How Google Autocomplete Can Affect Your Brand’s SEO & ORM Strategy

Have you ever typed a company name into Google and been instantly greeted with words like ‘scam’ or ‘complaints’ by Google Autocomplete? That can’t be good for business, and it is a situation that more and more organizations are finding themselves in.

Being part of a firm that is heavily involved in Online Reputation Management (ORM), we take on a wide range of tasks. There is a bit of everything, from helping individuals clean up search results for their names to partnering with corporations to identify and fix reputation problems.

One of the most common issues we get now, from organizations both large and small, is to take on the task of developing and implementing strategies that will influence Google Autocomplete.

These clients look to us to help them identify the source of the problem (e.g. do they really have some bad business practices or is it an upset former employee or competitor?) and consult on how to address and fix the issues. We then develop a strategy to influence Autocomplete to highlight the positive aspects or activities associated with the brand and push negative values out.

A Data-Driven Approach

Data drives our efforts to help our clients, so a few months ago, we set out to take a deep dive into Google Autocomplete. There is some other research online about how Autocomplete may work, but we figured it might be best if we started fresh with our own data.

We began by building a dataset made up of what Autocomplete suggests for a large number of companies, and then performed analysis on this data to identify if it could help us with many of our reputation management projects.

Consistently hearing from businesses with similar Autocomplete problems helped us hypothesize that by looking at the Autocomplete values for hundreds of companies, we could identify a list of values that Google favors when providing Autocomplete suggestions to searchers.

Our intention would then be to use these ‘favored values’ in our efforts to influence Google Autocomplete for other brands and larger companies.

While we won’t go into exactly what we do to promote a specific word in this article, it is worth noting that based on our testing, we believe the Autocomplete algorithm is comprised of 3 main influencers:

1. Search volume and searcher location – the amount of searches performed for a keyword along with the location of the searchers
2. Mentions of the keyword on the Web, crawlable by Google’s spider
3. Social Media mentions of the keyword on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

If you can obtain these 3 items in large quantities for your desired keywords, you may be able to influence Google Autocomplete.

If you are interested in learning more about white drives Google Autocomplete, this Google Instant/Autocomplete article provides a strong background on the subject, and Google also pulls back the curtain a tiny bit on their Autocomplete support page.

Methodology

The first thing we needed to do was identify our starting point:  what companies do we look at to determine if there is an Autocomplete bias?

We decided that we would use the Fortune 500 to get a list representative of very large companies. We then also chose the INC. 5000 to complete the dataset, as this list contains companies ranging in size from very small to medium/large.

The companies selected from the Inc. 5000 were limited to the 500 at the top and 500 at the bottom of the list.  The top would represent mid to large sized businesses, and the bottom would be the small businesses.

We analyzed them all separately and broke out the data so that we had findings that pertained to small business, medium-sized businesses, and large businesses. We noticed that there was some overlap between the top 500 on the Inc. 5000 and the Fortune 500, so for the top of the list, we skipped the first 100 on the Inc. 5000 and grabbed the 500 that followed.

Next, we used an undocumented Autocomplete API from Google that displays the top 10 values for any given word or phrase.

This is the format that the API uses (you can access it right in your browser):

http://google.com/complete/search?q=YOUR+PHRASE+HERE&output=toolbar

We used some Google Docs magic to scrape the Autocomplete values for the 1500 different companies and then dumped the data into Excel for some more sophisticated data crunching.

What This Raw Data Looks Like

Want a visual representation of what the Autocomplete value results look like?  This Wordcloud (thanks Wordle.net) is made up of the 13,500 Autocomplete values we pulled (9 values for each of the 1,500 companies).

Once we had the data in Excel, we were able to analyze it and find data points such as the most frequently appearing values by occurrence, differences between top values in large and small businesses, negative keyword occurrences, and more. We’ve dug through the data to find the most interesting and actionable information for you.

Autocomplete Analysis For The Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is made up of the largest companies in the US by gross revenue.  You can view the 2011 list of companies that we used here.

We first analyzed the Autocomplete values for these companies, and the following are the top 10 Autocomplete values for them based on occurrences (occurrences follow each of the words in parenthesis).

1. Careers (227)
2. Jobs (153)
3. Wiki (145)
4. Investor Relations (140)
5. Stock (108)
6. Locations (87)
7. News (72)
8. Foundation (52)
9. Coupons (42)
10. Headquarters (40)

It is interesting to note that ‘Careers’ and ‘Jobs’ occupy the number one and two spots in frequency.

 Our takeaways on the prominence of jobs/careers in Autocomplete are:

1. Your company should make an internal decision on what you’ll call your employment area. Will you call it ‘jobs’ or ‘careers’? Whatever it is, be consistent with it across your organization.
2. It is clear that people search for company name + jobs/careers a lot. Make sure you have a well-built out area on your site catering to job seekers. Also consider syndicating your job listings to sites like indeed.com, careerbuilder.com, snagajob.com, etc so that you build a strong correlation in Google’s algorithm between your company and the concept of employment.
3. Encourage candidates interested in work to search for “Your Company name + jobs/careers”. So, instead of sending someone a link to your job listings page, tell them to just Google “Brand Name Careers” to see all of your listings. The searches this generates signals to the Autocomplete algorithm that people are interested in that search phrase.

Here are a few more quick-hitter thoughts on the top 10 values and how you could use this data for your own brand:

• Wiki – Consider starting a Wiki that is associated with your brand name. If you are a big business, you can probably create a wiki all about your company. If you are smaller, it may make more sense to build a wiki about your niche or industry.
• Investor Relations – You don’t necessarily need to be a public company to have ‘Investor Relations’. Consider creating a section for this on your site, with resources such as press releases, letters from the CEO, a news feed, contact information, analysis reports, links to important blog posts, etc.
• Locations – If you have multiple locations, build out a dedicated page for each location on your site.
• News – It may be old school, but have a ‘news’ section on your site if you can keep it up-to-date.
• Foundation – Consider being a do-gooder and start a foundation. Many organizations already do things to give back to the community and society, so why not consider formalizing that a little more through a foundation.
• Coupons – People are always searching for these. If you are in a business where these make sense, take control of it and develop a strategy to use it to your advantage.

These top 10 words appear to be very popular in Google Autocomplete for the Fortune 500. In fact:

Other Interesting Notes From The Fortune 500

• McDonald’s shows ‘Coffee Lawsuit’ in the 9^th position, nearly 18 years after the landmark coffee trial took place. It is clear that negative values just don’t go away on their own, and that you must actively work to keep them from displaying for your brand.
• There are quite a few companies that have negative Autocomplete values lurking.  Google displays just 4 Autocomplete values for most users, so values in positions 5+ don’t display. Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, News Corp, New York Life, Qwest, Bristol Myers Squibb, and a bunch of other well known brands have negative values such as ‘lawsuit’ or ‘layoff’ lurking in those deeper positions, but they could rise up at any time. These companies should be actively working to push these negative values out of their top 10, because if they don’t, a negative value could move up into their top 4 and cause some serious branding issues.

Autocomplete Analysis For Small To Mid-Sized Companies

It also made sense for us to analyze companies that are quite a bit smaller than those on the Fortune 500. This would provide results that would be more meaningful for small businesses. We decided to use the Inc. 5000, which is comprised of the fastest growing companies in the US.

By grabbing the companies at the end of this list (500 of them), we could pull a good representation of what the Autocomplete landscape is like for small businesses, and what other small businesses could do based on the data gathered.

The top 10 values we found, based on occurrences, are:

1. Inc (99)
2. LLC (66)
3. Jobs (57)
4. Reviews (54)
5. Review (49)
6. Facebook (28)
7. Coupon (26)
8. Blog (23)
9. Address (23)
10. Careers (23)

It is important to note that a blank value was, by far, the most frequently occurring value, but we didn’t show it in this list above.  This means that a value was not returned in one or several of the positions for a company.

Key Takeaway For Smaller Enterprises

If you are a small business, use the analysis in this document to define and influence Google on what your Autocomplete values should be. If you wait for Google to fill-in your Autocomplete values, you could end up with brand name + ‘scam’, ‘complaints’, or worse.

This slide deck has some proactive tips you can take to protect your brand’s online reputation.

These are the other highlights from analyzing these smaller companies:

• Jobs/careers again proves to be ultra-important, so follow the advice outlined in the Fortune 500 section for this topic.
• Taking control over your reviews is important, as it seems almost inevitable that review or reviews will be associated with a company in Autocomplete. Make sure you are stockpiling positive reviews on Google Places, Yelp, industry review sites, and your own website, especially before you think you’ll need them. There is nothing like a negative review to throw everyone in your company into a frenzy.
• Facebook has a strong showing, and so you know it will only become more and more important that you have an active presence on the social network. I’d imagine that when we run this exercise again in 12 months, with Google pushing Google+ so strongly, we’ll see Google+ somehow “work its way in” as well.
• While not in the top 10 list, we did find many occurrences of ‘lawsuit’, ‘scam’, ‘layoffs’, and other unsavory recommendations. We won’t out any small companies here, but we do advise people to look at their Autocomplete values often. They change about every 6 weeks, and you don’t want to be caught off-guard with a negative value that can cripple your branding. We provided the API link format above, or if you want an easy input box you can use the one we’ve built here.

Autocomplete For 500 Mid to Large Companies On The Inc. 5000

Following an analysis of the 500 at the bottom of the Inc. 5000 list, we moved up to the top of the list and grabbed 500 from there (after skipping the first 100 due to overlap with the Fortune 500).

These represent mid to large sized companies who have shown tremendous growth over the past several years. For these companies, the top values occurring in Autocomplete are:

1. Jobs (119)
2. Careers (110)
3. Reviews (76)
4. Salary (62)
5. Wiki (56)
6. Inc (46)
7. IPO (41)
8. Address (34)
9. LLC (31)
10. Revenue (30)

What is interesting about this is that it shows elements of what we see in both the Fortune 500 list as well as the list from the smallest companies on the Inc 5000. This is evidence that a brand’s Autocomplete values shift as the company grows.

Here are some notes on the new values we see:

• Salary – be aware that, for larger organizations, people will be searching out salaries. You’ll want to take ownership of the results, and make sure that you are representing your brand positively in those results. There are many sites like Glassdoor.com and SalaryList.com where most medium and large-sized companies are listed, and you’ll want to review how your company is represented on those sites.
• IPO – I can only imagine that this shows up if there are talks that the company might be going public or has already gone public. This is another place where it pays to check your results. If there is negative content out there for it, develop a strategy to turn the discussion in a more positive direction. Negative Branding in any form could impact IPO or future stock prices.
• Revenue – People will be searching this out. Have a section on your site dedicated to it, as it will rank at the top, and you’ll be able to control the message.
• We also noted a significantly large portion of the Autocomplete values were city specific, typically the brand name + a large city name. This demonstrates that if you are present in multiple cities, they can be used to fill out your Autocomplete values.

Combining All Of The Data

While it was useful to segment the companies by their source (Fortune 500, Top of the Inc. 5000, Bottom of Inc. 5000) to understand the differences in Autocomplete values across different business sizes, we also stacked all of the data and analyzed it as a whole.

You saw the tag cloud at the beginning of this article that was the result of all of the values combined, here is the overall Top 10 list – at this point, there shouldn’t be any big surprises:

1. Careers (356)
2. Jobs (329)
3. Wiki (207)
4. Inc (162)
5. Investor Relations (150)
6. Reviews (140)
7. Stock 130)
8. Locations (109)
9. LLC (98)
10. News (95)

Categorizing The Values

After uncovering the Top 10 values, we then assigned categories to any keyword that appeared at least 5 times in the stacked data. By doing this, we could see which category of keywords appears most frequently overall.

The following are the top 10 categories:

1. Locations
2. Employment
3. Investment Information
4. Company Structure (LLC, Inc, Co., etc)
5. Social Network/New Media
6. Complaints or Reviews
7. General Information
8. Coupons
9. News
10. Negative

What is interesting here is that while we have seen career and jobs dominate the top of the lists, when categories are assigned, ‘Locations’ is actually far more common. This is because ‘locations’ is made up of so many different values (the word location, locations, plus every city and state reference).

Business owners should also take note that ‘Complaints or Reviews’ is the 6^th most frequently occurring category, and the negative value category (scam, lawsuit, etc) is the 10^th most frequently occurring. Both of these areas are hotbeds for negative branding activity, so it pays to be proactive in maintaining positivity in these areas.

What Do We Do With All Of This?

Overall, what we have learned is that there isn’t nearly as much variability in Google Autocomplete as we first thought coming into this. There is clearly a correlation between keywords used for businesses and the values displayed in Google Autocomplete.

For a company proactively trying to take control of their Autocomplete values, the data we compiled into the top 10 lists provide a good start for the values to target.

Once you finalize a list of your target positive values, it just takes some ingenuity and clever thinking to get people searching those terms, mentioning them in social media updates, and including them in content published to the Web. A few months of that, at a decent volume, is typically enough to sway Autocomplete in the direction you want it to go.

Limitations

The data isn’t perfect, but we think it is strong enough to make decisions from when used in aggregate.

Some limitations include a location bias in the Autocomplete values (based on where the Google Docs IP address geolocates) and the fact that values for some companies are very specific (e.g Boeing where most values are plane models like 747, 757, etc) and one-offs like that don’t show up in reporting although it is important to note that some companies have this.

Also, because we input the company name directly into the Autocomplete API, we only received nine usable Autocomplete values because the first result was always the company name.

Next time around, we’d insert a space after the company name, as this will generally remove the company name as the first recommended value and would give us 10 values to fully analyze.

Is There Autocomplete Analysis That You’d Like to See?

We think that there is a lot more research to be done with Google Autocomplete, and we’re going to keep exploring. Robert Darlington, Dan Hinckley, and myself spent quite a bit of time figuring out exactly how to pull this experiment off, and now that we have the tools in place, we’ll be pulling even more data and performing even deeper analysis.

Is there something you’d like explored with Google Autocomplete? Let us know in the comments!

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine. Land.

Article Source :- http://searchengineland.com

14 Tips To Prevent Your WordPress Blog / Site from Being Hacked

There are over 5 million results in google for the keyword “prevent wordpress hack“. Everyone has their own opinion and I dont think all of these posts are updated frequently. It’s been a while I have posted here. If you have been following me on my twitter then you should know what I have been up to. First, here are few things you should know- I have made several changes to this blog.

Recently, some of my blogs were hacked. It was funny how the index file had an image of a smurf showing the middle finger with a text saying “where’s your security?” I was glad the hacker left his email address so I could thank him for mocking the security of my blogs and so, I did. The amazing part- This guy didn’t even touch the database; he didn’t even inject any shit virus. I felt it was weird but after checking out each files, I found they were all clean.

I was so involved in other projects that I didn’t pay much attention to security which is actually the most important thing here. If this dude didn’t breach my security, I wouldn’t have known it was vulnerable and hence wouldn’t have bothered to take action. Whatever it is, I have sent him a “Thank You” Note I have removed some shitty plugins, transferred to HostGator, tweaked codes and more…Today, I have decided to write a post on how I did what I did- that is, strengthen the security of my blog to keep off hackers and all creepy people. I will have a video tutorial created for this later this month but for now, check this out. Some basic tweaks can help protect all your hard earned content. Check out the following tips to prevent wordpress hack.

14 Tips to Prevent WordPress Hack

1. Backup :-

This is the first step and the most important. Before you plan on making any changes, make sure you backup your entire DB. You can do this manually or use an available plugin. I recommend backup buddy which backs up your entire wordpress blog. Unlike free plugins which only backup your database, backup buddy exports your entire database with images, files and whatever you have in your blog’s content folder- Pretty sweeet!

 2. Update WordPress Version :-

Second crucial step after backing up your blog is to update it to the latest version. You should always make sure that your blog’s version is up to date. WordPress team creates patches to help fix security holes. Follow wordpress feed to find out about the latest updates or you could simply login to your admin.

I would also recommend that you follow WordPress Development and BlogSecurity as they will inform you whenever a new patch/fix is released.

• WordPress Development
• BlogSecurity.net

  3. Change Your Login / Password :- 

The default wordpress login is “admin” and most hackers know that. We should change this to something else that would be difficult to guess. Something like “rogers12” or “donhoe2” is good examples. The best thing to do is delete the default admin and create a new custom login.

I suggest that you use strong passwords which include upper/lower keys, numbers and symbols. Something like “rockSTAR19!@” or “Anabel2@!” is a great example of a strong password.

Most hackers try to brute force the password so if your password is really strong as I mentioned earlier, you should be fine.

Do not use birth days, names, pet names or hobbies as passwords. People who are close to you know a little more about you; you don’t want any wild guesses 

  4. WordPress Keys in wp-config.php 

I didn’t know much about wordpress keys but it is another important security measure. These keys work as salts for WordPress cookies thus, ensuring better encryption of user data.

Use the WordPress Key Generator to generate these keys. Now open up your wp-config.php, find the lines that look like below and simply replace with the generated ones:

define(‘AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

Save and you are done!

  5. Install WP Security Scan

This plugin is the real deal. It’s simple and automates stuff. It will scan your wordpress blog for vulnerabilities and inform you if it finds any malicious codes etc. If the texts are in green in the admin panel then you should be good. However, they will not just be green; sometimes you have to make them  . And I will tell you how.

6. Change Table Prefix 

The default table prefix for wordpress is wp_ . I know that, you know it and I am sure the hacker does too. SQL Injection attacks are easier with the default table prefix because it is easier to guess. A good prefix would be “mashjg23_” or “sasdoe265_”. Changing your database table prefix is highly recommended and you can do this in two ways. The manual way requires some work and is not suitable for newbie; here’s when WP Security Scan Plugin makes your work much easier. It has a tab called “Database”. Once you are in it, you have the option to rename your entire table prefix to something that is tough to guess. Do this and you will be a step closer to strengthening your blog’s security.

DB Password: How strong is your database password? Both your wordpress login password and database password should be strong. Include upper/lower keys, numbers and symbols.

7. Prevent WordPress Hack By Blocking Search Engine Spiders from indexing the admin section. 

Search engine spiders crawl over your entire blog and index every content unless they are told not to do so. We do not want to index the admin section as it contains all the sensitive information. The easiest way to prevent the crawlers from indexing the admin directory, is to create a robots.txt file in your root directory. Then place the following code in the file:

#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /category/*

  8..htaccess Hacks 

 .htaccess (hypertext access) is the default name of directory-level configuration files that allow for decentralized management of configuration when placed inside the web tree. .htaccess files are often used to specify the security restrictions for the particular directory. This is not an exact tip that falls under the list but you should know about .htaccess because you can do a lot with it to prevent wordpress hack. I am not going to get in depth for this term but I found out some sweet .htaccess hacks which can tighten your wordpress security. See them below

  9.Protect Your .htaccess

After tweaking your .htaccess to protect your blog from hackers, you cannot simply leave the .htaccess open itself to attacks. The hack below prevents external access to any file with .hta . Simply place the code in your domain’s root .htaccess file.

# STRONG HTACCESS PROTECTION</code>
<Files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</Files>

10. No Directory Browsing

Its not a good idea to allow your visitors to browse through your entire directory. This is an easy way to find out about directory structures and this makes it easier for hackers to lookout for security holes.

In order to stop this, simply add the piece of 2 lines in your .htaccess in the root directory of your WordPress blog.

# disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes

  11. Secure wp-config.php 

 Wp-config.php is important because it contains all the sensitive data and configuration of your blog and therefore we must secure it through .htaccess. Simply adding the code below to the .htaccess file in the root directory can do the trick

# protect wp-config.php
<files wp-config.php>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</files>

The code denies access to the wp-config.php file to everyone (including me  )

  12. Limit Access to the wp-content directory 

Wp-content contains everything. This is a very important folder and you should secure it. You don’t want users to browse and get access to unwanted/other data. Users should be only able to view and access certain file types like images (jpg, gif, png), Javascript, css and XML.

Place the code below in the .htaccess file within the wp-content folder (not the root).

Order deny,allow
Deny from all
<Files ~ “.(xml|css|jpeg|png|gif|js)$”>
Allow from all
</Files>

13. Protect WordPress Admin files 

 Wp-admin should be accessed only by you and your fellow bloggers (if any).  You may use .htaccess to restrict access and allow only specific IP addresses to this directory.

If you have static IP address and you always blog from your computer, then this can be a good option for you. However, if you run a multiple user blog then either you can opt out from this or you can allow access from a range of IPs. You can refer to Apache’s documentation on mod_access for complete instruction on how to set this up.

Copy and paste the code below to the .htaccess in wp-admin folder (not root folder)

# deny access to wp admin
order deny,allow
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx # This is your static IP
deny from all

The above code will prevent browser access to any file in these directories other than “xx.xx.xx.xx” which should be your static IP address.

There is another way you could restrict access to the directory and that is by using a password in the .htaccess. I am planning to write a detailed .htacess hack where I will include all of these.

  14. Prevent Script Injection 

I found this code on wprecipes and it works like a charm. Now you can protect your WordPress blog from script injection, and unwanted modification of _REQUEST and/or GLOBALS.

Simple copy and paste the code below to your .htaccess in the root

# protect from sql injection
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]

Take a note at the files permission. Wp Security scan shows this in a nice way. Browse the specific files on your root using your favorite ftp client and Chmod the files if required.

Last but not the least; you can install WordPress Firewall 2 which actually protects your blog from malicious hackers. It blocks the attempts of the hacker and notifies you when abused. Only the negative point of this plug-in is, it sometimes even blocks our action. This can really get annoying and I do not really recommend this plug-in unless you have SUPER Hackers and bots screwing up your blog. Stick with the .htaccess hacks since they do the job pretty well and your blog should be just fine.

1. WordPress Security
2. 11 Best Ways to Improve WordPress Security
3. How to Stop Your WordPress Blog Getting Hacked

 Prevention is better than cure. I cannot personally guarantee that your blog will not get hacked after implementing the methods I have mentioned but, I am sure the chances of getting attacked will be very less.

How secure is your wordpress blog? If you have a tip or a piece of code you would like to contribute then use the comment box. I bet after reading this post, you will know how to prevent wordpress hack to some great extent

Source : Mastermindblogger.com

9 Killer Tips To Make Your Blog Popular

1. Customize your Blog design :-

I have posted this like what, hundred times before. Well without a doubt, design matters. This is very important my friends and that is why I have listed it first. Every blog should have a unique design. People are attracted to something that is unique and interesting. When a person visits your blog, the design gives them the first impression and this determines the amount of time they spend browsing your blog. Now to be honest, if your blog has a crappy design, I am not going to visit it. Even if I visit it accidently, I might spend a few seconds before I leave and bam.

Look at this blog. How cool is it?  I am sure you can setup something similar or decent. Practice makes perfection so keep tweaking and trying out new layout, design and navigation and focus on creating the best user experience for your readers.

There are plenty of decent templates you can find online. I am running a customized thesis theme which is one of my favorites and it powers almost 80% of my websites. I chose thesis over woothemes and others because it gives you ton of sweet options such as buttons to easily change fonts, color and seo capability. It is easily customizable and if you know a little code like I do, you can create awesome designs in no time.

2. Add Your Blog To Blog Communities :-

Blog communities are really popular for blogs. Other bloggers and web enthusiasts are constantly checking out these communities for networking and information. There are many communities you can submit your blog to but it’s better to stick with the ones which are popular and have a decent Google PR (pagerank).

I have posted a list of top article and blog directories so check them out and submit your blog right away.

Remember: When you follow a blog that you find interesting, and you contribute something nice through commenting on it, you are basically increasing your visibility in the community. A lot of people will check you out and also subscribe to your blog if you are good. Always try to participate in a network and engage in conversations. Whether you write a blog post or a comment, make sure it delivers some value to the community.

3.Write Tutorials & Pillar Articles:-

I have followed Yaro Starak who is one of the top bloggers. Yaro has always emphasized the importance of pillar articles. Now think about this, if you write an article about what happened on a certain day, the content is meant only for that day and with time it gets old. But, if you write a How-to Article or a tutorial that solves a problem, it stays there forever.

Let me explain. If you write something about “How to get rid of twitter spam or How to get loyal readers to your blog”, you know that you can use these tutorials whenever you want and they won’t get old because the same method would apply all the time. Lots of people will share it and bookmark it for future reference. Pillar articles are killers and you can easily write at least 5-6 a month.

4. Be A Guest Author on Popular Blogs :-

Most blogs you will come across these days accept guest posts. Popular blogs like problogger, shoemoney, johnchow just to name a few; they all give new bloggers a chance to get noticed through guest blogging. Now this is a great opportunity and shouldn’t be missed. You can’t just post anything you like but it should be related to the niche and you have to prove your worth. One blog post on some of these popular blogs can get you huge amount of traffic.

How to find blogs that accept guest posts? How about you Google terms such as “guest post by” or you can check out this blog post on kissmetrics that explains guest blogging in details.

Writing guest posts is a truly amazing way to get noticed and drive traffic to your blog. Don’t forget the link juice you get and waves of new subscribers.

5. Give Something To Download Free :-

I love free stuff, don’t you? A good way to gain readership and make your blog popular is to give free stuff to the public. It can be almost anything; an eBook, a wordpress theme, some popular tools or even free online class. Based on the experience from my other blogs, people love free things especially when they are premium and valuable.

There are several PLR content that you could give away to your readers. Whatever you decide to give, make sure it is worth downloading. Ask yourself, would you download it yourself? If you wouldn’t download the free stuff yourself, you can’t expect others to download it either. Quality matters my friend and if your stuff is good, people will just keep coming.

6. Blog Frequently :-

Fresh content is the key to your blog’s success. Do not just blog once a week and expect people to check in every day. Your readers are hungry for information and they expect to see something valuable and new on your blog frequently. I know sometimes you can get busy and have days when you don’t feel like blogging, and it is completely ok. If blogging is your passion, you will manage time for a post; it comes naturally my friends.

The search engines can find out how often you blog and they love fresh content. The more often you post to your blog, the better it gets. Of course, unless you follow a different blogging style such as Glen at viperchill who makes 1 – 3 posts per month. Glen has a unique style of creating blog posts. Most of his posts go above 4000 word limit and if you carefully notice, he has a lot of lengthy pillar articles on his blog. And as a result, viperchill gets 10 times more traffic than most other blogs combined in the similar niche. Viperchill is the proof that quality content matters over quantity of posts.

Whatever style you adapt, make sure your content is unique because at the end of the day, that is what matters the most.

7. Link Love :-

One of the best ways to get your blog noticed is to trade links with other bloggers in the same niche. There are multiple ways you can approach a blogger or an author and request for a link love. You can email them (make sure you don’t spam), you can comment on their blog post and request and of course add them on your facebook and discuss about it. I personally do not do this right now because google doesn’t give much value to such links.

The best way to get link love is through guest blogging as mentioned earlier. Try creating some great blog posts in some popular blogs and you will get both traffic and quality backlinks.

8. Create Facebook Page And Promote It :-

Facebook pages are rising in popularity. Check your account right now and tell me how many invitations you got to join a page. I bet it’s a lot. Create a facebook page for your blog right now and start sharing it with other millions of facebook users. When requesting to join your page, make sure you don’t spam because it can be really irritating. You can also set up your blog’s RSS Feed on the Page itself so that people can check out your posts without even visiting your blog.

The new facebook timeline gives you lots of options. There are lots of amazing facebook apps that you can use to integrate your blog with facebook and make sharing easy breezy. Some good methods you can use to promote your facebook page is by adding a widget on your blog, adding a popup like button, writing a blog post on it and also including the page details in your newsletter. Facebook is huge and the traffic is legit. The quicker you create your page and get involved with it, the better social presence you will have.

9. Get A Twitter Account And Tweet Your Posts :- 

I am sure by now most bloggers have a twitter account. Forget bloggers, pretty much everyone has a twitter account today, and they use it to broadcast what they eat, when they sleep etc. There is no problem in doing that but to make it a little more productive, how about tweeting your blog posts to your followers instead.

People follow you because they are interested in sharing things with you. When you tweet, they are most likely willing to check it out. I like the idea of microblogging because it makes it easy for you to share your opinion and cool stuff with the world. Achieving the celebrity status on twitter is everyone’s dream. If you deliver value through tweets, you will have created a huge network of loyal followers who will retweet your stuff which eventually drive massive traffic to your blog. Retweets matter. Remember, retweets do not only help in driving traffic but also help in search engine optimization.