How to attract visitors to your blog

Together with many other bloggers, I'm looking for ways to optimize the number of visitors on my blog. I have been posting for a few months now, and I therefore think I'm able to share some tips with you. I will reveal some of the tactics that I found to be helpful.

- Choose topics that attract people and stay on that topic
- Keep it short and to the point
- Tag your posts
- Think of an interesting title for your blog or tweet
- Spread the word and test different titles among different social media
- Use images, links and video's in your blog
- Include (multiple) common hashtags in your tweets
- Write posts often so the readers won't forget you

Blogging goals
Obviously, there are many more tactics that can be used. It also depends on the type of blog your writing. I think there are two major goals to write a blog: for personal of commercial purposes. Personal bloggers write to enjoy themselves and other people who want to read it. Commercial blogs are interested in attracting a greater group of people. These blogs need to record their visits and actively attract visitors.

SEO-content
If you want to draw the attention of people around the world, it is wise to write posts so that search engines will pick up your blog. Googles takes three factors into account when providing search results: crawling, indexing and presentation.

The fact that 'Googling' has become an official verb, has proven that it is a widely performed activity. Therefore: write SEO-friendly content. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web page in search engines via the un-paid ("organic") search results. Just a few tips and tricks:

- Use popular but relevant keywords
- Don’t use too general keywords, but also not too specific.
- Don't worry about plurals; search engines don’t read them
- 6% to 10% of your text should be keywords
- Use links and headings: they have more value to search engines

There are many more tips to be found on the internet, such as on SEO SERP guide, ReverseDelta, Marketingfacts or simply Google's guidelines for webmasters.

My personal experience is that it doesn't help to invite people to leave a guest post. I also linked my blog to Hyves but that wasn't a big success. The majority of the traffic comes from Twitter. Surprisingly, LinkedIn is also a popular entrance, which additionally has the highest 'Time On Site' in Google Analytics. I think the best tip is to write about a hot topic, but keep it specific. The majority of my organic visitors came from the search term 'ipad 2 magazines'. I think also the many links in my posts have contributed to the number of organic visitors. In total, this has resulted in 37 organic visitors (which I'm pretty proud of :))! In these few months my knowledge about attracting visitors has grown, however, there’s still a lot more to learn.

Reasons for online dating

Online datingsites are websites where people can present themselves in order to find a potential partner. If someone likes an other person on the website, they make contact online. If they continue to like each other, they might decide to organize an offline meeting.
It is usually necessary to pay for membership, which makes these sites more reliable. No one will access the site just for fun. A big advantages of online dating is that the system will search for a partner that matches best.

Various datingsites
A huge amount of dating sites have settled on the internet. There are many general datingsites, but also numerous 'special interest sites'. These sites are intended for people with certain preferences. For example, if you are concerned with nature you can go to Green Singles. If you're interested in horses you can go to Equestrian Singles. When you are looking for a Christian partner you can go to FunkyFish, for students there is Matchstudents, for coloured people there is Black Singles and for Jewish people there is Jdate. You can even find your own Russian woman at Anastasia Date, find a plus size single at Large and Lovely or look for a wealthy partner at Wealthy Men or Sugardaddie.

Name any preference and there is a dating site for it! I wonder whether there are enough visitors for all these websites but I guess there are, since these websites still exist.

Reasons
But why are all these sites so popular? People make use of online datingsites for several reasons:
- It's appealing to search in a big pool of potential partners
- The privacy and anonymity of a dating site
- An efficient and easy way to find a date
- Easier to find someone with the same interests
- The only possible way left to find a partner (for older people)

I have never tried it myself, but I think it’s a good way to meet new people when you are looking for a date. Datingsites often have a negative image, which I think is not very fair. For many people it is a great way to meet their significant other.
However, my preference goes out to meeting in person first. I think online dating is too detached, while dating should be intimate and personal. If I was looking for a date I wouldn’t go to an offline datingbureau, so I wouldn’t do this either with online datingbureaus. Online dating is however far more approachable than offline dating assistance!

Google Search becomes Social

It was just waiting for the moment that Google integrates a social feature in Google Search. The moment is there. Google recently introduced the +1 (plus one) button in the search results. It is such a feature that when it's there you think: 'ofcourse, why haven't they thought of this sooner!'

Relevant search results
The +1 button represents things like "great website!" or "check this out", comparable to the Like-button on Facebook. Your friends or family automatically see your recommendations in their own Google search results. According to Google, your search results will become more relevant with this new feature. They take the ‘+1 stamp’ into account when determining a page's relevance and ranking.

Google experimental
Unfortunately, we in the Netherlands are not yet able to use the +1 button. The button is first tested in the US for a number of users, and will soon be available in other languages. If you can't wait to try it out, Google has been so kind to make this feature available for try out on Google Experimental.

Promote your website
In the future, you can also integrate the +1 button on your website. This is the perfect way to get more organic visitors on your website, since Google is one of the greatest players in online search engines. You can already sign up if you want to install the button on your website. You'll receive an email as soon as it's available.

Google profile
In order to assign a +1, you need to have a Google profile. This way, friends and family can see who has recommended a certain search result. Just a warning: +1's are public for anyone who is socially connected, so be careful with recommendations of 'certain embarrassing sites' ;) Users are able, however, to conceal their +1's on their Google profile.
This profile makes the +1 button less approachable, but is necessary in order to connect to social media. A great advantage is that your own +1's are saved on your account. This way, users are able to retrieve the links they have found and liked on the World Wide Web, at any time.

Read more about the effects and possibilities of the +1 button on the Google Webmaster Center.

Find the perfect vacation using social media!

Many people are planning their summer vacation at the moment. I've just booked my own vacation, but perhaps I can interest you with a new tool.

Today, KLM launched an innovative application where you can search for a vacation using personal interests. With KLM Travlr you can use keywords that match your own interests such as shopping, diving or surfing. This makes it fun and easy to look for a vacation, which is adjusted to your individual desires. Furthermore, you can explore destinations that you wouldn’t normally think of.

The content is retrieved from social media such as Twitter, YouTube and Google Maps. The application runs completely on user generated content. In addition, you can share the information you find on social media.

My personal experience
I'm not sure whether I am a big fan of the application just yet. The first time I tried it, the interface was a bit fuzzy to me. When you click on a photograph, the interface jumps to a different screen without any clear connection to the previous one. It looks fancy, but there are too many pop-up windows overlapping. However, after some clicking it became clear to me. My preference goes out to interfaces that take no more than a few minutes to figure out. Today's launched application is still a beta version, so perhaps this is the first possible improvement.

Win-win-situation?
Obviously, a big advantage for the KLM is that they receive a lot of information about potential customers. It sounds like a win-win situation. However, you need to be aware of the fact that KLM keeps track of your personal input. I am also wondering how information is automatically retrieved from social media: can this information be legitimately retrieved from public profiles on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter? I suppose they thought it over carefully, but there are stil some questions on my end..

All in all, I think it's a smart application and I wouldn't be surprised if other travel websites take over this idea soon.

Try it yourself: Travlr Application