Generating traffic is the hardest part of running a website. Whether you are just starting out on the web or are as seasoned as webmasters come, there is always an opportunity to increase your traffic allowing you reach more visitors and potential subscribers.
There’s a lot of advice out there on how you can get traffic to your blog. The problem is, many of the tips and tactics are basic. Luckily, Derek Halpern agreed to sit down and drop some of his top traffic building tips.
Derek Halpern runs several celebrity gossip sites along with the newly launched Social Triggers. Social Triggers is a site that takes psychological research and pairs it with internet marketing. Derek is one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to driving traffic and conversion rates. It was a real honor to sit down with him.
Video Interview:
Major Take-Aways:
Convert One-Off Visitors Into Regular Visitors
Every time a one-off visitor hits your site, your goal should be to convert them into a regular reader. To do this, you need to figure out where one-off visitors hit your site the most. Chances are, it’s the single post page, because that’s where most of them hit .
So, if that’s where most of your random hits hit, the main purpose of your single post page is to convert a random into a regular.
Eliminate Negative Social Proof
Sure, the buttons look nice and so are comments, but if they’re not being used. Nix them because when a random person sees it, they think the place is empty… if no one else is doing it… I’m not going to do it.
Find New Sources of Traffic
Network — When you want traffic, chances are you’ll go comment at the big blogs. This is a poor strategy because you won’t get their attention. Find similar sized bloggers and put time into building that relationship. Sure, they may have 500 readers a day, but chances are, your audience and their audience don’t overlap. If you can get some of them over, you’ll start building the snowball.
Celebrity Bait — Find someone and write an in depth article about them and explain something they may not have thought of.
Closing
Make sure to check out Social Triggers and follow @derekhalpern on twitter.
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Written by Nick Reese
Nick Reese is a full time internet marketer living in Austin Texas. When Nick isn't managing web properties he enjoys biking, shooting video, and drinking tea. You should follow Nick on twitter here and check out his side project Becoming Bold.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Nick,
I couldn’t agree with you more on the value of eliminating negative social proof. If everyone else can easily see that no readers appear to be engaged in the work that you are producing, it is quite damaging to showcase this lack of dynamic conversation. I’m glad you mentioned this as this is something that I have definitely overlooked while blogging. I’m sure Cialdini would vet for your word on this one.
-David
It’s funny… most people overlook this. Do you know what else most people overlook? The fact that they put so much stuff in their sidebars… that no one clicks on any of the links because of information overload.
If you’re going to watch this video, I think two of the main tips that you can implement right away would be to eliminate negative social proof and clear out the clutter. What do you think?
That is a good point Derek. I cannot tell you the number of sites I’ve visited and just groaned and returned to Google after seeing a complex set of menus and other items strewn along the side that I just do not have the time to play with. I honestly miss the days of sites that are easy to navigate, and I think that serious levels of respect should be given to anyone capable of blending simplicity with striking-good looks. Reducing clutter while keeping things looking snappy is a talent, and one that I think is seriously underrated throughout the web today.
Great Stuff, Nick and Derek! Great quote from Derek, “One Page, One Goal.” Each page should have a specific goal, but I would argue that there should be a Primary goal and a secondary goal. The logic behind the primary goal and secondary goal is many different types of web visitors (types of personas) will find, land on, encounter certain pages of your website, which means you should try to identify a Primary goal for the page, and a secondary goal that may resonate better to a different type of persona. (hope that makes sense)
Either way, excellent tips here!
Can you go into the celebrity bait section a little more? Are you saying to call someone out that is considered a celebrity in your niche?
I’m not saying you call them out in a negative way. I’m saying you call them out in a way that sheds some light on what they’re doing that they may not have thought of.
Theres too many people who try to attract negative attention, but that gets you no where. Instead, you want to attract the right kind of attention. you do this by providing valuable insight without being overly snide or negative.
Love the new look of the Art of Blog site. I spent some time here last night and today – with color. Nice touches.
Keep up the great writing and resources.
Russ, Glad you like it! Still ironing out the kinks. ;)
Yeah, really dig it, Nick. Can’t wait to see the “ironed out”, finished product.
Cheers
Really good interview guys! Been thinking about some of this stuff lately (getting people to take action after reading a post & highlighting/reworking content) and you have reinforced a lot of that for me.
This dude’s site has little to no traffic how can this guy be qualified to preach? This is a joke.
People who don’t stand by their comments get no respect from me.
You are making a fundamental flaw of judging a new 2 month old site. As I mention in the post. Derek has run celebrity sites for years. I dare you to touch that industry.
Take it or leave it, the stuff he is talking about works. Case closed.
And the guy doesn’t even use his real name unless his name is lol.
Well, if the guy’s (or gal perhaps) just happens to be “THE LOL” that started everything, then they ARE a household name ;-) I mean, EVERYONE knows LOL, and his/her bigger sibling ROFL. In fact, plenty of people even know their crazy uncle, ROFLMAO.
Thanks for your sharing. I think very helpfull.
I agree with Ryan Beale too
Very informative post and just what I was looking for. Thank you
I am so glad that you found it useful Emily! Thanks for the nice comment :D
Chad
Thank you so much, this REALLY helped me.
Thanks for the tips guys. I just realized that I’m guilty of “negative social proof” and have hid comment counts. I did it with a function in Thesis:
remove_action(‘thesis_hook_after_post’, ‘thesis_comments_link’);
Casey
Thanks for the nice comment
Very interesting topic, the video is full of useful advice – thanks! One question I have is, as much as I agree with not having too much content on the side bar, why is it that most high traffic sites are flooded with links and content on every single inch of each page… a few examples:
Top 3 blog sites:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://mashable.com/
http://techcrunch.com/
In my eyes, the sites you listed don’t have to worry about building an audience. These sites have an audience and their CPM models require them to keep the visitor on the site as long as possible. Getting the visitor to click anywhere, on to the next link, creating yet another page view, is their end goal.
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