-to-action. As with any piece of marketing material, a blog post should be designed to get someone to do something.

Here are a few popular calls to action:

1. Comment – You can encourage people to comment by ending the post with a thought-provoking question or simply asking them to let you know what they think.
2. Share – “If you liked this post, tweet it out.”
3. Implement – I believe the best result of any blog post is for a reader to take your advice and implement it.

The main reason I’ve been following IncomeDiary for so long is because I constantly find myself implementing Michael’s advice. When I see the benefits to following his advice, it makes me want to come back for more.

Now you have a choice. You can comment, share, or implement. I prefer if you implement, but I’ll appreciate all three.

Image by: Stuck in Customs

How Alerts Work

Every time Google sees something that it thinks is significant, then they create an alert, which matches up with the websites time-line of traffic. These alerts range from boost in traffic, and time on site, to location of visitors and traffic sources. If you don’t want to look through all of your Analytics everyday then I suggest that you use the intelligence to alert you to what’s going on instead. When you open up the Intelligence section, it should look something like this.

The alerts that you’re seeing on the time-line at all alerts set by Google with what they deem to be significant. These alerts can start to add up, so if you want to make sure that you only see much more relevant information, you can change the sensitivity slider down to low. This will remove the results that are not especially important, although it won’t delete them, it’ll just hide them. Unlike setting goals, or combining your Adsense earnings with Analytics, you don’t have to set anything up for this to work, nor do you have to wait to start seeing results as it will show you all of the results from the past too. When I adjust the sensitivity slider to low, this is what my results look like.

Sliding this far along the slider is quite extreme, but relevant to show you the difference – I usually have it set somewhere around the middle where the mix of results are more relevant. Below are the results that you see when you click on one of the bars containing alerts. As you can see, at this end of the scale, the results are quite extreme, and results such as source information and visitor location have been taken away. It’s all about what you’re interested in seeing, and how relevant they are to your website. I personally don’t have too much need to know any more about the location of my visitors.

So far, we’ve been viewing these results on a daily basis, but you can also view them on a weekly or monthly basis too. This doesn’t combine all of the data into a week’s worth of information, it changes how Google will look at what is significant. A large boost in traffic from Mexico one day may have been relevant on a daily basis, but when you look at one week and compare it to another, it may not longer be deemed significant. Looking at the results on a weekly or monthly basis become as relevant as daily views for you when your website gets older. I would always recommend tracking the website on a daily basis, but checking at the end of each week and month on those basis’s too is a good idea.

What the Alerts Track

To look closer at the results that Google provide me with, I’m looking at the day with with most amount of alerts, with a total of 14. There was a small spike in traffic on this day, but it was mostly from the aftermath of a much larger spike in traffic. This did provide me with a couple traffic alerts telling me that my percentage of new visits was up by over 40% and because of the increase in traffic who were being linked to a single page, my bounce rate also went up by 15%, providing me with a second alert.

All this new traffic produced further results such as a decreased time on site and boosts in traffic from certain locations. Google does exactly what we’ve come to expect and breaks this down into easy to read information, referencing the result it was expecting for the day. Not only was I provided with relevant information on what was going on with my visitors, but it was further broken down by location. I had two alerts for United States and they were grouped together with an increase in visitors, but a decrease in time on site.

The final bit of information that I was provided with was the Traffic and Content alerts, which told me where my traffic was coming from, along with how long they were staying on the page. I can see from my alerts that both Reddit and StumbleUpon picked up on my link and I received an increase of traffic and time on site respectively. This is all very nicely laid out for me in this easy to read intelligence section, without having to do any confusing looking around. The Content information even went so deep as to not only tell me which page was the most popular, but which landing and exit pages had an increase in time on site.

How to use this New Information

If you’ve read my recent article on Custom Reporting and Advanced Segments, then you’ll understand the extra control and knowledge they can provide if used properly. Google understands the uses better than any of us, and that’s why they’ve added the ‘Create segment’ link at the end of most of the alerts that you see above. We can use this new information that we’ve found through our alerts to study the traffic in more detail and provide us with better results and knowledge.

Say for example, I notice one day in my alerts that my Facebook time on site has gone up, I may want to track this further and more often in the future. I click on the Create Segment at the bottom and I’ll be taken to an Advanced Segment page, where all I have to do is add any other metrics I may be interested in, name it and save it. Even though the alert was referring to the increased time on site, the segment is still only going to show a single parameter referring to the source. This is because we can examine all the future information by saving the segment and using it in the dashboard as our only traffic source under the segment section in the top right-hand corner.

How to use Custom Alerts

When you’re in the Intelligence section, click on ‘+ Create A Custom Alert’ on the right hand side to take you to the right page. You create these alerts similarly to how you would an Advanced Segment. You first select whether you would like the traffic to apply to the Day, Week or Month, and then whether you’d like to be alerted by email for these. I select yes, as I like to know straight away when something is happening on my website so that I can act accordingly. Next, you select conditions from the drop down menus for whatever you would like to test. I’ve gone for the source of Facebook.com and asked it to alert me when the % of traffic from them is more than 50% greater than the day before. It’s up to you to experiment with this and find one that suits your traffic, I may find in a few days that 50% is too low.

When you take the added functionality of the intelligence reports, and combine that with advanced segments and custom alerts, you can produce a lot of very useful information from this feature. This is a quite advanced feature for Google Analytics and if you’re having trouble then I suggest you go back and read my post on Google Analytics and my post on Custom Reports and Advanced Segments to get a better idea of how this all works.

In fact, a 2010 report from Cisco stated that 30% of Internet traffic is video – and that number is only getting bigger and bigger. They project that video will account for a ridiculous 90% of Internet traffic by 2013.

So how can your blog get a slice of that big video pie?

How to Use Video to Increase Blog Traffic

Blogs thrive on quality content – and since video is so dynamic and engaging, adding it to your posts can help make your content more exciting and shareable.

Since video search ranking is less competitive than traditional search, posting a how-to video can bring in more visitors from search engines as well.

But if you’re posting videos that are too long, too dull, or that don’t offer anything more than a written post, you’re actually doing your blog and your readers a disservice.

Three Types of Effective Video Blog Posts

Tutorials

When you’re explaining something that visual or auditory, words alone can be clumsy and confusing. Anyone who has tried to follow an instruction manual knows this all too well.

But with a video tutorial, you can show people exactly how something is done – whether that means recording video of you building a table or capturing video of your computer screen to demonstrate how to create a website.

Not only are video tutorials more valuable to your readers, they can also be easier to make than a lengthy written tutorial.

Example:

Interviews

Interviewing people who’ve found success in your blog’s niche is a tried and true tactic. Not only do interviews offer fresh perspective and valuable advice, they give you an excuse to meet interesting people.

While posting text or audio from the interview is great, recording and posting video (whether in person or over Skype) is almost as good as being right there in the same room as the interviewee.

Example:

Entertainment

If you’ve got a creative streak in you, video is a great way to let it show.

You don’t have to be an expert video editor. Some simple ways to make a fun video are using stop-motion or time-elapse footage.

Strike the right chord and your video could go viral.

Example:

Note:

All the views in the world don’t mean much if nobody’s actually visiting your site. If you’re planning on people watching your video on YouTube or Facebook, it’s essential that your video ends with a call to action and incentive for the viewer to visit your blog.

Don’t make the video content the end of the story. If people find your video elsewhere like on YouTube or embedded on another site, you must provide them with a means and incentive to reach your blog.

Write some related content that you can dangle before viewers at the end of the video, so that they’ll have an incentive to go visit your site. In the above example, the video directs to a post called, 21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs.

Video Advantage #1 – Shareable

Video posts are more socially viral than their written counterparts.

When you share a standard blog post on Facebook, what you’re really sharing is a picture, a title, and a link.

When you share a video post on Facebook, you’re sharing much more: with one click, people can begin watching and benefitting from your content. This makes a video post a very potent tool on the world’s most popular social network, because people who otherwise wouldn’t bother to follow the link may well click play.

How to Use Video to Increase Product Sales

If you’ve been to many sales pages lately, you know that the best ones feature a video front and center.

Video simply increases conversion: an April 2010 report from Internet Retailer stated that consumers who watch a product video are 85% more likely to buy.

A video is a 24-hour salesperson:  all a shopper has to do is press play and they’re immediately hearing and seeing about everything that makes your product great.

Selling Your Product through Video

While the videos on your posts can be a bit amateur, a sales page video must reflect the professionalism and quality that you want people to associate with your product.

That doesn’t mean that the video has to be flashy. Many videos on sales pages are nothing more than a human voice and some simple background text – a little dull even by the standards of a PowerPoint presentation.

The point isn’t to entertain the viewer or to wow them with special effects. Instead, the goal of your video should simply be to enumerate the features, advantages, and benefits of your product in a straightforward and honest way.

Video Advantage #2 – Easy

To read a web page, one must be active – reading paragraph after paragraph while scrolling downward.

But once they’re watching a video they must actually be active to stop watching.

This is a huge advantage on your sales page because half of the battle is just communicating your full message before the potential customer decides to bail.

Video Advantage #3 – Persuasive

When somebody is watching a video, they’re using a different part of their brain than when they’re reading – and while that part of the brain is very spatially intelligent, it’s not quite as good at coming up with rational arguments.

This is why television commercials feature so many supermodels. Though our rational minds would never think, “If I drink more Coca-Cola, I’m going to be more attractive, like those people,” our visual minds make an association between healthy, beautiful people and the bottle of Coke.

People are easier to persuade when they’re watching a video than they are when they’re reading text.

Example: Pop Up Domination

To see a simple but effective sales video in action, check out this page for Income Diary’s very own PopUp Domination.

How to Use Video to Build a Stronger Brand

The world’s biggest brands have been promoting themselves with video since the first television commercial aired in 1941.

Ever since, video has been the primary platform for the development of major brands. Just think of all of the striking logos, talking animals, memorable taglines, and catchy jingles you’ve seen.

Video and Your About Page

The about page is every blogger’s best opportunity to establish their all-important personal brand.

People read your blog posts because they want to be instructed, engaged, or entertained – but they visit your about page because they want to know more about you.

So even if you don’t want to post video regularly, you should consider creating or commissioning a video for your about page. It will give visitors the impression that your website is a professional place, dedicated to providing quality content – and it can help forge a personal connection with your audience.

Advice for Branding through Video

Instead of reciting goals and data, try telling people your company’s story.

It’s a good idea to put your logo at the beginning and end of each of your video, to keep your brand at the forefront of the viewer’s mind.

Ideally, you’ll create an audio signature to go with your logo. It can be simple as a short melody or sound effect – anything that can get stuck in your head.

Video Advantage #4 – Personal

When we meet a person for the first time, the actual words that they say take a backseat to everything that they’re “saying” with their tone of voice, facial expression, and body language.

It’s all of these hard-to-describe visual and auditory cues that make up our first impression and allow us to begin connecting with somebody at a personal level.

So when you put a video on your about page, you’re inviting your readership to understand a little bit more about what it would be like to know you in real life. When people start seeing you as an actual person, they’re more likely to start seeing you as a friend – and that’s when loyalty and community can really blossom.

Ready to Feature Video on Your Blog?

I hope that this article has you motivated to utilize video to help your website reach its full potential.

If you have any questions about web video, don’t hesitate to ask below and I’ll do my best to respond.

Sharebar – Social Media Slider

This plugin is actually the inspiration for this blog post, as we’ve been getting a lot of people asking us about it, and how we set it up. The one that I use on ExpertPhotography is called Sharebar, but there other version such as Digg Digg, which is used on this site. They all do roughly the same thing though. They allow your readers to select the social media that they would like to share your content though, which makes it much easier for them, and encourages them to do so. I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that it slides up and down the page as you’re browsing, so it stands out, and you know where to find it if you want to share anything.

Since starting my Twitter marketing, I’m always annoyed when a photography website doesn’t have this plugin, because it means that I have to go looking for a share button, which you shouldn’t have to do when you’re effectively doing them a favour. Having this plugin, as apposed to no plugin at all, makes a huge difference, which I notice immediately. You can add your @profile to the end of the tweets, so that TweetDeck will alert you when someone tweets your content, and as soon as my plugin was installed, I started receiving a lot more alerts. This means that more people are seeing my website, as well as my Twitter account, where if they follow me, there’s a very good chance they’ll see my site again.

Tweet Old Post

I installed this plugin on a whim, thinking that it wouldn’t really do much, but it couldn’t hurt. I had all my latest content set up to tweet through TweetAdder, but nothing set up to encourage people to view my older pages, most of which I consider to be lost in the archive. You can change the settings to include links, add additional text, how many it posts a day, and much more, you can even select the URL shortener.

So, from 5 minutes of work, you can have all of your older posts contribute to your twitter marketing, and start sending you considerable traffic if you have a strong following. My following has grown to over 3500 in just a few months, and it’s continuing to grow, as well as sending people to my Facebook. Facebook insights showed me exactly how successful my linking to the Facebook was when I looked at my Insights, it said that within 1 month, 635 people had come to my page, just from my regularly tweeting about it.

Facebook Social Plugin

This is a plugin that almost every decent blog has, or at least a variation of it. The official Facebook version is probably a bit better than the one than most, but less in keeping with my theme. The official version is a large square box to attract the readers attention, with details on how many people like the Facebook page, as well as some of the names and faces of those who like it. There’s also an option to click ‘Like’ right there on the page, without having to go through to Facebook, which I think is a real advantage to the alternatives as readers are more likely to click on it if they don’t have to leave the page. I switched to this plugin just recently, and I’m already noticing a big difference in the amount of likes that I’m receiving. 

PopUp Domination

I can’t really talk about ways to get more traffic to your site, without talking about PopUp Domination. As many of you well know, PopUp Domination has been proven to increase your subscribers by 429%, by using a simple, but good looking light-box solution that pops up when a new visitor arrives on your site. It’s intrusive enough to get their attention, but designed well enough so that it’s clearly part of the website and not an unrelated advert. This is the only plugin on the list that you actually have to pay for, but over 8000 people already have, and that’s a lot of happy customers. The product is only $47 dollars, and if you’re not happy with it, you can have your money back within 60 days. Building a list is a very important step to making money online, because you can start to contact people directly who are interested in what you have to sell.

Show Top Commentators

This plugin in a great way to encourage people to comment more often, because it starts to rank those who comment the most. It could be easily compared to becoming the major or somewhere in Foursquare, or karma on Reddit; it doesn’t mean anything, and you can’t do anything with it, but people want it anyway. You link the names, and website if they input it, along with the number of comments in your sidebar. This is a good way to grow your reader interaction, and make people want to come back to your site more than once. This isn’t a plugin that I currently use, because I think it would work better with a website with a stronger following, but I can see myself using this in a couple months.

Post to Twitter

Post to Twitter is a plugin that takes any content that you post on WordPress and then posts it to Twitter, which immediately notifies all of your followers. This sort of automation is accepted on Twitter, but not Facebook, because the number of updates per day is a lot higher than Facebook. Posting to Facebook is something that needs to be done manually because Facebook can detect what program is used to post, and that distances the fan from the post when they know that a machine wrote it. I’ve recently started to post less of other peoples material on my Twitter, and more about myself so that I can use it for traffic now, rather than growth of the Twitter page.

Facebook Comments for WordPress

This is a plugin that I’ve been meaning to get installed because of the way it works with Facebook, as well as WordPress. Besides the fact that it makes it way easier for people to comment on a post, it also means that they can share what they’ve commented to their Facebook page with the ‘post to Facebook’ function. By clicking on this function, it enables the readers to share their opinions in their Facebook feed, which is also sharing your website with all of their friends. By making it easier for them to comment, you’re actually helping people to find your website where they wouldn’t have before. The image below is from the black theme, but it’s also available in white. 

All in One SEO Pack

This is one among the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s incredibly easy to use and works with most WordPress plugins by automatically generating META tags and optimizing your titles for search engines. It’s been downloaded more than 9 million times, making it one of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO. It takes a lot of the hard work out of the equation, and doesn’t rely on you knowing the sort of knowledge that professional SEO guys know, to start getting good results. This is the sort of plugin that everyone should put on their blog if they’re trying to get a better response with Google, because Google is hard to understand, so it’s easier to leave it up to someone else who understands better than you.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

This has got to be one of my favourite SEO plugins because it allows you to check how search engine friendly your content is, before you actually post it. You’re provided with a preview of what your post will look like in Google, and then you can input focus keyword(s) to see how many times they throughout the post, title, URL, etc. You can then change how the title appears in Google, as well as the description too, meaning that you can takes steps to make your content more SEO friendly, and make people want to click on them. All of this is edited from the post editor page, and it just becomes a part of how you finish up your posts, along with tags, excerpt, category and featured image.

upPrev Previous Post Animated Notification

This plugin was designed to emulate the “Next Post” buttons you see once you scroll to the bottom of New York Times web articles, and it’s the exception in this post. This isn’t about getting more traffic to your post, it’s a way of making someone stay on your site for longer, by clicking on more pages. I included this because I started to use it, and found that I was getting really good results and wanted to share with others. When a visitor reaches the bottom of the page, the preview will pop up for the next post in that particular category, and if you have your categories laid out well, you can greatly increase the amount of time that a visitor will spend on your site. The preview looks very professional, and the popup action attracts the readers attention without being too intrusive. It’s proven to produce more pageviews as it’s more effective than most related articles.