How I got 300% More Blog Traffic in just One Week, Part 2
SEO Blog Tips, Part 11:
Hi there Blokesters.
As you know I haven’t been blogging much lately, but believe it or not there’s been a method to my madness. I’ve intentionally been blogging less because I’m running a little experiment (not to mention the benefits to my achy-breaky neck and back muscles). 
Am I Dreaming?
I’ve been sitting quietly on the sidelines monitoring my results just to make sure I’m not dreaming. After all, to say that I increased my traffic better than 300% in a week is a fantastic claim and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.
So I checked my results again and pinched myself just to make sure … and guess what? I’m happy to report that traffic is steady and is up 500% on average!
But wait! That’s not completely true because on good days it can even be up 600% or 700% (and I’m not talking about days that I’ve been Dugg or Stumbled either).
That’s not bad for doing nothing. Not bad! What am I saying? It’s phenomenal!
Work Smarter, Not Harder
What’s so amazing about this is I’ve hardly blogged at all since starting this experiment! So I’m not working nearly as hard as I used to and I’m getting much better traffic results (and position in the SERPS) than I ever did.
In fact, I’m getting hits and comments on posts that I wrote years ago that were buried by Google when I was still with Blogger.
Are you excited? Are you pumped? I know that I am.
Of course this goes against everything that we’ve been told so I must be on to something. They told us that if we want better traffic then we MUST write more, continuously every day. Keep the content flowing and they will come.
Well I think I’ve blown that theory out the window.
I’m personally gratified with this result because honestly, I’m really sick of all those recycled junk posts out there that are being spewed by the probloggers. So let’s hope they take notice and stop wasting our time with all their crap. (About the only thing they are really good at is throwing a new spin on the same old content to keep you clicking on their ads).
Not Your Typical SEO Post
As you can see this series will not be your typical SEO blog tips post. I’m not going to just repeat what has already been said out there because unlike my competitors I don’t recycle content for the purpose of gaming the search engines or link baiting you to visit my blog.
Instead, this series will share with you my personal observations and what I’ve learned over the past few weeks (and years) so that you can make your own conclusions.
Proof is In the Results
Proof of course is in the results and if you don’t believe me then just click here and see for yourself. Depending on which version of Google you use I can be found in the top 10 search results for my “blog tips” niche. Whereas just before I started this SEO journey I wasn’t even on Google’s radar.
In the words of our friend Borat — NICE!
First let me clarify that I do not consider myself an SEO expert, not that there are that many out there anyway. Just like my “Blog Tips” niche, SEO is probably one of the most saturated out there. It seems like every other blogger is a self-proclaimed SEO expert, and I wish to state unequivocally for the record that I am not one of them.
In this series I will briefly discuss a few tried and true SEO maxims that you may have already heard before. There are some basic SEO truths that are important and should be given their just deserts. But I won’t delve too much into that because the series will be mostly about my own observations and what’s NOT been said until now.
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
Before I go any further I’ll let you in on a little secret. What started this journey was Darren Rowse offending me with his customary smug attitude during an email exchange that we had recently.
Amongst the many things we discussed I expressed my outrage that he moved in on my “blog tips” niche I had created many years ago. Apparently “making money” wasn’t enough for him.
You see, I gradually slipped out of Google’s radar because I wasted too much time blogging on the Blogger platform. The Wordpress copycats had moved in and crowded me out of my own niche.
It’s not because they were better bloggers, but the simple fact is Wordpress users have definite advantages SEO-wise and there is no way a Blogger blog can compete.
I realize the Blogger purists are not going to like my saying this, but the simple fact is moving over to Wordpress was the best thing I ever did and I will explain why in more detail later in the series.
If There’s One Thing I Can’t Stand it’s…
I thought it would be fun to knock the chip off Mr. Rowse’s shoulder and give him a little demonstration of what I could do with the power of blog SEO. So I ran a little experiment to see how hard it would be to regain my “blog tips” position with the SERPS.
But not even I could have predicted the amazing results and how quickly I would accomplish this.
If anything this episode has proven that any dufus with a keyboard can do well in the SERPS :-) and after you finish reading this series you will be able do it for yourself (and it won’t even cost you a penny).
Like I said earlier my traffic is now up 500% and I’m back in the top ten Google results for my “blog tips” niche. Considering that I couldn’t even find myself listed a week before I started this journey, this result is simply amazing and even better than I could have hoped for!
I fully expect it’s only a matter of time before I recapture my undisputed #1 position again. But what’s really amazing about this is how quickly it all happened. I did it without even writing a post for over a month, and unlike the copycats I didn’t have to hire an SEO expert to do it for me either.
So my first and foremost Blog Tip for you is this — if you want to be a serious blogger then do yourself a favour and quit Blogger … use Wordpress.
Right out of the box Wordpress provided better traffic results than I was with Blogger (and I hadn’t even done anything yet except to switch over). I reported this observation in my first official Wordpress post “Moving Blogger Over to Wordpress: The Good, Bad and the Ugly“.
There are a lot of reasons why Wordpress outperforms Blogger which I will explain later in this series. Ok, I’ll give you a little hint now – it’s not just the way Wordpress is designed.
There are some really cool SEO tools that make a huge difference, and like any tool it’s only as good as the person using it. Why? Because what good is a tool if it’s not in the hands of a professional?
Don’t worry Blogger users because some of this stuff you will learn will also apply to you if you don’t want to make the switch. But the bottom line is no matter what you do, you will not be able replicate the results that Wordpress can give you.
So why am I willing to give you this information for free? Well first of all it’s because I’m a nice guy. No, really … I mean it. 
I AM a nice guy and I want YOU to have this information and not just the smug a-listers who only pretend to be nice so you can make them rich.
Well this post is already getting a little long in the tooth so it’s time to close this second installment. Stay tuned for Part 3 where I will discuss in detail how I was able to improve my traffic better than 300% in just one week (and so can you) …
P.S.: If you arrived here first don’t forget to read Part 1 of the series.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.blogbloke.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this-small.png)
Tweet This
Subscribe to the Bloke's Newsfeed for more great Blog Tips!
Leave a Comment...
Leave a Comment and Join the Conversation...
Be COOL! Grab a Button
Vote for Blog Bloke!.gif){kind=small}
Morning Blog Bloke,
I’ve been reading your articles for a little while now and am really enjoying your style and knowledge of all things blog-shaped.
I made the big switch over to self-hosted Wordpress 6 weeks ago having been inspired by the first post in this series. One thing that’s eluded me however is how to get google to re-index my domain.
I’ve got a sitemap working and listed it with google webmasters, there’s 150 incoming links to my homepage, I’ve added the site to google, and installed Headspace2 for extra juice..
Any advice would be very much appreciated and I look forward to the next episode in this series.
Google will eventually get around to it but if you’re impatient (like me) then I would install the plugins “Google XML Sitemaps” and “XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress”. I’ll talk more about this later in the series.
Then resubmit your url to Google again.
Thanks for that Blokester,
I am also impatient, and submitted the xml sitemap about 3 weeks ago. Well guess they’ll get there eventually…
It just seems strange that they’re taking so damn long. When I check Google Webmasters it says that googlebot is crawling me and my sitemap daily. There’s a few broken historical links (30 odd), but they’re fixed now and everything else shows up fine there.
I’m about to migrate a mate’s website to wordpress as well (http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/), and want to try and avoid any pagerank loss in the move. Do you reckon I suffered the drop to 0 due to switching to a domain at the same time as I changed to wordpress? Might have been better changing to a google hosted domain for a month and let it all update first then swap across?
Cheers,
Moses.
Absolutely. A new domain will take longer to generate pagerank.
Blog Bloke reply on November 27th, 2008 8:10 pm:
Moses reply on November 21st, 2008 2:42 am:
Blog Bloke reply on November 21st, 2008 1:31 am:
Hi Bloke!
Sounds like an ad for a great As Seen On TV Infomercial….
How much will Blokes SEO program cost you? Not $300, Not $200, Not even $100…
Are you ready for this?
Blokes SEO program is FREE!
P.S. don’t tell Jaffer I was here since he knows my true identity!
Miss Moneypennys last blog post…Thomas Beatie, Mr. Mom On Steroids
I like your style Miss Moneypenny, and speaking of names … you can call me James.
Blog Bloke reply on November 21st, 2008 1:26 am:
Awesome stuff my man, definitely looking forward to part 3!
Dennis Edells last blog post…2 NEW BLOGS Unveiled! FINALLY!!
Good to have you back Dennis. Part 3 is in the works as we speak.
Blog Bloke reply on November 26th, 2008 7:30 pm:
First time coming across this blog, so it looks like your experiment is working:) I’m looking forward to part 3 as well.
Web Marketings last blog post…How to Identify Internet Marketing Scams
Thanks for dropping by. Part 3 is almost finished.
Blog Bloke reply on November 26th, 2008 7:29 pm:
Good For You. I have a hard time keeping up with my blog traffic and stats.
Thanks Mealah. If it’s that hard keeping up with your traffic stats then kudos are in order for you!
Blog Bloke reply on November 26th, 2008 7:28 pm:
Good traffic. Web traffic is really necessary for web popularity. The more traffic the more worthy
Gobble, Gobble, Happy Turkey Day!
Glad you are spending less time at the computer and more time doing something FUN with family, I hope.
I’ve noticed the same phenomenon bloke. I’ll take 3-4 days off and I see a spike in my feed subscribers. This has yet to fail. Coincidence? Doesn’t seem to be.
I don’t believe in coincidence
Blog Bloke reply on December 4th, 2008 12:43 am:
SEO is such a weird topic. Someone can talk about it like it is a science and others can talk it up like feng shui.
I really appreciate you stating that you are not an SEO expert before providing your advice. I find too often that people consider themselves experts on the topic.
I think you are just being modest though your blog has a PR of 5. That doesn’t happen by accident.
Keep up the experiment. I cannot wait until part 3.
PS wordpress is nice. DotnetBlogEngine is my preference.
Emily.
In this day age there’s no shortage of “experts”, “coaches” and “gurus” on the web.
Last year before I moved to a new domain on wordpress I was a PR 7.
Blog Bloke reply on December 9th, 2008 6:23 pm:
Amazing traffic results!! You are absolutely right about Wordpress blowing Blogger right out of the water. Even without any seo plugins my WP based blogs have done very well, the Google spiders just seem to love the code it is written in.
Tracys last blog post…Massage Chair Holiday Shipping Deadlines
There is something about the way Wordpress is designed that gives it an advantage. Because the Blogger code is all in one template it is a little different than regular CSS and HTML like Wordpress. Search engines also love PHP.
Thanks for dropping by Tracy.
Blog Bloke reply on December 12th, 2008 8:37 am:
Hello Blog Bloke
I recently came across your site and was instantly hooked. I currently own a politics/international relations blog on Blogger which I started in October 2005.
I’ve been thinking about moving from Blogger since upgrading to the widgets template and loosing all my comments because Haloscan/JS-kit will not work with the new template.
I found your blog when I searched for tips on migrating from Blogger to Wordpress. Since that day I have been hooked but the thought of leaving everything that has become so familiar to me at Blogger daunts me.
I am also not looking forward to all the effort that migrating to Wordpress entails. Now I am stuck as I do not how to proceed. Should I stay with Blogger or should I move to Wordpress ? Your thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated.
Hi Kashmiri.
Well first of all you should read http://www.blogbloke.com/migrating-redirecting-blogger-wordpress-htaccess-apache-best-method/ and http://www.blogbloke.com/moving-wordpress-blogger/
My best recommendation is if you can afford $50 a year for blog hosting then you will definitely be better off using Wordpress. Especially when writing a professional blog.
Thanks for your comments.
I guess I am a little luckier in a sense cos before I realised that I was on first 5 pages (Google) for “girly wordpress”, I wasn’t using any SEO “tips” at all (at one time Feedjit widget revealed I was getting a lot of visits via Google for “girly wordpress”). I am not using SEO much although sometimes I do download tools and try them out. I guess I need to be more focused.
kellys last blog post…One Human Trait often Overlooked as a “Online Success Ingredient” (Part 2)
Wow, 1 week. I’ve increased my traffic 400% over the past 3 months and I thought that was awesome…
Ginis last blog post…How to Create Gorgeous Snowflakes in Photoshop
After 2 months my traffic is now up between 700% and 1,000% percent! I must say I am very pleased and all without hardly writing a thing. As I watch my traffic go up I’m hard pressed to want to write anything at all these days. I’m starting to get lazy and I may have to retire the keyboard if this keeps up.
Blog Bloke reply on December 20th, 2008 4:09 am:
it is very attractive opportunity, I will see it and waiting for the next part
Is it true? i just having a problem too with getting traffic.
balifinder@bali indonesia travel guides last blog post…Crowded Tanah Lot, Bali
Thank you for this information.