If you’re here, then you’re probably searching for ways to make your blog better (and get some more traffic while you’re at it!). As you already know, the internet is packed with literally millions of blog posts about this subject – so in order to avoid wasting your time I’ll skip all the obvious and generalized advice that’s been copy-pasted around the blogosphere so many times already and focus only on the things I know from my own personal experience.
1. Place a PERMALINK in the bottom of every post
Okay, I’ll admit that this is a weird tip to start up my list, but I bet that it’s something you haven’t already read ten thousand times before. So why is it a good idea to place a permalink in the bottom of your post?
First let’s define ‘permalink’: a permalink is a static link that points to a specific post. The reason I use permalinks (which seems redundant at first, because the title of each post also serves as a permalink) is to protect my blog from content theft. There are many blogs out there that take your posts and republish them as their own (it’s called sploging). Why? So they could post a lot of new content in a very short time span and use it to promote their blogs in search engines (oh, and also monetize from advertisements and link exchange while they’re at it!).
If you have a permalink in your post, every time someone steals it you will be notified by a trackback/pingback. It may not prevent people from stealing your stuff but it will at least notify you when it happens. An additional benefit is the incoming links you’ll receive from your own permalink when your post is republished somewhere else. Such links will improve your page rank and in some cases will increase your Technorati authority as well. Sploging isn’t so bad afterall, isn’t it? :)
2. Make sure your blog is optimized for Google.co.uk
First of all let’s make sure that we’re on the same wavelength here: different Google’s (Google.com, Google.co.il, etc.) will bring up different search results for the same search queries – I hope you already knew that, but even if you didn’t – you do now. No matter which country you live in, and what language you speak, it’s absolutely essential that you promote your blog/website on Google.co.uk!
This includes monitoring your position in search results for your keywords, and also publishing your AdSense ads there (in addition to Google.com and your local Google).
The reason I’m saying this is not because I’m the co-founder of Google.co.uk, it’s because of a rather unpredicted reason: Microsoft! When you select a search provider for the built in search box in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, the default Google search is not google.com – it’s google.co.uk! This means that whoever uses IE7 as their web browser and selected Google as their search provider (but didn’t manually set it to google.com) is searching through google.co.uk!
This advice alone would probably cost you hundreds of dollars if you’ve gotten it from so called SEO “experts”, and here you are, getting it for free at
hillelstoler.com, why not link here from your own blog and help spread the word?
3. Make sure you understand incoming links
I’ll do this one real quick: one of the most important things for any website or blog in terms of traffic and SEO is incoming links (links from other websites that points to your site). There are three things you must know about incoming links:
3.1 ‘nofollow’ links are links that might get traffic to your page (via people who click on them) but will not increase your page rank. This generally includes links in comments, forums and wiki pages. So there really is no really need to spam Wikipedia after all! :)
3.2 When you link to your website it’s best to use anchor words. For example, if you want your site to appear on search engines when someone searches “La Costa Lotta” – it will be best if you could get other websites to link this anchor term to you. For example, this link: read about La Costa Lotta is much better than this one: read about La Costa Lotta here.
3.3 Incoming links from other blogs can have different values for you. A blogroll link is the best because it appears on every page and regenerates itself every time a new post is published (important for your Technorati authority). Links from inside posts are good because they’re tracked by Technorati and others, and there is also a good chance people will see (and use) them when they read the post. Side bar links are good because they are always visible, however they don’t count on Technorati, and the chances of getting any click through traffic from them are slim. Last on my list are links from pages – which are nice to have but not very great.
4. Use GetSocial
GetSocial, that’s the only unoriginal advice here, but it works, and it’s my software – so what can I say? The way I see it, social bookmarking is a lot like playing the lottery – it wastes your time in most cases, but sometimes, rarely, you can hit the jackpot in terms of traffic, and I like those odds! According to my personal experience, StumbleUpon produces the most traffic, followed by del.icio.us but I guess it’s different from blog to blog. I’ve also noticed that when people write a description for the bookmark, it returns MUCH more traffic – so please: take the time to write a short description of this post when you bookmark it!
Hillel Stoler (and other cool stuff) 
Since I started using Get Social, my hits have doubled. There’s a lot I don’t understand about blogging and marketing, but this device seems to work. Once, I went from 80 hits to 2500–in one day. Is that all you, Hillel, and your little bar?