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Top 5 secrets for quality soccer blogging
By Amanda | March 31, 2008
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I’m still a novice here, but based on a bit of research and multiple chats with my trusted SEO (-;, here’s what I found about being a successful blogger and increasing page traffic.
1. Get others to link to you, and link to others.
How the heck is Google worth $o much money? Back in the day, Google said, ‘What if there were no search engines? How would a person, walking across the world wide web, get anyplace?’ The answer: LINKS. Once you find a site you’re interested in, links help you get from one place to another in a smooth, sensical way.
Google then said, ‘We should factor links as an important component of page reliability.’ And thus, the google search engine was born. (Okay, you and I both know that a search engine has many more complicated algorithms than that, but stay with me here.)
Basically, think of a LINK like a vote in a democratic election. When somebody links to your blog, Google sees this like a vote for your page, and therefore ranks your site higher in search engine results. Linking to an outside source isn’t quite the same, but it certainly does play a factor. That’s because by linking out, you’re participating in the democratic process and Google recognizes that.
2. Host your blog on your own domain.
If you’re hosting your blog on Blogger, WordPress, or any of a multitude of blogging sites, it’s important that you switch over to your own domain ASAP (I can help with this if you’d like advice. I just went through the process myself). Why? If somebody links to your blog, hosted on another domain, then that vote doesn’t go to you. It actually goes to blogger or wordpress itself. Then how can Google differentiate between you and the thousands of other bloggers on that domain? It’s kind of like voting for a President in the early primaries.
3. Thank people who link to you. Communicate with them and comment on their pages.
Links are hard to come by. If somebody links to (aka “votes” for) your blog, that’s a huge compliment. Make sure you get in touch with your fellow blogger to thank them, and if it’s appropriate, share a link back to his/her page.
I don’t know about you, but when somebody leaves a comment on my blog I get really excited! Why not share that experience with others? Another idea to gain traffic is to write a rebuttle, follow up, or related story to somebody’s post on your own blog. Comment on the original story and put a link back to your page in the comments. People are likely to follow up with you if they’re interested.
Also, vote/comment in Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit. Importanly, post in forums. Communicate with others who have similar interests and tell them about your blog.
4. Write quality, descriptive headlines.
If you want to keep your site competitive on the pages of search engines, you really should be writing descriptive headlines that attract attention, inspire people to link to your page, and explain the article’s purpose. (Remember, however, to never over-promise and under-deliver in your article.) If every time you write one notable piece you gain one, two, five, or ten prominent links, the article did its job.
Eric Ward, also known as the Godfather of linking, describes it well: “Link Bait is more or less anything you create anywhere on the Web that inspires other people to link to it. They can link to it via a Web page, a blog, social bookmark site, tagging site, e-zine, newsletter, IM, email or any other method that tells others about the bait.”
Andy Higgins is known as the “master-baiter”. Check out his blog here. He offers witty insight into pretty much anything and everything blogging/SEO.
5. Subscribe to Google Analytics, and learn how to apply the data to your blogging.
“Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there for analyzing traffic on your website. With a little bit of setup, it will give you an enormous amount of information about who is coming to your site, what they’re looking for, and how they’re getting there. In fact, it has so much information that it can be overwhelming!”
Don’t let this scare you away. With just a little training, you too can use Google Analytics like a pro.
For example, I wrote a short, non-descriptive, basically terrible post about Cuba vs. USA soccer game. This one post seemed to get more hits on my blog from Google referrals than any other post on my site. So instead of letting traffic continue to visit my page and bounce, I rewrote the article and increased the amount of time people spent on my blog.
Another example is that people seem to find my blog when they’re looking for information about soccer statistics, prozone, dartfish and other video analysis software programs. I subsequently wrote an article about statistics in soccer and my page views increased by 25%. Basically, learn what people want and then give it to them.
Before you do anything else, READ THIS, the Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.
Topics: Social Media |
April 8th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Thanks for the advice. Check out my blog, madaboutfutbol.com