The problem however is that a lot of these are things that people DO care about and DO focus on. Sometimes a lot. In fact, some of the big important people who write big important blogs about this stuff even recommend that you do.

What this means is that there’s a lot of people wasting a lot of time and effort on stuff that really just doesn’t matter. To show you what I mean, I have put together a list of 8 things that I personally don’t give a crap about at all. And really… neither should you.

And away we go…

1. Blog Post Length, Article Length, Or Content Length Of Any Kind

Various gurus of various related industries (SEO, blogging, etc.) will tell you that there is some ideal length you should be shooting for when you write blog posts, articles, and create content of any kind. Off the top of my head, I can remember seeing recommendations for this ideal length being 250 words, 500 words, 600-800 words, NEVER more than 1000 words, and so on and so on.

Basically, pick a number between 1 and a billion and someone has probably suggested that it’s the ideal length for the content you create.

There’s a few reasons these people makes these length recommendations, but the top two usually are:

1. You reader’s attention span. Meaning, the attention span of most of your readers/potential readers is (supposedly) short, and therefore your content should be short as well to both compensate for this and comply with what they (supposedly) want.
2. SEO. The thought here is that search engines have a preferred length of content per page, and having too little or too much will (supposedly) hurt your chances of ranking well.

This all sounds wonderful and everything, but guess what? I don’t give a crap.

I pay no attention whatsoever to the length of the content I create. Never have, either. And I think the people making these strict recommendations for content length are either greatly misinformed or mildly retarded. And the people who actually follow these recommendations? You’re just wasting your time and possibly hurting the quality of your content in the process.

Seriously. Writing with the intention of reaching a very specific number of words is dumb. Going back and editing your content so that it is within a specific word range is dumb. Purposely making a piece of content longer than it should be because it didn’t reach your goal number of words is dumb. Trying to shorten a perfect piece of content because it ended up being a bit longer than some guru recommended it should be is dumb.

Getting my point yet? It’s all dumb.

Sure, people on the internet do have short attention spans, but they have even shorter “crappy content spans.” If your content sucks, they won’t read it no matter how short it is or how close to the “ideal” number of words it was.

But if it’s good, they’ll read it no matter what. 500 words, 5000 words. Nobody cares as long as it’s good. That’s the only requirement, really. Make it good. As long as it’s good, it will be read no matter what length it is.

And please don’t misinterpret that as me saying people won’t care if something is longer or shorter than it should have been. They’d definitely care about that. But if it should have been that long or should have been that short… it’s perfect. Don’t go changing it because you heard someone say it would be better if it was longer or shorter for whatever idiotic reason.

That’s just… dumb.

I’m not just guessing here either. I know this from experience. I regularly create content that is 1000 or more (sometimes a lot more) words, and my readers read it and like it and subscribe to it and tell their friends about it and digg it and do whatever else people do when they come across great content. Why? Because it was great. They give even less of a crap than I do about how many words it was.

For entertainment purposes, and because I know people love real life examples, I just did a word count on the longest single-paged piece of content that I can ever remember creating. It has a ton of links, ranks amazingly on all search engines for all of its goal keywords, and is extremely well liked by everyone who comes across it (never gotten a single “I hate this, it’s too long!!!” email in my life). Do you know how many words it has?

About 16,000.

No, that’s not a typo.

So to all of the gurus who have said flat out that you’ll be doomed if you write something with over 1000 words: take your recommendations and shove them up your ass. I’ve gone 16 times over that “maximum” recommendation and it worked out as perfectly as it possibly could have. It’s a pretty extreme example, sure, but it proves my point nonetheless.

And for SEO? Yeah, there’s actually some truth to it in a certain context (another post for another day), but in the context of these silly recommendations, it’s just so unbelievably insignificant that even giving it a second of thought is just plain pointless.

In the end, the only thing you should be focusing on when you write is writing something great. As soon as your focus starts to shift towards length recommendations and the number of words you’re writing, it starts to shift away from just writing something great, and there’s a damn good chance that this will unknowingly affect the quality of that piece of content.

Want my personal “content length” recommendation? Whatever length makes your piece of content as perfect as it can be for the people who will be reading it, THAT is its ideal length. Making it any longer or shorter than that should be avoided at all costs. Gurus be damned.

2. Keyword Density

Ah yes, keyword density. One of the true keys to SEO… in 2001.

Today, or even the last 5 years? Nope, not at all.

Sure, one of the many things search engines take into account is the body text of your page, so it makes sense that your goal keywords for that piece of content should be used there.

But, as I very politely mention in the SEO Flowchart To Awesome Search Engine Rankings, your goal keywords should end up being used organically in your body text, not purposely. If they weren’t, you either picked the wrong goal keywords for this piece of content, or you’re a shitty writer.

Not to mention, focusing on keyword density tends to lead to you looking and sounding like one of the countless dumbasses who repeat words over and over again unnaturally in a pathetically hilarious attempt at reaching some magical keyword density numbers. You know, as though it actually matters or will help in any significant way whatsoever.

And, let’s pretend you live in some magical fantasy world where keyword density does significantly matter to search engines. Do you honestly think you’d rank amazingly and then get a ton of visitors and none of them would mind that you just used the word “mortgage” 14 times in a sentence with only 15 words? Dumbass.

So no, I don’t give a crap about keyword density. I do some basic keyword research, create the best content I am capable of creating, and my goal keywords get used throughout the content all by itself. How many times? Don’t know, don’t care. I don’t go back and count or run the page through some keyword density analyzer. I just create something my readers will love and do my best to get it seen by other people who’d love it too.

And it all ranks just fine. In fact, better than fine.

3. Blog Comment Reciprocation

Ohhh, here’s a touchy subject.

You know when you have a blog, and someone comments on one of your posts, and you see they have a blog too, so you click their name, go to their blog, check it out for a couple of minutes, and then comment on one of their posts to return the love?

Yeah, I don’t do that. I just don’t give crap.

I just have better/more important/more productive things to do than fake interest in someone else’s blog just because they commented on mine (which in some cases is just them faking interest in my blog in an attempt to get me to go to their blog and leave a comment faking interest in their blog which in turn sets off a never-ending time-wasting cycle of shitty comments from people just faking interest in each other’s blog).

No thanks, I’ll pass.

Waaaaay back in the day, maybe I did this a TINY bit (until I realized how completely pointless it was). And these days? No chance whatsoever.

I only comment when I have a legit reason to or a genuine interest in doing so. That goes for all blogs really, not just the blogs of people who comment on mine (and that’s how it should be). My days of faking interest just to be polite and/or make borderline useless friends within my niche and/or return the favor (or whatever else you want to call it) ended years and years ago.

I was very quick to realize that my time is better spent creating awesome content and getting it in front of the people who would like it, not struggling to pretend to care about a post someone just wrote because they pretended to care about a post I just wrote.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I am not saying you shouldn’t ever comment on your reader’s blogs. I’m just saying you should only do it when you have a legitimate reason to or a genuine interest in doing so, and not just because they commented on your blog and you feel obligated to, or want them to keep commenting on your blog so you comment on theirs in hopes of getting them to continue.

And don’t think “ohhh, it’s different for you because of the stage you’re at and I’m still kinda starting out so it’s different for me and blah blah blah.” It has nothing to do with that at all.

Commenting like this is just a big waste of time for 99.9% of the people who do it because it doesn’t actually accomplish anything. It might seem like it should when you’re doing it, but it doesn’t. It’s just another thing distracting you from the much more useful things you could be doing.

4. Hate Based On Nonsense

As creators of anything online, there are different types of hate that we will all come across at some point. Explaining these different types more thoroughly is already on my future posting to-do list. For now though, you should be aware that once any blog or site of any kind begins to get popular, there will ALWAYS be some amount of hate directed your way.

Yup, it’s the truth. And it happens to everyone. No matter how awesome your site is and how many people love it and feel that it is the single greatest thing in the history of the internet, someone will always hate it.

What you need to pay attention to when you reach this point is what the basis of that hate truly is, and then decide how to deal with it. Because when the hate is based on something legitimate, you will need to deal with it accordingly (I’ll explain how in that same future post).

But when the hate is based on nonsense, you need to be able to realize it, and then just not give a crap. Why? Because if you do give a crap, 3 things will usually happen:

1. First, it’s going to make you feel terrible. You’ll lose confidence in whatever it is people are hating on (your site as a whole, a specific piece of content, a product, your writing, your credibility, etc.), and that’s NEVER a good thing.
2. Second, you’re going to waste a lot of time (which could have been better spent on a thousand other things). Responding to hate that is worth responding to is NOT a waste of time. Responding to hate based on nonsense always is.
3. And third, you’ll probably only make it worse.

So, when someone sends you an email, or leaves a comment, or posts something on their own blog, or twitter or wherever else that in some way directs hate at you/your site, stop and think. Is it based on nonsense? If so, the very best thing you can do is not give a crap.

When it’s based on something real, that’s when you need to care. But if it’s just someone being a dick, ignore it.

5. Meta Keyword Tag

Why, in my day the meta keyword tag only cost a nickel. You could fill it with whatever keywords you wanted to and then rank fantastically for all of them on Altavista soon after.

But then, about a decade ago, search engines got smart and made the meta keyword tag count for something between “absolutely nothing” and “nothing.”

It certainly can’t hurt to use it, but it certainly won’t help either. These days I include it when I remember to, mostly out of habit. And even then, I usually fill it with stuff for my own amusement. Like if I write a post on this blog about making money online, one of my keywords in the keyword tag might be “money.”

I then laugh to myself for a second, reminisce about the days when that post would have ranked in the top 10 for the word “money” on a bunch of search engines that no longer exist, and then get right back to doing something that is actually worth doing. Fun times.

6. Reciprocal Link/Link Exchange Requests

On average, I must get at least 10 of these reciprocal link/link partnership/link exchange type emails each and every day, including weekends. No joke. You know what else isn’t a joke? The fact that I literally haven’t even opened one in about 6 years. Forget actually reading them (probably stopped doing that about 8 years ago), I haven’t even opened one in that long.

And do you know the last time that I actually exchanged links with another site? I do. I can even remember what site it was with and how it came about. Do you know what year it was? 2000.

So if I’ve gotten about 10 of these emails a day for the last 9 years, that’s nearly 33,000 of these kinds of emails that have been sent to me which went on to accomplish absolutely nothing for the various dumbasses who sent them.

Why? Because there isn’t any remote chance that anything good can come from exchanging links with the low quality garbage sites that are still dumb enough to send out these kinds of emails. Unless of course you enjoy being associated with bad link neighborhoods, because there’s a damn good chance that will happen.

Oh, and if you happen to be on the other side of this (you’re the one actually sending these kinds of emails), then may God have mercy on your soul.

7. The 948,311 Blogs About This Stuff

Uh oh, probably the touchiest one on this list.

Fine, 948,311 is just a rough estimate of how many blogs I think there are about internet marketing, blogging, SEO, making money online, and other related subjects, but it’s probably pretty close. Truth of the matter is I don’t really give a crap about any of them.

Why? Because there are SO few people saying anything that is new, different, unique, great, or special in any way, and SO many people who are just rehashing the same shit you’ve heard a million times before.

It’s just the same average content you could have gotten from 50,000 other sources of the same information.

Why exactly should I give a crap about them? Even better question: why on earth are you reading them?

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying you shouldn’t bother reading any blogs about this stuff. I’m definitely not saying that. I’m just saying that you’re wasting your time reading anything besides the few blogs that stand out and are truly special.

Because honestly, everything else is just a lesser version of those few blogs.

My personal opinion is that the number of blogs in this niche that fit the “truly special” description can be counted on 2 hands. That would make the other thousands and thousands of blogs about this stuff completely pointless to read and unnecessary to subscribe to.

I know, I know. You “need” to subscribe to all of these blogs to “stay up to date” and “never miss a thing” and “have access to all of the useful information that’s out there.” I get it. I really do.

What you don’t get though is that there really isn’t this constant never ending stream of information out there that warrants this mindset.

All that’s really out there are thousands of blogs about the same subjects saying the same things.

The only difference is that a select few are doing it infinitely better than the rest in that truly special stand-out kind of way. Your job is to read those few and stop giving a crap about all of the others. All they’ll ever do is waste your time.

Want some examples of that select few? Alright… SEOmoz, ProBlogger and CopyBlogger are the first few that come to mind. There’s a couple of others, but I truly doubt I’d get above 10 if I really sat down and put together a list (another future post, perhaps).

Back to my point. If you’re currently reading more than a small handful of blogs about internet marketing, blogging, SEO, making money online and any other related subjects, it’s time to cut back. Keep the few that are doing it better and dump the rest. Despite what you may think, they aren’t actually helping. They’re just taking up more of your time.

8. Making Money (until I have something to make money from)

Yup, I did a whole guest post about this for John Chow, so I’m not going to repeat it all over again here. The take home point of that post was that you shouldn’t focus on making money until you have something that you can actually make money from. Until you have a great site with a nice size audience and a significant amount of consistent traffic, focusing on making money is a useless, distracting, judgment-clouding waste of time.

So no, I don’t give a crap about making money until the second I reach that point. This remains one of the very best tips I could possibly give to anyone trying to make money online.

The Point

Why am I telling you all of this? To let you know that I’ve spent a significant amount of time not giving a crap about any of these 8 things, and everything has worked out just fine.

So if there’s anything on the above list that you currently do give a crap about… feel free to stop with the peace of mind of knowing that it’s not going to hurt.

If anything, it’s going to help.

I’m no psychic, but I can pretty much guarantee that every single person reading this raised their hand (or more likely thought “I do” but didn’t want to play along with the hand raising. Don’t worry, it’s cool.). The reason I can guarantee this is because on these here internets, links are everything.

They send traffic, they cause content to spread, they get you recognition, and they are the key to SEO. So, if you have a site of some sort that you actually want to be a success, one of your top goals is to get as many high quality links to it as you possibly can. Of course, understanding this is the easy part. It’s actually getting them that tends to give people problems.

I’m sure by now you’ve come across a bunch of link building methods that have been mentioned a million times before by a million different people. And they are all fine and good and effective I’m sure, but today I want to tell you about a favorite link building method of mine that I rarely (if ever) see mentioned.

It’s a little something I’ve nicknamed The Niche Crossover.

The Niche Crossover

I briefly alluded to this link building method in my case study about How To Increase Traffic To A New Site Or Blog, and now it’s time to fully explain it.

The Niche Crossover is exactly what it sounds like it should be. It’s a way to cross over into other niches outside of your own. The purpose? To tap into a whole other world of previously untapped sources of links and traffic and potential subscribers, users and customers. You know… everything you want more of.

Like most link building methods, The Niche Crossover revolves around the very simple concept of creating a great piece of content and then getting that content in front of the people who would want to link to it.

The big difference however is that with this link building method, the number of people who would potentially want to link to your content is going to increase, big time. And with this increase, there will be an almost equal increase in the number of links your piece of content actually ends up getting. Now we’re talking.

The way to make this happen is actually quite simple. Like anything else, it starts with the creation of great content. In this case though, the great content needs to appeal to 2 different niches: yours, and the niche you are looking to cross over into.

Your basic goal with this piece of content is to create something that either connects your niche to some other niche, or connects some other niche to your niche. Normally your primary goal when creating content is to create something that your audience will like and find useful. Your goal now is to create something that both your audience AND some other unrelated audience will like and find useful too.

And of course, you need to do it in a way that makes sense and ends up being an actual high quality piece of content. But that should have been obvious.

You know what I hate? When I read some article that explains how you can do something, but then doesn’t give any realistic examples.

10 Realistic Examples Of The Niche Crossover

1. Have a blog about cars? Write something about the best/safest family sized car, and then mention it to parenting blogs.
2. Have a blog about gardening? Put together a guide to growing your own vegetables in your yard, and then mention it to health blogs (or even cooking blogs).
3. Have a blog about weight loss? Rank and review the 10 most useful weight loss related web apps, and then mention it to tech blogs.
4. Have a blog about home improvement and repair? Explain the best ways to save money on supplies, and then mention it to money-saving blogs.
5. Have a blog about style and fashion? Make a list of the X most stylish running shoes, and then mention it to running/marathon/fitness blogs.

In every single one of the above examples, you have created something that is relevant and useful to your own readers. That’s always goal #1.

Doing so means that you have also created something that other blogs in your niche would find useful too, so right there you’ve given yourself an opening to get links from all of those blogs. That’s goal #2.

And goal #3, which is what makes The Niche Crossover possible, is that you have created something that appeals to another niche altogether, meaning you have now put this piece of content in a position to get links from blogs in a completely untapped niche that heretofore had no reason to ever link to your site.

And that’s what The Niche Crossover does… it greatly increases the potential number of sites who’d want to link to your piece of content. This in turn greatly increases the number of links it will actually end up getting. What more could you ask for?

Oh, and if you’re wondering why there’s only 5 examples above when I said there would be 10, I didn’t screw up. A funny thing about The Niche Crossover is that it’s always reversible. If a piece of content would allow you to cross over from Niche A to Niche B, it would also allow you to cross over from Niche B to Niche A just the same. So, reverse the 5 examples above to find 5 more examples.

In fact, this is a good way of checking your content idea (like how you were taught to check math problems in 3rd grade). If you can’t reverse it, you came up with a shitty idea.

A Bonus Benefit Of The Niche Crossover

Ok, so by now you understand the main benefits of this link building method. As an added bonus, here’s an extra benefit that you probably didn’t realize…

One of the most common complaints you hear from people who are unable to get links is that the sites and blogs that should be linking to them are their competitors, and there is no way that their competitors are actually going to link to them. Wait, hang on. This letter just arrived in the mail:

Dear People-Who-Make-The-Above-Complaint,

Suck it!

Love,
The Niche Crossover

You see, The Niche Crossover completely bypasses this problem. By creating content that crosses over into some other niche, you are no longer stuck in a situation where your only potential linkers are your competitors in your own niche. You’ve now opened yourself up to a whole other world of potential linkers (and traffic, subscribers, users, customers, etc.), none of which are even remotely close to competing with you in any way whatsoever.

Not bad, eh?

A Final Reminder (or 2)

Before you run out and start brainstorming ideas for trying this method out, I should probably remind you once again that no matter how perfect your idea is and how well it would work in terms of allowing you to cross over into the perfect niche… the piece of content still needs to be good. Preferably really good.

This is true with any link building method, of course. You can get it right in theory all day long, but you need to ensure it translates well in reality or else it just won’t work. So, make sure it’s good.

Oh, and one other little reminder. You still need to actively go out and get this piece of content in front of the people who would like it and want to link to it. In case you forgot, these people = bloggers/site owners in your niche, and bloggers/site owners in the niche you’ve crossed over into.

That’s about it. Now go get yourself some links.

Stumped for possible cross over ideas? Not sure if yours are any good? Let me know in the comments and I’ll throw some suggestions your way.

Yeah, seriously. I’m talking like 1997 here. And in case you missed it, that was me letting you know that I do indeed have some experience with this stuff. Now that that’s out of the way…

Does SEO confuse you? Is ranking well on search engines something that you are unable to do? Does it all just seem complicated and borderline impossible? Well, it’s your lucky day, because I have the solution.

Below is what I’m calling The SEO Flowchart To Awesome Search Engine Rankings. The rest is self explanatory. See for yourself…

(click it for the full size version)

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.