Getting Traffic

This is filed under Marketing

 Now that I already have a blog in place, the question that bugs me most right now is how do I get other people to read my blog? If I were one of my targeted readers, where do I usually go that would definitely lead me to this blog? Since my selling point is information and I'm targeting newbies like me, the most obvious answer would be the search engines with the most recall--Google and Yahoo. But I should be on the first to second page on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) so the reader don't have to go too far along the results to find me. This entails Search Engine Optimization. I have read a 30-page instructional E-book on SEO but I have yet to try it out. I'll post my findings later on.

 So far, based on my own personal internet experience,the sites that lead me to explore other blogs in my interests are in the PMT forums and blogs, Blogger help group and Yahoo Answers . If I want to gain an audience from the readers in these sites, I would have to be visible more often in these forums and give helpful advice of my own. Hopefully, I could offer help soon enough. I'll make some time after I make this blog a better site to visit than what it is right now.

 Of course, an important factor that I need to consider is if the sites that I want to be visible in are getting good enough traffic in the first place. This is where Alexa comes in. Alexa is one my best web discoveries so far. It is one of my Firefox add-ons, (the other is ScreenGrab) with it's icon always on the lower right corner of my browser. It is where I learn the top sites with the highest traffic ranking on the internet. As of today, 10th of November 2007, the following are the top 10 sites most visited in the Philippines.

  1. Friendster
  2. Yahoo!
  3. YouTube
  4. Google.com.ph
  5. Multiply
  6. Google
  7. Wikipedia
  8. Blogger
  9. Imeem
  10. Photobucket

 The full list is here. Aside from the traffic rankings, Alexa also gives info, among others, on each sites on the following:

  ⇒web description,
  ⇒year the site started online,
  ⇒and what other web pages the people who visit the particular site go to.

 I could explore Alexa and all the sites it'll lead me to all day, but I still have a lot of improvements that I need to do on this site. I guess I'll just leave the internet analysis for later.