Tastybuds

Yesterday I got my first day of 10 visits, so if I can sustain and grow that traffic, I will have completed my first goals.

A few factors have recently helped me to get this traffic. The articles I submitted just got approved, which has not only gotten me traffic, but has also helped out on SEO. Every article i write gives me an extra inbound link or two. The day after they were approved, the ranking on Google for “Danny Gabriner” jumped ahead of my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to #1. I have noticed gains on other terms as well, and hope to soon have my tool available to automatically track my ranking progress.

I have also noticed that bots are beginning to find me, post spam comments, and steal my content. Not that this is necessarily a good thing, but at least it means I’m getting noticed, and I am getting some inbound links from it.

Jason Menayen also just wrote a post listing a few blogs, resources, and forums which deal with AdSense. I am happy to have been listed there, as it will drive traffic my way, is a solid inbound link, and gives me a bit of credibility. I am also very excited to learn about the other resources out there, and plan on exploring the areas he listed.

So it looks like I will need to be setting some new goals for myself. I will be thinking about these, but in the mean time I wiki continue to post, comment elsewhere, and submit my articles.

It has been 20 days since I started this blog, and although I am trying to build it up as quick as possible, it is a long process.

My initial goals were to get an average of 10 visitors per day, and 4 comments on my blog. The idea is that in addition to pure traffic, I am trying to build up a community of people interested in optimizing AdSense, and other analytics. In order to accomplish these goals, I set out to average a posts day, comment twice on 5 different blogs, and accumulate 20 posts.

I now have 35 posts, which is almost 2 posts per day. Commenting has been difficult for me; I commented 3 or 4 times on the YieldBuild blog, but I have not found any other blogs to heavily comment on. I think I have scattered a single comment on 6 other blogs, which brings my total to 10, but I still need to find blogs which I am deeply interested in.

How has this payed off? I am now averaging 3 visits per day, and have gotten my 4 comments. I still have a bit to go before I am at 10 visits per day, but feel I am beginning to get traction. What I am happiest about so far in terms of my progress is that I’ve managed to get a free lunch from one of my readers for blogging and commenting.

I also have begun to monitor my SEO process. Almost all my traffic so far has come from comments, but in the last day or two, more is coming from Google. My ranking for “optimizing adsense” has jumped from 89 to now 26. My next goal will be to get that into the top 10.

So what do need to do to finish off my first goals? Continuing to post at least once a day shouldn’t be a problem, but I need to really find more blogs that interest me and comment heavily. I will try to average at least one comment a day. I also have submitted a few articles to EzineArticles, and if those get approved, will submit more. My hope is to achieve my goals within th next 20 days.

It’s been about 10 days since I started this blog, and although I am starting to get used to it, and have learned a bit, I still am not getting the kind of traffic or participation that I would like. I think what it boils down to is that I have had quite a few superficial posts, and have still not wrote enough true articles.

I realized this lack of good content when I started reading and thinking about methods to get users to this site. One technique which I have read quite a bit about and believe in is submitting articles to other websites. Not only do those articles contribute inbound links, which helps with PageRank, and getting on the search engines, but it also is another outlet for your content, and it can drive interested readers your way.

So I went out hunting for article submission sites, and reading what people recommended in this arena. What it boiled down to is that there are a massive amount of article directories out there, many of which are complete spam, but also a good handful of sites that everyone seems to be recommending, such as www.ezinearticles.com. Some people recommended submitting to only the best, while others say to spread your content as far out as you can. I will probably try a mix of the methods, but there is still one problem: a lack of good content.

When I got to looking through my posts and deciding what I wanted to submit, I realized that I only had 1, maybe 2 articles that were informative and thoughtful enough to send out. This is out of my 25 or so posts that I currently have. So with that I decided that I really need to get back to what I have always heard, and get to writing tons of good content.

My hope is to get 5 or so good articles in the next few days that I can submit to 5 sites, and see where that takes me. Not only will I be playing the inbound link game, but I will also be building my own site into a place people will want to stay at.