Think You Have to Spam to do Well in the Search Engines? Think Again.

One of the things that has been the most fascinating part of running a magazine-style site is watching how each of the individual channels are growing in such vastly different ways. Momsational gets most of its traffic from contest aggregation sites. Freelance Parent is getting a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, because they put out a lot of popular articles on writing. And the Kids’ Activities blog is going gangbusters thanks to the search engines.

I’d like to talk a little bit about what Shannon is doing right on the Seasonal Kids’ Activities Blog, because yesterday she got more traffic to her blog than I did on mine, by over 200%.  She got no big Stumble from StumbleUpon, no big link from another blogger : nearly ALL her traffic came from search engines yesterday, and no one single keyword or keyphrase sent her more than 9 visitors.

So How Did Shannon Kick eMom’s Butt Yesterday?

She Takes Advantage of Seasonal Searches

It was the day before Valentine’s Day, and searches for Valentine’s Day treats, activities, recipes, etc. peaked yesterday. Maybe “skyrocketed” is a better word than “peaked”. After the holiday her traffic will slump a bit until St. Patrick’s Day comes around.

She is Listening to Her Audience

Although people rarely comment on Shannon’s blog, she knows what they like by analyzing the way they find her site. She has a rich keyword history to review in Google Analytics at this point, and she knows what people are looking for. So she gives it to them.

She Has Done a Lot of Keyword Research

What Shannon lacks in her own data she is finding in keyword tools like this one from Aaron Wall. She’s taken the time to find out what words other people use to search and is making sure she uses their language in her post titles and articles.

She is Using Proper Alt Tags on her Images

By naming her images with keywords and using keywords in image ‘alt’ tags, Shannon’s referrals from Google Image Search are on the rise, and it’s also helping her to rank better overall

She is Developing Natural Relevant Links from Quality Related Sites

There aren’t a ton of Kids’ Activity blogs out there, so there aren’t a million places she can go to network. But by getting to know Char over at Printables4Kids and even linking from her own personal bog, she has been able to make a huge difference in her traffic this Valentine’s Day compared to past holidays like Christmas and Halloween

She is Working on Creating Community Outside of Her Blog

While she hasn’t seen a ton of traffic from her efforts yet, she’s taken her content on the road so to speak when she set up a group on Flickr to share photos of kids’ projects with other parents. It’s been a great way for her to both get more exposure for her blog and also contribute great content to the parenting community outside of our site.

I’d Also Like to Highlight What Shannon ISN’T Doing

She Isn’t Submitting Her Own Articles to StumbleUpon or Other Social Media Sites

Although there are mixed feelings about the rights and wrongs of self-submission, we prefer to let the community decide what gets popular on the social media sites.  Skellie can tell you how to make sure your stuff gets stumbled tamper-free.

She Isn’t Spamming Forums with Links

Although Shannon is finding forums and communities to join, she’s only mentioning her site when it comes up in conversation, or when someone asks for the information. I think this is a really, really important point, and exemplifies best practices when setting out to do self-promotion in online communities.

She Isn’t Leaving Comments on Blogs Just to Promote Herself

I’m a huge advocate of commenting as a way to promote yourself. I also advocate only adding to the conversation and not spamming other bloggers. Interestingly, when I look through Shannon’s referring sites, I don’t see any traffic of substance coming from her commenting activity. I’d actually recommend she does this a little more come Easter time.

She Isn’t Slacking

Usually our authors write about 3-4 posts a week. In preparation for Valentine’s Day, she posted a lot more frequently leading up to the holiday, and wrote a lot of posts much earlier than she did for previous holidays. That two week lead time and updating her content at a rapid pace made a HUGE difference in increasing her traffic.