That's a lot of reading - and a lot of writing too; thanks.
Larwee,
I'm nearly done reading through the threads, with plenty of diversions to follow from various contributors. It's a hell of a lot to go through in one sitting , so I know I'm going to have to re-mine articles for their insight.
I really liked
21 tactics to increase blog traffic though. It had a few gems in there pointing out a few stupid mistakes I've been making:
- linking meaningless text ("click here" or "example.com")
- allowing traffic to fade away after a freak surge, instead of riding the wave with a follow-up post
- procrastinating and reacting too slowly (allowing media-frenzy to whither before posting something genuinely insightful)
Linda,
I know I'm going to have to re-read your post a few times over the next few days and weeks to get the full benefit from the time you've obviously put into it. (BTW: I have to doff my cap to you for using cats and "long tails" in the same paragraph
)
The general feeling I get - and I know I'll have to go over things again a few times - is quite heart-warming: I was quite cynical thinking I'd discover keyword-stuffing and hidden text was still a common practice. As it turns out, most suggestions seem to revolve around positive actions: creating real content and tools, and exerting some discipline to keep up regular activity. But there's probably one thing that's either missed, or hidden amongst the threads, and that's
monitoring.
There were several action plans (handily separated into daily, weekly and monthly activities) - but I didn't see much about how you monitor and assess how well the actions are serving you. How do you check the effort to produce a well-researched article was worth it? If it takes 3 - 5 hours to write an article, is that more rewarding than writing 10 comments in an hour? Are blogs and forum comments time-efficient for today's traffic, but rubbish for long-term page-rank?
I think I need to read your (Linda's) comment again tomorrow, as it probably answers the questions I've just asked, but I'm too tired to see it.
Thanks again,
Ash