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Tag Archive for Reason

bikram | August 9, 2010
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3 Benefits and One Drawback of Free Traffic

The word “FREE” takes our breath away, and forces us to stop doing whatever we are doing and pay attention to the item that comes before or after the word “FREE”. Free is very powerful, and so is free traffic.

Just announce that you will get guaranteed free traffic to the first person standing at your door tomorrow in the morning at 6 AM, and you will see a huge rush of people standing at your door a lot before 6 AM choking the city’s traffic, provided you have this reputation of being true to your words.

Free traffic is powerful, and people can do anything to get that, and ironically, they spend a hell lot of money on SEO (search engine optimization) to get free traffic. But, is free traffic worth the money? Let’s find out.

3 Benefits of free traffic

It is Free

Yes, it is free, and there was no point on guessing this benefit, for the topic itself spilled the beans. You do not have to pay any monthly fee or Pay-per-Click fee, CPM fee, or even Pay-per-view fee for this traffic. It is pure gold.

It is natural

Unlike traffic coming from sponsored listing on top of the search engine, free traffic is natural. People feel in charge when clicking on the organic result, for they caused the result to appear, not some advertiser by paying for the listing (sponsored one). This is reason why so many people click on the organic result in the search engine despite the fact that such listings are preceded and superseded by sponsored listing.

It is durable

You stop paying Google and it will remove your ad from the sponsored listing, but this does not happens with the organic listing that you get from Google or any other search engine. The listing stay there and traffic keep pouring.

And one drawback

It is slow

Everything is so good about free traffic, other than the speed of its delivery to a new website. If you have just registered a website, and need to go out soon with your product then organic free traffic is not your friend. Result can take 2-3 months to come by.

It is this nature of free traffic that makes it unreliable and no-so-useful for new websites. But, I would not like to discount free traffic. Instead, I will go with it, and to fill the traffic hole, in the meantime, I will use paid listing. A mix of both will take you a long way.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | March 5, 2010
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Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 11

This is the last post of the series, and in this part I will talk about how you can sound all knowledgeable to your readers by being on top of the news and by writing resource posts plus one more.

Set Alert in place

Set Google Alert, Twist (for twitter), and Blogscape (for blogs) for the keywords you are targeting, and be on top of the updates in your niche. You can then capitalize on the recent happenings and tell your readers how they can profit from it. By being top of the news, you will sound knowledgeable and will be regarded as an expert in your niche.

Write a resource post

A resource post is a must-have for any blog. It gives your users a reason to bookmark your page. A well-written resource post has an ability to pull visitors again and again to your blog. It is also very much digg-friendly. You need to have as many resource posts as you can think of.

Write quality guest posts

Guest posts are new black for blogging. Write quality guest posts, and while writing them you goal should not only be to get published on the blog of your choice, but also to lure the readers to your own blog. This could only happen if you write quality guest posts.

With this our 11-post long discussion on making your blog stand out from the crowd comes to an end. And I hope, you enjoyed the series, and worked on the bite-size tips shared in this post. You may like to bookmark this post, as I am providing links to all the posts that I wrote in the series. Let me know how you feel about this series, and what changes you would like to see in future series.

Index

  1. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 1
  2. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 2
  3. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 3
  4. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 4
  5. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 5
  6. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 6
  7. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 7
  8. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 8
  9. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 9
  10. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 10
  11. Blog with a Friendly Face – Part 11
Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | August 21, 2009
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Who Else Subscribes to These Blogging Myths Part -1

Myths are good thing. It tells you about your place in the cosmos, and helps you understand the reason for your existence. This, more or less, is what the great mythology expert Joseph Campbell has to say about myth, but the kind of myths we are going to talk about here is not the type Campbell will approve of. We are talking here about myths (to be more precise let’s call it lies) related to blogging that most of us have subscribed to.

Myth 1: Too Many Blogs Myth

I must say at the onset, this is not exactly a lie we tell ourselves, but it is a lie, nevertheless. Yes, technically speaking, there are millions of blogs out there, but most of them are nonfunctional. They are not updated. They are there just to increase the head count.

If you have decided to go for blogging, you will not be competing with those millions of just-there-doing-nothing blogs, but with some of the active blogs that add value to the readers’ life.

Myth 2: Blog Setup Myth

It is commonly believed that blogs can be set up in a minute. Well, technically even in less than a minute, but the blog thus started will not have any value, neither for the creator nor for the readers. It takes time to set up a good quality blog where readers will like staying.

Myth 3: One Blog-Post a Day Myth

This is the most common myth subscribed by most of us. We believe updating our blogs every couple of hours is the only way to keep the blog interesting and people flocking around. Well, as said, this is just a myth. Now every blog needs to be updated daily. Blogs operating in the hyper-active niches like news, current affair, product launches, etc., only need daily or hourly posting.

Do not post crap just to increase the number.

Myth 4: The 10-Minute Myth

People believe writing a piece for blog does not need much time. Just devote 10 to 15 minutes every day, and you are a blogger, professional blogger more so. Well, technically you can be a blogger this way, but professional? Not in the wildest dream; rather, you will be a blogger whose blog will be read only by your mommy. Even your partner will not read it.

Writing a serious post for a serious blog is hard work. You need to do research, collect information then give it a shape of a blog-post then proofread. Phew!

A Parting Word

Do you have any personal favorites or the myths you want to debunk? Share it with me and let us find explanation for that as well.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | May 14, 2009
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SEO SIMPLIFIED – Keywords in Content Part – IV

So far in the series we have discussed about keyword density, keyword prominence and keyword proximity. In this concluding article on proper use of keywords in writing SEO content, we will talk about keyword ranking. When working hand in hand these four keyword usage techniques get better ranking for the your content. Hence, a proper use of each of them is necessary.

All keywords are not created equal. Some are more valuable while others are less, and for this reason we classify keywords in two broad categories, primary keywords and secondary keywords. This classification is done on the basis of the importance of the keywords for the website or blog in question. Once the keywords are ranked, we use primary keyword to optimize the tags, contents and HTML codes whereas secondary keywords are used to support the primary keywords. In other words, secondary keywords are used to strengthen the positioning of the primary keyword. Primary keywords are those keywords that get your website more visitors and have less competition, while secondary keywords are used less frequently by the searchers.

It is necessary to use a good combination of primary and secondary keywords to optimize a website for higher ranking. Although secondary keywords cannot get a huge fan-following for itself, but it creates the environment in which primary keywords flourish. Secondary keywords work as links between two or more primary keywords. There is no set rule for using secondary keywords in the content. Use it the way you like maintaining a separate keyword density of below 7 percent for each of the secondary keywords. Going over the limit will render your keywords inert, so keep even the secondary keywords inside the boundary imposed by major search engines.

This discussion on keyword ranking has led us to the end of the four-article long discussion on how to use keywords in content for better result. Continuing our SEO Simplified series, in the next article we will talk about sitemap.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | May 5, 2009
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SEO SIMPLIFIED – Keywords in Content Part – I

Content is the reason why users will come, and content is the reason why you have started the website or more precisely it is the content because of which any media exists. We consume media to get something, some information, or knowledge from it. An interesting-to-read and relevant content is what we need to put on our website to pull and retain visitors, and we need to write the content using the keywords for which we have optimized our websites. There are four key considerations that we need to keep in mind when using keywords in the content. These four elements are very important, so you need to pay extra attention to these. Let’s discuss them one by one. In this article we will talk about Keyword density.

Keyword Density: In the simplest term Keyword density refers to the number of times a certain keyword or key phrase has been used in the content. This is calculated in the percentage term. For any kind of content you should eye to maintain the keyword density of between 2% and 7%. If the keyword density is below 2% then the search engine will have hard time noticing the content, and the content will be overlooked (considered spam), if the keyword density of your content is more than 7%.

Suppose you have written a 300-words article using the keyword “marketing eBook,” and you have used this term 12 times in the article then the keyword density of “marketing eBook” is 4%. To get to this figure, we  have used the following formula:

KN = (KD X WN)/100

Where,

KD = Keyword density

KN = Number of times a keyword has been used in the article/content

WN = Total number of words

Now, Let’s take an alternative view. You have written an article of 500 words using a certain keyword, and you want to achieve a keyword density of 5%. Now, the question is how to find how many times do you need to use the keyword to achieve 5% density? To do this, you can use either of the two formulas written below. The first formula is nothing but the reverse of the above one.

KN = (KD X WN)/100

Where,

KD = Keyword density

KN = Number of times a keyword has been used in the article/content

WN = Total number of words

Alternatively, you can multiply the total number of words by 0.05 to get the number of times you need to use the keyword to achieve 5% density. In the above example, you need to use your keyword 25 times to attain a keyword density of 5%.

To calculate the keyword density of 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, or 7 % using above formula, you need to multiply the total number of words by 0.02, 0.03, 0.04, 0.04, 0.05, 0.06, and 0.07 respectively.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,