1. Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by http://TNL.net

2. Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3. Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4. Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5. Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6. Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7. Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8. Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9. Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”

10. Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11. Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12. Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13. Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14. Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15. Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

The overall page rank in directories like Google, Yahoo or Alexa is the key factor while doing a search. It decides which website or page deserves the top places in the results of the search of a keyword. The search engine basically calculates the importance of the webpage.

For example, let’s say that you prepared a webpage supplying the users with focused, detailed and understandable info. You think your page deserves a high importance, therefore when you search for the theme of your website, you believe it should be shown in the top 20. Well, sometimes life is cruel. If you don’t optimize your webpage for a specific keyword, if you don’t get enough inbound links directing the user to your site, you would be disappointed by the 1/10 importance rating in Google. Don’t give up! It’s still worth fighting for. There are several factors which decide the page rank of a website.

First of all, Internet is not like the streets of a city: if you put your “shop” in a busy street, people will drop by your place. No visit on Internet is a coincidence. You have to create your links from other sites (inbound links). You also have to increase the internal linking of your website so that visitors can just “hang around” in your site. So your first factor for the page rank is the linking of your page.

Secondly, pages which attract more visitors (i.e. number of unique daily users) are obviously more important in the “eyes” of the search engines. This, being the dependent variable in our equation, grows directly proportional to the inbound links. So, page rank also increases with the number of unique visitors.

At last, relative, focused content increases the importance of your page (page rank). Initially, every page you add to your site increases the overall page rank of the whole before you start adding in-context hyperlinks; “in-context” hyperlinks because according to Google authorities, the hyperlinks that you place inside the content of the page are accepted more valuable. If you have got a few money to spare, use LinkXL to put your link on other sites as in-context hyperlinks, which will certainly help to boost your page rank.

Briefly, on the web, there are no lucky days, no coincidences or no serendipities. If you want website traffic on your page, you have to create it yourself. You have to put quality, focused and original content, you have to increase the number of the inbound links. The website traffic on your site will increase automatically depending on the other variables. Finally, one day you will look at your site and see that the page rank has jumped from 1 to 4 or even higher.

These links should be high in terms of quality. If you get twenty five links from sites that are not authority sites it will not do you much good. It would be much wiser to get five links from web sites that have good page rank and are closely matched to the overall theme of your blog.

There are basically two ways to get these types of links. First, you can research the web and find high quality web sites that are theme related to yours and email them asking for links to your site. However, why would they want to link to your new page rank zero site?

You will get better results if you build a “Blog Farm”. A blog farm has one distinct advantage, it is under your complete control. Instead of having to go asking for links, you will have the ability to post a link from your blog farm to your new WordPress blog yourself. You will have the power to add a link to “any” new blog that you build in the future.

This is what happens, the link to your new WordPress blog draws the search engine spiders which is mandatory in order for your blog to be indexed in the major search engines, which are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

I will go over exactly “how” to build a blog farm in my next post.

This week saw my Alexa ranking broke through the 500k mark for the first time, it stands at 481,656 at the time of writing. Technorati ranking not moving much at 220, 166.

Chances are you have probably invested strongly in banner ads, classified ads, search engines or even spent a pile on so-called “safe lists” only to find yourself disappointed again and again.

There is a perfectly legal, outrageously effective, traffic generation technique that, until now, has gone relatively unnoticed by the masses.

What if you could recover existing web traffic that is currently being overlooked and basically being flushed down the toilet?

What if you could grab one of those prized listings in Yahoo that cost $200 with no guarantee you’ll even be included in the directory?

What if you could get that traffic for a fraction of what other advertising methods charge?

Expired domains might be an option to mull over. Every day over 3 million hits of targeted traffic are lost due to abandoned web sites.

Why does this happen?

Webmasters may lose interest or they don’t have the money or time to manage the site. Occasionally they just forget to renew. A large part of these expired domain clicks come from sites that were never developed. BUT, some were once solid sites generating traffic and sales.

Expired domains is all about capturing all the effort, time and money that the previous owner developed and putting it to good use for yourself.

What if a domain name had link popularity, had a coveted dotcom (.com) extension, or was even listed in Yahoo or had Google Page Ranking?

What is Link Popularity? Simply put, Link Popularity is the number of other websites that link to your site. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if a domain name previously had Link Popularity or was one of those coveted dotcoms or was even listed in Yahoo, that it might have once been a thriving website?

Not only that, but with a little time and effort, you might even be able to pick up some popular domain names just for conjecture or to resell on eBay ! Many of the domain names that expire every day could be resold even without Link Popularity or any of the other “carrots” because they just happen to be highly regarded as a tangible asset. Short, descriptive domain names that end in a “.com” or “.net” are examples of this.

The best part is that you can get these names for the price of registering them, often for less than $10!

Even if you didn’t use the domain name to redirect traffic to your own web site, if you find a couple and sell them at auction for $25, $50 or more, that’s a pretty suitable return on a very small investment.

If you are looking for alternative ways to generate traffic to your site, expired domains might be a good investment.

When setting your online community up, think about exactly what you want to do. If you are relying on the community to bring most of your traffic, you probably want to make it easy to access from your homepage. You might make it the largest link or the top link on the page. Use different colors and fonts to get the attention of those who visit your site. Making your site easy to navigate is a great way to get people to participate. The goal is to get the attention of your visitors. If you are placing a lot of emphasis on the online community function on your website, then they will be more likely to use it.

You can always offer a small chat area right on your homepage. This can be a great idea for those website operators who want to place the largest emphasis as possible on their online community function. It can however distract viewers from seeing other areas of your website, so be careful when setting your homepage up in this manner. The best thing to do is to create an easy link right to the chat or message area from the top half of your homepage. This allows the user to get right to the intended area.

With thousands of online users spending large amounts of time participating in online communities like chat rooms, twitter, forums and message boards, it is logical to believe these functions would help increase traffic on any website. This is an easy and inexpensive way to draw traffic to your site and can be a lot of fun for everyone involved. If you think this may work for you, simply sit down and decide which method to use. Then choose the best plan for adding the online community to your actual site, whether it is on the homepage or a secondary page. Once everything gets rolling, you will be shocked at how effective establishing an online community can be for increasing your website traffic.

This week I gained almost 9k in Alexa traffic ranking and a marginal gain in Technorati ranking:

Alexa traffic ranking – 530,404 (620,792 last Sunday)

Technorati ranking – 242,461 (244,901 last Sunday)

Also I’ll put up a list of good articles/posts on making money online.

Here are this week’s links:

Make money online – 100+ Tools and resources
Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
30 Internet Marketing Blogs You Must Know to Succeed Online
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website
15 Abilities You Must Have to Get Out of the Rat Race

My Blog Log: http://www.mybloglog.com
Unique in the sense that this blog directory lets you create your own free widget to
display your recent readers and their information. It helps you track traffic and
communicate with repeat readers. My blog log also has many communities that are
great for networking and establishing link exchanges. It also gives you basic traffic stats on visitors to your blog and clicks out of your blog.

Blog Rush: http://www.blogrush.com
Rather than simply list your blog in a directory, blog rush adds your latest posts to their
widget which is seen by thousands of viewers. Your site headlines are shown on blogs
with content similar to your own, which means readers that will be interested in your
product or news are going to be seeing your headlines. This tool is great for generating
massive amounts of traffic to your site. In order to get the most out of Blog Rush keep
your post titles short and attention getting to encourage readers to leave the blog their
reading in order to visit your blog.

Blogarama: http://www.blogarama.com
This is one of the largest free directories on the Internet. Once your blog is listed on
Blogarama users will be able to rank your site, and many users using Blogarama will
comment on your posts and refer your blog to other users.

Blog Flux Directory: http://dir.blogflux.com
In addition to letting you add your blog to their directory Blog Flux offers a variety of
tools that will help you promote your blog and increase your revenue. Blog Flux offers a
button maker, online now codes, advance tracking, and much more.

Blog Universe: http://www.bloguniverse.com
A directory of text blogs, audio blogs (podcasts) and even video blogs (vlogs) that are
organized based on subject/content.

Blog Toplist: http://www.blogtoplist.com
This is a toplist just like the name suggests. Blog Toplist has built up year’s worth of
fantastic blog traffic and has an excellent reputation. List your blog and benefit from
this toplist’s traffic and various advertising campaigns.

Blog Search Engine: http://www.blogsearchengine.com
Finally, a search engine dedicated entirely to blogs and blog related tools. Users
visiting this site are only seeking blogs so you don’t have to worry about attracting
visitors who are completely uninterested in blogging.

Bloggernity: http://www.bloggernity.com
A combination blog directory, search tool, hosting company, and forum. An all in one
resource for new blog owners to promote blogs, search for tools, and connect with other
blog owners.

Blog Hop: http://www.bloghop.com
Add your blog to this directory and searchers will be able to find your blog through other
blogs with similar content. A great source for targeted traffic.

Blog Sweet: http://www.blogsweet.com
This directory is composed of some of the most popular blogs on the internet. Blogs
listed here benefit from higher search engine ranking and usually see a large increase
in traffic.

Blog Watch: http://www.blog-watch.com
This service offers a little bit of everything. Inclusion in their search engine, tools for
your blog, and even great templates for you to use to make your blog even more
unique.

I was trying hard to get another traffic surge. One attempt was the video post on YouTube about the taekwundo referee kick, it failed miserably. The video itself got 2000 plus views, yet very few of those viewers were directed to my blog.

Today to my suprise, I did get another traffic surge, and it turned out that one of my readers added my blog or one of my posts to the Weblogs topic on StumbleUpon. It immediately doubled both my daily reader count and page view count. Thank you very much if you are the one kindly StumbledUpon my post!

So the verdict, StumbleUpon is the one to go if you want more traffic.

Moreover, the more visitors you have, the greater the chance that someone will click on your ads and that you will get commissions.

This means that you need to invite more and more people to your blog, and not just to get money, but to get attention. After all, if your blog is interesting enough, you may get a lot of people linking to you. One way that you can promote your blog is through posting on forums.

If you are interested in posting in forums and getting your voice heard, and if you want to get your blog noticed in the Internet universe, then you may be interested in the following tips. Take note, however, that these are only a few tips to guide you on your way to blog superstardom, and you need to learn on your own along the way and pick up your own lessons, too.

- Post in a forum that you are actually interested in. Believe it or not, the degree of your understanding of and interest in a topic in a forum will shine through your post. If people see that you are interested in the forum topic, then you may get more attention than people just reading your forum post.

- Post in a forum whose topic is related to your blogging topic. This can be critical when you are dealing with die-hard fans of a certain artist or film, because posting off-topic posts in a forum concentrated with users who have a single interest and aim can be distracting, not to mention grounds for kicking you out of the forum.

- Be dignified enough to spell right. Text shortcuts can make texts almost unreadable, and you can annoy a whole lot more people. If you make the effort to write in your blog, make an effort to write well on the forums, or you may find it harder to invite people to read your blog. Why should they read your blog when they can’t even understand what you are posting on the forum?

- Extend help to other forum members when they need it. Remember, people do not care about what you have to say until they find out that you care about them first.