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.

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?

What is URL Shortener?

URL shortening services are created for such social networks like Twitter. All we know, that Twitter allows us to use only 140 characters per one message. So this is very good idea to shorten our huge post links like the one I have for this post – http://www.iwoodpecker.com/url-shortener-nxy-that-earns-money-and-gets-web-traffic .

Which URL shortener is the best?

It’s easy to guess, that the best url shortener is the one, that makes the shortest URL out of your natural URL. Well, I wanted to make a list of those shorteners to choose from, but there is already some nice compilation at Wikipedia.

Why NXY.IN is so special?

First of all, NXY.IN is comparatively short itself. And it does a good shortening job as well. But it’s not the only one reason, why I’m talking about it now. NXY.IN has also the opportunity to make money for you and to drive traffic to your website.

How Does It Make Money?

It’s easy. Login to NXY with your Twitter account > go to the top option “Ads Settings” > paste your AdSense publisher ID and the ID of your channel. In order to display some special ad, you should make another ad code in your AdSense account or you can use your old one, if you’ve had some, which is not bigger, than 468×60 px. Check out the pic how your option should look like.

If you don’t want to use AdSense, you can make your own banner – 468×60 is the max size for NXY. It will appear in the top left corner. Tip: it makes sense, when you shorten others sites’ URLs. You can, actually, use your blog’s banner with NXY. So.. it lets you to promote others without forgetting of yourself :)

Moreover, there’s a distribution Twitter button in the top right corner of the shortened URL and the option to cancel that bar. So, if a user doesn’t want to see your ad or this bar at all – he can turn it off. Let me show you all those features…

How does it get web traffic?

It doesn’t get traffic directly by your wish, but it does get traffic, if your shortened links become popular. If they are popular, and you did everything you could to show those links, you can get to the section of “Top Articles” or “Today’s Hot”, which supposed to bring you some extra traffic.

First of all, track your links stats:

If you did well, then you might get to the right tab of your account, which is, actually, more like a “social activity top”. It looks like this:

I’d say, that it’s hard to make your links viewed on Twitter, unless you have more, than 2,000/3,000 followers (I’m not speaking about targeted followers). The best way is to use NXY URL shortener beyond Twitter: profiles, forums, social media sites, in comments, on your website etc.

Minuses of NXY.IN

1. Ads in shortened links. You might lose some piece of your audience, if there are those, who don’t like ads;

2. My own experience – I have a total of 300+ views. And there are still no clicks on ads. Why did I mention this fact here? Because of AdSense. I think it’s not that attractive to earn money from it. But I might be wrong and it’s all about your viewers and the number of views :) ;

3. It’s not that easy to get traffic. You have to work on your total number of views.

Updated on the 13th Jan. 2010

NXY have changed their design, but the principles are the same. You can get money, you can get traffic with this service.. blah blah blah :)

***

Video Dessert: «Kitten Surprise: How to Break Up a Cat Fight …»

…the kitten was not sick or poisoned nor was this planned, he just drank too much milk.

It’s 2010 now! It’s time to get real website traffic to your website or blog, or even better, if you have a blog as a “plus” to your website.

I’m going to speak about the most important factors, that generate website traffic today. If you’ve been looking for the most compact article about the modern ways of getting website traffic in 2010, then you’re at the right place. Be sure, that after the information from this post, the only left thing for you would be to start the action.

Let me ask you… what means “website traffic”? How do you imagine that? It’s important, because you can’t start getting website traffic, if you don’t know, what you are trying to get. Take 1 minute to think about it. Really. When you’re done, just go on reading.

So, What Means Website Traffic?

I hope, that you have the answer. Let’s compare. My answer is “you”. What was yours?

Anyways, “website traffic” really means “you”, because there’s nobody else, who can turn on the PC or laptop. It’s you, who looks for the information on the Internet; who votes for someone or something; who buys journals or some food, using PayPal; who sells products; who comments on blogs or on Facebook; who asks somebody to help at “Yahoo! Answers”; who recommends to watch the movie and so on.

Getting Website Traffic Means Attracting Other People.

That’s why it’s so important to understand, that website traffic means you and the other people like you. It’s not a click, nor a number of “views”, nor “5 stars” for the video, nor 1534 “unique visitors”. You’re dealing with real people like you. Remember to ask yourself “Would I like it?” before you show or offer something on the Internet.

I hope that was clear enough for the compact introduction. Let’s get on further.

Design of Your Website or Blog

Do not overdo with design of your website. There are 5 must-be-done things with your website design, that will help you to get more website traffic.

1. Try to make your website or blog navigation as easy, as possible. The deepest page should be 3-4 clicks from your home page;
2. Try to make the look of your website as friendly, as Google’s home page;
3. Use Photoshop (or similar software) to make sizes of your website images as small, as possible, but don’t lose the quality. I’ve used to keep it around 8-30 KB and that’s OK. Mostly it’s 8-12 KB;
4. Don’t make your website or blog look like NASCAR. The fewer ads, the better.
5. Remember to keep your code clean, because it’s your website loading speed, which would crucially affect your search engine rankings in 2010;

Choosing Domain Name

Well.. The shorter, the better. It’s easy, right? No. As the Internet becomes more and more popular with each day, it’s getting harder to pick a domain name, that you like. So.. it takes a little bit of your thinking to find the appropriate name for your website.

Here are 3 tips how to choose :

• Think of your niche.
  Try to get the most important keywords from it. And invent your domain name. For example, you’re going to write about travelling. Your name is Paul. Very good! Make use of it. How about www.TravellingWithPaul.com ? Yes, that was the big one. Well.. what about www.PaulsTravel.com? Not bad.. work on it;
• Use numbers instead of words.
  Example – www.2createawebsite.com. Though it’s rather long, it’s simple at the same time;
• Don’t forget about dashes.
  If you’ve picked www.PaulTravel.com and it’s occupied, try this – www.Paul-Travel.com. Not too bad, isn’t it?

Remember also, that your domain name is the very important part of your Internet face. It’s not the only one part though. And note, that you have only 1 chance to choose the appropriate domain name.

Difference between .com, .org, .net, .edu etc.

There’s no big difference between them at all. Someone says, that search engines would better index .edu sites, or that backlinks from .edu sites pass more rankings to your website. Do you believe it? I don’t, because just think of it.. if that’s true, then what’s the point in .com or .net? There’s no logical explanation, nor physical evidence. The only difference between them is that they’re supposed to help in grouping the growing number of website names:

• .com stands for – commercial;
• .org – organisation;
• .net – network;
• .mil – military;
• .gov – government;
• .edu – education.

Building Backlinks – Get More Website Traffic

Sounds good. Let’s take a look at ways of getting traffic from other sites by building backlinks. Let’s classify these ways.

Submit Your Website or Blog to Search Engines… or Not?

This is in past, when you had to submit your website to search engines. Now it’s different. Search engines will find you by themeselves or through some of your backlinks from other sites. You, actually, can submit the URL of your website or blog to search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN (Bing). This would, probably, get your site indexed a little bit faster, but not much.

Note, that there are no more different search engines, as many websites scream, offering you to submit to 1000s of search engines only for 5,95$. There was a time, when the number of search engines was huge, but most of them now are parts of Yahoo!, MSN or Google, others are simply dead.

Submitting to Directories

There are 2 general types of web directories:

• Website directories, that still accept sites;
• Website directories, that are dead or not updated.

There are also 4 secondary types of them:

• Paid directories;
• Free directories;
• Directories, that want you to put a reciprocal link to your site;
• Combined directories, that relate to one of the above type only, or two of them, or all of them.

And, finally, there are 3 sorts of web directories:

• Website directory – check out this list of top website directories;
• Blog directory (for blogs only) – begin from these 50+ blog directories;
• RSS directory (for blogs only) – start submitting your blog from these 30+ RSS directories;

The most important are only 2 of all of them by today – DMOZ directory and Yahoo! directory. At the very moment, I’ve submitted my site to both of them a month ago or so. Still no answer. But… I didn’t put any reciprocal link from them, nor pay for submission. May be that’s the reason, may be not. Anyway, I’ll try to resubmit in 2-3 months. I guess, that it’s hard, but it’s worth it. Will speak about it later.

Submitting Articles to Article Directories

I’d recommend to use only 1-3 article directories, because all of them want you to submit the unique content. How do you suppose to do that with 50 article directories?

Anyways, you’ll get very nice amount of traffic from article directories. They rank higher, than your site, when you begin or in the process of growing. So, it’s easier to reach the top of search engines to drive visitors to your own website or blog.

Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Begin from this list of 70+ do follow and nofollow social bookmarking sites.

There are 2 crucial rules, submitting to social bookmarkers:

• Submit posts, stories, articles with the unique titles and descriptions. Otherwise, you’ll be penalised by search engines;
• Choose the right category for your submission, because this affects on your visitors, that you get.

Getting Website Traffic Commenting on Blogs

I’d recommend to comment on “do follow” Blogs with CommentLuv enabled, if you’re hunting for a big number of backlinks. This way you’ll get a constant and continual website traffic, but not too targeted, because if you comment a lot, then, probably, your comments are short and barely visible.

To get targeted website traffic commenting on blogs, think of your comments. Leave comments, if you really feel, that you’re able to add something valuable or to refute some fact from the commented post.

Decide for yourself what traffic you need.

Backlinks from Social Media Profiles

For example, you’ve registered on Twitter. Put a link to your website in your profile! It should be like this – http://www.example.com . The more, the better. You, actually, could just run through all social media websites you know just to register, in order to put a free backlink. Believe me, all of them will be indexed as an external links to your website.

My result of getting backlinks from social media profiles at Google.

Use Trackbacks

Yes, trackbacking is another way to get backlinks to your website.

How to get a good trackback?

Trackback is a blog feature. In most cases if your blog is powered by WordPress, then you can enable this feature in the admin panel.

If you link to another blog, then that blog can accept your trackback, which means, that you get a backlink to your post. This way of getting traffic is even better, than commenting. Though the trackback link usually appears near comments, visitors understand, that the author trusts this link. This affects readers opinion about your blog, which increases a chance, that they would follow the link and, moreover, would subscribe to your blog or come back later.

Learn SEO to Get More Traffic from Search Engines

SEO is the abbreviation of the phrase “Search Engine Optimization”. Today it’s so popular, that there’s no problems at all, if you wish to improve your SEO skills, because there are thousands or even millions of blogs, that could explain how and why to do this or that.

Why the traffic from search engines is so valuable?

Try to track what you’re doing, when you’re looking for some answers or showcases. Of course, you’re going to Google and type several words, that you think are associated with your problem. Then you follow some of the results, and if that was relevant to your question, you feel satisfied and, probably, you bookmark this site or put it to your favorites. This is the power of SEO, because those sites, that are in the top of search queries, would be most likely followed by you and the others.

Make your aim #1 to get to the top of Google with your keyphrases. In order to do that, learn SEO.

Ways to Make Your Traffic Come Back

This is the most interesting part :) OK, you’re already getting traffic. But if you analyze it, you, probably, can see, that there is a huge bounce rate around 70-90%. This is no good. You must make it different. Make another aim for you to decrease your website’s bounce rate, which would help you to grow your audience.

15 tips to make your traffic come back:

• Make your RSS feed buttons visible;
• Publish a new post as often, as possible;
• Create contests and think of good rewards;
• Don’t make posts or articles too big;
• Use images;
• Use CommentLuv for your comments;
• Make your blog do follow;
• Track your most popular posts and use it for your future posts;
• Make “Tops” of your posts, articles or podcasts;
• Refresh your old posts and mention that in your latest posts;
• Make your pages full of things to click. People love it;
• Make your website or blog look alive;
• Differ from others to make your traffic love you*;
• Try to express your thoughts simple;
• Be the first in everything**;

*What means to be different from others?

That’s your key to success. If everyone screams, that they could help – scream, that you can show. If everyone speaks about how cool is using Feedburner – write a post about Feedburner minuses etc.

**How to be the first, if there are so many competitors?

It’s not that hard, as it may seem, because it’s about understanding the meaning of being the first. You can be the first with your own way of expression. If you’re late with some news, look at the news from the original side and bomb it out. You’ll be the first.

For example, Robert Pattinson is being awarded for something. Ok.. you’re not the first one, who announced it. Not a problem. Write about his top 10 latest awards, including this one. People would, probably, be interested in this kind of info, because he’s currently being discussed in news. See? That’s way simple.

Paid Ways to Get Website Traffic – Worth It or Not?

Though it’s still popular today to buy traffic, I won’t ever recommend you to do that, unless you’re working online just in order to sell big stuff.

This is about your reputation. So, if you’re niche is about travelling or blogging, then don’t use this method. Would you like it, if you’d knew, that you were bought…? Disgusting, isn’t it?

There are tons of free ways. The only thing you have to do is to think a little about your own way through all of the known ways.

What Web Traffic Do You Need?

This is as important, as knowing the meaning of website traffic. So, let’s look at the main types of web traffic:

Social Media Traffic – Those are people, who surf through sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller etc. They submit your stuff, if they like it. They comment, they ask. Mostly, these people are curious about all latest trends in social media.

Silent Readers – This group of people are those, who just read something, that they are interested in. Don’t expect them to comment on your blog. “Silent readers” come from search engines. Most of them won’t subscribe to your website or blog, but they would bookmark it or put to favorites if your post or article is what they want.

Traffic from Banners – Or in other words, paid traffic. This type of website traffic is risky. From one hand, you’re the guy with money for them. From the other hand, you have some default respect, which could become a wall against your personality. So, think twice before buying places for your ads (banners).

Real World Traffic – The precious one. They come to your site directly. They’ve heard about you from their friends or from the news. You have a high default respect from them.

Bad Traffic – They’ve heard some bad things about you. Their opinion about you is below the normal level. But still.. they are your website traffic. So, when they come, be ready to change their mind. That’s not easy though.

Return Traffic – You can easily call this type of traffic – your readers. There is a big chance, that they will subscribe to your blog, because they’re on the way to get used to visit your blog.

Think of your own ways of converting one type of website traffic to another.

New Ways of Getting Traffic

Of course, most of the known ways can bring you some constant amount of visitors. But.. you know, the Internet and its social media is crazy today. Each and every day there’s a new way for anything. I look for 2010 and I’m so excited about what will happen with the usual ways of getting traffic. So.. follow the trends. Look for extraordinary ways of getting traffic. Because if you’re the discoverer, you’ll get the best award for it.

For example, I’ve recently discovered for myself, that a simple button “I like it” at Google Reader could bring some nice number of visitors, which means that the more subscriptions I have, the more traffic I can attract just by clicking the single button “I like it”. Check it out yourself and find out how it works.

The Conclusion

Well.. I hope you’ve loved this article. I’ve reviewed all of the most important aspects of getting website traffic for the beginning of 2010, and I hope, that you’ve found for yourself something useful here.

If you’d like to add something, make sure to leave a respond below.

***

PS. Here’s another amazing article to get more web traffic in 2010. You’ll find there some kick-ass methods, that are used today.

No, no, no… Don’t think, that this is another affiliate program. No.. This is another social bookmarking site, but not “another” at the same time. You can submit anything, that relates to blogging, and be sure – lots of people will see that.

This is strange, but I really would like to share some reasons why I think, that Blog Engage is fantastic for promoting your stuff.

Blog Engage community is rather young

Do you know what does it mean? Remember Digg.com, when it was just beginning? Those, who joined Digg at that stage, are now “Supreme Diggers“, and what they do sees almost everybody. That is, what you need, when you start your blogging or something else, that needs a lot of promotion.

Nice green-blue design

Don’t get me wrong, but I like it. Somehow.. it relaxes and makes you act. Two different things in one. Amazing, isn’t it? :)

Blog Engage community is sociable

I’ve never seen anything like this before. Ok.. my experience isn’t that big, but still.. I feel that, this is one of the best places to get some extra traffic to your website.

Your activity at BlogEngage.com equals your promotion

The more you vote, the more you add friends, the more you comment, the more you get those precious views of your own website. Though this system is almost everywhere, it has tremendous strength within the Blog Engage community. So be active, get more visitors. I’d say, that this is fair. Don’t you think that?

Adsense revenue sharing opportunity

I really hope, that this feature will be developed. Read about it.

By the way, sharing Adsense revenue is very clever promotional way to attract new visitors. You should note that and use some similar method for you.

My own proof as a reason

Don’t laugh. I’m just starting :) You can see from the archives how long I’ve been blogging. Did you have anything like this by the end of your 1st month of your blogging?

So.. from this screenshot you can see, that Blogengage.com is on the 3rd place. I should also tell you, that I’ve joined it a week ago. Not bad, huh? I believe, that it is.

So try it, if you still haven’t.

There are website directories, there are article directories.. and guess what. You can submit your RSS feed to RSS directories.

Cool, huh? And this way, every time you publish a new post, those directories are being updated. Most of them… Sometimes you have to update’em manually. But that’s OK, right? Do we want to get some extra traffic and external links? Sure, we do. And this is another way, that needs just some of your time.

It took me about 3-4 hours to submit my RSS feed to the following list of RSS directories. I bet that you’ll do it a lot faster, because all of these RSS directories are quality ones and work 100%. They are also up-to-date by December, 2009 (by January 2010 now). That’s why the topic says “2010″.

So.. check out my top RSS directories 2010 with Google pagerank and Alexa ranking. Notice also that I didn’t include such RSS directories, that demand you to put a backlink or banner for them. Be sure, that the list is perfect for today.

Updated on the 4th Apr. 2010

Scheme of the list: URL – Google Pagerank – Alexa ranking

• publisher.yahoo.com – 6 – 4;
• www.redtram.com – 6 – 1,959;
• www.feedage.com – 6 – 6,786;
• www.feedcat.net – 6 – 19,980;
• www.codango.com – 6 – 23,018;
• www.plazoo.com – 6 – 26,861;
• www.millionrss.com – 5 – 29,514;
• www.rssmountain.com – 5 – 41,532;
• www.feedmil.com – 5 – 60,531;
• www.feedsee.com – 5 – 79,358;
• www.feednuts.com – 5 – 95,226;
• www.blogdirectory001.com – 5 – 102,726;
• www.rss-spider.com – 5 – 117,987;
• www.oobdoo.com – 5 – 124,881;
• www.feedmailer.net – 5 – 156,696;
• www.5z5.com – 4 – 15,124;
• www.feedest.com – 4 – 29,231;
• www.jordomedia.com – 4 – 36,974;
• www.2rss.com – 4 – 38,968 – currently experiencing difficulties with MySQL database;
• www.leighrss.com – 4 – 44,707;
• www.rssmotron.com – 4 – 62,853;
• www.goldenfeed.com – 4 – 62,976;
• www.solarwarp.net – 4 – 92,050;
• www.feedgy.com – 4 – 115,898;
• www.greenprofs.com – 4 – 333,121;
• www.feedmap.net – 3 – 51,381;
• www.blogbunch.com – 3 – 84,338;
• 4guysfromrolla.aspin.com – 3 – 127,378;
• www.feedlisting.com – 3 – 129,001;
• www.newzalert.com – 3 – 191,967;
• www.1800rssfeeds.com – 1 – 175,964;
• www.rssmicro.com – 0 – 35,743;
• www.readablog.com – 0 – 62,785;
• www.automotive-links.mustangv8.com – N/A – 110,707;
• en.newsxs.com – N/A – 226,999;

Updated on the 4th Apr. 2010

I’m going to update the list in several months, so that you can come back and look for updates.

As a bonus, try this free submitter, that submits your RSS feeds to several services at once.

PS. You can check also the resources of my list:

1. 55 Active RSS Directores (Written in 2007 – not updated);
2. 35 Best RSS Directories to Submit Your Blog (Written the 16th Jan., 2009 – not updated);
3. RSS – Blog Directories (List Updated 11-16-09);
4. RSS Submissions (great list, unknown date of update);
5. List of RSS Directories (Posted 06-03-2009 12:59 PM);

So often.. we simply cannot leave our thoughts on someone’s website. We know that this is our extra traffic, but…

But why? What makes us be afraid of commenting? I’ve tried to understand this moment in my brain and here’s what I’ve got:

1) I’ve got something on my website that I don’t want to show.
- There are no such websites, that you should be afraid of. Because Internet is like a street. Don’t be afraid of the stuff, that you have on your website. Leaving a comment means that you’ll start getting visitors from the backlink of your comment forever until this comment is deleted (usually comments live very long). So, if now you’re afraid of your stuff, then maybe in some time this would help you with extra traffic. Think sometimes of the future things.

2) I’m just afraid of expressing my thoughts.

- Alright… then tell me – what the hell are you doing on the Internet? Shut your PC down and do something different. That’s it.
But if you want to make something of yours popular on the Internet, then you have to be active everywhere.

3) My comments don’t fit others.
- That’s great! This means, that you’ll attract lots of attention. This is what you really need, when you leave your comments.

4) What if the author of this website won’t show my comment or ban me?
- This is possible. But wait.. Do you really think like that everytime you leave a comment? That’s awful.
Try to think a little bit more positive. The world will change around you.

5) I’ve got a lot of grammar mistakes…
- So what?
Who doesn’t have? Feel free to comment everywhere. Think of the author’s thoughts, when he was setting the comment form. He really needs it. At least to encourage himself.

6) There’s no point in commenting, because it’s set to “nofollow”.
- The “nofollow” attribute only restricts an access to Google bot. Other search engines ignore it.