Weblog Hits

Ok, I’ve had enough with the default masthead that comes with the WordPress, so I finally made something a little more eye pleasing. It’s not the best in the world, but not as embarassing as the default look. Well, I didn’t plan on doing this, but perhaps I should make this a quick tutorial in case anyone else out there would like to know how to do this.

Step 1:

To get started, first right click and save your default masthead to your desktop. It should be a blue masthead that looks something like this:

Step 2:
Using Photoshop or other image editing software, select the white border on the outside of the blue and then COPY the selection.

Step 3:

Hopefully you have already found a good background for your masthead. If not find one and open it up. Now simply pasted your selected area to this background picture. Add text or other graphics if desired:

Step 4:

What I do from this point is crop in the white area and then paste this on top of the original blue masthead image. By default, your masthead is probably stored in a location on your server at:

/wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickheader.jpg

To make things easy, safe your new masthead as kubrickheader.jpg and upload over the old one. Save the old one if you like as a backup.

Now, your new masthead should show up on your blog. But, you probably notice your blog title overlapping your masthead making things look screwy. You will also want your masthead clickable so readers can use it to easily navigate to your home page. To do this you will need to go into your blog admin and click on “Presentation”, then click “Theme Editor”. On the right click the link that says “Header”.

It should say at the top: “Editing header.php”. Select and copy everything and save this as a backup on your computer in case you make a mistake. The section you will need to edit is near the bottom of the header.php file.

At this point I will send you to a more detailed explanation of how to edit the code. Click here to continue…

Now, what does this have to do with increasing traffic to your blog? Well, nothing directly. It has more to do with making your blog pleasing to your visitors…so they will keep coming back.

[tags]blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

I bought my second ad on the Blogads network and must say I’m very pleased with the results. The first ad I bought was placed on the site (REMOVED - SEE NOTE BELOW). That one ad cost $40 and brought in close to 2,000 visitors in one week. This week I’ve placed an ad on A Welsh View for $25. Both of these ads were for one of my other blogs. As soon as the ad went live, I could see a spike in my traffic.

Part of the success may have to do with my ad. I looked at examples of great blogads and borrowed the idea to make an ad look like an embedded video. I think a lot of people like the look and feel of ads on the blogads network. I’m not sure what it is about them, but they get you involved and are kind of fun. Who knows…all I know is for the money, I’m pretty satisfied.

Now…if only I could get an invite so I could start putting blog ads on my site…

UPDATE: Now I am not so impressed with Blogads. Since I made this post, the good site I mentioned earlier now sucks. They have 10 ads on their sidebar and if you buy one you will be at the bottom and won’t get any clicks. Blogads needs to make all ads rotate on a continuous basis. I’ve taken the link down to one of the blogs I recommended. I won’t advertise there again!

[tags]blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips,blogads[/tags]

I justed checked and Google has finally indexed this site. I was beginning to wonder as I think I’ve had other sites listed sooner - but 6 days is nothing to scoff at. It would take many experiments to figure out what factors speed up the time it takes to get listed, but I’ll summarize some important things I did that may have played a part:

1. Submitted my URL to Google’s add url page.
2. Linked a word in one of my posts to an permalink on Google’s Blog.
3. Did the same thing to an article on TechCrunch.
4. Posted legitimate comments on a few blogs I enjoy reading
5. Announced this blog at BloggerForum.
6. Spent two or three hours writing a good article to submit to social news sites, submitted
7. Added RSS feed link to my site
8. Added blog to Technorati
9. Installed plugin to add Technorati tags to my posts
10. Installed this Google Sitemap plugin, created sitemap and pinged Google.
11. Optimized this blog using these excellent tips to make it more pleasing to the search engines.
12. Posted at least one article per day

For the most part that is basically all I have done. I just checked my stats and found my first hit from a Google search, so I’m pretty happy to have this happen in less than a week.

I’ve heard read quite a few times that the best thing to do is create high quality content…no spam…no garbage. It took me a couple hours or more to find all of the links and write this article, but a lot of people have enjoyed it, and I enjoyed researching and writing it. I think that is the most important key of all. You’ve heard it a million times…if you build it, they will come…yadda yadda yadda.

[tags]google,blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

Test king is the best exam source existing. One can find not only Microsoft, cisco, ccna training but all the purveyors providing certifications. Test king adorns the finest exam preps such as 220-601.essentials to attain the degree you visualize getting. There are number of other resources offered by test king specializing in Microsoft certifications such as 70-292 and 70-282. Cisco certifications are also very much in demand with tests like 650-178 and 640-802. Other Cisco tests under test king are 640-801 and 642-453.

I just installed the Sociable plugin for Wordpress (what I use for this blog) and I’m pretty happy with the results. After installing the plugin, it will put a bunch of tiny candy like icons at the bottom of each post. Click on each icon and it will take you to one of the many social bookmarking sites to submit your post. Some of the sites include digg, furl, blinklist and reddit just to name a few.
If you take a look at the graph to your left you can see the spike in traffic after submitting one of my articles. So far it seems like I got the most traffic from Newsvine. The cool thing is someone saw this article and posted it in the macrumors forum - so a small viral effect is taking place.

Now I will say it does look a bit obnoxious having 25 little icons under each post, so I may have to cut back and only include the more popular ones. This is an easy fix. I simply go into the admin and uncheck the ones I don’t want to use.

I’m not sure if there is a similar plugin/add-on for other blog platforms, so if anyone knows drop me a line or leave a comment and I’ll post it up here.

Click here to download this plugin.

I’ve done a few things over the weekend to try to get traffic and one of them includes claiming this blog at Technorati. If you haven’t done this yet with your blog, you should do so now. Once you sign up, you will need to claim your blog. You will then need to validate that the blog is actually yours by adding some code to your blog and then click the “Claim Blog Now” button. Now your blog should be searchable in Technorati.

I’m honestly still new to Technorati, but from what I hear it sounds like a necessity for your blog to be listed in it. I’ll keep researching it and update later on this topic.

Another thing I did was install a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags. This allows me to easily add Technorati tags to my blog and increase my traffic from them. For example, in my previous article, I added these tags: blogs, blog tips, blog traffic. When you click on this link to Technorati, it will bring you to a list of posts that have been tagged in the same way. The most recent articles will show at the top.

I’m still have a few things to learn about trackbacks, but did an experiment and am getting a little traffic from an earlier post. You should only link to another blog article if you actually have something to say about it, not just to get traffic. This was for experimental and learning purposes only. In one of my posts, I actually was on subject. I linked to an article on Google Notebook and a day later had a trackback link from that article to my blog. I think I’m getting the hang of trackbacks and permalinks, but still have some investigating to do.

I still haven’t been listed in Google. I would think I should show up any day now. Seems like it usually takes about a week, but who knows.

Well, the header of my blog looks pretty lame, so I think it is time to make a better looking masthead for it. I also found another blog on the subject of increasing blog traffic, so I think I’m going to email them to see if they want to exchange links. Hey…it doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?

[tags]blogs,blog,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

Well, I did a little experiment a little after midnight on May 14th. I wrote this article and submitted it to digg. I was hoping it would go over better than it did, but I did get some traffic out of it and hopefully that link from digg will perhaps speed up the process of getting indexed by Google. If you look at my stats you can see a spike in traffic that came from digg. This is nothing really. If you get on the front page of digg you will probably get a few thousand hits and possibly be mentioned in other blogs.

Some people on digg might disagree with the idea of writing an article specifically to try to get on digg. I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as you have something interesting to offer. If people on digg don’t like it, then the story will get buried. I haven’t researched it enough but I do believe a lot of sites out there are using this tactic - but they are doing a better job than me. That’s ok, I’m going to try another tactic soon. I’m going to research what types of stories make it to the home page and see if I can come up with an article idea based on what’s popular at digg.

To be continued…

[tags]digg,blog tips,blog traffic[/tags]

I did a google search for “blog traffic” and ran into this excellent article by Paul Stamatiou and thought I would share. It is titled “HOW TO: Boost Your Blog Traffic“. The article covers topics such as blog usability, style and content and gives several good recommendations for free services you can use to help promote your [tag]blog[/tag]. This is a good read…I suggest you read it now! And…take action!

Lately I’ve found myself obsessed with my Sitemeter stats for a blog I started not too long ago. I started noticing other popular blogs using the same free stat counter, many of them letting the public view the details of where their traffic is coming from. The traffic some of these blogs get is pretty amazing to say the least.

If you do this google search it should bring up a list of all or at least most of the sites in google that are using a sitemeter on their web site/blog. By adding other keywords such as “blog” or whatever you can narrow your results. I spent a couple hours searching around and compiled a list of 25 blogs with links to their realtime sitemeter stats. I think you’ll find it very interesting to take a peek at their traffic details.

25 Blogs and Their Insane Traffic:

Andrew Sullivan - Political Blog
62,363 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Andy HoboTraveler.com - Travel Blog
8,948 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Autoblog - Automotive Blog
111,280 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Blogging Baby - Baby Blog
49,411 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Bruce Schneier - Security and Tech Blog
13,863 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Cinematical - Movie Blog
22,006 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Daily Kos - Political Blog
531,175 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Deadspin - Sports News Blog
84,882 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Defamer - L.A. Gossip
199,854 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Gadling - Travel Blog
8,748 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Gawker - Manhatten Media News and Gossip
229,224 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Gizmodo - The Gadget Blog
383,978 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Gridskipper - Urban Travel Guide
12,576 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

hack a day - Hacking Blog
56,514 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Instapundit - Opinions on Current Events, etc.
121,159 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Jalopnik - Car Blog
55,315 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Joystiq - Video Game Blog
483,389 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats|

Lifehacker - The Productivity and Software Guide
99,388 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Screenhead - Online Review of Funny Shit
10,521 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Sploid - News With a Tabloid Mentality
16,240 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

The Unofficial Apple Weblog - Apple News Blog
53,770 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Valleywag - Tech Gossip
10,059 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Washington Monthly - Political Blog
49,552 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Wonkette - Politics for People With Dirty Minds
74,759 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

WOW Insider - World of Warcraft Blog
16,988 Visits/Day
Click For Blog Traffic Stats

Who knows if they are really Million Dollar Blogs - but I think it’s safe to say they are probably doing fairly well.

Not much traffic coming into my blog yet, but I still plan to draw some attention to this blog in the next day or two. For now, I went ahead and submitted my blog to Technorati, which is probably the most popular blog search engine.

I also have added the little orange Feedburner RSS link/icon thing which you can see on the right to hopefully encourage people to subscribe to my feed.

Well, that’s all for now. Time to play golf or something…

Well, so far traffic is extremely low with 23 visits since I opened. I’d say probably half of these visits are mine. I got a few hits from BlogClicker, but higher quailty hits are coming from a post I made in the forums at the Blogger Forum web site. I’m not in Google yet, but hey…it hasn’t even been a day yet.

I’m think I need to post another relevant comment on another blog. I’d like to use one of my other sites, but feel that would be cheating, so I won’t. I still don’t think I have enough interesting posts, and I definitely need to add some pictures to my blog to make it more exciting. So, I will wait before posting to a site such as BlinkList (more on these sites later).

I do have one idea up my sleeve that I will probably do tonight or tomorrow. I’m going to write a hopefully diggable article to submit to digg. It is a tough crowd to please, but if you have an interesting enough article and you get to the front page, you will get a massive spike in traffic. That’s all for now…look for my hopefully interesting article soon.