Today I want to talk about creating quality. There are so many blogs in every possible niche, you may be focusing on how to get traffic to your blog. If that is your focus, you may want to read some of my other blog posts such as, Ten Ways to Promote Your Blog, and Weekly Wrap-Up: Link Building.

But today I want to focus on how to create a following on your blog and how to keep folks on your blog longer, reading what you have worked on so hard to express. Obviously there are many reasons why you want your visitors to visit often and to stay on your site longer. One factor that I have noticed over the past six weeks of testing, is that my Alexa ranking (which is a rough estimate of how popular your blog is) seems to be more directly impacted by how long folks stay on my blog than how many visitors I have. And how do you get visitors to stay on your blog longer? You give them quality; you answer the questions they have come looking for, you entertain. By doing this you create posts of interests, post that others will Digg or Twitter, creating more visitors, more repeat visitors and visitors that stick around longer to see what else you have written.

This week I would like to recommend several blog posts that speak to the importance of writing quality blog posts. The first is from, as you probably know by now, one of my favorite bloggers and internet marketers, Kim Roach. Her blog post, Case Study – 1 Article = 7,640 Visitors takes you step by step through the process she took to write a blog post that attracted visitors like crazy.

In her blog post Kim says,

The first thing I did was actually write the article. This is actually THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the process because the quality of your article is going to determine how far it will spread and how much traffic it will end up attracting. Promoting the article is definitely a critical piece of the puzzle but you MUST start by creating a truly exceptional article.

I love this paragraph because it makes two thing crystal clear! You must first WRITE, and second, what you write must be quality.

The second blog post that I found that speaks to this issue is Seth’s blog post, The Importance of Writing Good Content, where he talks about “Pillar Articles,” which are a set of articles that bring a constant flow of traffic to your blog. His take on quality blog posts are similar to Kim’s in which he says:

Well written content is linked to, twittered about and Digged by online users because it is useful, funny, insightful or maybe even odd. Good content increases the value of your blog and likelihood that visitors will return to see your next article.

My third recommendation from this week is Daniel Scocco’s post titled, Checklist for Writing a Quality Blog Post. As the name suggests, he outlines a list of what is necessary to make a blog post top quality. One of his check points specifically is the quality of the content. Says Daniel:

This is one of the most important questions you need to ask yourself. Will your content actually create value for the reader? Is it original and unique? …

People want to learn new things, solve problems, become more productive. They want to know how stuff works. Practical tips. Tutorials. Reviews. Can you help them with that?

It takes time to create quality, but I have found that it is much more important to blog less and write high quality then to blog more and create posts of lesser quality.

Have you done any testing about this yourself? Have you ever been surprised by posts that you wrote that were extremely well received or not well-received? I know that I have found that those posts that I feel most connected to seem to attract the most traffic.

Until next time,

~Norene

It wasn’t until I started the coaching program with Alex Jeffreys that it dawned on me one day that I Was Having Fun! The reason I was having fun wasn’t related to making money, as I hadn’t made any money yet, it had to do with the networking that was occurring as a result of the coaching program. Through forums and blogs I was learning more and more about Internet Marketing and these wonderful people that I was meeting along the way were making what had been overwhelming for years, doable. I had heard many times that Internet Marketing was simple but it was not easy. And I let that thought really paralyze me. What I found was that once I started networking with other internet marketers, all that I thought I could never do, really was easy. One step at a time.

Reading other people’s blogs, you really get a sense of the person’s personality and strengths. I came across so many really good, helpful, instructive, motivating posts and I wanted to share some with you. Today I will share some of my favorite blogs that were written in the areas of Blogging, Traffic, and Motivation/Attitude/Goal Setting.

I hope you find them helpful as well.

Blogging
If you are having trouble blogging or want to improve your blog, Matt Wolfe is truly one of the most knowledgeable bloggers that I know. One of his blogs that really shortened the learning curve for me was his blog post about plugins called The Best Plugins for WordPress. He also has numerous short posts that are extremely valuable to the both the new and advanced blogger, making everyone who visits feel comfortable and competent due to how easy to understand his posts are. One such post was about scheduling blog posts in the future called How to Schedule Posts for Later. This was a simple post, but it gave me immediate information that I hadn’t known previously. Matt’s blog is just a wealth of information and he has a free course called WordPress Classroom that is outstanding.

Another blog post that I found really helpful was Lee Berlemann’s pinging post, Follow Up to My Additional Pinging Post. In this post he lists tons of sites that will ping your site bringing in more traffic. I would have never found and compiled this list on my own and I’m very grateful to him.

Traffic
Getting a constant stream of traffic is critical to an internet marketer’s success. The following blog posts were extremely useful to me.

Rob Willis lists 13 different tips for getting traffic to your website or blog. His list is detailed with how to set up these traffic generators easily.

Kim Roach lists 21 ways to get traffic in her blog post titled, 21 Untapped Traffic Sources. I have written more extensively about Kim and her traffic generation strategies in a previous blog post.

Another very extensive description of ways to increase blog traffic can be found on the problogger.net website. Additional information on what might be causing a decline of traffic to your blog can also be found on the problogger blog.

Motivation/Attitude/Goal Setting
One of the most important part of an internet marketing business is to maintain a positive attitude and to keep motivated. I found several excellent posts about this topic.

One of the best posts I have read about goal setting I have mentioned before. It is Paul Norwine’s blog post titled, Goal Setting for Dummies. In this post he explores being specific about your goals and how to whittle down your goals to one main goal to focus on.

Another excellent post is Rob Willis‘ blog post titled, Simplify – Prioritize. Rob lists 5 action steps to help prioritize to make attaining your goals achievable.

A fun blog post was created by Huddson Lee titled What I Learned From My Dog about Online Marketing. It is a post about setting priorities and living in the moment. Well worth the read!

Heine Wentzel writes about his method for always staying positive in his post SOTOFOT.

Finally, a huge part of goal setting and moving your business forward is to remember the importance of continuing to learn. Many people, especially those who are comfortably successful, slow down or even stop learning new ways to use the internet. This attitude can quickly leave you behind. Daniel Scocco talks about this in more detail in his post, Always Be Learning New Skills.

The internet is a big place. Learning from others, networking with like-minded folks, this is what makes this business fun!

What are some of your favorite blog posts about Blogging, Traffic and Goal Setting/Motivation/Attitude?