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.

Recently I have been looking for a plugin, that could add a dynamic to my sidebar. What I mean is that I wanted some widgets to be visible for certain type of my web traffic and on certain pages.

Certain Widgets on Certain Pages

I have found what I have been looking for – this plugin is called Dynamic Widgets. It, actually, allows you to modify visibility of your sidebar widgets whatever you like. And I wanted to display “text” widget, which shows 3 best articles, only on single post pages.

Why?

I have modified my front page so that it could focus my web traffic’s attention on certain places: “Featured post” and “Latest stuff”, which supposes them to click on those links. I do not want to have too many things to “check right now” on my front page.

In this case it acts against you.

But displaying “3 Best Articles” widget on single post pages makes readers take a little look at them (because they have attractive pictures) while reading solid texts. And after reading a post or (if they did not like it) while reading, they may switch to “3 Best Articles”, which plays a positive role.

I reduce my blog’s bounce rate and extend average time on site!

Certain Widgets for Certain Web Traffic

WordPress plugin Dynamic Widgets also allows you to display certain sidebar widgets for certain web traffic.

Widgets could be displayed only for:

• Administrator
• Editor
• Author
• Contributor
• Subscriber
• Anonymous

… or for several types of visitors at once, while others cannot see your certain widgets.

Dynamic Sidebar Has Even More Advantages!

1. You can make some special note for your subscribers on your sidebar, which is cool, because your subscribers want to be unique and to be noticed;
2. You can run some certain poll specially for your subscribers… or for contributors. You can, actually, run different polls for different types of traffic! Isn’t that great?
3. You can display your ads only for anonymous web traffic, which shows some sort of respect for your readers;
4. What about a special message or several rules for editors? You can do that as well. It saves your time;
5. What about a widget, that displays “Top Authors” only for authors or “Top Contributors” only for contributors?
6. Any more ideas? (I think there could be more great types of purposes!)

***

Oh.. I almost forgot – the link: Install Dynamic Widgets plugin.

***

Today’s Dessert: Robot Boys’ Awesome Dance

Winner of Talent 2008 Denmark – Robot Boys. These guys are amazing dancers and entertainers. They won the final, and the prize money of 250,000 danish kroner. Watch…

This question still bothers many bloggers: «What means Alexa ranking?», «What is Alexa ranking?»… I have met so-o-o many blogs arguing on this topic, that it is time for me to explain the value of Alexa web ranking, because I cannot imagine my blog’s niche without it.

The shortest definition of Alexa ranking is the potential of blog or website in numbers. That’s it. You can stop reading here. :)

…

Still reading? Then let me show you more detailed solutions on 5 problematic topics like:

1. How Alexa gets the traffic data of your site?
2. Is there any way to prevent your site’s traffic from being ranked by Alexa?
3. How you should be treating Alexa web ranking?
4. Why Alexa does not relate to Google Page Rank?
5. How to improve Alexa ranking and does Alexa toolbar improve it or not?

Before I will start answering the above questions, I should also mention the fact that many people ignore Alexa ranking, do not trust it and even hate it, because of its toolbar, which was considered by their anti-virus software as a spyware or a virus.

The summarized answer from the folks from Alexa on this problem was the following:

No, the Alexa Toolbar is not spyware.
Spyware is defined as hidden software that is installed on your computer without your knowledge.
It generally collects your personal information for advertising purposes, and provides you with no value in return.
The Alexa Toolbar is only installed when a user chooses to download it – it is not installed without your knowledge. The Toolbar is not hidden, it is prominently displayed at the top of your browser. In order to fill the Toolbar with relevant information, the URL of the page you’re on is transmitted to us and we return related information for that page.
The Alexa Toolbar can be turned off at any time.
If you feel that the features of the Alexa Toolbar are not of value to you, the Toolbar is easily uninstalled using Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel of Windows.

This is it. Just add Alexa toolbar to your anti-virus software’s “trust list”, if such is present.

Now let’s get back to the 5 problematic questions.

How Alexa collects traffic data of your website or blog?

In the beginning Alexa Inc. was able to collect your traffic data only if you had installed their toolbar. Now, as you may have noticed, you do not have any toolbar installed and you still can see, that Alexa is ranking your blog or website.

Since early 1996 they have started using Alexa Crawl system, which works just like any other crawling bot.. e.g. google-bot. Currently Alexa’s crawling bots (or “crawlers”.. or “robots”) are gathering approximately 1.6 Terabytes (1600 gigabytes) of Web content per day. That is a huge number…

By today Alexa has gathered over 4.5 Billion pages from over 16 million sites, which is why if your site is only several days old, your Alexa traffic rank starts with ~16,000,000.

In other words, there are 2 ways, which Alexa is using to track your traffic:

1. Alexa toolbar, which you should install first. It gives you much more accurate data, than crawler’s work. So you better install it today. Download Alexa toolbar here.
2. The second way is Alexa Crawl system, which finds your site through external links pointing at you.

How to prevent Alexa ranking?

This is a very logical question. Of course, when your blog or website is still too young to show its “great” traffic data to the entire world, you want to hide it. This is why you may want to prevent your site from Alexa ranking.

In order to do that, first of all, you shouldn’t install Alexa toolbar. Uninstall it, if you already have it.

The second thing you want to do is to modify your robots.txt file:

1. You can allow or disallow specific robots from visiting part or all of your site. Alexa’s crawler identifies itself as ia_archiver, and so to allow ia_archiver to visit (while preventing all others), your robots.txt file should look like this:

   User-agent: ia_archiver
   Disallow:

2. To prevent ia_archiver from visiting (while allowing all others), your robots.txt file should look like this:

   User-agent: ia_archiver
   Disallow: /

That’s it. Only 2 ways. “Noindex” meta tag, probably, will not help you, because Alexa doesn’t mention it.

Treating Alexa ranking

I am not going to teach you how to treat alexa ranking, because it depends on your site’s needs. I will only share my own opinion on this problem.

Alexa traffic rank is my number 1 traffic analysis tool, because it really shows me the potential of a blog. It helps me to decide, whether to deal with the given website or not.

Alexa ranking can give you the general idea of successfulness of some site after 1 week.

Say, on monday I see, that the site’s Alexa rank is ~500k. Then.. I check its stats in the end of the week, and wow.. Alexa has changed to ~495k. This means, that the site is on the right road.

However, if Alexa has changed to, say, ~510k after the whole week, it means, that the author is not promoting his site anymore or doing it not properly. Moreover, I can say, that such site is getting ~15/20 unique visitors per day.. and it’s falling down.

Alexa does not relate to Google page rank

This is true, because Alexa uses its own crawler called ia_archiver. Google crawler’s name is… Googlebot. They are totally different, though they have similar algorithms, which is why a lot of bloggers and webmasters think that they somehow relate to each other.

To make it easier to understand:

1. Using Alexa, you can appraise site’s daily traffic;
2. However, with the help of Google page rank you can decide, if the outcoming links from some site are quality or not. Though you also should consider many many more factors, like keywords, dofollow/nofollow tags etc. Quality links improve your SERP.. simply reminding :)

How to improve Alexa traffic ranking?

Have you felt that?..

The question has the answer in it.

You need to get more traffic on your daily basis. But do not panic.. everything has its own time for it. If you are blogging consistently and promoting your stuff, your traffic ranking will be going up with each day. It only depends on how well you are doing those two things.

Well, as I have mentioned above, to get more accurate traffic data from Alexa you might need to install Alexa toolbar. But note.. it does not improve your traffic ranking, it only shows it more accurately.

For instance, when your watch is lagging for 5 minutes and you fix them (installing some toolbar :)… they become accurate. But the fact is the fact – they would have shown, for example 6:45 pm, anyway.

***

I think I have defined the meaning of Alexa ranking and have explained its ranking purpose.

Web sources that were used except the mentioned above: Alexa ranking – does it matter? and Technology of Alexa.

***

Video Dessert: «Stop The Alexa and PageRank Obsession!»

Lisa Irby explains why you should stop being obsessed by Alexa traffic rank, PageRank and so on.

When I was doing my latest post – Insane List of 140 Do Follow & Nofollow Blogs with CommentLuv 2010, I’ve noticed several strange things about do follow and nofollow blogs. Theoretically, a nofollow blog should rank better, than a do follow blog, because a nofollow blog doesn’t share its ranking in links. So, it means, that it stores it for itself. You know that. Nothing new. But..

Ok, let’s compare several pair of blogs from my list of blogs with CommentLuv. In this case, the “pair” is a do follow blog and a nofollow blog with similar Google pagerank and Alexa ranking.

Do Follow VS Nofollow: Round 1

blog.hichamaged.net (will be “A”) and www.jhsiess.com (will be “B”). Their Google pageranks are both 4. And both of them have appr. 219,000 of Alexa (by the 21st of Dec. 2009). A is a nofollow blog and B is a do follow blog. Ok with that.

Niches

A’s niche is “life, personal, psychology” and B’s niche is “life, death, personal”. Well.. the same boring, I guess :)

Compete Ranks

Use popuri.us to check my work. So.. A has 825,263 and B has 263,443. The lower means the better. Seems like B is winning. Let’s go further.

Yahoo backlinks

A has 18,449 and B – 18,120. Almost the same, so nobody wins this time.

Archives

A’s archive and B’s archive. Don’t count the total amount of their posts. You can visually decide, that A’s got twice more, than B.

Wait a minute.. A is nofollow and it has so many posts! This blog lives longer and it should be ranked better, than B. But considering the fact, that they have pagerank 4, B wins with less posts, because it has gained its rank faster. And it has better Alexa ranking, which means there is more website traffic running on this blog.

Summary

www.jhsiess.com, which is B and a do follow blog, wins.

Do Follow VS Nofollow: Round 2

eblogtip.com (as “A”) and www.andrewkeir.com (as “B”). Both of them have Google pagerank 2 and Alexa – ~176,000. A is a do follow and B is nofollow.

Niches

A’s niche is mostly “blogging, design”, B’s niche is “blogging, money etc”. Almost the same.

Compete Ranks

A has N/A. B has 238,011. Technically, B wins.

Yahoo backlinks

A – 6,466, B – 744. It’s clear, that A wins.

Archives

B has about 185 posts and the first one was posted on October 19th, 2008. A has twice less – 98 posts by today, and the oldest post was published on Sept. 28th, 2009.

Summary

A wins, because it has twice less posts, it is younger and it has much more of backlinks. Remember, that A is a do follow blog?

Do Follow VS Nofollow: Final Conclusion

No doubt, that do follow blog is better, because you get high-ranked much more faster. Why? Maybe it’s because the majority of your visitors are those, who wants to comment. Or maybe those, who comment, eventually do some kind of an external promotion, which surely do the best for you and your blog.

What do you think?

Are those parameters, that I’ve used, enough for a total comparison of do follow and nofollow blogs? Maybe there is something else, that should change the final result of this experiment?

I’ll gladly accept your opinions.

***

Video Dessert: «Dramatic Cat»

Insane dramatic cat… watching TV and then…

I’ve spent several days submitting my site to various web directories, bookmarking my web pages, twitting.. The result is really terrible. I’ve been waiting much more stats than these:

This screenshot shows how many visits I had for the last week. Is that normal? I don’t think so..

Anyways, let me show you what I’ve been doing.

First of all, I’ve submitted my website to almost half of this list of web directories. Most of those web directories haven’t accepted my site yet.

Secondly, I’ve submitted my posts to my list of social bookmarking sites. I used about 80% of the list, because the rest sites didn’t fit with their categories.

Lastly, I’ve started twitting! As you can see from the screenshot, it gave me 20 visits. Ok, not bad. But wait, look at my twitter profile! It has 300+ followers! And only 20 visits.. Come on! What’s wrong with social media? Is it overfulled or what?

I have to figure it all out. Who can tell me what to do now?

How do you think, where you are more visible: in the street with hundreds (maybe thousands) of people or in some common room with several persons in it?

Let’s get to some popular website, where we can leave our comments. Most of these sites have huge numbers of posts and articles. How many comments do you see under each post? 50, or 80.. more? Are you going to read them all? Are you going to visit each and every author’s page and read their creations? This is madness, because you don’t have so much time!

Now… Most of us have very low numbers of visitors. Our amount of content is also not so big. Do you remember your reaction, when you get some comment? Sure.. you check this author’s page, right? And most of your visitors do, because this is almost the only one comment you have on your current post. And if it’s written well and attractively, I bet , that you would read it.

The same way works a promotion of your website, when you leave comments

• Find those websites , where the average comments number is not bigger, than 10-15;
• Make your comment readable and relevant;
• Do not make huge comments. Save your visitors time. 2-3 lines – max;

Analyze yourself

• Write down somewhere your list of those websites, where you used to comment;
• Use Google Analytics to track visitors from those blogs;
• Improve your commenting technique.

Tried YouTube, right? How many views do you have? I bet you have some, though you’re looking for some ways to get more. These tips will help you to know about YouTube possible ways of getting traffic to your channel and then to your website, blog or anything that you promote in Internet.

• Choosing country and language: First of all, scroll all the way down to the bottom of any YouTube page. You’ll see there 2 options: Current Location, Current Language. When you’ve checked the needed options you’ll start seeing those videos, that relate to them. In order to make sure, if this works right, go back to the top of your current page and click “videos” or “channels” links below the search form. From there – choose any video and get right to its channel. You can see then where this video was made from.

  What difference does changing the “Current Language” option? It doesn’t. The only reason is simply to make you feel comfortable.

• Category of video: That’s right. You’ve got to be sure about your video category. That’ll help you in getting targeted traffic. So, be careful. You can always configure that, when you’re uploading a video, or in the settings of your uploaded videos.

• Video response: Promoting feature #1… if you’re lucky. You can find this feature right under the video itself and above comments. All you need is to find someone’s video in your niche with lots of views. If you feel, that you know about this subject better, try making a video response. This will bring you some part of the traffic from that video. That doesn’t work always, because you need the author’s approval, which you won’t get that simple.

  What do you need to get an approval? You’ll have to make your video response cool enough, so that it could be like a continue-thing. You might need to talk to that author. Send him PM (private message), add to your friend-list, or subscribe to his channel.. if that’s needed. Do something to make him believe that you’re a good guy, and your video doesn’t suck. Sometimes authors give their approvals at once.

• Activity: Forget about popularity without your activity and start commenting… everywhere. Yes, everywhere on YouTube. Subscribe to others’ channels, add to your friend-lists those, who, as you think, are not spammers and are active ones.. and belong to your niche. Communicate sendind PMs etc. But be careful not to become a spammer. There is a little difference between a spammer and a super-active user. Your traffic will grow according to the content and appearance of your videos + your activity.

• Title, description, keywords: Search engine stuff. Act with these as if it’s your website. And when your popularity begins growing, you’ll start getting traffic from the YouTube search engine. Until then it’s useless to rely on it.

• Subscribe! Right… ?: It’s almost the same as subscribing on blogs. You like making funny videos? Or.. do you prefer to teach people or show them how to do this or that? Look for those, who are in your niche. Comment them, chat with them, do the “play” kind of stuff… and of course – subscribe to them, if you like. That’s it. People will notice you, don’t doubt!

• Appearance of your video: You can look for some tips on the Youtube handbook page. In addition, I’d advice to configure the preview moment of your video. This can be done in the settings of your uploaded videos’ section. You surely have met some videos, that show very attractive moments as a preview moment. Don’t you want your video to be like one of those? :)

• Partnership: It’s like Google Adword+Adsense, but on YouTube. Your videos get more views and you also are able to earn money. Read these Partner Program Basics.

• So how to direct traffic from YouTube to your website?: It’s not difficult at all. You wether write your website link on the video itself, in the description (at the beginning is preferable) or in the channel. The better way is to add it anywhere that you can, but carefully. Try not to bother, add some piece of your fantasy.