Site Traffic - BlogCraving

How to See What Google Sees in Your Site

April 30, 2008 By Travis Lusk Leave a Comment

Ever wonder what Google sees in your blog or website? Well, you can…to some extent.

All you have to do is search for your stuff and see if it shows up right? Well that would probably take all day. So here’s how you get there a little faster. Let’s use iCastLimited.com as the example.

Log onto Google. In the search field, do each of these searches individually.

site:icastlimited.com
link:icastlimited.com
cache:icastlimited.com
info:icastlimited.com
related:icastlimited.com

What does each search mean? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: google, index, search engine, search field

Right out of the box, it comes with all the most popular social networking sites and bookmarking sites. In about 5 minutes, you can have this configured and launched on your blog. It also comes with a handy little plugin for WordPress that makes the implementation slightly easier. However, you don’t need the plugin portion if you are compfortable with it on your own.

You are left with a clean, small button on the bottom of your posts that says ShareThis with a little icon. That’s it. Nice and clean. When clicked, it pops open to reveal your sharing options.

For you as the site owner, you can track the usage of these networking tools through the ShareThis website. That way, you can see if people are actually using it!

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: blog, blogs, bookmark, configured, email post, email to friend, implementation, networking tools, sharethis, social networking sites, tagging, traffic, wordpress

Have you thought about video blogging?

April 15, 2008 By Travis Lusk Leave a Comment

Gary Vaynerchuk, from WineLibraryTv.com sure did. Back when his family owned a small liquor store, he had the thought to not only grow his business, but draw it a cult following. Here he is in his own words.

0 Have you thought about video blogging?

Watch, enjoy, and learn.

Filed Under: Site Traffic, Video Tagged With: blogging, gary vaynerchuk, liquor store, Video, vlogging

How to Make Your Blog Load Faster

April 14, 2008 By Travis Lusk 4 Comments

One of the biggest issues people come to us to solve is making their blog load faster. This is often the first challenge a growing blog faces.

Eventually, your blog will become popular enough to necessitate upgrading your hosting plan. However, there’s a lot you can do to put that day off for quite a while.

One of the first and most powerful things you can do is cache your homepage and posts.

What is a “cache” ?

To understand how caching works, you first have to understand a little about how WordPress works. Without caching, here’s how your blog works. When someone browses over to your site, WordPress immediately queries your WordPress database for all of the content and settings on the page.

A query is like a search. The site script searches the database for the appropriate content to display on the page. Every time the page is called upon by a user, the database is queried again and again. This repeated database query will eventually cause a tremendous amount of stress to the server.

The result is that pages start to load slower. Eventually, they may start timing out all together. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: blog, cache, database query, load time, mean time, server, stress, wp-cache

How to Track Who’s Linking to You

April 13, 2008 By Travis Lusk Leave a Comment

For most experienced bloggers, this is not news. However, for you beginners out there, this can be a very valuable skill/tool.

Blog pros usually spend up to an hour a day digging through their website analytics. I know, that sounds absolutely insane, but it’s true. Pro bloggers are blogging for a living, so it is very important that they understand every heartbeat of their site.

One (of many) ways to track the success of your site is to see how many other sites are linking to you. Google and other search engines actually look at these links as implicit endorsements of your content. Them more links to your site there are, the more “important” search engines believe your site to be.

Naturally, you’ll want to have as many high quality sites link to you as possible. When they do, a quick “thank you” note back is always appreciated. Also, linking back is encouraged if you find thier site valuable as well, however it is not required.

Also, when a site links to yours, one way to digitally thank them is to head over to their site, browse, and comment where appropriate.

So how do you know how many sites are linking back to you? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: analytics, awstats, blog search, blogs, endorsements, heartbeat, high quality, link back, pagerank, quality, site google, site rank, stats package, technorati

Boost Your Site Traffic in 30 Days

March 30, 2008 By Travis Lusk Leave a Comment

I stumbled upon a an old post on ProBlogger about increasing your traffic in just 30 days. At first, I didn’t notice the date it was published, but I really believed in what it was saying. Then I noticed the date, and it made me laugh because the tips still hold true today.

Tip 3 was worth highlighting:

Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Even though this is from 2005, it is still true today. If you want to gain respect in the blogosphere, you have to earn it. Just writing your posts and sitting around waiting for the readers to flock in doesn’t work. You need to proactively get out there and make your name known.

However, I caution you against belatedly plugging yourself where ever you go. Don’t just comment on someone else’s post because you are looking to get clicks back to your site. And don’t make your comments into a big advertisement for yourself.

Instead, actually contribute something worthwhile to the conversation. That will gain you more blogging street cred

Filed Under: Site Traffic Tagged With: advertisement, blog, blogging, blogs, free, publishers, readers, tips, traffic

If Mark Cuban can do it, so can you!

March 26, 2008 By Travis Lusk Leave a Comment

There was an excellent article up on the NY Times Personal Tech section about blogging. The headline really caught my eye, “So You Want to Be a Blogging Star…”

It starts right off with the story of billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet. Cuban writes his own blog, blogmaverick.com. He’s probably one of the busiest businessmen you’ll ever meet, yet he still has time to write his blog.

So what’s the big deal with a billionaire writing a blog? Can’t everyone have a hobby? Well, Cuban’s blog is ranked among the top 1,000 blogs in the world. Considering that there are tens of millions of blogs on the web, that’s a huge accomplishment.

Funny enough, he actually has an active discussion going on right now about blogging. Apparently, bloggers in the Mav’s locker room is becoming a big deal. I kind of disagree with his position though. (See my response below)

Another point I think should be highlighted in the in the article is where they mention participating in the blogging community. This is extremely important. Once you get your blog off the ground, even if is only a few posts old, get out there! Start participating in the community. Write comments on other blogs. Link to other blogs too. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Site Traffic Tagged With: billionair, businessmen, dallas ericks, hdnet, iCast Elite List, journalists, locker room, mark cuban, mav, ny times, owner of the, owner of the dallas ericks, stream media, tips, traffic

Part 2: Of Making Your Business Site Better

March 25, 2008 By Travis Lusk 1 Comment

We continue with our discussion of how to make your business website better. After yesterday’s article, I realized that these tips really don’t apply exclusively to business sites. Really, you can use this information for any site that you want to make better. Anyway, on with the show. We left off with…

What if I don’t want to spend any money at all?

I know it doesn’t seem like it could be true, but you really can make significant improvements to your site and you overall brand without spending any money. There’s a lot of places on the web that claim “Free traffic,” “Increase Sales for Free,” “Free Links,” etc. In those cases, it is a little too good to be true. However, there are some good places to start.

Update Daily!

That’s right folks, daily. The key to web super stardom is simple, but a big commitment. If you want to see an increase in traffic to your website, update it everyday. Give it 3 to 6 months, and you will see a huge jump in traffic.

Visitors don’t want to see the same thing every time they come back to your site. If you’re lucky enough to get someone to come back a second time, and they see the exact same content they did last time, they’re not coming back. Period. Why would they? They already know what is going to be there!

However, if they come back a second time and see all new content, now you’ve got them right where you want them. It immediately peaks their interest. They’ll now know (and expect) that every time they come back.

I don’t care of you own a plumbing business or a bookstore, you need to update regularly. Every. Single. Day.

How can I update everyday? For that matter, what possible updates could I have?

Since we are in the “spend no money” mode, here’s what you do. Stroll on over to Blogger or WordPress.com and start a blog. From your main site, just link over to it. From there, you will have a wealth of simple tools at your disposal enabling you to make updates whenever you want (aka everyday. I’m watching you). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Site Traffic Tagged With: blog, Business, business website, free links, free traffic, money mode, sales, simple tools, traffic increase, traffic visitors, website