I’m going to start this thing off with a fact. And it’s the kind of fact that will make anyone who is currently thinking “a guest posting guide? nah, not really interested” instantly change their mind and eagerly anticipate reading the rest of this. Intrigued? Here goes:

Some of the biggest, most popular, highest traffic, highest earning blogs in your niche (and every other niche) got to that point as a result of one thing and one thing only… guest posting.

In many cases, the blogs that reached this point weren’t special at all. They were average, the writing was average, the content was average, the design was average, everything about them was average at best.

Yet, they were able to reach this almighty point of blog success. How the hell did they do it?

Quite simply, nothing but hardcore guest posting.

I’ve seen it happen a ton of times. Sometimes the success is deserved because their blog truly is great and they should have reached this point. Other times? Not so much. But, guest posting was the great equalizer. As long as you can guest post like a champion, how great your blog is sometimes only barely matters.

THAT’S how effective guest posting can be. It alone can make your blog a success.

Intrigued now? Good. Let’s do this thing.

What’s The Purpose Of Guest Posting?

Self promotion.

Simple enough answer for ya? It’s the honest truth. That’s really the only reason people guest post… to promote themselves, their blog, their site, their product, their service, or whatever else.

And it’s not a secret, either. Every blog you guest post on or are considering guest posting on is fully aware of this. It’s very understood that you didn’t just have some sudden innocent interest in helping them make their blog better by supplying it with great content for free.

They know full well that you’re only doing it to promote your own stuff, and they are perfectly fine with it (I’ll get to why later).

So, if you’re wondering if guest posting would be useful for you, or if it’s something you should be thinking about doing, here’s the question that will help you figure it out…

Do you want to promote something?

If you answered yes, guest posting is definitely for you.

If you answered no, then what the fuck are you doing on this blog in the first place?

How Much Good Will Come From Guest Posting?

Guest posting will damn near always make something good happen for you. Meaning, there are certain benefits that will always be there, and a certain amount of awesomeness that will always come from doing it.

However, the actual degree of awesomeness you will experience as a result of guest posting will greatly depend on a bunch of factors specific to your exact situation.

In order of importance, the main factors influencing the degree of success of a guest post are:

• The size and popularity of the blog you are guest posting on.
• The quality of your guest post, and how click-through enticing it is.
• What type of audience the blog you guest posted on has.
• How closely related your blog is to the blog you posted on.
• The quality (and relevancy) of your blog’s content, especially your most recent posts at the time your guest post goes live.
• The design and usability of your blog.

All of the above will play a large role in the amount of good that comes from doing a guest post. The lower all of the stuff on this list is, the lesser the benefits will be. The higher the stuff on this list is, the greater the benefits will be.

Of course, this guide is all about showing you how to make the benefits as huge as possible. Speaking of which…

What Are The Benefits Of Guest Posting?

Ah yes, the benefits. Here now are the 7 benefits of guest posting:

1. You get at least 1 link.

Every guest post comes with at least 1 guaranteed link (in the rare case it doesn’t, call the blog owner a douche and find somewhere else to post).

It will usually appear at the end of your post in some type of “This post was written by [insert your link here]” format, usually along with a short bio. Sometimes a blog will let you include more than 1 link in this spot, and if you’re really lucky AND it makes sense to, you may even be able to include a link within the post itself.

Either way, you will get at least 1 high quality link as a result of guest posting (assuming of course you guest posted on a high quality blog, more on that later), and as you should have certainly learned by now, link building is one of the keys to internet marketing.

More specifically, it is the key to SEO.

2. You get an immediate burst of short term traffic.

SEO aside, there is one other very obvious benefit that comes with getting linked to: traffic.

In the case of guest posting, it will be an immediate burst of short term traffic. The size of the “burst” will obviously depend on the factors mentioned earlier, but assuming the blog you guest posted on has any real traffic/audience of any kind (I’ll explain how to ensure this later on), there will be some sort of influx of traffic in the period of time directly after your post goes live.

Of course, this traffic won’t last very long (could range from a few hours to a few days depending on those aforementioned factors), and there’s two reasons why this is so. First, as more posts go up on this blog, your guest post gets pushed further and further down until it’s off the front page and out of immediate sight.

Second, no matter how big and popular the blog is that you posted on, their audience at the time of the post is finite. At some point all of their readers will have seen your post, and once that happens… there just won’t be any more short term traffic left to get.

But let’s get to what makes this traffic special.

See, traffic itself is practically useless. It looks pretty in Google Analytics (or whatever you’re using for stats), but in and of itself traffic is nothing. What you really care about are conversions.

What conversions? Whatever it is you are looking to convert your traffic into. Regular readers, RSS subscribers, email list subscribers, users, customers, clients, ad clickers, affiliate product buyers, social bookmarkers, whatever. Once you get someone to your site, what action(s) do you want them to take? That’s what you really care about.

And the thing about the traffic coming as a result of guest posting is that it consists solely of people who have already shown an interest in you. They read your post on this other blog and became interested and/or curious enough to click through.

This means that your conversion rate with this traffic can potentially be higher than it would be with traffic coming from any other source for any other reason.

So, the burst of traffic coming to your blog due to guest posting ends up being the perfect kind of traffic to convert into whatever it is you are trying to convert your traffic into.

3. You get some long term traffic, too.

Once the short term burst of traffic mentioned above comes to an end, your guest post still has the potential to continue sending traffic to your site in the long term.

Think about it. Your post might not be front and center on the blog anymore, but it still exists there. Maybe it will go on to get a lot of links, or go viral, or rank well on search engines, or become one of that blog’s most popular posts.

If any of this happens, it just means more traffic for you in the long term.

4. You, your blog, your brand, and your content get exposure.

Guest posting gets you out there in front of a (potentially) very large audience who never even knew you existed before that point. Forget just getting your link out there, it gets your brand out there. It gets a full sample of your writing out there. It gets what you have to offer out there.

Even if people don’t click through, they’ve now at least heard of you and been exposed to you. If they liked your post, they may even remember you. And the next time they hear of you, you’ll pop into their head as that person who wrote that guest post they liked. And this time, maybe they will click through.

5. You get some credibility.

There’s a bunch of ways to establish credibility online, and one such way is by doing a guest post for a prominent blog in your niche (or a related niche).

Why? Because if you get a post published on a blog people already respect and feel is a credible source of information, you sort of get some credibility by association.

The fact that they let something you wrote appear on their blog shows their readers that they’ve given you/this post their vote of confidence. This won’t go unnoticed.

And your own readers, assuming you tell them about this guest post of yours (more on that later), will also take notice.

6. You make a friend.

And if you picked the right type of blog to guest post on (more on that later), you make a friend in a high place. By guest posting for someone, some kind of relationship usually gets formed between you and that blog/that blog’s owner. It’s just good old fashioned networking, really.

Where you choose to take that relationship in the future is up to you, but the fact that it now exists is what’s really important. A lot of previously closed doors are now wide open.

7. It can cause The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.

I’ve seen it happen countless times. Sometimes it’s takes a bunch of guest posts on a bunch of different blogs over a period of time, and sometimes all it takes is one perfect guest post on one perfect blog.

And then, just like that, The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination takes place.

Guest posting has huge ripple-starting potential, and if it actually does make it happen, the benefits from that point are endless.

(If you don’t know what The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination is, then you obviously haven’t read How To Increase Traffic To A New Site Or Blog. Read it sometime.)

Why Do Blogs Accept Guest Posts?

Because getting completely free content that is to their exact specifications and liking is dA SHiT!

Not good enough?

Because it’s waaaay easier and waaaay less time consuming to copy and paste a great post into Wordpress and hit “publish” than it is to sit down and write that great post yourself.

Still not good enough?

Because blogging takes work, and having someone else just do it for you while you do something equally productive makes a lot of sense.

Better now? No?

Because the success of a blog partly lies in its ability to put out great content on a regular basis, and guest posting is tailor made for allowing that to happen in the long term without a hitch.

Still no? Fine…

It’s all of these things. Blogs need content, and guest posting supplies it. Blogging takes time, and guest posts save it. People hate doing work, and guest posters do it for you. People don’t like paying for stuff, and guest posts come for free.

Blog owners get and get and get and get… and they really don’t have to give anything (oh wow, a link!) in order to get it.

So why do blogs accept guest posts? For the very same reason guest posters want to do guest posts. To improve their own situation.

It’s really 2 selfish acts that come together to make it a win-win situation. Blog owners get what they want, and guest posters get what they want. Everybody wins.

Is Guest Posting Only For People With Blogs?

Hell no. You definitely do not need to have a blog in order to guest post on other blogs. Most people do, but it’s certainly not a requirement.

All you need, really, is something to promote. And in some cases, you don’t even need that.

For example, you could just have some non-blog site, like a web app, or a store, or a service, or anything else really. Hell, you don’t even need to have a site. You could just have a product or service to promote, or an event, or a Twitter account, etc..

The list goes on and on.

And if you’re really nuts, you can even guest post without having anything to promote at all. Sounds crazy, I know, but there are some sane reasons.

The first one that comes to mind is that you are doing it to form a relationship of some sort with this blog/blog owner for some purpose (general networking and making friends in high places, possibly becoming a full time writer for this blog, etc.).

Another reason could be that you will soon have some type of site or blog, and you want to try establish yourself in your niche early and sort of pre-build yourself an audience.

The people guest posting for these reasons are definitely in the minority, but I figured this was worth mentioning. This is the “ultimate” guide after all, so I’m not leaving out a damn thing.

The End Of Part 1

So you now know all the basics of guest posting. For example:

• The purpose: self promotion.
• The requirements: having anything of any kind to promote.
• The benefits: link building, highly convertible short term and long term traffic, exposure, credibility, networking, and the infinite potential of The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.
• The effectiveness: when done right, it alone can make your blog a success.

Part 2 will cover finding the perfect blog(s) to guest post on. Check it out: How to Find the Perfect Blog to Guest Post On

(This is Part 1 of my series “The Guest Post: The Ultimate Guide To Guest Blogging.” To become a total guest posting badass, be sure to read the entire series.)

Over the next few posts, I’m going to be taking you through every single aspect of one of the most popular, proven and all around effective ways of increasing traffic, links, subscribers and really just marketing your site in general…

The guest post.

The goal of this guide? To turn everyone who reads it into a total guest blogging badass.

Whether you barely know anything about it, have thought about doing it, or have already done it a bunch of times before but didn’t get as much out of it as you should have, this guide is for you.

Check it out:

• Part 1: The Basics of Guest Posting
• Part 2: How to Find the Perfect Blog to Guest Post On
• Part 3: How to Write a Guest Post and Get it Published
• Part 4: 10 Guest Posting DOs and DON’Ts for Maximum Success

The timeline goes a little something like this:

1. In October 2007, I launched a brand new site.
2. Less than 1 week later, I was able to increase traffic to an average of 1,300 unique visitors per day (about 4,000 daily page views).
3. This amount of traffic remained consistent during week 2.
4. By the end of week 3, traffic increased to an average of about 4,000 unique visitors per day, an amount of traffic that would either remain fairly consistent or increase from that point on.
5. Today the site averages about 10,000 unique visitors per day (30,000 daily page views), and that number continues to gradually rise.

I never spent a cent on any form of advertising, I have no cool internet guru friends who could just do me a favor and mention my site on their already huge/popular blog, and my site is in a typical, average niche. Long story short, I was in the exact same position as the majority of people who are trying to increase traffic to their new site or blog.

The difference? I actually did it, and did it fairly quickly. What you are about to read is the fully detailed analysis of exactly how I did it, including pretty screenshots of my traffic stats. Here we go…

Pre Launch

Before putting the site live, I did a shitload of work. Yes, that’s a technical term. And when I say “work,” I’m not at all referring to the actual creation/coding/design of the site itself. No, that was a whole other kind of work, and this post has nothing to do with that.

The “work” I’m referring to here is the work that helped me increase traffic to this site both quickly and significantly. A bunch of thinking, a bunch of planning, and a bunch of research went in to making this happen. It wasn’t some magical coincidence. I prepared in advance and purposely set out to do it. At this point that might sound a bit broad and confusing. Don’t worry though, you’ll see what I mean soon enough.

The First Month (weeks 1 – 4)

Here’s a screenshot of my site’s traffic during its first 4 weeks.

Now let’s look at exactly where all of this traffic came from, and how I got it.

September 28

• Unique Visitors: 0
• Page Views: 0

This is the day before the site gets uploaded and goes live. Can you feel the excitement?

September 29 – October 5

• Unique Visitors: 8 (daily average)
• Page Views: 81 (daily average)

The site is kinda… sorta… live. At this point, all of the traffic you see is just me, my badass freelance guy (he did some programming work on the site), and a few friends testing stuff. I basically told them “go here and try to break things.” As best as I can remember, there were no problems of any kind, and everything worked like it should. Which means… it’s go time!

October 6 – October 8

• Unique Visitors: 113 (daily average)
• Page Views: 531 (daily average)

The site is really live, meaning it’s officially ready for real people (besides me and friends) to see it. The traffic you see on these days is a result of getting mentioned on a couple of blogs. How did that happen? Well, I sent out a couple of emails to a couple of small relevant bloggers in my site’s niche pretty much making it clear to them that they’d be complete idiots if they didn’t mention my site on their blog. As you can see by the little bit of traffic on these days, it worked.

The key to emails like these is to make them short, to the point, and very convincing. Convincing how? Simple. You must convey that what you are recommending (your site) is EXACTLY what the readers of this person’s blog need, want, and will love. If you can make the blog owner realize this is absolutely true and accurate and not some “please link to me and I’ll be your bestest friend!!!!” sales pitch, they WILL blog about whatever it is you are trying to get them to blog about.

Of course, I say this under the assumption that your site, blog, page, post or whatever it is you are emailing them about is actually… you know… any good. If it’s not, you’re screwed. Plain and simple. The greatest email ever won’t amount to anything if what you’re recommending sucks balls. It doesn’t even have to completely suck balls. It could actually just be “fine” and “good.” Often times “fine” and “good” doesn’t work. Aim for great.

Basically, make sure that what you are emailing people about is actually worthy of an email like this and is actually something the readers of their blog will truly find useful and like a lot (or better yet, love). I have this sort of email down to a science, and I’ll definitely write a full post about it in the near future. (Subscribe so you don’t miss it.)

Oh, and if you’re wondering when I found these couple of blogs to contact, it was during that Pre Launch phase.

October 9

• Unique Visitors: 4,256
• Page Views: 11,384

In addition to contacting a few smaller sites like I mentioned above, I also contacted a few bigger ones. And, as you can see by the big jump in traffic on this day, it just so happened that the biggest one of them all (and one of Technorati’s top 10 blogs on the planet) decided to mention my site. Hell yeah!

A side effect of this mention (besides a bunch of pretty traffic) is that it kicks off what I like to call The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination. You’ll understand why in a second. Actually, less than a second.

Soon after my site was mentioned on this big blog, it went on to hit the front page of Delicious. Hell yeah again, and hello ripple effect!

The result of making it to the front page of Delicious? More pretty traffic, more of an ideal audience seeing my site (Rand Fishkin calls this audience the “Linkerati“), and yet another ripple in my ripple effect.

October 10 – October 14

• Unique Visitors: 1,130 (daily average)
• Page Views: 2,927 (daily average)

The traffic you’re seeing on these days is due to a combination of a few things. First, it’s a lot of left over traffic from both my recent appearance on one of the top 10 blogs in the world, and my stint on the front page of Delicious. But, that’s not all.

You know all of that traffic that’s been showing up lately? Well, turns out some of this traffic consisted of people with their own sites and blogs and social networks (that darn Linkerati), and a lot of them just so happened to like my site. The result? More mentions, more links, more word of mouth, and more traffic.

Like I said before, it’s The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination. Getting mentioned somewhere special (in my case a REALLY popular blog) leads to traffic, and that traffic leads to going popular on Delicious as well as other people/blogs mentioning my site. This all leads to its own traffic, which leads to other people/blogs mentioning my site, and so on and so on and so on. Ripple after ripple after ripple.

I also put up a pretty awesome new piece of content during this span of days, and I passed it along to a few smaller relevant bloggers whose reader’s I knew would love it. They apparently agreed with my opinion of its awesomeness and proceeded to give it a mention on their blog.

And with those mentions yet another “ripple effect,” albeit on a much smaller scale, begins. No matter what size the scale is, it causes the same thing: more traffic, more links, more word of mouth and more of everything else you’re hoping for when you’re trying to increase traffic to your new site.

October 15

• Unique Visitors: 3,083
• Page Views: 10,368

This was the day that I sent out an email to an email list of mine. The idea for this site, by the way, came to me while working on another site I own which had been around for about a year or so prior to the creation of the site this post is about. Both sites are related enough that the visitors of the first would definitely be interested in checking out the second. So, right around the time I had the idea for this site, I started an email list on the other one. This was the day I put that list to use.

The list was pretty small at the time (2000-3000 subscribers I’d guess, it’s near 40,000 today… I’ll post about that in the future, too), but it brought a nice amount of very targeted traffic which actually served to kick off yet another “ripple effect.” There is still a bunch of traffic (and links, and word of mouth, etc.) coming via the first few ripple effects, and now the same thing is happening as a result of a mention on this email list. Niiiice.

So, there is now a fairly significant amount of diversified traffic coming to my site on a daily basis. This is a very good thing.

October 16 – October 25

• Unique Visitors: 1,100 (daily average)
• Page Views: 2,803 (daily average)

The traffic during this span of days is due to a combination of all of these so-called ripple effects that I keep talking about (which extend on and on and on) and the continued creation of more awesome content, each of which is marketed individually to hopefully go on to cause their own little ripple effects. And in this case, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Between the 19th and the 22nd, one specific piece of content got some really nice mentions on some really nice blogs. A funny thing happens when a blog mentions/links to your site or a piece of content from it: they become a lot more likely to do it again. This is another part of what is happening here, and I fully recommend keeping this little fact in mind.

Of course, that’s not all that’s happening here, as there are a bunch of new mentions from a bunch of new sources, too. In fact, some of these mentions in this specific case are happening as a result of a link building method that I have personally nicknamed The Niche Crossover.

October 26

• Unique Visitors: 37,796
• Page Views: 41,717

It’s about to get viral up in this bitch! Actually, it already has. The traffic you are seeing on this day is due to a bunch of things, the most significant of which is hitting the front page of Digg. Sweet! How did this happen? Well, it starts with the creation of yet another awesome piece of content (and this one was seriously on a whole other level of awesome) followed by… wait for it… The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.

I don’t know about you, but I imagine trumpets playing every time I say that.

This technically started the previous day, when this piece of content of mine got mentioned on a fairly popular blog in my niche (after I emailed them about it). The next day, another much more popular blog (and one of Technorati’s top 30 blogs) also mentioned this piece of content and credited the first blog as their source. Ripple effect, anyone? But wait, there’s more!

Soon after getting mentioned on this bigger blog, an even BIGGER blog (one of Technorati’s top 10 at the time, a bit further back as of today) decided to mention this piece of content as well, and credited this second blog as their source. Ripple effect, for the win!

Then, the combination of having this 1 piece of content on these 3 prominent blogs all at the same time leads to… Digg. The front page of it, actually.

And from there, a shitload of traffic, some more links and mentions on some more sites and blogs, more word of mouth, more Linkerati, more RSS subscribers, more users, more ripples, and really more of everything you want to happen when you are trying to increase traffic to your 3-week-old site.

October 27

• Unique Visitors: 13,563
• Page Views: 15,317

And so it continues. A lot of this is left over traffic from being on the front page of Digg the previous day, as well as all of the traffic that comes from the many sources that find your site via your appearance on the front page of Digg (that wacky Linkerati again).

In addition to that, there is also a bunch of traffic still trickling in thanks to the various smaller “ripple effects” my site has going on as a result of its sweet ass content and the fact that I am successfully getting that content in front of the right people.

Another significant referrer of this traffic was Delicious, as this most recent piece of content managed to make it to the front page there too. One of the many side effects of going popular on Digg is that you tend to go popular on other social bookmarking sites as well. For me, in nearly every single case, that other site is usually Delicious. (Side note, it rarely ever works the other way around.)

This marks my site’s second appearance on the front page of Delicious in just its first 3 weeks of existence. How did it happen? Super awesome content + getting that content in front of the right people. That’s pretty much all it takes.

October 28 – November 1

• Unique Visitors: 3,809 (daily average)
• Page Views: 5,577 (daily average)

This span of days makes up a portion of my site’s 4th week of existence, and as you can see, it’s averaging a pretty decent amount of traffic. No, it’s not taking over the world with this amount of traffic. What it is doing however is getting more traffic after its first 4 weeks than most new sites/blogs get after their first 52 weeks. Hell, if you really want to talk percentages, this is likely more traffic than most new sites/blogs get… ever.

The cause? There’s really no better way to explain it other than to say The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination continues. Well, that and the fact that my site and its content are f’ing awesome. Every link and mention my site gets, be it on some huge prominent blog, some smaller niche blog, the front page of some social bookmarking site, wherever… it just brings more traffic and more links and more ripples that just keep on going.

And yes, I’m going to beat that “ripple effect” thing to death until it’s fully ingrained in the mind of everyone reading this to the point where it becomes a widely accepted internet marketing term. Get on it, people!

Another thing to note is that I’m kinda sure it was around this point when the site started to rank alright for many of its goal keywords on various search engines. It wasn’t ranking fantastically for much yet, but it was ranking well enough (and for enough keywords) that it started bringing in something that can be considered a mildly significant amount of search engine traffic. Really real search engine traffic is still a few of weeks away. You’ll see.

November 2

• Unique Visitors: 15,770
• Page Views: 21,436

Hey look, the most recent piece of content I put up has just gotten StumbledUpon. Sweet! Once again it’s just a case of creating something special and getting it in front of the right people. The ripple effect this time? It got quite a significant Stumbling.

November 3

• Unique Visitors: 46,356
• Page Views: 55,475

Correction… THIS is a significant Stumbling. Hell yeah. Some amount of this traffic is also due to another really nice mention on another really big site. The combo of the two made for the highest traffic day so far. Sure is pretty to look at.

So, in just its first 4 weeks, my site has hit the front page of Digg once, the front page of Delicious twice, gotten StumbledUpon like a mother fucker, gotten thousands of back links (some of which are from some of the biggest sites and blogs in the world), begun ranking “alright” for many of its goal keywords, and is officially averaging a pretty significant amount of traffic.

Yeah, it’s safe to say month #1 = success. Big time.

Now let’s take a look at what happened during my site’s second month of existence.

The Second Month (weeks 5-8)

Welcome to month #2. Here’s a screenshot of my site’s traffic during its next 3-4 weeks.

And now for exactly where this traffic came from, and exactly how I got it.

November 6

• Unique Visitors: 6,213
• Page Views: 9,511

Before I can explain this traffic, I first need to let you in on a little secret. During these last few weeks, while doing the seemingly thousands of other things I’ve been doing in terms of the creation and marketing of this site, I’ve also been gradually working on this one very special piece of content. I tell you this now because it was on this day that that piece of content went live, and the ripple effect you are about to see is nothing short of spectacular. Seriously.

So, after putting this content live, I contacted one of the head guys of one of Technorati’s top 30 blogs in the world (and one of the very same guys who previously mentioned my site a few weeks earlier) and told him about this piece of content. Like I said before, a funny thing happens when someone links to you because they like what you’ve created: they become a lot more likely to do it again.

Next thing you know, he does it again, and this new piece of content gets a fantastic mention on this blog. Can you hear that? I think I hear trumpets again. You know what that means. The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination is about to begin. And does it ever.

While watching all of the pretty traffic roll in as a result of getting linked to on this guy’s popular blog, I started to see some other traffic make its way in as well. I’ve got to say, even I had to rub my eyes for a second to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Turns out what I was seeing was indeed reality. One of Technorati’s top 5 blogs just mentioned this piece of content in a very positive way. Hello ripple effect!

What followed from there was a bunch of traffic, a bunch of links, and once again a bunch of everything you want to see happen when trying to increase traffic to your new site. Despite how awesome this all was, this actually ended up being just the beginning on this content’s ripple effect.

November 7

• Unique Visitors: 9,305
• Page Views: 14,636

A large portion of the traffic on this day is due to a combination of everything that happened the day before as well as this most recent piece of content getting StumbledUpon. Yet another ripple in this ripple effect. Fun!

At this point there is also some traffic coming from other sources as well. You know, from search engines (rankings keep improving by the day across the board) and various other links to various other parts of the site and the site as a whole.

November 8 – November 11

• Unique Visitors: 4,116 (daily average)
• Page Views: 6,751 (daily average)

More of the same. This one recent piece of content is pretty well liked, and people keep on talking about it and linking to it. Similar things are happening, albeit to a lesser degree, with other pieces of content and the site as a whole. Search engine traffic keeps growing, and things are progressing quite wonderfully.

Only, I must admit… I’m a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m “jump-up-and-down-in-my-house-like-an-idiot” happy at all of the success the site has had thus far and how quickly it has all come. It’s just, even though this recent piece of content has gone pretty viral and generated a bunch of good traffic and gotten mentioned and linked to by some pretty huge sources… I just know it could have and should have been even bigger.

I’ve been playing with the internet for a living since I was 15 years old (1998). I like to think I’ve developed a pretty damn good feel for how things will turn out. Which things will and will not succeed, and how big or small of a success those successful things will be. And, based on everything I was feeling about this piece of content during all of its stages of creation… I just know it should have been even more of a success than it already has been.

Oh well… what can you do.

I’ll tell you what you can do. You can go to sleep, wake up the very next day, and watch it take over the mother fucking planet.

November 12

• Unique Visitors: 85,275
• Page Views: 97,389

And here’s an example of expectations being exceeded. Let this be a lesson to you… never underestimate The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.

Here we are, about 1 full week after this recent piece of content went live and got all of its original links and mentions and traffic, when all of a sudden something dawns on me: I’m a dumbass. You know how I keep saying that when someone appears to really like something you’ve created and mentions it on their blog, they become a lot more likely to do it again? Well, it was on this day that I realized I forgot to pass this piece of content along to one such person, a person who lovingly linked to another part of my site a few weeks earlier (and was, at the time, one of Technorati’s top 10 blogs).

So, I contact this person, they totally remember me and my site and appear to love what I’m telling them about, and the next thing you know, it gets mentioned on their blog.

Now kids, sit back, relax, and watch these ripples ripple.

In what seemed like 15 minutes later, this piece of content hits the front page of Digg and proceeds to make this site’s previous appearance on Digg’s front page a couple of weeks earlier look like a complete joke.

Due to all of the above, new links to this piece of content are popping up everywhere at a speed so fast I couldn’t even keep track of it. And then…

November 13

• Unique Visitors: 39,945
• Page Views: 51,030

And then, crediting that first blog as their source (RiPPLE eFFeCT!), this piece of content gets another terrific mention from one of Technorati’s top 5 blogs in the world.

And then, about an hour or so after that, it gets yet ANOTHER mention from yet ANOTHER one of Technorati’s top 5 blogs.

Can you say… viral?

And then…

November 14

• Unique Visitors: 15,133
• Page Views: 22,627

By today I’m getting emails from people who are claiming to have heard about my site on their local radio station, and other people letting me know they saw something about it in their local newspaper.

For anyone who has ever wondered what it looks like when something goes freakishly viral, look no further than these last 3 days. All hail The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.

For those of you reading this and scratching your head in wonder as to how this all happened, I’ll say it again. Create something that is truly special and get it in front of the right people. The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination will take care of it from there.

November 15 – November 29

• Unique Visitors: 3,831 (daily average)
• Page Views: 6,341 (daily average)

Considering this span of days includes Thanksgiving week, I’d say traffic was quite good. New links are continuing to pop up all over the place, and search engine traffic continues to improve. Hell yeah!

On the 23rd, that insanely viral piece of content of mine from the previous week wound up making it to the front page of Delicious. Hell yeah again.

On the 28th, my next “special” piece of content was all done and ready to go live. A funny thing happened this time. It got mentioned on one of Technorati’s top 20 blogs (and a whole bunch of others) just a half hour later without me doing a damn thing. Apparently my site had made enough of a positive impression during its first 6 weeks of existence that some prominent bloggers were now watching and waiting to see what my site was going to do next.

Just another ripple, kids… just another ripple.

Let’s now jump ahead in time a little and see what was going on in month #4.

The Fourth Month

Alright, so we’ve now skipped over month #3, which was December 2007 (averaged in the area of 4,000 unique visitors per day most of the month), and jumped right to the beginning of month #4, which was January 2008.

Now let’s break it down.

January 3, 2008

• Unique Visitors: 5,000
• Page Views: 9,335

After not really doing much work on the site during December (way too busy Christmasing up da joint), my next “special” piece of content went up on this day. You know how I keep stressing the importance of creating something great and then getting it in front of the right people? Well, at this point, many of those “right people” are regular readers/users/subscribers of my site. Meaning, I create something great, and the “right people” are seeing it right then and there.

Proof of this is the fact that this new piece of content went on to hit the front page of Delicious a few hours after I put it up. Unlike the last bunch of times this happened, it didn’t first require getting linked to on some other prominent sites. Now my site is the prominent site. The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination strikes again.

Although, I should mention that this piece of content did end up getting quite a few mentions/links from quite a few other prominent sites and blogs, too. That just comes with the territory now. I don’t really have to contact anyone letting them know I created something special. They are finding it on their own.

January 4, 2008

• Unique Visitors: 7,143
• Page Views: 12,944

According to my records, this was the day that Google rankings began to hit some higher level. Everything that I was previously ranking “alright” for I was now ranking “pretty nice” for. Pretty much all across the board, all of my rankings improved on this day. It was as though some sort of “trust” switch got turned to a higher setting down in Googleville. Even the newbiest of SEO newbs should know why.

You know all of the thousands and thousands of amazing links I’ve been saying the site has gotten over the course of this post? How the site itself got a bunch of relevant links from sites of various sizes, and how each individual piece of content I’ve put up went on to accomplish the same thing? Well, in the eyes of Google (and others), this builds trust. And trust, my friends, leads to pretty search engine rankings.

At this point nearly all of the traffic you see throughout the remainder of this month is search engine traffic. I took a nice little break from “special” content, and let search engine traffic carry the site completely.

Now let’s jump way further into the future to something a bit more current.

A Bit More Current (March 2009)

Here we are, a little more than a year later. In real time this means we are now looking at traffic from just a couple of months before this post was posted. Here’s the screenshot:

As far as traffic goes, as you can see above the numbers have gradually increased to nearly 10,000 unique visitors per day (nearly 30,000 daily pages views). As of today (June 2009), traffic is actually just slightly above those numbers.

I should also mention that this is my everyday base level traffic, primarily coming via search engines. Now when the site gets mentioned on some big blog or hits the front page of Delicious or I post something new and my subscribers show up to read it, traffic goes up into the 15,000-20,000 unique visit range and beyond.

As far as SEO goes, the site is ranking pretty amazingly for most of its goal keywords. In fact, imagine your site’s best-case-scenario, #1 goal keyword. Think about it for a second. Pretend you found a magic genie lamp, rubbed it, and the Genie Of SEO popped out to grant you any 1 search engine ranking of your choosing. The only catch of course is that it must actually be relevant to your site. Go ahead, give it some thought.

Got it yet? Cool. My site is currently #3 on Google, #2 on Yahoo, and #4 on MSN for that keyword, and has been for quite a while now. New pieces of content end up ranking fairly well for their keywords soon after they go live, and older content continues to rank really nicely just the same. The site has a huge number of back links from a huge number of sites and continues to pick up more on a regular basis. What I’m trying to say here is, SEO mission = accomplished.

As far as conversions and revenue and users and subscribers and all of that lovely stuff goes, yeah… the site is doing just fine in those departments too.

And as far as the site’s overall status goes, it’s safe to say it is now viewed as an authority in its niche.

The site, in pretty much every way I can think of, is a complete success. Not to mention, everything is still gradually continuing to improve.

Bringing It All Together

So, what does it take to increase traffic to your new site or blog? What does it take to go from 0 to 1,300 unique visitors per day in under a week? What does it take to increase traffic to a pretty consistent 4,000 unique visitors per day by the end of the third week? What does it take to have this amount of traffic remain (and improve) in the long term and not just be a quick lucky burst of short term traffic? What does it take to make your brand new site a success in the fastest way possible without spending any money whatsoever?

Well, let’s look at the 5 things I did:

1. I planned and prepared in advance.

Before the site was even uploaded, I had already planned out almost everything I was going to do to increase traffic over the next couple of months. I researched all of the popular and not-so-popular sites in my niche to figure out how I could get them to mention me. I took this a big step further and figured out how I could get mentioned on other sites that were really not part of my niche at all, but would mention my site if I could make it make sense to.

What would it take? How could I make it happen? I knew the answers to these questions before the site was even live.

Similarly, you know all of those pieces of content that went up one after the other once the site was launched, each of which went on to reach higher and higher levels of awesome results? Well, I thought up and planned out all of the ideas for all of that content before the site ever existed. In addition to knowing what the content would be, I even had it planned out to the point where I knew exactly how it would be done, what order it would be done in, what had the best chance of getting mentioned on Blog A, what had the best chance of getting mentioned on Blog B, etc., etc., etc..

I knew it all before any of it ever happened.

Not only that, but I mapped out exactly what would happen and when during these first couple of months. I knew I would first try to get mentioned on this blog, then try to get this piece of content mentioned on this blog, then send out an email to my email list, then work on this next piece of content, then contact the owner of this blog, then see if this piece of content could hit the front page of Digg or Delicious, and so on and so on.

I obviously couldn’t control whether or not any of this actually happened the way I wanted it to, but what I could do was plan it all out in advance to make it as likely as possible that it would indeed work out the way I wanted it to.

2. I created amazing content.

Yeah, I know you automatically sound like a douche the second you tout the awesomeness of something you’ve created, but there’s no better way to say it. Content is where it all begins, and I killed that shit. None of what you read above would have ever happened if this wasn’t the case. Very few of the sites in your niche are willing to mention crap, even fewer of Technorati’s top blogs in the world are willing to mention crap, and even fewer of the people in your target audience are willing to use, read, try, buy or recommend crap.

Being able to get linked to and mentioned by so many different sources of varying levels of popularity in such a short period of time is thanks to, above all else, the fact that what I set out to get them to mention was GREAT. Not okay, not alright, not good… great.

If your ideas suck, if your site sucks, if its content sucks, if you suck… none of this will happen. And like I mentioned before, it’s doesn’t even have to suck. It can actually be good and still get nowhere (or at least take a hell of a lot longer to get somewhere). If you want your site to do anything close to what my site did, you need to aim for a minimum of great. Anything less probably won’t do.

3. I created more amazing content, and built on its success.

I didn’t get lucky with 1 great piece of content. No, I beat people over the head with great piece of content after great piece of content. While one was on the front page of Digg, I was working on the next. While the next was on 3 of Technorati’s top 10 blogs at the same time, I was working on the next. Boom, boom, boom. One after the other after the other without much time passing in between. Still wondering why I planned it all out in advance? Starting to make a little more sense now? I figured it would.

Doing this allowed me to build on the success of the previous piece of content. All of the traffic that came to see Content A was used to create more traffic to Content B. All of the links Content C got were used to get more links to Content D. When my niche was busy talking about Content E, I put Content F in front of them.

A constant stream of great content creates a constant stream of traffic and links and subscribers and everything else that makes a new site successful.

4. I got my site and its content in front of the right people.

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that even if you managed to create great content, you’ve still only done half the job. You can have the most badass site in the world and create the most badass content in the world and it really won’t matter at all. Why? Because you have a new site, and new sites have no traffic. That means there is no one seeing anything you are creating, so it might as well not even exist, let alone actually be great.

What are you supposed to do about that? The very same thing I did… I went out and got my stuff in front of the right people.

During that pre launch planning phase, I figured out where my audience was and what I needed to do to get my site and its content in front of them. And then… I did it. I contacted whoever I needed to contact. I created the content that I needed to create. I did whatever I needed to do. The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination took over from there.

Speaking of which…

5. I put my site in a position for The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination to take place.

That’s right, cue the trumpets!

If I had to sum this entire post up in one simple sentence, it would be this: “The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination took place.”

I created something special and got it in front of the right people. All of the traffic, links, mentions, word of mouth and success that this site achieved from that point on is a result of absolutely nothing but The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination.

So, do you want to increase traffic to your new site or blog? Yeah? Then put it in a position for The Ripple Effect Of Internet Domination to take place.

If you can do that, the traffic will come.

Oh, and subscribing to my feed probably wouldn’t hurt either.