Make Images that Google can Find and Increase Blog Traffic!

Never forget to add images to your blog posts. Not only do they appeal to the reader of the blog, adding to the visual interest. They also bring a lot of attention to your blog since the images will be found by users searching the popular and evergrowing Google Images.

The problem is of course to find images that are not copyrighted. I have solved this by making all images myself for my main blog, Fantasytree. Don't know how to draw or paint? Fear not, free drawing lessons are available at Fantasytree and I will share everything I know about making digital images if you just contact me over there (or here).

If you really don't feel like making your own illustrations (nothing fancy is needed really, no matter how simple an image is it will be found by Google) then you can find stock images online, both for free and for a fee.

But why miss out on a fun and enriching creative hobby?

Happy blogging, drawing and painting!

Use Google Analytics To Make Your Blog's Content More Relevant!

In case you aren't, you should definitely start using Google analytics. This way you can gain all information you need about what readers like most about your blog, how many times each individual post has been viewed and so on.

I start each week by looking at which subjects have been the most popular, striving to focus just slightly more on such subjects that have received a lot of pageviews. Don't just write blindly, analyse and use strategy when writing for your intended readers.

Happy blogging!

A Blogger's Quest Now on Twitter!

I am happy to announce that this blog is now available on Twitter as well. New updates to this blog and microblogging from me can now be found there. As user Bloggersquest I'll be posting feeds and tweets at http://twitter.com/Bloggersquest.

See you on Twitter!
/Magnus

(Updated!) 22 Things I've Done to Increase My Blog Traffic

In this post I will collect all the different actions I've taken in order to increase traffic to my blogs.  Hopefully you will find some things you haven't tried yet and that will bring more traffic to your blog. I will only write about which step I've taken, not how or why. That will be developed in future posts - provided you as a reader ask for it. So don't forget to give me feedback. Which of these things would you like to see further explained and developed in future posts? Happy blogging!

These steps are in no particular order:

- Submitting blog to blog portals
- Being active in forums about the particular niche, linking to my blog in the signature
- Submitting blog to search engines
- Joining Google AdSense
- Analyzing with Google Analytics in order to write more about things my reader were particularly interested in within my niche.
- Pinging
- Focusing on writing "pillar articles"
- Becoming an affiliate
- Opening an aStore
- Posting a lot of selfdrawn/painted images (show up regularly in search engines)
- Linking to and commenting on related blogs
- Providing free lessons and tutorials
- Forwarding feeds to social networking sites
- Making a YouTube video, with reference to my blog
- Search engine optimization
- Taking time to answer comments
- Offering to feature and recommending other bloggers on my blog
- Providing "Quick links" to my most popular blog posts
- Linking to websites with related content
- Making an effort to be as broad as I possibly can within my selected niche
- Building a network at social sites with people sharing the same interests
- Linking to my aStore from other websites

(List updated November 2009)