So, this week, I continued to seek out new ways to improve my site's utility to visitors and increase traffic by submitting my everydayfinance blog to several blog ranking sites (if they're not up here yet, check out my everydayfinance site linked on left). Anyway, there are several sites out there where you can submit your blog by providing your URL, then insert some code which they provide into your template. To do this, you simply add to the HTML option in your Blogger template screen. They provide it to you when you register your URL. The sites then track your traffic and rank your blog based on incoming traffic. For the most part, they reset each week to allow smaller new blogs to attain top rankings as they grow. I was pleased to see that the finance site when to number 1 on a couple of them during my first week. Some of the larger ones require 10,000+ visitors per week, so I'm not there at the moment, in 6th, 7th, etc. But regardless, when someone visits one of these sites looking for blogs on finance, it's neat to see mine right up there.
Which blog ranking engines should I submit to and where to I find them?
I simply visited some other successful blog sites and started clicking away at their links to the blog ranking sites on the side of their page. As I visited each one and registered, I had to go back an paste in the HTML they provided. I then ended up with a line of little buttons on the side of my blog. Some of them show your ranking right in the button. Anyway, for a listing of mine you can visit from my everydayfinance site. I'll have a bunch up here too when I get a chance, but for now, focusing on that as my main site and using this site and an outlet and imparting mistakes and learnings here.
Index your blog with the major search engine sites:
One of the first things to do when looking to increase your site's traffic is to ensure that the major search engines are presenting your site on the front page when relevant searches are applied. For a finance site, that's somewhat difficult with the thousands of them out there, so on my tests, I often don't make the front page, but do for specific searches like my tax software comparison posts and my alternative investment posts. To get your site indexed, visit each one and do a search for say "Index my site in Google" and follow the prompts. It's pretty straightforward. Don't be surprised if your site isn't indexed immediately, it can take a week or two. In order to check on whether it's indexed, in each search engine, type in your exact URL and see if it comes up.
Get linked with other sites:
Most of the search engines rank searches partially based on how many other sites link to them. By finding like-minded sites, friend's sites, etc. and getting them to add your link, you will increase your site ranking. I'd advise against just linking up with any cheesy site that simply trades links - there are a lot of them out there; it detracts from your site's legitimacy and may be something you regret later.
Tell Everyone!
Once you have a fair amount of content, and you feel like your site has some momentum, tell everyone about. Ask them to forward it to their friends and families. Admittedly, most of my traffic has come from other people interested in finance and I haven't completely exhausted my personal network list because I have a lot more to say before I start roping in people I know. But some of the few people who are actually interested in finance or just generally enjoy my posts are regular visitors. I would advise against providing details on the Adsense links and how revenue is generated from them. They may start altruistically start clicking away daily on your ads and end up getting you in hot water with Google. If people are genuinely interested in your content, they'll click through. I'll cover more on this during my Adsense/revenue post.
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