I’ve been busy the last 10 days – no sorries. This pause helped me realize a lot of previous blogging mistakes and delusions. The base of the most of those delusions and mistakes was the misunderstanding of my blog’s traffic.

You see.. one thing is to treat your web traffic as clicks.. or a number of reads or pageviews, but treating it as people is completely another. And this is where begins web traffic demographics and the next level of your online success.

Now let’s get to the details.

4 Most Common Reasons of Delusions and Mistakes

Find yourself here. You still can fix your blogging mistakes. Just avoid the following delusions.

1. Comments: Lately I have faced one interesting fact. After I publish a new post.. I wait for comments. I look for people’ opinions. I want to be praised for my work.

   Isn’t that funny and stupid at the same time?

   In most cases we get comments from other bloggers, who simply visit your blog to get another backlink. They have to praise you (or to thank you), because otherwise you won’t accept that comment.

   Sometimes blog owners even mention, that they won’t accept negative or offensive comments.

   You see.. this whole system of commenting on blogs is built wrongly. So, why do we think, that these are our readers’ sincere opinions?

   Even when we get some beautiful, nice and big comment.. don’t rush to treat it seriously.

   Why?

   Because it might be some bloated comment in attempt to get more attention. Just check that author’s other comments and decide whether you’re right or wrong.

   Be careful. Sometimes people improve their comments with good motives.

2. Negative Feedback: I used to treat negative comments or e-mails too seriously. It distracts.. I know that.

   But one little thing I have learned so far is that you will keep getting negative feedback as long as you become more popular. People now even do not regret their time to judge you or to humiliate you. And this is a good sign.

   Again.. in most cases those people simply are losers. But.. sometimes it’s not that easy.

   Sometimes you get negative feedback, because you, actually, deserve it. But, you know, it’s about your experience, when it comes to treating the feedback seriously or not.

   Anyways, your blog development shouldn’t depend on single feedbacks… even if you’re about to lose your mind.

3. Reading Irrelevant Blogs: Of course we are not automatic machines nor robots. Sometimes we let ourselves read blogs we like even if those particular blogs do not relate to our blog’s niche.

   And there comes one problem.

   As we all are humans, we have to share our thoughts – we just need to, because they stick in our heads. And what do we do? We begin to write a post on our blog on that topic sharing our thoughts and opinions. But this is not what your readers are looking for! At least not most of them.

   If you blog about «blogging mistakes», then follow the plan. You have it done, right? If you haven’t, then your chances to get new subscribers decrease.

   The solution of this case is to try to belong to the targeted social media sphere of your blog’s niche.

4. Temptation to Be Like…: This is in our blood. We, bloggers, all were tought by A-list bloggers.. like.. whatever :)

   Today most of them are our idols and good examples.

   The biggest problem here is that we intuitively copy some part of their design or writing style or topic or else, which decreases the amount of signs of your own unique style… and that makes you look like an average blogger.

   How to avoid being like others?

   There is no certain solution, because this is about fixing your intuition and sticking to the plan of your business. This is why you need a plan or the list of the rules, which should help you not to lose your own unique way of your online journey.

How to Treat Web Traffic?

The answer is very simple.

Just treat your traffic as people, visitors, readers, commenters, students, pupils, children, pals, freinds. Treat it like that despite the traffic demographics.

Be aware of thinking that your web traffic is simply traffic or customers. They all have their families, friends and pets. They fall in love, they eat and sleep and they are just like you.

This simple method just looks so easy. But following it demands a lot of inner qualities, which can help you remember – it’s about Internet, that separates you and your site visitors.

Find out even more about Web Traffic Demographics. This article is written in 2008, but it is still actual.

Analysis of Web Traffic Demographics: 2 Web Tools

There are only 2 basic web tools to help you analyze your site traffic demographics.

• Quantcast.com – This tool gives you a lot of details about your traffic demographics, but it also needs a lot of time to analyze your site: 5-6 days to display basic info about your traffic and at least 1000 US visitors. Plus – Business and Geographic data will populate after 30 days of being quantified.

  But the data is great, so you better wait until it’s ready.

• Alexa.com – I, personally, like this one because of the simplicity. The more traffic you get, the more accurate data will be available.

Who Are My Visitors?

In the very beginning I thought, that my potential visitors are young webmasters and bloggers. I mostly imagined them as young men (male, 20-25 years old). But I was so wrong…

Here’s what Alexa says about my traffic demographics:

This means, that my readers are mostly 35+ years old.

Can you now imagine my shock? I’m only 22 years old and I’m, actually, teaching those, who are twice older, than me. This information has crucially changed my blogging way and standpoints.

This is why I have been thinking of my blog improvements for so long! This is why I have done the following changes…

5 Blog Improvements After Reading the Information About My Traffic Demographics

Blog Structure

1. I have replaced «10 Facts about iWoodpecker» with «Featured Post», because most of the bloggers are mostly used to «About» pages, rather than creativity like that :)

   Besides, «Featured Post» on the home page can give some general sense of the blog’s niche for newcomers and can help to promote that particular post.

2. I have changed the general look of the home page and the blog itself to make it look like a blog. Because I’m, actually, speaking in my posts with other bloggers. And they are used to sites that look like blogs. Otherwise, I can lose those potential visitors.

Sidebar

1. The phrase «Subscribe» changed to «Free Updates». There is one certain reason – it sounds more friendly.

2. Now I run a poll, which should give me a sense of my audience’s likes and dislikes. It’s not working now as good as I wish, but I believe this is a matter of time and the amount of traffic.

3. I have uninstalled several widgets from my sidebar, which were taking too much room. I have left only those ones, that relate to the content. Well.. it’s not 100% like that, but the general view of the sidebar is now much more better. Cleaner and more useful.

4. I’m still thinking of adding a list of my blog’s categories… But there are still some doubts whether it’s needed or not.

Post Page

1. I have removed a lot of social media buttons from my posts. And I still can’t get enough. I think it’s some kind of a rocket-science… I mean the playing with the number of social media buttons. At least.. the less the best.

2. Completely changed the design of «related posts», «categories» and «tags» parts, that come after the main content on the post pages. There is only one purpose – to make it look cleaner and more attractive.

3. I have moved «trackbacks» to the right side of the comments section. The reason is to encourage bloggers to link to my posts, which gives them in return some decent amount of web traffic and the guarantee, that their trackbacks will be visible enough.

4. I have also added gravatars and improved the comment form to encourage bloggers to leave comments. Not sure if it’s working, but I like the way it looks now :)

5. I have also changed some instructional phrases for commenters. Deleted the phrase: comments are moderated.

   Who, actually, thinks today, that comments on blogs are not moderated? So on and so forth.

Page Load Time

1. Removed SexyBookmarks.

2. Removed a lot of Ads by Google. Though I’m still playing with them. The only thing I have figured out for sure is that I don’t get clicks on image ads at all.

3. Removed a lot of tracking scripts including «MyBlogLog».

4. I have made my main CSS file cleaner. Though I should also think about plugins’ CSS files, which also should be improved.

5. I have also removed ~14 plugins (9 were inactive). I have deleted even my «contact form» plugin, because it was not needed at all, though its CSS and Script files loaded on each page.

Video Desserts

There are several reasons.

I know only one blogger, that also includes video desserts, though this is a great idea to improve visitors’ time one site and bounce rate.

And according to my traffic demographics I choose which videos to add.

***

Video Dessert: «Chat Roulette: Funny Piano Improv #1»

This site was a real discovery for me yesterday. And here’s Ben – the pianist freestyling in real-time with random strangers.

This time it will be an experimental post, because it is, actually, a simple blog comment on 3 Resons Why Blog Commenting Is Important by Alex from howtospoter.com.

The reason why I’m publishing the comment on my blog is that it was considered a spam by Alex’s spam-proof system :) This must be some mistake.. But I find this case a very good idea for this post.

Besides, my readers know that I speak about web traffic and web promotion. Excellent promotion demands risks and unusual attempts to do something new, where you’ll be the first one… Isn’t this case a good and unusual way of web promotion? :)

My Spammed Comment on Alex’s Blog

Make sure you have read Alex’s post before reading the following comment:

Alex has already reported via Twitter that it really could be his spam filter issue.

***

Video Dessert: «Laughing Baby»

Do you enjoy ripping newspaper like this little baby? :) I couldn’t stand his laughter – very relaxing video.

By this moment you have my 34 ex-bookmarks directly from Google Chrome bookmarking panel. And now let me show you 28 bookmarks more. This is the 2nd part of my ex-bookmarks for beginning bloggers and for beginning webmasters.

Note: 3 of them are in russian. You can use Google translate service or install Google toolbar, which has its own high-speed built-in translator.

4 Blogging Resources for Your WordPress Blog

1. CommentLuv is a plugin for WordPress blogs.

   If you want to recieve more comments, you better start using it today. And, if you have a PageRank of 1-2 or more, your blog most likely will be soon listed in someone’s list of blogs with CommentLuv, which automatically guarantees, that you’ll start getting more and more new visitors and comments. That is why I had it in my bookmarks.

2. WP plugin Subscribe to Comments is another must-have plugin for WordPress blogs.

   This plugin enables your commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. It includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address.

   You can even integrate your blog design to the subscription manager, which I still have not done. My bad :)

3. “Previous” and “Next” Post Links code for your WordPress blog.

   This is a tutorial by DragonBlogger. I’ve bookmarked it lately and will follow it soon. Meanwhile, you can include it to your collection of blogging resources. You have one, right?

   This feature helps to reduce your bounce rate, which in turn improves your website or blog’s SERP.

4. Template Tags from WP Codex is a list of the general user tags available in WordPress, sorted by function-specific category.

   If you understand PHP and HTML at least a little, you can customize your blog as you wish using template tags.

   I have bookmarked this resource, because I needed it to fully change the structure of my blog theme.

7 Online Income Resources for Beginning Bloggers and Webmasters

1. Chitika Premium – For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue. And it can be used along with AdSense.

   They have got 3 different types of ads for publishers: in-text-ads (like Kontera and Adgitize), WhitespaceAds that appear only when whitespace is available on higher resolution monitors and integrated Chitika eMiniMalls – ads pay on a per click basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured.

   One of the most popular benefits of Chitika is that ads appear only for your traffic that comes from search engines, which means that your daily readers will never see any ad, unless they would try to come on your site through some search engine. Chitika also pays only for US and Canada traffic, though there is also an option to monetize international and non search traffic.

   This is another must-have blogging resource for your collection of useful bookmarks.

2. Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with tweeters.

   In order to make money with this platform, you have to have a lot of real followers, not bots nor internet marketing scams.

3. Ad.ly allows you also to make money and to advertise on Twitter.

   I have registered my account there a month ago or so. No results. So, I can’t say anything about how they pay and whether it is worthy or not. But I am still keeping it in my bookmarks for future.

4. Bunch of Good Affiliate Banners by Brian from BlogEngage. The list itself is great and you can save a lot of time, because if you are looking for banners to decorate your website or blog’s sidebar, then follow the link and enjoy the wide choice of banners.

5. Make Money Online Blogging by Seth from Blogussion.

   Seth introduces us to 30 ways of making money blogging. What made me bookmark this article is that the ways were categorized by 3 different blogging levels: for beginning bloggers, for beginning novices and for professional bloggers. And every way is clearly explained.

6. 15 Link Building Tips by Dosh dosh. I have bookmarked this post, because I was new to link building methods.

7. AffiliateTips is a website that provides you with a complete guide on how to make money online with the best affiliate programs. Here you will find extensive website and blogging resources on affiliate marketing.

   I have found this resource lately in Alexa’s top. Looks cool, huh? Let’s say.. I find affiliate programs working much more better comparing with annoying ads all over the blog. With this website you can find highly targeted affiliate offers for your blog’s niche in minutes. All you need is to have a ClickBank ID (or “account name” in other words).

10 Superb Lists for Blogging Improvement

1. Several High PR Forums to Boost Traffic – this is one of my oldest dusty bookmarks. You can still find there several useful forums to get traffic.

2. 100 Ping Services for WordPress Blog – simple and clear, though in russian (I have mentioned in the beginning of this post how to translate russian blogs into english).

   You can add all of those ping services to your WordPress blog through your admin panel. Find “Settings”, then navigate to “Writing”, from there find the title “Update Services”.

   Some of the listed ping services may not work. So, it is best for you to install WordPress plugin – MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. The plugin corrects WordPress’s pinging system and solves many other problems. You are also able to see, which ping services work and which not.

3. Blog with Tons of Lists of Dofollow Blogs – this is one of those blogs with very narrow niche created to beat some certain Google real-time search result. In this case, author is trying to be on the first page of Google results with the keyword phrase “more dofollow blogs” or maybe “dofollow blogs”.

   Anyways, the provided information on dofollow blogs is fantastic and frequently updated. If you are looking for dofollow blogs with your niche – start right from moredofollowblogs.blogspot.com .

4. 100 Dofollow Forums to Increase Backlinks – uncategorized, without pageranks list of dofollow forums. I have bookmarked it to make a worthy list with more details in future.

   But you can already use that list :)

5. Top SEO Blogs of 2009 – very strong list. 207 retweets and it means, that you are dealing with a worthy compilation of SEO blogs. Take several hours to read them, if you are not sure about your search engine omptimization methods.

6. Top 15 URL Shortening Services – fresh article by Siddartha from Gadget Cage. You can find for yourself almost any type of URL shortening service from this list. But use them wisely, URL shorteners can damage your SEO in the long haul.

7. Dofollow Forums – the categorized list by niche. Seems like the author updates it regularly, so it means, that the list is great. I have followed some of the links just to test them and make sure the author was doing his job right. No mistakes found, so you can freely treat it like the best blogging resource to get backlinks from forums.

8. 538 Twitter Users that Blog by ProBlogger. This one is an old list, but I bet, that Twitter users, who still exist in that list can be very useful for you and your blog. So, why not to try to add them? :)

9. List of Sites Sharing Google AdSense Revenue – if I would ever make my second blog, then it would be done on some of the platforms listed in that article. Most likely, it would be Squidoo. The opportunity of AdSense revenue sharing platform for your blog seems very attractive by this moment. Not sure how it would be in future.

   Check the list whenever you have any extra minute.

10. List of Mnemonics for beginning bloggers and webmasters. If you are using rare characters like “&” or “$” in titles, then this list of mnemonics should become your close friend :)

    I have not found any english alternative for that list of mnemonics, so use Google Translate service or Google toolbar to understand the gist of the article, if you really want it. Because, actually, you need only the list itself, which is provided pretty much clearly.

4 Unexplored Blogging Resources to Get More Extra Traffic

1. Stumpedia is the human powered search of links. You can submit any link to this directory – just like with the stories submissions. You can also find friends, join or create groups and search for some interesting stuff for yourself.

   I’d call Stumpedia a “social directory for your links”, which is fair in my opinion. Try it, this stuff is new, fresh and juicy!

2. Plaxo is a big address book and a way to stay connected with your friends, just like in Twitter or Facebook. You can also share any stuff with your contacts and Plaxo will not limit the number of characters of your messages – a big plus. You can also run polls, which is cool :)

3. Virb is the combination of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube and Flickr.. I guess. I’ve been online there for several hours.. listening to some music and running through it. This social network is fast with a big number of daily visitors. And I should admit that I fell in love with it, because it really has a lot of potential web traffic for you website or blog. Test it.

4. Blastoff Network – is… I’m really not sure what it is. They promise you can make money, you can blast something and it’s convenient. This is how I have understood them.

   Anyways, thanks to Ileane Smith for showing this. I think it is a kind of discovery, that should be investigated a little bit more deeper.. and bookmarked, of course.

3 Ex-Bookmarks as a Bonus

1. Blog about Positive Thinking – or Maxos.ru . It is in russian, but I highly recommend it for those, who feel that it is time to fight the negativeness within you.

2. Uxbooth – a blog, that I have bookmarked, because of its design. It was long time ago and this blog was one of the first ones with unusual and great web design for me.

3. Websitebabble forum by Lisa Irby from 2CreateAWebsite.com.

   This forum is full of beginning bloggers, future webmasters and occasional visitors. I hope you know what to do with this kind of traffic :)

***

Well.. no more ex-bookmarks. Now there are only 2 for you! Get traffic, earn money, improve your blogging and make new friends with these 2 parts of proven bookmarked websites, web services and web tools.

***

Video Dessert: «Jessica Alba The Stare Response on ibeatyou»

This is Jessica’s entry for the “ibeatyou” stare competition. Try to stare at her as long as she does :)

This time let me show you several dozens of saved bookmarks on my Google Chrome browser’s bookmarking panel.

I have been saving them during several months so far. And I thought this would be a great idea to put all of them here, in order to empty my bookmarking panel and to share with you this wealth from all over the Internet.

These websites, services and web tools will be extremely useful for beginning webmasters and those, who want to find something new to track visitors, to make some money online, to improve your website or blog, to grow the number of backlinks and simply to get more web traffic.

I’ve devided the collection into two parts, because there are, let’s say, too many of saved bookmarks for one post.

All of the them are logically categorized.

9 Tools and Services for Beginning Webmasters and Bloggers

1. Page Rank Checker is a free tool to check Google page ranking of any web site pages. You also can display your site or blog’s PageRank value on your web pages using its special html code.

2. Web Site Popularity Checker is also a free tool, but this one has more features. It checks Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati and more. It also allows you to see how many times your site was bookmarked at del.icio.us. And a bunch of features more!

   I used to use only this one, because of its speed and accuracy. And you can also find useful its html badget for your website or blog to show your stats to the world.

3. Free Webmaster Tools is a multi-service full of amazing tools to improve your SEO ranking and website optimization. The first page of this site displays 8, I’d say, best tools, such as Backlink Checker, IP Address Number Converter, Meta Tags Extractor, Position Checker, Fonts Collection, Keyword Density Checker, PageRank Checker and Spider View.

   Though I’ve never used it, I’d say, that I should get back to it sometime.

4. Blog Tracker is an invisible tracker that will count your blog visits and other blog statistics. It is also free and I should say, that it works better, than Google Analytics, from the standpoint of data display. It means, that you will be able to see your last visits and hits earlier, than Google Analytics would show.

   In general, this counter has less built-in features, but faster, than Google one’s. It depends on your needs what to choose.

5. Bookmarking and Sharing Service is a free way to boost traffic back to your site by making it easier for visitors to share your content. That’s how this service describes itself. If I’m right, then AddThis really was one of the first ones of such kind. So, it’s tested by time.

6. Social Bookmarking Service, which is called SocialMarker. This service recommended itself as a free tool for spreading your links on 48 of the best social bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Propeller.com, Slashdot.org, Technorati.com, Reddit.com and many many more. They promise you, that you’ll be able to manage with it in 15 minutes. Not sure about this one, but it definitely reduces submission time.

   And you can also use their social button, which in my opinion looks not that pretty, like AddThis button :)

7. Social Networks Updater or Ping.fm is a free and simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.

   If you don’t mind URL shortening, then Ping.fm is, probably, the best one for you. But, I’m not the one and I still don’t use it. Why? I’ve explained it in my recent post about SEO risks involved with URL shortening.

8. HelloTxt is one big social network, because it allows you to read, update and organize all known social networks like Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn and tons more. Its Alexa Rank is worse, than Ping.fm’s, but it’s just a matter of time. I think HelloTxt’s future is much more better.

9. NXY.IN – URL Shortener is too awesome to be a simple URL shortening service. It has built-in analytics, popular/upcoming articles feature and a feature to make money using your AdSense ID.

   It has ~38k Alexa Rank, which is not bad for a new service, but it’s PageRank is 1, which means, that Google somewhy doesn’t trust it. So, for this moment it would be better to refrain from using this URL shortening service, if you use them at all.

12 Google Resources: Visitors Tracking, Keywords and Money

1. Google Translate – this is my number 1 service. If your English isn’t your native language, then this service is indispensable. It is fast, accurate and easy-to-use. Plus – you can listen to pronunciation of some of them.

2. “Define” trick by Google – this is a simple command to search any word’s meaning. It may help you to find more keywords to the one you already have. You can also get the idea of what you should mention, when you have some exact keyword/s.

   Examples: web service, webmaster etc.

3. Introduction to Google Adsense by Lisa Irby. Simple and clear. I guess I have started iWoodpecker, because of this article. Who doesn’t want to make money online?

   Though now I have a different opinion on Google AdSense topic..

4. 7 Ways to Make Money with Google Adsense Using Only Free Tools is an article by Christopher Kyalo. These ways are, indeed, powerful. You will find this explanation useful only if you already know something about Google AdSense. I’ve bookmarked it 7-8 months ago and I still keep it. Use it for your sake!

5. Google AdSense – Display targeted Google ads on your website’s content pages and earn from valid clicks or impressions.

   Well, it’s not hard to guess why I kept it in my bookmarks. This link leads to Google AdSense account. You can register one for yourself, if you still don’t have it.

6. Google AdManager – You can manage your online ad sales and inventory. Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.

   In other words – for advertisers. Keeping it for future.

7. Blog of Google Analytics – have not heard about this one? Then go ahead and subscribe. You will be provided with latest trends and news on Google Analytics. You can also try to ping one of their posts, in order to recieve a trackback. I bet you will be surprised with your result.

8. Google Tools for Webmasters – saved as a bookmark, because of too frequent use of it. Yeap, I’m still addicted to statistics.

   This service of webmaster tools is a straight way to high rankings. Absorb everything that Google suggests and fix anything he doesn’t like. You can also see your website or blog’s strong positions in Google real-time search. This is great, when you want to improve your best results!

   People somewhy used to ignore those errors and site defects, that Google shows.. Don’t do that. Be smart and dominate your niche.

9. Google Analytics – is another famous Google must-have-tool. Track your visitors and set goals. Discover site referrers and keyword phrases, that people were using to get to your website or blog. You’re the king here, so rule it.

   The only thing, that I’m still not used to is the amount of time you should wait until Google shows up your latest stats. It usually happens only on the next day.. but sometimes even on the 2nd day.

10. Keyword Tool by Google AdWords is a tool, which helps you to discover keywords and its competition strength. You can also see PPC prices set by AdWords. It gives you the idea of how important is a keyword, which usually lets you decide – to compete or not.

11. A Web Page Full of Google Tools – it was saved on my bookmarking panel very long time ago. This site was useful once. May be it is now for somebody..

12. Install Google Toolbar for Google Chrome If you have Mozilla Firefox, then, probably, you have heard of Google Toolbar. Well.. this is pretty much the same, but for Google Chrome. To be exact, this is an alternative way of having Google Toolbar on Chrome, because the real toolbar is not available yet. Well.. I use it this way and I must say, that there were no problems yet. Try it.

10 Twitter Tools, Services and Other – for Twitter Fans

1. TweetDeck is the leading browser for the real-time and social web, allowing users to connect with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. It is also available as a tool on your desktop.

2. HootSuite is another Twitter client. I prefer it rather than TweetDeck, because of its simplicity… I guess. It has less features and it looks not that cool, but it is still my choice. It manages with 4 networks: Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm.

3. TwittGeek is a marketing tool, which helps you to follow a limited number of people per day (it’s 150). Though you can purchase a PRO access, which is pretty much the same, as the free version – PRO lets you follow 300 users per day. I used to like it, but now I prefer buzzom (it’s a secret!) for this kind of following users.

4. Buzzom lets you follow, unfollow and reciprocate. Great tool for boosting your Twitter list of followers. It also has such features like cross-following and following targeted Twitter users using search by keywords.

   I like this service, because of seeing its growth and development. I remember the time, when it was incredibly slow and buggy. Now it looks much more promising.

5. FriendOrFollow.com works faster, than Buzzom, but has less features. Though.. I should say that sometimes it finds who does not follow you and who you are not following back more accurately. I use it, when I have several users not following me back (..another secret!).

6. TwitterCounter is the very known service, that offers widgets for your blog or website like Twitter Counter (which looks just like Feedburner’s Subscribers Counter), Twitter Widget (shows Twitter users, when they visit your site) and more.

   The TwitterCounter.com site itself has a lot of things to promote your Twitter account, like tops and lists. But don’t even think about getting there, those tops and lists are already dominated by web gurus like Pete (from Mashable!), Britney Spears and Twitter itself.

7. Oneforty – lets you find, collect, rate and share Twitter apps from all over the Internet. Visit them, when you’ll have some extra minute. You may find there a lo-o-ot of interesting freebies for your future tweets.

8. Revtwt is the advertising network, to help you to earn money on Twitter.

   I’ve tried it and it didn’t work for me. But if you have more than 1,000-2,000 Twitter followers (targeted, not internet marketing bots and scams), then don’t listen to me. Go ahead and test it. They have really large network of advertisers and offers. You can even make them send daily advertisments directly to your email box, which you can use or not.

9. 5 Twitter Directories – a post by Geoffrey Gordon, who introduces us to 5 best Twitter directories in his opinion.

   You should try them. Don’t leave it for tomorrow, like I do :) I still haven’t tried these directories.

10. Twitter Search is a search for Twitter, where you can find out what is happening right now. It works the same way as the search you see above your lists in your common Twitter account.

    I’m not sure why I’ve bookmarked it… :)

3 More Great Bookmarked SEO Articles for Dessert

1. Keyword Research – big article on keyword researching methods. The site itself looks ugly and I remember the time when it was full of ads by Google, but the article is a real treasure.

   I hope you will enjoy it just like I did a year ago or so. It’s good and simple for beginning webmasters or those, who don’t even know how to find out what keywords you need and how to look for them.

2. Sebastian’s Opinion on URI Shortening – find out why you kill your traffic, search engine rankings, and revenues on the long haul using URI Shortening. And note, that he doesn’t like when you say “URL” instead of “URI” :)

3. Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic by CopyBlogger. This post itself consists of various tops on backlinks and web traffic topics. If you haven’t read that one, you will, probably, keep getting your usual amounts of web traffic instead of more.

   I still come back to this article, when I have some extra time, to discover something new. And guess what, everytime there is some kind of another case study..

PS: I have a new record. This post was indexed by Google in less, than 37 minutes without any submissions. I should find out later what were the reasons.. :)

***

Video Dessert: «Bride Can’t Stop Laughing During Vows;

Her husband accidentally pronounces ‘lawfully’ as ‘wawfully,’ and she cracks up so much that they had to take a break in the ceremony.

Today I’d like to introduce you to the great blogger (or if to say better – the bloggeress), Ileane Smith, who is also known as Ms. Ileane Speaks.

She won the «Most Influential Commenter» competition in January, so it’s time to make a review of her outstanding blogging way and her ways of getting web traffic.

Before I begin, I’d like to add also, that what I’m going to speak about next, is written with all my respect and sincerity. It’s not just because of the prize for the competition, it’s not just because I promised to write a review for the winner. It’s about the reason to write about her. And I’m glad, that the winner is Ileane Smith. So, let’s look at the way Ms. Ileane is blogging and getting visitors to her blogs.

First of all, Ileane Smith is an extraordinary multi-tasker. I hope it doesn’t sound bad, because I think of it, as of a really positive factor.

Where you can find her?

I know 5 main blogs, that she has.

1. msileanesblog.blogspot.com – The one I like the most. The atmosphere of this blog makes you relax.. somehow.. and find the way.

   Oh.. and how she describes it:

   Need help choosing between wordpress.com and blogger for your free blog? I’m MS. Ileane the blog queen with the pros and cons of blogger and wordpress to help solve the mystery.

2. ileane.wordpress.com – This is probably her #1 blog. Ileane shares there everything she learns about blogging and social media, creating interesting podcasts.

   You can find out a little bit more about this blog on her about page.

3. bloggingwire.com/msileanespeaks – Speaking about this blog, I can say, that it was created as symbol of engaging with BlogEngage blogging community, where Ileane takes very important role.

4. bloggingwire.com/podcast – This one’s her latest blog. It’s about Ileane’s favorite topic – podcasts.

5. msileanespeaks.posterous.com – If you want to know about Ms. Ileane a little bit more, you should check this blog. It’s about her achievements and places, where she was mentioned.

Well, not bad, huh? I cannot imagine, where she finds the time for them all, but she definitely does, and all of these blogs bring her very nice amount of traffic!

Why Ms. Ileane differs from other bloggers?

She, actually, absorbs social media trends. What’s so special? Well, you can do that as well for some time. But it will take a huge peace of your energy. Not everyone can handle it. She’s the one, who can. And I really admire her from this point.

By this moment we know, that Ileane is the podcaster and the social media follower. Did I mention, that she comments a lot and engages with other bloggers.. very successfully? It must be like this because of her passion for blogging and for being a part of blogosphere, which is crucial for achieving success. Within the last month she deserved (yes!) several banner spots on various blogs. And it’s not about being lucky. I think people simply love her, because of her openness to everybody.

Did I explain her way of getting web traffic?

***

Video Dessert: «Funniest kid ever!»

This kid gets the worst case of stage fright ever. You gotta love him!

The thought about it visited me lately, when I was thinking of the first time I’ve heard of Henri Junttila and ProBlogger. I’ve started digging the reasons why they impressed me and what made me speak about them and even link to them.

The answer I’ve found within me was so essential and natural, that I’ve decided to share it, because this is how it works with all of us in every moment of our lives. Besides, it’s a good idea for another post at iWoodpecker.

In order to understand, what I want to explain and to show, I’d like to pay your attention at the concept of external links.

Basically, most of us are hunting external links. There’s nothing wrong with it, but.. it will only make you visible to search engines. You can even make a post about useless stuff and it will be on the first page of Google results. But you know… if the stuff is worthless, I do will click your link, but I’ll run away as soon, as I’ll understand, that there’s nothing useful. But.. the deal is different, when I know you somehow. I will probably check some other stuff of yours… Why not? I’m here anyway ;)

And guess what? This is how it works, when it comes to the type of online promotion, that I’m going to speak about here. But let’s get back to the concept of external links and the reasons we need them as many, as possible.

How can external links help you?

1. First of all, you know, that tons of external links is a straight way to high Google Pagerank and Alexa ranking.
2. All the above stuff leads you to your improved search results of your website or blog.
3. Then of course… you start getting website traffic. Mmm.. this precious web traffic. I know, I know.. all we are addicted with the tracking its statistics etc.
4. Finally, we get more sales, ad clicks and income in general. That’s why most of you and me have blogs, or a blog, or a website.

But again.. as I were saying, you won’t get the results of ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, Henri Junttila or any other pro blogger unless you have one thing, which is more important, than having tons of backlinks.

More important than external links?

Let me bring the explanation of it all step by step.

Good words about you and your creations

When familiar people mention someone, you almost always agree with the opinion or follow the advice, because you hear it from someone you know well and you trust him or her.

The same principles has this way of essential online promotion. Let’s take a look at the reasons, why I link now to ProBlogger and Henri Junttila and why they are so often my examples.

Problogger

• The first time I’ve heard about ProBlogger was an ad with him, where he says something about Chitika, which is number 2 after Google AdSense for him.
• The second (more effective way) time was, when I read some review about ProBlogger. Now I cannot mention where it was..
• The third time was… you won’t believe it… his own posts, where he shares his own success stories. Wow, right?

Henri Junttila

This is the most recent example.

• It happened after I read someone’s tweet, that mentioned the article «How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections». It impressed me a lot. Now I speak about him and mention him..

Types of this promotion

Now let me bring you several examples of these kind of online promotion. It’s not that easy to organize it, but it does a great job for you.

• Reviews:

  When someone makes a review about you or your website… this is awesome. Be sure, that even if you won’t get tons of unique traffic to your website or blog, you will recieve those, who will come to your website again and again or will even mention you somewhere;

• Recommendation:

  If someone recommends you, then the fact itself is great. This means, that you’re, actully, riding the essence of online promotion; Keep it up, because this is the thing, that will get you to your dream/aim;

• Quoting:

  This works almost the same, as recommendation or mention. It’s just another type of it;

• Mention:

  Mentioning itself means recommendation and quoting at the same time. So, it’s not hard to guess the value of it for you;

Summoning this promotion

There are 2 things that worked for me:

Being cool and friendly:

Which means that people love it. But it’s not all. I always try to imagine how I’d like people to treat me.. and I treat other people that way. You know what? It comes back. Seems like the world spins like that.

Mention others to be mentioned:

The bad news is that you can mention others 100 times and only some of them will mention you. It’s not the reason to get upset, but it’s the system, that cannot be overriden. Everyone’s unique.

***

These ways are average and won’t be viral ever. But they are easy to use, so do it. Being social isn’t hard and if you want to promote your website or blog, this is your way.

Website promotion isn’t fast. But it can help you to get the credibility, to make people know you, to remember your name, to mention you, to write reviews about you, to help you, to buy your products, to love you and even to hate you. Yes! Even if someone hates you, he, naturally, speaks about it with others. And there’s 100% chance, that someone will have the opposite opinion and this way you get a new loyal reader.

***

Video Dessert: «American Idol – Worst Singer Ever!!! (The Super Hero)»

This guys thinks he’s the real Greatest American Hero (A super hero from the 1980′s) Weird…

From this success story you can learn several very important things. It’s about blogging success and the way people (far not all of them) achieve it with a hard work.

Henri Junttila is a young man, a blogger. His passion is writing helpful stuff for people to inspire them.. well, at least, that’s what he’s doing in his last blog, called Wake Up Cloud.

His success story isn’t about a sudden success, it’s not about some kind of an overnight success neither. It’s about well-thought-out tactics. I love this kind of a success, because it’s about the real truth, that most of you, bloggers and website masters, are looking for.

You will never buy your website’s success. That’s another simple truth. Forget about SEO companies, which guarantee you high rankings for only 39,95$ :D Today most of these companies are more like jokers and comedians, rather than those, who can help you.

There is only one top ten results for a special keyword phrase in Google and other search engines. And if you wish to get there.. follow the example story of Henri Junttila. Learn something new for yourself or revive your memory of what matters.

Life of Henri Junttila

I’m not going to retell it word by word. He’s done it before on his “About page” at Wake Up Cloud. And I don’t have rights to do it, except quoting several key points.

1. My life really started when I got out of school at 18. I had worked a few lousy-paying jobs during the summers, which made me realize that I was not on the right track.

   - Very similar to my own story, and I bet that to some of yours.

2. I do not claim to have all the answers, because I am still learning and trying to figure things out, just like you.

   - And he’s doing it very well. But something still differs his view of how things should be done. Let’s find it out in a moment!

3. Something is not right with how things are done right now, so let’s change it!

   - I think, that each of you can feel, that something’s really wrong in this world. But it’s not just it, when you understand it and do nothing with it.

Have you felt Henri’s strength of will? That’s what helps him and moves him. And this is only one thing, that explains his success. Let’s find the others..

From Pagerank «0» to «4» in 21 days

This is how he’s managed to kick-start his blog “Wake Up Cloud”. It took him only ~4 weeks to jump from PR «0» to «4». His Alexa ranking is already ~113k and “Wake Up Cloud” has 2,500+ external links by Yahoo.

Actually, this is also the reason, why he recieved so much attention.

But let’s take a look at the tactics. This achievement isn’t sudden and unexpected at all. And there’s nothing impossible for you to make the same result on your blog or website.

The tactics Henri uses

Guest posts

I hope you guys know the meaning of guest posting. But do you know the strength of it, when it comes to writing guest posts more than your posts for your own blog? Especially, when you write guest posts for “big” blogs…

This way Henri has written 25 guest posts and 20 posts for his own blog in December.

This is one of the reasons of Henri’s fast success. But that’s not just it. There’s one more important thing. Will speak about it in a few moments. Now let’s take a look at his way of keeping beginning blog.

No annoying ads

Absolutely no ads. This guy perfectly understands, that ads would deter some of his first readers.

It’s very important to try to stay away from putting ads on your blog while your blog is still young and you have no strong and tight audience.

Single-style-design

“Wake Up Cloud” blog’s theme is Thesis, which is rather popular today and it has lots of myths about SEO features. But the only thing, that is true for sure, is that this theme’s code is very simple. And the theme itself looks simple and neutral.

Besides, Henri’s made his blog main color – blue, which is also neutral and calm. And it relates to his niche – self improvement.

Very strong «About Page»

By “very strong” I mean that Henri, probably, knows the importance of “about” blog pages. You can learn about this, I’d say, science from Skelliwag’s post about writing the perfect “about” page. Problogger has also a similar post, but Skelliwag wrote it with more details.

Almost absense of links in the text

This factor makes reading Wake Up Cloud a little bit more pleasant. I’m not sure, if it has some SEO strength, but I think it has the stregnth of keeping a sense of reading a book.

What was Henri’s the most crucial promotional step?

I have to warn you. This will not work unless you have something worthy to show, which is about to attract tons of website traffic.

Achieve what others want, and show how you did it

When Henri’s blog got PR 4 in 21 days, it was the perfect thing to speak about. And he did that, but as a guest post at Blogussion: «Leaping from PR 0 to 4 in 21 days without any connections».

Now think for a second of why he’s writing so many guest posts?

The answer is… If you’re sure, that your content is valuable and helpful, show it to people. Guest posting is the most efficient way, because at the early stage of your blog, search engines are not your friend.

As you’ll start to get unreal traffic from other blogs, where you’ve left guest posts, people naturally would like to know you… “How the hell he did that? Why he’s so special? What’s his secret?” This is what you want. This means, that your tactics did a good promotional job.

***

Sometimes, it’s very useful to analyze tactics of successful people and understand that the deal is not about the success. It’s about a real hard work, which sooner or later supposed to be rewarded.

Thanks to Henri for showing all of us the power of guest posting!

PS. I’ve forgotten to mention, that Henri also comments a lot. He’s got about 100 subscriptions in his Google reader. But.. I hope that this way of promotion isn’t new for you.

***

Video Dessert: «Jeremy Lynch on Britain’s Got Talent 2008»

Jeremy Lynch with his football freestyle audition on Britain’s Got Talent 2008, week 4.

Thanks to Ileane I’m writing this post. In the previous post “Shorten URLs with Su.pr…” she mentioned, that she doesn’t like those URL shorteners, that have frames, because they don’t count the traffic, which affects your Alexa ranking and PR a little bit. I didn’t even think about it before, so I’ve started digging the info about it.

Sebastian showed some advanced material on this topic. Thanks to that, I’ve compiled several the most important reasons why url shorteners are bad… and risky for seo of your website. Sure, feel free to shorten others’ links, but let me show you why it’s highly not recommended for your website’s links.

1. Stop working

URL Shortening Services can stop working. If you’re working with Tinyurl, then you have, probably, met that problem, when Tinyurl was off for awhile. This means, that every single shortened URL to your site is broken (not working ). You’ll get no traffic at all, because it’s not possible to even recognize the native domain of the shortened URL.

2. They absorb traffic?

Framed URL shorteners absorb your traffic stats. One word – thievery. Nothing more. Visitors, actually, visit your website or blog, but they are not counted as your traffic. It’s worsened even more, when those frames include social buttons like “retweet”, “digg” etc, because people promote not your website, but those URL shorteners – technically.

3. Less authority

With framed URL shorteners you lose also visible authority signs like the number of retweets and so on. Just look at my previous post about Su.pr URL Shortener.

You can see, that there are 14 diggs and 1 retweet (by the 25th of Jan., 2010). This is not normal, because usually the number of retweets is more, than the number of diggs.

This is because I’ve used Su.pr shortened URL of that post in tweets promoting it. Though, actually, there was a rather positive number of retweets for my blog:

4. Links don’t belong to you

All shortened links don’t belong to you. They belong to those services, which produce them. And the shortened links raise those services rankings, not yours. All the traffic data belongs to them.

5. Meaningless, unattractive and irrelevant looking

Most of shortened links are meaningless, unattractive and irrelevant looking. For example, compare http://www.iwoodpecker.com/getting-website-traffic-in-2010/ and http://nxy.in/3jlj9 . Which URL makes more sense? Yeah, the second one looks compact, but it’s just a set of letters.

6. Redirects?

301 redirects are not your friend. Every redirect slows down your page loading time. Now it’s crucial for SEO and traffic. Don’t forget about those rushing people, who surfes through the net all the time. They hate everything, which is slower, than “Formula 1″ :)

7. Short term

In the short term of using URL shorteners for your website URLs you have some nice stats and reference. But this is not what should matter, because it has too many risks. You have to be sure, that your links would be working in a year or two.

Today it’s getting popular to make your own shortened links. I think, that this is all blogs’ future. Read Sebastian’s tutorial about the integration of your own URL shortener.

***

Video Dessert: «7 Scary, Fun Halloween iPhone Apps in 30 seconds – AppJudgment»

This is monthly 30 second challenge. Each one has 30 seconds for his/her revision of some certain app..

Su.pr URL shortener is one of the best shorteners ever. Previously I’ve been writing about the URL shortener NXY.IN, and I thought that the “ad” opportunity of this service makes it the best one. I was partly wrong.

Why partly?

Because the main aim of shortening your URLs is to get traffic getting more out of your tweets and profile statuses with limited characters number. NXY does a good shortening job.. but.. its name is not that attractive and popular, its frame looks not that elegant..

Anyways, let’s talk about the Su.pr URL shortener.

8 Reasons to Shorten Your URLs Using Su.pr

1. 19 characters – All of your shortened links will be 19 characters long;
2. Post messages – You can post links (messages) not only on Twitter, but on Facebook as well and optionally at the same time;
3. Schedule them – You can schedule for later your tweets and facebook status updates;
4. 301 redirect – Su.pr URL shortening service has auto 301 redirect, which makes your links SEO friendly;
5. New post notifyer – Remember the Feedburner’s new “socialize” feature? Su.pr has the same;
6. Tracking statistics – Su.pr URL shortener tracks your links, counting unique clicks, retweets of the shortened link, number of reviews and stumbles;
7. Suggested posting time – This link shortener is one step further, than other similar services. It even suggests you the ideal posting time, based on the made clicks stats;
8. Friendly frame – The final reason is the friendly StumbleUpon frame, which motivates you to press “I like this” button. Of course! It’s only one click away :) ;

When to Use Su.pr?

My suggestion is to use this service to promote your own links. Just like I do.

What about other links?

Well.. I used to shorten them with NXY, because it adds some personal profit to sharing. I mean the AdSense or your own blog or website banner feature.

Minuses of Su.pr URL Shortener

It really took me some time to come up with the possible minuses of this service. Yeap.. this is so good, that you should think a little to come up with its minuses. I’ve found just 2 of them:

• Su.pr URLs are not the shortest. There are services, that offer 14-15 characters;
• There are no “tops” of links, that are usually your potential extra traffic;
• Plus 1 (21st Jan): Ileane said about the frame “problem”. Well, this post is the actual evidence of it. You can see that it has 1 retweet – that’s mine. But there are 10+ retweets more of su.pr link of this post that I tweeted;

Anyways, Su.pr is my number 1 URL shortener now. I just fell in love with it :) My number 2 is still NXY.

***

Video Dessert: «Squirrels Have Gone Crazy!»

Two squirrels have a go over… seeds! what else?

I’d like to introduce this video about the importance of play in our blogger lifes. I’ve seen this video before I started this website and now I think it’s time to correlate it with what I’m doing – with blogging. And yeah.. this topic relates to website traffic, because the better way you blog, the greater is your website traffic.

What was Stuart Brown talking about?

I’ll highlight only those phrases, that I think are important ones, because I’ve understood them.. yeah. I’m not that expert to get the gist of every single word he said. I’ll highlight phrases and will express my opinion on how they could possibly be related to blogging.

«Social play: if you want to belong, you need social play»

Smart one. But what could be a social play in blogging? May be contests, competitions? Polls? May be.. But all of them are virtual. Isn’t there any other way?

Blogging is mostly a single player game. You are sitting alone at home.. Social play – is a multiplayer game, so you need at least 2 players to play it in reality. You and someone else.. Seems like it’s a deadlock seeking a way to play blogging in reality. So, back to virtual variant.

«Polar bear playing with husky»

I don’t know why, but it reminded me of the quarrel with ExtremeJohn. It was a 100% play. Guess now who was a polar bear :)

So, it wasn’t a fighting till death. As to me – it was a pure play, nothing serious.

Did it work? Oh yeah.. just look at the people reactions. Though most of them are negative ones, I believe that everyone enjoyed the whole situation. It was fun, no one would deny that. And it was about emotions.

«Play born by curiosity»

Just like when you reveal your blog stats or your online income to people, that are curious about it. I wonder.. what could be the “play” factor here? The “showing” itself?

«Imaginative play»

Well, this one’s easy! You can play with your readers making them imagine something. Money.. the easiest example. A clear dream of something.. etc.

«Chaotic play»

Not a single idea about this one. I can only guess..

Chaotic play in our real life is when kids are running at the yard or else – screaming and playing with each other. I think this could be an example of chaotic play. But what about blogging? Any ideas?

«Nothing lights up the brain like play»

Awesome words. So true..

The bad news is that I can name only one blogger, that I know, who lighted up my brain – his name is Jordan Cooper from NotaProBlog.com. Yeap.. he’s comedian, he plays with those things about blogging, that supposed to be unplayable.. serious. And he’s doing it good.

I bet that being a comedian is not the only option to light up the brain in blogging. You’re your own magician. So.. creating something playful on your posts could, actually, light up your readers brains. Have you tried anything like that?

«Life without play»

Now imagine your life without any signs of play. It’s dipression.. No fantasy, no colorful pictures, no laughing, no passion etc

Would it become as boring as I think? I bet it will.

What do you think of “PLAY” in blogging?

What about blogging? What signs of play do you do on your blog? Any?

For example, I’m using that birdy on the top. It speaks tips and various stuff about blogging, that is supposed to help you :) I could, actually, tweet those phrases, but I’ve decided to make some fun out of it. I hope I did.

I’m now running a contest – “Become a M.I.C.“, which, as I think, is much more interesting, than usual commenting with a boring purpose to get some external links.

As you also can see, I use a lot of funny images. I don’t put any, that I think are not fun.. :)

Have you tried something yet? Did it work for you?