Searching For The Goose: Blog Reviews
Most of us are, at any given time, trying to figure out how to get more people on our sites. Ultimately every goal we have for our sites is defined by traffic, and traffic itself is the ultimate goal. Oblivious to the fact, or perhaps just keeping that piece of knowledge in the back of their minds- that real, sustainable traffic is built on well-written content that appeals to readers- all kinds of schemes to bring the masses in are dreamed up by bloggers.
Social bookmarking was a particularly clever idea for drumming up traffic- but mostly for the social bookmarking sites themselves. Great search engine results alone don’t guarantee traffic (I’m a perfect example of that maxim), because without search volume those results don’t produce big numbers. Frustratingly, search engine results for high volume terms are tough to come by, surprise surprise.
In the end, most ploys to create traffic fall under the “get rich quick” cloak, each as desperate a stab at the goal as buying a $1 lottery ticket in order to win $200 million is.
Adding blog reviews to your blog is one way to add traffic, but does it create real, sustainable traffic?
In short, I think the only way for this model to be truly successful is the approach Blogged has taken. They have their own problems ahead of them, building up and refining the idea, but they’re not off to a bad start.
Adding blog reviews to a blog that already has a focus is another matter, and I have two talking points regarding doing so:
One, if the blog in question is using the blog reviews as the headline act for the site, it’s not going to work in the long run. Yes, frequent blog reviews are going to bring some traffic to your site. Almost all of it will be people seeking blog reviews and then reading theirs. It’s a vanity thing, much like reading your own posts more than once after they’ve been published (don’t lie, you have written articles that you thought were particularly clever, and then read them several times yourself, it’s nothing to be ashamed of). This traffic gets you a very narrow audience who probably could care less about your site with the exception of your review of their blog.
Two, if you have a solid blog to begin with and blog reviews are not going to be your primary focus, then yes, they can give your traffic a bump. You will keep some of those readers once they’ve discovered that in addition to getting a free blog review, there’s actually some pretty good stuff there. You will definitely get some bookmarks and feed subscribers out of the deal. Just remember that the blog reviews are a feature and a traffic booster, and don’t lapse on what makes your site worthwhile in the first place.
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Comment by SEO Tips on 17 June 2008:
Couldn’t have put it better myself! Ranking number one for arbitrary keywords or phrases that nobody ever search for isn’t going to drive any traffic to your site!
Comment by keith watkins on 18 June 2008:
the most sure fire way to get people to to your site is content, content, content, you have to keep your site fresh and up to date and wordpress is king at doing that…search engines love wordpress…. fresh content will pull to the top of most serp pages for at least a couple of weeks or until it is replaced by more recent content for your search phrase http://earlybirdmessenger.com/
Comment by Codes on 10 July 2008:
If the content is quality and people want it, it should do well whether it is a review or not.