How do you tell if a Blog is successful?

There are may theories out there on various metrics we could use to determine whether or not your blog is successful.

Some people use metrics such as these to determine whether their blog is successful or not:

• Number of Page Views Per Month
• Number of New vs Returning Visitors
• Number of Shares on Social Media Sites
• Bounce Rates
• Number of Comments on Blog Posts
• Number of Email / RSS Subscribers
• etc.

The challenge with metrics like these and many others is that everything depends on what the purpose behind your Blog is in the first place.

For example, a Blog which is focused on humor, entertainment, or celebrity gossip may receive hundreds of thousands of visits a month but may not be seen as “successful” with those types of numbers.

Meanwhile, a Blog whose niche market is organic hydroponic gardening might be seen as ultra successful with the same amount of traffic.

Everything depends on what niche you’re in, what your blogging goals are and how YOU see your Blog.

I find that a lot of new bloggers want to know if they are doing the right things and if they are succeeding with their Blogs.

As a blogger for over 9 years now, I’ve spoken to and mentored many different bloggers and here’s what I’ve discovered…

How to Really Tell if Your Blog is Successful

What I’ve discovered is that a blog becomes successful the day which the blog’s author DECIDES and DECLARES that their blog is successful.

Nobody else out there can do it for you.

No “stat” or “metric” can do it for you.

YOU essentially have to declare that your Blog is successful and then go out there and find metrics, stats, and “proof” which supports your belief in your Blog.

As you do this, your blog will start to be seen as “successful” in the eyes of others as well…

… but it won’t happen until YOU start to see your blog as successful first!

For example, in my mind I believe this Blog is very successful.

I saw it as successful the minute I started it!

And then, every day I look for reasons, for “proof”, for stats and for metrics which support that belief so that I believe in the success of my blog more and more every single day.

By declaring that in my mind, and in my beliefs, other people out there start to see it that way as well.

But it always starts with YOU.

YOU have to decide, right now, that your Blog is a success!

It doesn’t matter if you have written one blog post or a thousand, or received 1 visitor or a million visitors… none of those metrics really mean anything to anyone unless YOU first start believing your Blog is a success.

Muhammad Ali declared himself “the greatest fighter” first, before anyone even saw him that way.  He first convinced himself that he was the greatest fighter and then he went out and became the greatest fighter.

It’s the same thing with Blogging.

YOU have to see yourself as a successful blogger.

Find reasons to believe that to be true, even if this is your first day blogging.

Once you start to believe this, you will manifest a reality where this is true.

You will start to see evidence and “proof” that supports your belief that your blog is successful, and it will become so!

With your thoughts, and your beliefs and your spoken and written word, you will manifest it into reality.

I believe in you!

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So you’ve got a blog and you’re looking for a way to get traffic to your blog for free.

In this post I’m going to share 7 ways you can get traffic to your blog absolutely free.

Free Blog Traffic Idea #1 – Comments on Other Blogs

One simple way to start getting traffic to your blog is to visit other blogs in your niche market and start participating in the conversation on those blogs.

When you leave well thought out comments, some of the people who read them will be interested in who you are and they will click on your name which will take them back to your blog.

Make sure that when you’re leaving comments you fill in the fields such as your name, email address, and your blog URL along with your comment, so that when people click on your name above the comment they will be taken to your blog.

The other benefit of this strategy is that even if nobody clicks on your name and visits your blog, Google will see and count the link to your blog which will help with your overall ranking on Google as well!

When you finish reading this post, why don’t you take advantage of this strategy by leaving a comment on this post since you’re already here!

Free Blog Traffic Idea #2 – Setup a Facebook Fan Page

Most people have a personal Facebook page where they share updates, pictures and videos from their life but when it comes to their blog posts, most people are shy about promoting them on their personal page.

Why?   Well, in most cases your friends and family may not be interested in what you blog about.

For example, on my TabletopGamer.com blog, I blog about tabletop gaming but only a few of my friends and family that I have on my personal facebook page have an interest in this hobby.

So, in such situations what most people do is they hold back from promoting their blog posts on their facebook pages.

The solution to this is to setup a Facebook Fan Page specifically for you blog where you can feel free to promote every blog post you write!

This way you can invite people to your fan page who may be interested in following your blog content, and they can decide whether they would like to see your posts on facebook or not.

Here’s a link to my Facebook Fan Page for this Blog.

You’ll notice I promote all of my posts on there, and I never worry about whether people on there are interested or not because if the aren’t they can simply “Unlike” my page and they won’t see any more updates.

Over time, you can also start to develop a fan base on facebook which will deliver more free traffic to your Blog.

Free Blog Traffic Idea #3 – Write Guest Posts for Other Bloggers

Another way to get traffic for free to your blog is to write a high-quality guest post for another blogger.

Guest blogging is still a great way to get free traffic to your blog, no matter what the critics say.

The key, however, is to take the time to create a very high quality blog post and not just slap something together without effort or thought.

One of the reasons why so many bloggers turn away guest posts is because the majority of people who write guest posts write content that is just horrible.

A blogger is not going to ruin their blogs reputation by publishing a crappy guest post, so make sure your guest posts are your best work!

Don’t be afraid of delivering your best work through guest posts.  It’s a great way to introduce yourself to a new audience.

One of the strategies that I’ve used in the past is before asking a blogger if they would like a guest post, I’ll first start reading their blog and participating in the comments and try to get a 2 way conversation going between them and I as well as between their audience and I.

When a blogger sees someone visiting their blog, reading their content, participating, leaving comments and having an honest, useful conversation, they are WAY more likely to accept a guest blog post from that person than if it’s a total stranger that just hit them up with a guest post request.

Take the time to first build some relationships with the bloggers you’d like to guest post for, and get to know their audience as well so that can write content that would resonate with their audience.

Free Blog Traffic Idea #4 – Get on Google’s Radar

If you’re running a blog on a solid blogging platform ( I recommend Kalatu ), your platform should be optimized to be Google friendly.

You’ll want to make sure that your blog posts are getting indexed by Google by having a proper sitemap setup and registered with Google Webmaster Tools.

You can also use this trick to get your blog posts indexed virtually instantly by Google.

If you’re not sure if your blog is getting indexed by Google or how many pages are getting indexed, simply go to Google.com and search for “site:yourdomain.com” (without the quotes).

Do not put a space between “site:” and your domain, and obviously replace the text “yourdomain.com” with the domain of your actual blog.

Do not put a “www.” beginning to your domain either, just everything after the “www.”

Free Blog Traffic Idea #5 – Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Another great way to get some free traffic to your blog is to submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

Make sure to visit these sites first, and get to know the different categories of posts on them so that you can determine which would be the best category to post your blog posts in.

Also, these three sites represent just a few of the social bookmarketing sites.

You can find an article with over 50 social bookmarking sites here.

Free Blog Traffic Idea #6 – Participate in a 21 Day Blogging Challenge

Another really cool way to start getting some free traffic to your blog is to participate in a 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

By participating in one of these challenges, you’ll gain access to a private facebook group for 21 day challenge participants.

Each day for the 21 days you’ll be encouraged to post and share you blog post for that day on this facebook group, and the other participants may decide to visit your blog and leave comments.

This strategy is especially effective if you combine it with Idea #1 and visit the blogs of the other challengers and leave comments on them.

You can even tell the bloggers that you are also participating in the 21 Day Blogging Challenge when you leave your comments, and there is a high chance that they might also reciprocate and pop by your blog and leave a comment as well!

Free Blog Traffic Idea #7 – Get Free Traffic From YouTube

Another absolutely amazing free traffic source is YouTube.

You can create simple YouTube videos which answer common questions or provide value to your target audience, and encourage people to visit your blog to get more value.

For example, I could create a YouTube video where I share the first three free traffic ideas from this blog post and then at the end of the video I could say something like “I hope you enjoyed these three traffic ideas, and if you’d like to get access to 4 more free traffic ideas, simply click on the link below to visit my blog where all seven free traffic ideas are revealed.”

In this way you can capture some of the traffic from people on YouTube who are searching for an answer to a specific question, and offer them SOME of the value that you offer on your blog, but not all of it.

In order for them to get ALL the value, you encourage them to visit your Blog.

This is a very effective strategy that very few people utilize.

I highly encourage you try it out.

You can also encourage your blog readers to visit your YouTube channel and to subscribe in order to get additional content that they will not necessarily find on your Blog.

In this way you can build up your blog traffic as well as your YouTube channel traffic as well, and provide even more value to your readers.

If you’d like to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel you can find it by clicking here.

If you enjoyed this blog post, do me a favor and take a moment to share it with someone you know!

Thanks!

So you’ve got a Blog.

And maybe you’ve even got a sitemap plugin installed.

And maybe you’ve even got that sitemap automatically sending a message to Google every time you write a blog post.

But are your Blog posts even getting indexed?

I currently run two blogs and I’ve been doing some experimenting with how Google indexes them differently.

On my main blog (this one) I blog daily, and have been doing so for almost 6 months now.

During that period of time my sitemap has submitted 188 pages to Google for indexing in the search engine.

On my second blog I have been blogging sporadically about once a week or so.

I had some older content that I moved to that Blog as a starting point, and so far I’ve submitted 47 pages to Google for indexing in the search engine.

Now take a look at this snapshot from these two blogs that I currently run:

 

As you can see, on my main blog where I’m blogging daily, Google has indexed 182 out of the 188 pages I’ve submitted to them which means that they’re indexing about 97% of my content.

On my other Blog, where I’ve been publishing a post about once a week, Google has only indexed 8 out of 47 posts so far, which means that they’re only indexing about 17% of my content there.

That’s a HUGE difference of 80%!

Now I’m not 100% sure why Google is only indexing about 17% of my content there so far, but the important question is – is Google even indexing YOUR site?

I see a lot of bloggers really confused about why they’re not getting any traffic to their sites.

Look, if Google is not indexing all of your pages, then that means that those pages are INVISIBLE to anyone searching on Google.

It doesn’t matter if you write the world’s best blog post about a certain topic, if Google doesn’t index it, then it basically doesn’t exist in the Google universe.

You don’t want that.

You want to make sure ALL of your content is indexed.

You work hard to write those blog posts, so why not make sure they’re all indexed?

Now, a few days ago I wrote a blog post where I shared an easy strategy for making sure your blog posts get index really fast on Google, but if you’re a Blogger I’ve got another question for you…

The tips that I share here on my blog are just a small tiny fraction of the tips and secret ninja strategies I share with my Empower Network team-mates.

The reason I bring this up is because I struggled for years to make any money with my Blog, until I hired and worked with a mentor.

Once I started working with a mentor, everything turned around for me because he was able to see my “blind spots”.

He was able to show me what I was still missing, and what I wasn’t paying attention to, and what things I was wasting my time on.

Do you have a Blogging mentor?

Are you plugged into the training that Empower Network provides for it’s members?

Are you part of a team and do you have a mentor helping you on your blogging journey?

Or are you still trying to do everything on your own, using some kind of “free” blogging platform or some discount hosting service because you’re too cheap to invest $25/month to join Empower Network and invest into your blogging business?

If you’ve been struggling to make it as a blogger, I invite you to join my Empower Network team.

You might be doing 95% of everything correctly, but just getting stuck on 5% that’s blocking you from achieving success.

Having a blogging mentor and being part of a team might just be the missing piece for you.

If you’d like to join my team, click on this link and get signed up today.

See you on the other side.