Things to do before you post and advertise your blog, and what to do once it’s up and running, like getting traffic and using AdSense.
I made this easy to understand, for maximum usability. I even added the easiest and best trick to get good traffic, but don’t abuse the trick. If you’re here for traffic tips, scroll down to – Tips for Getting Traffic.
First Thing To Do
This is a big step – get Feedburner setup for your website, ASAP. Make your RSS button easy to see so people can subscribe. I’ve had a few new visitors drop by for a few seconds, click the RSS button and leave, namely the guys from Digg indian tech blog. If you are using WordPress, you will need to get the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin.
Make sure you have a list of available RSS buttons for people to choose from. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to go to toprankblog.com/tools/rss-buttons/ and create your button. Make sure in step 2, you set it to default and use your Feedburner URL. To get your feed address, just open feedburner, login to your account. On the top left you will see something that says My Feed, once you click on it, click on the feed you want to use. Once the page loads, look under the feed name and click Edit Feed Details. On this screen you will see the address of your feed.
Before You Post
If you’re using WordPress, I recommend not getting blocked for a lot of pings. Did you know that every time you go back to an article and fix or change something, it will ping the blog site. So this will result in your post being banned. To solve this, I recommend downloading the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. It monitors your posts and ensures you are not banned for multiple pings. After you publish an article, it sends a ping, and each time you return to the article to change it, the article no longer pings.
If you’re going to be doing any kind of writing in WordPress, from just typing articles, to html coding, I recommend getting a better WYSIWYG editor. I’m using Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress. It’s easy to use, doesn’t clutter your articles with weird wrappers, and doesn’t mess with programming code. One of the features I like, is the addition of images, which are right in the interface, handle uploading images, and make it easy to change what you need.
I can’t say this enough; You need to get Wp Super cache. If a website loads slow for people, they will leave. I know my web host isn’t perfect, but I try to keep the website as fast as possible for everyone. On the same note, I recommend getting the Optimize DB plugin. This WordPress plugin is simple and easy to use. Just go to your manage tab, click Optimize DB, wait for it to run, then click optimize now. It works great and I use it several times a day when I post a lot.
Article Publishing
Don’t publish just one article first.
I recommend writing 2 or 3 articles, then putting them on a website. This way when you get your first traffic spike, people have other articles to read besides just one. Too many blogs come and go by just posting one article and nothing else. So if you don’t have more than a few articles, your chances of returning or subscribing are much less.
If you really want to get started on the right foot, I recommend finding the best of the 3 articles and submitting them to EzineArticles.com. Expect 3 to 5 days to turn around for them to review it and put it on the website.
I lost a lot of traffic on my first great article, because that was all I posted and people came, read the article and left and never heard from again.
Looking back on this, I wish I had another article I posted earlier so people would have a reason to stay. My first article that I posted had about 200 visitors in the first 30 minutes, the visitors read the article, then disappeared. Now when I post a great article, I get a spike in traffic, people read the article, then browse my website and come back a few days later.