I get emails from time to time from people who say they are using my recommendations for blogging and bending the web but that they still aren’t seeing Google results or much traffic.
My usual answer is that they aren’t really following what’s been written here and elsewhere about blog marketing, content development, and social marketing.
You Can’t Hide from Google
If you have the right ping list and you simply make a post, Google will come knocking very soon after. That’s it. No need to do social marketing acrobatics to get spidered, which is why marketers have adopted blogging.
Static sites can be put up and, with no ability to ping sites that Google watches for new content on the web, be completely deserted. Although it’s even hard to hide a site from the spiders for very long even if it isn’t promoted…at all!
With the proper site setup, it is harder to exist on the web for 24 hours with a goal of not being found by the engines than it is to get traffic and rankings.
The short answer is there is absolutely no way you can avoid being spidered and getting traffic if you really pay attention to what you read here. By simply setting up your WordPress blog properly, the very moment you post anything to your site, the Great Eye of Google is upon you. There’s nothing you could do to stop being indexed after making one post.
It is impossible to fail at getting traffic if you follow the guidelines below.
1. Have a blog (WordPress – self hosted – preferred)
2. Install the proper ping list.
3. Develop some unique, original, useful content for your niche with the proper keywords people use to find such information in the engines. Many people think you need to be a prolific writer to get ongoing traffic, but that’s not actually the case. You can write a quick post every other day and write a deep, useful post once a week, or less, and get good traffic and rankings.
4. Get involved in your niche and comment on other blogs. Simple, but most people never do this enough.
5. Use web 2.0 sites (there are thousands of them now) to get new links and attract traffic from each community you belong to. (Facebook and Myspace are the only communities out there. MyBlogLog is a community as well as many other web 2.0 sites that most people don’t think of as communities. But they have their own following and readership and the ability to create groups.)
Free Information is Trustworthy
Most people discount the value of free guides to web 2.0 marketing. They feel you have to pay for good information when, in fact, most of the paid guides pale in comparison to some of the free guides.
Authority Black Book and Bending the Web make it impossible for you to fail to drive traffic and gain rankings if you follow them and actually do the work.
The main problems I see with people who complain that they are following what I show them here at FTR yet they are still striking out are:
1. They are on a domain they bought that was previously a spam site and has been blacklisted by Google and others. This is a good way to hide from Google. Make sure you know where it has been and where it stands before you pick up a used domain.
2. They “say” they are following the guidelines and advice, but they are cutting corners, spamming (whether they know it or not), and expecting windfalls of traffic and rankings with very little work or thought on their part.
The bottom line is that there is very little a person could do to fail with what we teach here at FTR unless what they do is very little.
Marketing on the web is simpler now than it ever has been before, but it still and will always take work to get results.