How to get people to return to my blog.

[Runninground]

Originally Posted by Melody

Since you're using a wordpress blog, you can easily send trackbacks and pingbacks when you post a new blog review. If used correctly, this can help draw a few people in, and get the original blogger back to your site. It even develops links possibly. (Usually no follow links but still can draw in a few people).

Hypothetically, if you were to review my site, you would write up a review of what you like or dislike about my blog. Then in wordpress, you scroll way down and enter my blog's url into the place where it says "send trackbacks to..."

I have been told that wordpress blogs automatically pingback to each other, but I've never been convinced that is true.

Once you hit 'publish' on the review, the trackback gets sent to me. Since I moderate comments, I see it in the form of a comment. When I see trackbacks sent to me, I do almost always go look at and see what the originating site is to determine whether I want to approve it.

If I approve the trackback, (or pingback, whatever you want to call it) then you've also developed a possible link for yourself, though I wouldn't count on that to be a great source of traffic. But it can be a win - win - You get someone to come check out the review.

You have to be sending your track backs to a page that allows for comments. So (hypothetically), if you reviewed my blog, since you're not reviewing a specific article, you'd probably go to the "about" page to ping me to come look at what you're doing - That's a good back up. You write your reviews, and be sure check out the "about" page for the blog you're reviewing as a place to send a pingback.

Your trackback (if approved) now appears on the original blogger's site - Scroll down to the very bottom of this link and you can see a visible trackback. (Just as an example)

The problem you'll find is that a lot of people try to send out spam pingbacks and trackbacks. But if your review is legitimate, I think a lot of people will come look. I know that I do approve all trackbacks and pingbacks from legitimate looking blogs, and most any blog at PR 1 or higher. Pingbacks are almost a form of a compliment - someone took the time to link to me in a natural organic backlink, I take the time to look to see what it is.

Hope all that makes sense.

***

Speaking of links, did you remove the requirement that someone must link to you to get a review?

Thanks, I have just removed it, because I forgot about it
I'm not sure I know what you mean about trackbacks. Where do I put the URL? I do put the URL in the post itself, which I think sends the URL as a comment to the author of the blog, because when I have reviewed a website for the second time, I paste a link to the first review, and it comes up as a comment for me to moderate.

My traffic has shot up to 58 today, and its been under 25 for the last three days. I'm not sure why, but i'd love to know :P It does this every now and then. I managed to get to 98 before (I did post the URL on a forum though). So yeah, I'm not sure why it sometimes goes high. I really need to use a better tracking/statistic website thing instead of just using the WP stats

[Melody]

Runningground,

Here's what the trackback field looks like -

http://www.bloggeries.com/forum/atta...1&d=1321807739



So if you were reviewing my blog, you would put the url to my "about" page in that field above. The link that you put into that field must accept comments. When you click publish, it pings me. I come and look at your blog.

The strategies that I've used to get visitors to my blog are different than yours, it seems. But I am not a blog reviewer. You have an opportunity for a trackback with every post that you do. But I still wouldn't count on it bringing in more than a dribble of visitors, but it is something to at least take advantage of.

[Runninground]

Originally Posted by Melody

Runningground,

Here's what the trackback field looks like -

http://www.bloggeries.com/forum/atta...1&d=1321807739



So if you were reviewing my blog, you would put the url to my "about" page in that field above. The link that you put into that field must accept comments. When you click publish, it pings me. I come and look at your blog.

The strategies that I've used to get visitors to my blog are different than yours, it seems. But I am not a blog reviewer. You have an opportunity for a trackback with every post that you do. But I still wouldn't count on it bringing in more than a dribble of visitors, but it is something to at least take advantage of.

I don't think i've ever seen that :S I'm using the online version of wordpress, so that might be different?

What ways did you get traffic to your blog? Even if they won't work for me, i'd like to know

[theeventof]

The only thing that I noticed which may end up taking away from your search engine traffic is that you reviews are all done within an image. This basically means that google won't see all those awesome key words you've placed there.

I do like the way it's presented though so maybe it'll catch on in time. Anyways good luck in finding a following. Try submitting a guest post to somewhere like Problogger or Copyblogger - make it AWESOME and you'll get thousands of new visitors ;0

[Runninground]

Originally Posted by theeventof

The only thing that I noticed which may end up taking away from your search engine traffic is that you reviews are all done within an image. This basically means that google won't see all those awesome key words you've placed there.

I do like the way it's presented though so maybe it'll catch on in time. Anyways good luck in finding a following. Try submitting a guest post to somewhere like Problogger or Copyblogger - make it AWESOME and you'll get thousands of new visitors ;0

I sent a message about a guest post to problogger, they said yeah, send it to this email address, I sent it, and I've heard nothing since... -_-

[Melody]

@Theeventof - Good point! I think that Runningground slightly hurts her blog by having all the review content in an image. Google is not finding her!

@Runningground - I recommend text, with a few photos around the text. To answer your question about blog promotion (I could write a book) but I've counted heavily on twitter when my blog was new. Google+ didn't exist back then, but I use that a little now. There's a longer version to the story, but basically social media (non spam!) has been huge to me.

[Runninground]

Originally Posted by Melody

@Theeventof - Good point! I think that Runningground slightly hurts her blog by having all the review content in an image. Google is not finding her!

@Runningground - I recommend text, with a few photos around the text. To answer your question about blog promotion (I could write a book) but I've counted heavily on twitter when my blog was new. Google+ didn't exist back then, but I use that a little now. There's a longer version to the story, but basically social media (non spam!) has been huge to me.

Ok, thanks. I find it easier to do the review as an image. Maybe if I typed up the stuff that I wrote in the image and put it below the image?

[ChickenFreak]

Is the image-based review relatively new? I seem to remember being able to read your reviews before, and I find it almost impossible to read the image-based reviews - I have a small screen, and the print is small, so the only way to comfortably read the text is to change my screen settings and scroll around, or struggle to read it with my nose practically against the screen. Even then, it's hard to pick out which bits to read, and hard to tell when I've read them all.

In addition, Google isn't going to index the text in the image, so none of your reviews are being indexed or searched, so you won't get Google hits to your review posts. To Google, it looks like much of your blog has no text.

So, yes, I'd very strongly recommend having text in your blog posts. If you want the post to be tied to the image, you could place numbers to mark areas in the image and address them in the text.

[bibigeon]

You don't need to go and look for tons of reasons to get back to text based review, SEO is enough.

[Runninground]

When I write the next review, i'll try and remember to post it on here so you can see if its good or not