In my last post How to Get Traffic to Your Website or Blog I listed several basic SEO techniques that all bloggers should follow - regardless of whether you are trying to make money online or just blogging for fun. In either case you will want visitors. Many beginners chase social traffic only to find out later that they don’t make money from this form of traffic and all too often they find that this traffic doesn’t convert into loyal readers either. They come, browse and then leave without so much as a comment. I have called this type of traffic useless. Some have taken offense at this description and usually tell me that it isn’t useless as it helps them build links. This is true - social traffic can produce backlinks for your site. Unfortunately most often the backlinks are useless as well.

If you follow my directions then you can use social traffic to provide you with useful backlinks which will in turn help you to rank well in the search engines for terms that people search for. Search engine visitors are targeted which mean they have an interest in your topic before finding your site. Unlike social browsers the search visitors will click ads, buy products and even become loyal readers who will leave comments. There is a certain irony to all this - I have found that the best way to grow a readership and a social network isn’t with social networks - it’s best done with the search engines.

Here is the list of SEO basics I published on the last post.

SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;

You must use your keyword in your URL.

You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.

You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.

You must use your keywords and related terms in your post content.

You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.

If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.

If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.

You must use html for the bulk of your pages content

Rather than getting into a long winded explanation of why you should follow my Advice I will just show you an example of a site that uses Keywords for all of the above and a site that doesn’t. The benefit of using Keywords will be crystal clear when I’m finished.

I said that social traffic can indeed produce backlinks but that these links are all too often useless. By useless I mean that they don’t use anchored text in the link for any useful terms that people search for in the search engines.

Melissa from “Why be Normal” has a social blog here on Today.com. She spends a lot of time driving traffic using social networks and I suspect Google Images. She does quite well but could do a lot better with a lot less work.

Her Keyword “Why Be Normal” has no search benefit. In simple terms nobody searches for the term. It also doesn’t reflect her blog’s topic or niche. Her site is most accurately described as a humorous photo blog. I did a search for “humorous photo” on Google before my last post. Why be Normal was not listed on the first page of the serp’s (search engine results page) for that term. I added an anchored link to Melissa’s blog in that post. And waited.

I did a search today on Google for “humorous photo” and guess what?

(Click images to enlarge - use magnifier to enlarge further)

All it took was two anchored links using the term “humorous photo” to get Melissa’s blog ranked on page 1. (The term doesn’t have a lot of competition.)

Here is what Melissa’s backlinks look like. Notice that her links all contain “why be normal” in the anchors. This is because most people link to your site using either your URL or your Blog Title. In some cases they will use your Post title.

Now imagine if she had used a term like “Humor Blog” or “Funny Pics” or “Humorous Photos” in her URL, Blog Title and Post Titles. Every one of her links would contain those keywords and she would be easily ranking well or even number 1 in Google for terms that get searched for and drawing in daily traffic without having to do any work what so ever. No new posts, no chasing social network traffic. Search traffic shows up consistently day after day and if they like what they see they will leave comments and click on relevant ads and buy relevant products.

Now let’s look at this Adsense blog. I use keywords in all my titles and URL. I don’t post often and only in order to target more keywords.

Not bad - 9 posts, 1100 comments (which contain a ton of keyword rich content that the Google bot devours) and no time spent chasing social traffic.

You will notice I have very few useless backlinks.

Now I am not generating nearly the same traffic as Melissa is at the moment. But from Today.com’s perspective I am generating better traffic. Traffic that they can make money from using Adsense. When my traffic clicks an ad Today.com receives top CPC for the click as my visitors are targeted to the ads placed on my site.

In Melissa’s case and basically most of the Today.com sites the Google Adsense ads are smart priced and Today.com only receives a few pennies a click. The reason for the poorly targeted ads on Today.com is because the bloggers don’t use keywords in their post titles (this is the main trigger for what ads Google produces on your page) and they have several unrelated posts (and titles) on a single page. The Google bot is forced to determine what your page is about in order to serve relevant ads. If you do not target a keyword in your post title and have several post titles on a page the end result is a mishmash of ads usually not relevant to anything in particular and almost never relevant to what your social traffic is looking for. (It’s worth noting that Social Traffic rarely clicks ads anyway nor do they buy advertising or buy from advertisers. A problem Today.com is having trying to monetize all the social traffic blogs here on Today.com) This means that any clicks you do receive will not convert well for the advertiser and Google will give them a discount by simply paying Today.com a few pennies instead of the bid price.

Why be Normal should be showing ads for various humor related topics as that is what the traffic is looking for. Instead the site is showing ads as follows;

If her post titles all contained related “humor” or “Funny Pics” keywords she would see an instant change in the ads displayed and Today.com would see a much better return as far as CPC (cost per click) is concerned. Changing her blog title to “Humour Photos - Why Be Normal” would have the most impact on both her search rankings and Adsense relevancy. Moreover the blog description should simply read, “Humorous Photos and Funny Pictures to make you laugh”. If her friends would change their anchored links pointing at Melissa’s blog to related keywords like “funny pics”, “humor Photos”, “Humorous Pictures” etc she would see a sharp increase in search traffic as her blog ascends the serp’s for those terms.

These simple tips will work for any site and aside from making you more money with Adsense they will increase your readership and comment levels as you will be drawing in targeted visitors. Melissa averages 3k - 7k visitors a day with un-targeted traffic and has to post often and work the social networks to keep the traffic coming. Is it worth all the work? Today.com isn’t making much from the traffic, Melissa has few comments and her RSS feed subscribers show no readers. (using Blog Perfume Feed Analysis which may be broken? )

This Adsense blog had a whopping two posts for the month of March. How did my traffic stack up?

13,300 unique visitors or 6,650 unique visitors per post. Not a lot of work put in any way you look at it. I even made $40 for the effort but that isn’t why I’m here. I am simply trying to dominate another set of keywords related to the make money online niche. In time I will add more and more targeted keywords to this site and eventually drive 1000’s of visitors here daily without doing much of anything. It’s the ultimate system for passive income and I have reproduced this method countless times before.

My main blog produced the following search traffic over the final two weeks of March with only two posts;

and in case you don’t believe that targeted search traffic makes money this shot shows how well each keyword converted into revenue;

No amount of social traffic will give you those kind of earnings for the work involved.

Be smart - blog socially if that is your thing but at least optimize your sites for the search engines. Using proper keywords in your URL’s and Titles will create useful anchored links even from social bloggers who don’t know what an anchored link is. They just send links using your URL so make sure your URL has your keyword in it and you will rank for it in the serp’s. Eventually you won’t have to chase social traffic. Google will send you all the traffic you need.