Here’s a quick screen shot of my Google Analytics stats from yesterday.

Bear in mind I’ve been away and haven’t posted recently so my traffic has been virtually nil. This is reflected in my Alexa ranking which dropped into the millions again.

I want to show you exactly what I did to grab this quick boost to my traffic so you can do the same.

I spent a few hours sifting through Twitter and adding people who I thought were both interesting and whom I’d like to network with.

I didn’t just blindly add people. I made sure to check out their page and tweets to see if they are people that I actually want to network with.

Tip: As a starting point, view the people your friends are following and those who follow them.

Twitter sets an initial limit of 2000 on the amount of people you can follow. Once you have 2000 followers yourself you can start to follow more than this limit.

People often debate the merits of following so many people but for me, the more the merrier! This way you can visit Twitter at any hour and find someone to tweet with.

Sneaky tip: You could lift this limit more quickly by unfollowing those that don’t follow you back and adding more that hopefully will. Once you’re beyond 2000 followers and the limit is lifted, re-add those that you unfollowed if desired.

As I write this I have 871 followers and rising as people log into their accounts today to follow me. You should also note that I added several leads on the back of this traffic too.

Be sure to have a link back to your website in your Twitter profile or this won’t work! Don’t forget to follow me here: http://twitter.com/JohnSzram and I’ll follow you back!

You might also want to get a Twitter Counter like the one you can see in my stats menu. Happy Tweeting!

There are many different ways to increase website traffic but today I’m going to focus on 4 of the easiest methods. I’m going to give you 4 simple ways that you can increase website traffic quickly, easily and that you can start to put to use today.

These methods aren’t rocket science and they are no big secret but if used correctly they work really well. If you are not currently using them as part of your overall traffic strategy then you are missing out.

Notice I didn’t say these are the best ways, but they are just some of the easiest ways to drive visitors to your site quickly.

You’ll notice my Alexa ranking not too long ago was in the millions, which isn’t unusual for a new blog. As I write this it’s at modest 239,235 and steadily rising. Recently I even broke into the top 100,000 for the week, which in itself doesn’t mean much but I like to use it as an overall indicator of how I am progressing.

Anyway… I digress, let’s get started:

1. Blog Commenting

The Golden Rule: Add value to the converstation.

Please do this, it is so important. The temptation when using blog commenting as a traffic generation strategy is to try and get as many comments out there as possible. A few well written comments are much better than lots of “nice post” type comments.

People will simply gloss over these comments and the chances of them visiting your site are virtually nil. Conversely if you add something of value to the conversation readers might think “this person has something to say, I’m gonna check out their site.”

Don’t force it either or it will sound contrived. If you’ve got nothing to say that is relevant move on and find another post where you can add something of value.

If you have the Alexa Toolbar installed, my advice would be to comment on blogs where you can not only add value but that are also in the top 100,000 on Alexa and certainly in the top 500,000. This shows they are getting a decent amount of traffic. If at all possible focus on commenting on “dofollow” blogs. If you are not sure what that means check out my recent post here: http://www.johnszram.com/are-you-following-me/

The thing about blog commenting is, I enjoy it. I truly enjoy reading other people’s posts, learning and adding my thoughts. In fact, I’d add more comments but I don’t want to flood people’s blogs! You get to read, learn, contribute and you benefit from the traffic and backlinks. It’s a great set up.

2. Submit To Blog Carnivals

Submitting to Blog Carnivals is also a great way to drive people to your site. It’s a win-win situation, the carnival owner gets valuable content for their site and you get a backlink and traffic.

Some of the carnivals require that you post a link back to the their site which I have no problem doing since hopefully we won’t be submitting to spammy sites anyway. Think about it like this, if your link to their carnival helps them in the search engines… great! The more people visit their site the greater the chance they’ll find your content and come back to your blog.

I like providing my content for others to use on their site and this helps to build a reputation as an expert or an authority on your subject.

3. Social Bookmarking

I choose one of my best articles and I submit to a lot of social bookmarking sites and I do this once a week. Instead of submitting to them all individually I use Social Marker. I have usually been surprised by which individual sites send me the most traffic and there’s only one way you’ll find out and that’s to submit and monitor the results. You could use Google Analytics to do this.

The first time I implemented this strategy I noticed a huge increase in website traffic to our site. On one particular day I saw an increase of 400% from the previous days traffic the night after submitting through Social Marker. I highly recommend you submit a quality article using their service. I can’t promise those results but it’s still an effective way to gain visitors.

4. Forum Participation

Forum participation much like blog commenting is a great way to increase website traffic. Especially if you make posts that offer good quality information. Like all of this stuff, relevance and content are king. You’ll need to create a link to your site in your signature so readers know where to find you.

Please don’t spam these places. Contribute. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as “marketing karma” but usually the more you give, the more you receive back. If you are struggling to make money online, think about that for a moment, how much are you giving as opposed to taking?

The posts that work the best are ones where you start a thread for no reason other than to provide quality information. Don’t think about getting anything in return. Just provide the best information that you can on a particular subject and people will thank you for it and so will your traffic stats.

It’s a great way to build a reputation as a provider of quality information and to show your expertise on a particular subject. Do it today. Think to yourself “I’m going to write the best information I can possibly write on this topic and submit.” See what happens.

Forums are also one of the best places to learn, since you can get as involved as much or as little as you like. You can sit back and only read other’s posts or you can become proactive and contribute. You’ll find the whole process much more rewarding once you start to contribute.

My favourite forum is Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profits but I would say that since I’m a moderator there right? Well I’d say that anyway and I did before I became a mod (though I’m actually a rocker ). It’s without doubt the place where I feel most at home.

Now go out there, start driving some traffic today and let me know how you get on.

I’m on a real drive to simplify everything in my Internet Business right now. There have been a few things that I haven’t been quite happy with from an organizational standpoint.

I’ve just moved to my new server at HostGator and I’m really pleased that the move appears to have gone smoothly. Give it time for the gremlins to appear.

This is the first time I’ve had access to cPanel and I’m loving it, I’ve never had awstats available to me before, I had to rely heavily on Google Analytics which didn’t give me everything I needed. My old host used a frankly confusing custom control panel and the prices they charged were daylight robbery!

I’ve also moved all my mail from my many different accounts over to Gmail . As soon as the propagation with my domain has settled down I’m going to sign up for Google Apps and use their hosted email service. This simply means I’ll be using Gmail with my own domain instead of @googlemail.com.

I’ve also upgraded to WordPress 2.6 which appears to be a fairly solid release. All this in the name of streamlining and improving productivity! I’ve still a few things I want to clean up on my local PC, and some other systems I need to put in place but we’re heading in the right direction.

I’ve had a fair bit of luck with all these new transfers etc. and I’m a little nervous as nothing has gone wrong yet… Hope I haven’t spoken too soon!

I wasn’t sure I should share this with you as it makes me look rather silly, but I thought you might find it amusing, if not a reason to get started building your mailing list today.

Sales Confusion
I checked my email on Monday night and saw that I had a sale for a product I hadn’t yet promoted. I sat scratching my head wondering where the sale had come from. Just then, another payment notification – another sale and then another!

Don’t get me wrong I was pleased but I was a little confused because I like to keep track of these things and I couldn’t remember promoting this particular product.

What am I selling?
The product in question was Terry Dean’s Foolproof Method of Choosing Slam Dunk Markets for Beginners which I recently bought with the intention of promoting at some stage since it’s a great value packed product.

This product makes use of the $7 script and during the sales process there is an option to send a recommendation message to a bunch of people but I’m sure I didn’t fill that out. In fact, I know I didn’t.

Moment of Clarity
It slowly began to dawn on me. Being a subscriber of this blog you know that I don’t send many promotions to this list. In fact, I hadn’t sent any until a couple of nights ago.

There are no follow up messages on this list and no promotions, which some might think is crazy. Anyway, on Monday evening I decided that I should test an email series to go along with my blog broadcast messages.

I grabbed a sample email from my desktop and pasted it into AWeber to make sure the formatting was correct. I sent the message to myself to test. Everything was fine, but before I had the chance to change the message I was interrupted in the middle of the process and I hit save.

As you know when you add a follow up message to your list it’s not only your new subscribers that receive this message. Depending on where your subscribers are in your follow up sequence previous subscribers will also receive your message.

As I had no follow up messages at all on this particular list my new message was sent to everyone.

Startling Results
I have a small but loyal following here at JohnSzram.com but I was taken aback by the results. A staggering 13.3% of people on my list bought this product from me which as you can imagine was a nice surprise.

That’s quite a startling percentage when you consider I never even edited the body of the email. I just changed the links, put my name at the end and hit save (send). It was simply Terry’s default message with my links in it, no other changes.

For those of you that bought the product from me thank you, you simply have it in your hands sooner than I thought you might which is great since you can start using the product and making your money back immediately.

For those that don’t yet have it, you might want to try promoting it yourself, you can pick up a copy below for only $10. I made my money back in no time and much sooner than I had planned too!

>> Choose Your Market <<

Let me know how you get on.

You probably know by now that it’s important to build a list and develop a relationship with your subscribers. So what do you need to get started?

You’ll need 3 things:

• Autoresponder
• Opt-in Box
• Free Gift

Autoresponder
A “follow up” autoresponder is software that simply allows you to collect your visitor’s details (usually just name and email address) and send out emails to many subscribers at once.

For this I use Aweber but you could equally use GetResponse , or another of the popular autoresponder services as they all operate in much the same way.

Aweber has all the features I need and more, including some great analytical tools so that’s what I personally recommend. You can take a free test drive of their software at their site.

Opt-in Box
Next up you’ll need to create a webform or opt-in box like the one you see at the top of this page. Aweber makes it really easy to create multiple webforms and also lets you track their performance. You can then place it on your blog or squeeze page and this enables you to start adding subscribers immediately.

People will still need a compelling reason to opt-in though which leads to my next point.

Free Gift
Give something of value away in exchange for your visitor’s email address. This could be a free report, a video, an email series, audio series or similar. The rule of thumb is it has to be something of value. Something that you could sell, something that would ordinarily cost money to obtain.

But I’ve got nothing to give away?
Have a look at my current opt-in box and you’ll see the free report I just started giving away. I didn’t write that report it was created by Internet Business Coach Terry Dean .

It’s a great report full of extremely useful information for both aspiring and experienced Internet Business owners alike and contains a lot of information that really resonated with me the first time I read it.

The version of the report I’m offering is a brandable version, in other words it contains my affiliate links. You can download the original report at Terry Dean’s Blog .

Giving away a product of your own is, of course, far more valuable especially if it’s something that people can’t get anywhere else. But if you haven’t created a report yet why not find one, preferrably brandable, and give that away at least until you’ve created one of your own.

Easy huh?
Now you’ve started building your list you can keep blasting promotion after promotion to your subscribers and squeeze every penny out of them right?

I hope not.

The Money’s In The Relationship
You’ll have heard “The money’s in the list” countless times but hopefully you’ll also know that this is only half true. The money is really in the relationship you have with your list. If you treat your list like the human beings they actually are, your list will be much more responsive when it comes time to sell.

Before I sign off I thought I’d share a couple of videos I recently stumbled across from Frank Kern that will shed more light on the subject of mailing lists and that go over the process in more detail. I hope you find them useful. Check them out here: http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?page_id=9

FireFox
If you use Firefox (and in my opinion you should!) you will know about extensions. For those that don’t, these are simply add-ons to the Firefox browser that let you personalize your user experience.

Search Status
One of the most powerful extensions I use is Search Status. It provides you with handy information like PageRank, AlexaRank, backlinks, keyword density, link reports, whois and lots of other SEO related tools.

You can see how it simply sits in the bottom corner of my firefox browser next to my Alexa Toolbar.

Below is the context menu displayed when you right click the “q”symbol. You’ll notice how it allows you to highlight nofollow links, generate link reports, view your site’s meta tags, keyword density, show which pages are indexed and where your backlinks are coming from.

These are all extremely useful tools for monitoring your own site but here’s where it gets interesting…

Unfair Advantage
You could use it to find out which sites link to your competitors pages, view their traffic sources and perhaps see who their likely affiliates and JV partners are. This is also a good way to find new link directories and exchanges simply by viewing where your competitors go to place their links.

An unfair advantage? Possibly. Powerful stuff though I think you’ll agree.

Surely this will increase spam?
There is every chance that once you remove the nofollow attribute that this will attract those who are only looking for some quick link love. However, I’m of the opinion that it’s worth it if you have certain things in place.

My philospophy
My aim is to maintain or improve the quality of comments for you as a reader and reward genuine contribution.

I want to reward readers who actively participate and contribute on this blog. If someone is kind enough to take the time to leave a comment and contribute to the discussion I am more than happy for them to receive credit in the search engines as well as having a chance to generate traffic.

Everything in moderation
Whilst all of the above is true, I also recognise the need for balance and moderation. My blog is set up in such a way that every comment requires moderation before it appears and this has always been the case.

This gives me complete control over which comments I include, those that I moderate and those I choose to delete. I also have the Akismet plugin that catches most of the obvious spam comments.

I verify each link that is posted and if I feel it looks like spam I’ll either remove the link, comment or both. This is to protect you as a reader and also ensure this blog isn’t seen as a link farm when google crawls the site.

Comment’s like “nice post” usually won’t be added and anyone who posts keywords where their name should be also has their comment removed.

My own blog commenting strategy
I comment on both nofollow and dofollow blogs. If I’ve got something to say on a particular subject I don’t stop to think which category it falls under.

However, when I set out specifically to generate traffic by using blog commenting I set out with these intentions:

• Place my link on dofollow blogs
• Contribute something of value
• Read and Learn
• Look for potential JV partners

So although I set out to drive traffic that’s not where the process ends for me. Some people will simply try to post as many comments as possible. But they are missing a trick and that is learning from the site’s you visit and building relationships with the site owners.

I’m certainly not part of any “dofollow movement” this is simply something I’m testing and if this action affects the blog adversely then I won’t hesitate to change it back.

If I place a link to your website on my blog there is a chance someone will click on it and you will gain a free visitor to your site.

If you make a comment on my blog your name will be hyperlinked to your site and you have another chance to grab some free visitors.

If you trackback to one of my posts from your own blog and I approve, you get yet another link back to your site. These are all ways to generate traffic to your site by interacting with mine.

Now generating traffic is all well and good but you also want your comments to help your site’s ranking in the search engines and doing the things above does not guarantee this at all. Why?

Do you follow?
WordPress software by default adds the “nofollow” HTML attribute to all links from user generated content on your blog. This means anyone leaving a comment or providing a trackback to your site will not gain any positive influence when it comes to ranking in the search engines.

Put simply, if you leave a comment on a WordPress blog that has default settings you will not rank any higher in the search engines. Sure you might get some traffic from people clicking on your links but you want to gain some extra ranking benefit too.

How can I know the difference?
A quick way to tell if the blog you are visiting has the “nofollow” attribute in place is to click any post that has comments and view the source code:

• FireFox: Right-click the page then “View Page Source”
• Internet Explorer: Right-click the page then “View Source.”

Scroll down to find the code for the comment section and if you see rel=’external nofollow’ after the links then you know you will not be credited when the search bots crawl that particular site.

How can I change my own blog settings?
There are 2 main methods you can use.

1. Use a plugin
2. Modify the core WordPress code

The main problem I have with modifying the WordPress code is you have to remember not to overwrite it when you upgrade to the latest version of the WordPress software or update the new version once you have upgraded.

Dan Thompson (One of my fellow moderators over at Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profits) recently made a post about this:
http://www.elpassoblog.com/why-adding-blog-comments-does-nothing-for-seo/

It was Dan that got me thinking about this issue in more depth recently. As I mentioned on his blog I’ve tried many different methods but in the last few days I’ve settled on using Semiologic’s DoFollow plugin which you can download here (bottom of the page):

Semiologic DoFollow Plugin

Install like you would any other plugin and once activated the “nofollow” code is removed from your comment section.

Being the proud owner of a “dofollow” blog has it’s own issues and there are a couple of things you need to consider before you put this in place – primarily spam.

I will be talking about this in more detail soon and how this has caused me to rethink certain aspects of my blog’s comment policy. See you then.

I read this post http://www.lee-mcintyre.com/blog/does-it-get-any-better-than-this on Lee McIntyre’s blog today and I want to share this personal story since I too have been sharing in the celebrations.

When I was 9 years old my family suffered a great personal tragedy when my mum’s brother – my uncle, died at only age 18. As you can imagine this was an incredibly difficult time for everyone and it had a profound effect on my life.

Pride
At this time I played football regularly at school. My family couldn’t (perhaps wouldn’t!) afford to buy me a new football top and I inherited one from my uncle – his Manchester United top. I was so proud to wear that shirt.

I remember pulling on that top and feeling such pride and that, in some small way, it brought me closer to my uncle. I was ridiculed by the other school kids week after week, laughed at and pointed at since I was wearing a top from the seventies and they had their shiny new eighties tops.

I don’t tell you this so you can feel sorry for me but because I knew what I was doing was right, that it didn’t matter what other’s thought and that was enough for me. It has always been enough for me.

Determination
I keep my head down and keep ploughing away and don’t let anything get in the way of what it is I want to achieve whether it’s musically or in the Internet Business arena.

I sometimes wonder if it’s moments like these that shape who we really are. I’ve never been afraid of ridicule. I’ve always been true to myself. I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind and I’m fiercely independent. I don’t follow football very closely but I watch all of Manchester United’s games and I’m more passionate about them than perhaps I let on.

Unlike Lee, I’ve never been to a football match in my life (typical Man U supporter some would say!) music was always my passion and concerts and gigs took precedence over Ryan Giggs. But I do consider myself a lifelong Manchester United supporter.

Where is this going? I don’t want you to be afraid of anything online. Internet Marketing sometimes gets a bad reputation because of a minority (perhaps majority) of people who are only out to make a fast buck. I’m an Internet Marketer but I have nothing to do with those people as I’m here to build a long term business.

Honesty and Integrity
It can be hard sometimes explaining what you are doing to family members and a lot of people will think you are insane or lump you together with those unscrupulous types.

You know in your heart which category you fall into and ultimately you are the one who has to live with yourself. I only promote marketing with honesty, integrity and transparency and want nothing to do with those who are dishonest. I like to sleep easy at night.

If you are in this for the long term you need to think the same way and do not be afraid to be yourself. People do business with people. Be yourself and if you are always honest then you have nothing to try and remember.

Take Care,
John Szram

24. Plugins
Only use plugins or widgets that enhance or support your content or that help build your community and deepen your relationship with your subscribers. Avoid using those that distract from your content. Here’s a list of widgets currently installed on this blog:

• Akismet – Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• Breadcrumb Navigation XT – Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor’s path to their current location.
• Get Recent Comments – Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.
• FeedBurner FeedSmith – This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
• JAW Popular Posts Widget – Adds a sidebar widget that shows the most popular posts. Requires the Popularity Contest plugin.
• Limit Posts – Limits the displayed text length on the index page entries and generates a link to a page to read the full content if its bigger than the selected maximum length.
• MyBlogLog Widget – Adds MyBlogLog widget to your blog.
• Popularity Contest – This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity.
• ShareThis – Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• Top Commentators Widget – Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site.
• What Would Seth Godin Do – Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors.

25. External links
Links to other sites should be kept to a minimum. I recommend none above the fold unless they are to your own products. You will notice that there are no external links immediately above the fold other than those which might appear in my post area.

Links to pages on your blog or site should open in the same browser window. External links and even links to your own products should open in another browser window. You want your blog to remain open in your reader’s browser.

26. Comments
You want to encourage participation so leave the “follow attribute” but just limit the number of comments displayed. I recommend a top comments widget over simply listing the last comment posted. This rewards the more active readers by having their link displayed on your page.

27. Ads
Don’t use them. I hate visiting blogs full of ads. When I see a site full of ads I navigate away. Unless they are for your own products I would not recommend and even then they should be subtle.

Obviously this depends on the type of blog your creating. If you are reviewing other peoples products, you are an affiliate marketer or you make a living from adsense then this is different. If it is for your personal blog limit them and place them below the fold. This is just my personal view.

28. New Visitors
Don’t welcome everyone at the top of your page or in your header. My tip is to use the What Would Seth Godin Do? plugin. I have mine set to welcome new visitors on their first 3 visits though some might say 7 times might be best. Test and find out what works best for you. If you use this plugin, encourage new visitors to sign up to your list or feed.

29. Exit Popup
I don’t have one of these at present but this is something perhaps you should consider. I know many marketers who say that this substantially increases their opt-in rate. Offer something of value in return for your reader’s email address. Usually a product that you could get away charging money for. Offer it for free. Be careful though as a lot of people do not like popups of any kind.

30. Stats
You are proud of your blog right? Display an Alexa Traffic Rank Button on your blog, don’t be afraid to show your stats even if they aren’t that great at present. I’ve heard the act of putting this button on your page alone actually helps increase your ranking! Let your readers know how popular your blog is. Since you are always going to be working on improving those stats then let everyone see just how well you are doing. This is also a great personal motivator to drive traffic to your pages.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts as much as I enjoyed writing them and find these tips to be of use when thinking about starting your own blog.

Is my blog perfect? No way! But it does adhere to most of the above criteria and will adhere to all over the coming weeks and this will give my blog the best chance of success.

Some of you may disagree with some of the points above. The point is you have to do what’s right for your business and niche. There are no hard and fast rules but use these ideas as a guideline and you won’t go far wrong.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below. Don’t forget if you enjoyed this post then please feel free to share.