Friday, November 27, 2009

Avoid these common mistakes and double your website traffic in 3 days

I've been self-employed for over a year, and most days are pretty good. However, when my online editing business goes through a slump, my financial situation can quickly become dire. I was getting about 40 people a day to my site - not a lot, I know, but because my blog has very little extra content and focuses exclusively on offering online proofreading services, most of my traffic was targeted and I could usually get enough business.

Of course I knew that getting more traffic was a good idea. Even if people find and explore my site for other reasons (ie informational articles about writing and editing), the overall page rank would probably go up, meaning more natural search traffic for my targeted keywords.

Getting more traffic, however, is not always so easy... but I did discover that I'd been doing some things very wrong, things that were crippling my site's traffic. Fixing these things took a couple of days, was free, and has already produced double the traffic.

1) If you're using Wordpress or another blogging system, change your url format! I'd seen this advice before, many times, but didn't listen. I was afraid of screwing up all my links and making my site ineffective. Finally, I just went ahead and changed the default Wordpress url format to a 'blog post/month' format. This way the titles of your posts are in the url - which dramatically helps search engine results. I don't fully understand 'redirects' - and I've heard that doing this can mess up your site's ranking. I don't know. For me, after changing url format all my links automatically work, my site is still PR2 in Google, and I'm getting double the traffic. I can only assume that with time, the improved url's will generate even more traffic.

2) Use 'All in one SEO' or similar to change the meta title tags of your posts. Every post needs to have a catchy title that grabs readers attentions; but it also needs to have a different meta/html title full of keywords that people will search for. The way to get both on Wordpress is with the "All in one SEO" plugin. Take the time to do this for every post.


3) Make a specific page for anything related that people might search for. I run an online proofreading and editing site. Who are my potential clients? Students, academics or authors writing things in English. What are they going to be searching for? People don't search for general stuff like 'writing tips and tutorials'. People search for very specific things, like "How to write X". Knowing that, I've put up a series of articles, like "How to write a thesis statement for your dissertation". This is an article that is likely to be found and read, by people finishing their dissertation; and presto - they're already familiar with my site and services.

4) Make an event. I started a $100 writing contest. In just a few days, that post has attracted about 100 backlinks and lots of traffic. Of course these are not necessarily visitors who will need my editing and proofreading services.

However, the traffic (and backlinks) will help my site seem more relevant and thus rank better.

5) Give them something to do. I added a typing game on my site. It's relevant ("test your typing skills") to my site's content and, because people love tests and challenges, will probably get some people to stay on my site a little longer. This increases my site's 'stickiness' and thus I'll rank better.

6) I redid my site's theme/look. You shouldn't change your theme or look that often - and it's true people are looking for content and generally ignore the style of your webpage - but if it looks old, home-made, or outdated, people will probably click off it fast. I liked my old site; but it had a lot of content and different colors. It had a few small people pictures. My new site has a simple homepage with big pictures of smiling people (people like people...) see it at http://www.paper-perfect-editing.com.

7) A secondary blog. It's difficult to really explode my traffic because my site is just a 'services' site; it can never have mass appeal for lots of people. Therefore, I'm starting another blog full of writing tips, which will be easier to promote and get backlinks to; of course everypage of this new blog will point to the website I want to promote. Although it will take time to build up traffic, the project is worth doing.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Free online editing and proofreading services

Paper Perfect has a slick new website! In order to drum up new visitors, we're expanding our 'free editing program' - take advantage now! For a testimonial and link from your blog or website, or the right to use your paper as a sample on our site, we'll give you 1000 words free editing. Check out the offer here:

Free online editing and proofreading for papers, essays, English documents.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Essay Writing Competition, win $100! "If I ruled the world".

Have you ever had one of those days when you wished you were in charge? When you thought to yourself – “If I ruled the world, I’d do it differently…” Here’s your chance to express yourself! Let your brilliant writing and passionate ideas flow – and win yourself some much deserved recognition (and a little cash) as well. Introducing…Paper Perfect’s $100 essay writing competition, “If I ruled the world.”

In 1000 words or less, tell us what you hate about the world – what bothers you or ticks you off, and how you’d fix it if you were running things. How would politics/economies be organized? Would there be more freedom or less? New laws or rules? You don’t necessarily have to argue for a world that would be better for everyone – if you want to be a despot or tyrant, tell us why. We are looking for the best and most interesting writing; not necessarily the nicest.

Competition Details

  • Open to anybody who enjoys writing.
  • Essays should be persuasive – they should develop an idea, topic or argument and try to convince readers to accept an idea.
  • Essays should be well-organized, and if necessary, give evidence, examples, and logical arguments; but they should not be boring! Great writing will be rewarded.
  • Essays should be no more than 1,000 words.
  • The top essays will be featured on this site, and receive a free critical review.
  • Deadline is 2/1/10 – winner will be notified by 2/15/10 and sent $100 via PayPal.

Click here to enter the Essay Writing Competition!