Slapped By Google Penguin? – Take A Look At These Top Traffic Sources

What are your top traffic sources for your blog outside of Google, and why is it so important for you to work on increasing referral traffic? Read on…

Are you sick and tired of the anti-SEO propaganda being paraded around by Google, with Penguin this and Panda that, and hearing ‘this is how you should be building backlinks and creating user friendly content’, blah blah blah… I’m confused, are you? I mean I’ve been doing just that and playing by Google’s rules doing exactly what they want me to do, but when Penguin 2.0 rolled out, I was given yet another slap!

So I ask you: Are you sick and tired of busting your butt off trying to make your blog or website more Google friendly, only to find that when the next animal update is rolled out, all your hard work is rewarded with a bigger slap than you had the first time around?

Well you’re not alone in this; Google is making it increasingly frustrating and difficult for so many ethical webmasters, internet marketers and bloggers out there who are all trying their best to keep their search engine rankings intact by following the rules and guidelines, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of businesses with websites that have also been affected.

It would seem that whether you’ve been carrying out good SEO practices or not, chances are you’ve been caught in the cross-fire and slapped by Google Penguin 2.0, probably for something that you had no control over! Tarnished by the same brush as the spammers, and it sucks…

I fully understand that the web needs to be a better place for the end user, and that Google are trying to eliminate as much spam as possible to make the web a better place, unfortunately in the process of doing so, so many legitimate small business website owners, internet marketers and bloggers have been affected, but has Google’s bottom line? Probably not…

Anyways all is not completely lost, whilst you can keep doing your extreme best to make your blog or website more Google animal friendly, and continue building natural backlinks and creating useful content and so forth, there are many other more effective ways to get traffic without having to rely on search engines, and one of which is staring you right in the face. We’re talking about increasing referral traffic from top traffic sources and big authority sites.

Let’s take a look –

10 Top Traffic Sources For A ‘Google Animal’ Proof Blog!

1. Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is still one of the most effective ways to drive referral traffic to your blog. Here are some points to bear in mind when commenting on other blogs – (also see:- High PR blog commenting sites list)

1. Read and comment on ‘niche related’ blogs.
2. Try and be one of the first few to comment on a post.
3. Leave meaningful comments that add value to the conversation.
4. Comment on CommentLuv enabled blogs where you can.
5. Comment of do-follow blogs where you can.
6. Create a daily blog commenting schedule.

2. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is an awesome way to get backlinks, traffic and readers to your blog as you well know, however it seems that there is a lot of unethical guest blogging practices going on more recently, (namely by SEO and commercial organizations) These companies submit nothing more than chopped up, poorly written and useless content spam, these people don’t give a second thought about contributing invaluably, they’re more concerned with the anchor text backlink they’re going to get from their crappy post. Of course this is not the way to guest blog, so here are some things to bare in mind when guest posting for traffic –

1. Pick 2 or 3 high domain authority niche related blogs to guest blog on, and become a regular reader and subscriber.
2. Focus on one or two main topics and become an authoritative writer in those topics
3. Don’t regurgitate what’s already been said; bring something fresh and new to the table.
4. Have a weekly guest blogging plan of action and be consistent.

3. Article Marketing

Article marketing is far from being dead, OK it might not as effective as it once used to be and that’s only because the vast majority of content marketing and article sites have also been slapped by Google, and again that’s because of the unethical work of content spammers. Nevertheless article marketing is still worth your time and effort. Here are some tips to bear in mind when doing article marketing –

1. Pick one or two high profile article 2.0 websites like HubPages or Squidoo or InfoBarrel.
2. Always, always, always submit unique and valuable content on those kinds of sites.
3. Don’t forget to add variety to your anchor text links.

4. YouTube

Now we move onto two of the biggest search engines outside of Google. YouTube and iTunes, lets start with YouTube, if you don’t have a YouTube channel stop wasting time and get one set up, then think of some ideas that you could use to create video content with, how about re-purposing some of the content from your blog and turning them into videos to post on YouTube?

5. iTunes

iTunes is the another popular search engine and is certainly becoming the doorway in which a lot of people are moving towards for finding content and information, and not just music and video, so consider creating your own podcast show or publishing your own book on iTunes.

6. Build That Email List

Need I say more? Every blog owner or niche website owner should be involved in building an email list.

7. SlideShare

SlideShare is an awesome content marketing platform that has a lot of potential for helping you promote more of your own content and drive traffic to your blog. You can create slides that compliment the content on your blog or again re-purpose some of the content on your blog by turning them into slide presentations. Creating an account is so easy; you can register using Facebook or LinkedIn.

I’m currently putting together my first SlideShare presentation which I’ll share with you folks shortly. In the meantime here are some tips for making cool use of SlideShare –

1. Combine awesome quality images with minimal text.
2. Use bold modern fonts for text.
3. Use bullet points to highlight key features of your content.
4. Use the first few slides to promote your blog or website.
5. Avoid typos at all costs.
6. Make it short, 10 to 15 slides for getting your message access.
7. Add ‘call to action’ at the end.

8. Content Curation Tools

I’m also a big fan of content curation tools, especially Scoop.it and Chime.in which I’m sure you’ve heard me mention before, these sites great for backlinks and traffic. Lear to Get Free EDU Backlinks.

How to make your content more shareable & How to check duplicate content.

9. LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter

When we think of using social media for generating traffic there are plenty of websites that fall into this category, but trying to succeed using all of them is truly an uphill challenge. So focus on the three most popular, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

1. Join Facebook group(s).
2. Promote your Facebook business page.
3. Create a posting schedule for Facebook. Learn about Facebook Apps to Improve brand visibility
4. Don’t just post links, add variety in what you share, i.e. post questions, images, polls, videos, other resourceful content.
5. Use hashtags and keywords in your twitter messages.
6. Schedule your tweets.
7. Increase twitter followers. (Learn more about Twitter Advertising)
8. Personalize or brand your profiles.
9. Complete your LinkedIn company profile.

Recommended:- How to optimize your content for social media & How to create a healthy social profile.

10. Blog Community Sites

Finally join top blogging community sites and engage with other like minded bloggers, share links to your latest content to get traffic and readers. Currently the best sites to join are BizSugar, BlogEngage and Blokube. Out of the three sites, the one that I’ve had the most referral traffic from by absolute miles is BizSugar.

OK let’s recap those 10 top traffic sources –

• Comment on related blogs
• Guest blog (Guest blogging for link or branding – Tips)
• Do article marketing
• Use YouTube
• Get on iTunes
• Build your email list
• Create SlideShare presentations
• Use content curation tools
• Be more active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• Join blog community sites

More from the blog :- How to create an effective blogging routine.By Delhi Courses