What am I doing wrong?

[Ibbi1122]

Hello,

i started a Technology Gadgets blog an year ago, since then i focused on writing unique and quality content. I did a bit a forum posting, blog commenting, directory submission and link exchanges with other relevant sites but still i didn't get the traffic which i wish for.

At the moment, i am getting only 2000 UVs which is nothing in my opinion.

What else should i do to? Help please

[KeriMorgret]

I'm going back to where you said your intent is to be a leader in this space. If you want to be a leader, you need to come up with a new angle on the content itself and have a reason for people to come to your site as a direct visit or rss subscription, not coming there because they found you in a google search for a trending topic.

Mashable, and sites like them, gets their views and is a leader in their field because they are the ones who went to YouTube and sorted through hundreds of videos to find those ten videos, write descriptions about them, select the order that they appeared, etc. If you truly want to be a leader, you'll need to be the one out there doing that, not rewriting copy after another site does the research. It's less about "does this beat a plagiarism detector and can I stay a step ahead of the Google algorithm" than "can I provide some awesome content or way of looking at things that no one else has done yet".

[Ibbi1122]

The content is 100% unique on that post. You can check that with any plagiarism software you can. The only matching thing are the youtube videos, on which mashable has no copyright etc.

I still gave a reference to that post.

This is the news i covered yesterday:

‘Apple Fixture Installation’ At Best Buy Hints At October 21st iPhone 5 Launch (http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2011/09/apple-fixture-installation-at-best-buy-hints-at-october-21st-iphone-5-launch/)

After that sites like Techrunch and Redmondpie covered the same news with almost the same content. Does that mean they copied as well?

[KeriMorgret]

I'm looking at your post about the Top 10 most Icon Moments from Steve Job's Career at Apple (http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2011/08/top-10-most-iconic-moments-from-steve-jobs-career-at-apple/). At the bottom of the post it says "via mashable" and appears to be the same content as Mashable. That's the type of thing I was referring to, as I saw this on several pages.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

2000 UV's a day! I'd kill for that!

If you want to expand, maybe you should target some new keywords. You could try some PPC targetting potential new keywords and see how many UVs they bring in before aiming for one

[ShaMenz]

Hi,

One of the things I notice when I look at the articles on your home page is that it feels much more like a "News paper" site than a personal blog. With a brand like "gizmocrazed" I'm expecting something a little more personalized and maybe even quirky in the text of your articles.

If your aim is to make it to the top in blogging, then you need to really think about what sets the top bloggers apart. What makes them stand out from the crowd?

I will tell you what I think the key ingredients are, but I would suggest that you spend some time really reading the work of some of the most popular bloggers out there (especially within your own space) and see if you see these things, or maybe something else that makes people want to follow their posts.

So, in my view there are some important ingredients that are common to the really popular blogs out there:

• They are real (not invisible people, always ready to "own" what they write)
• They are engaging (usually written from a personal standpoint and directed at the reader)
• They are authoritative (authority comes from "analysis & research", "experience" or "reputation")
• They are opinionated (even guest bloggers openly convey their own opinion on the subject)
• They write about things that other people don't, write it from a completely different angle or viewpoint or, write about it before anyone else does.

Now, I would suggest that you go out and read blogs like Techcrunch, Boing Boing, Engadget, and a few dozen others. Read each post twice.

1. Just read it and see how it makes you feel
2. Read it with a critic's eye (pick it apart and understand how the writer achieved their effect)

When you understand what is happening with these top bloggers and what about them makes 400,000 people a day want to know what they are saying, start applying what you have learned to your own writing.

The changes you have made are already making a difference to the "feel" of your site.

[Ibbi1122]

Thank you so much for a detailed review

I have renamed the link exchange to "Our Friends". + All the extra advertising space has also been removed.

How can i make sure that only the relevant ads are displayed for posts?

It's not about earning money, its about taking the site to the top.

[ShaMenz]

Hello again,

First, I have to say that I think part of the problem here may be expectation - as Dunamis already mentioned, 2000 uniques a day is not bad for a site of this age.

After taking a look at your site there are a few things I see that may be negatively impacting your search traffic and visitor behavior:

• The first thing I see that would be of concern to me is the "Link Exchange" page. Using this term along with the text on the page that describes the trading of reciprocal links is sending a signal to search engines that this site is openly engaging in link trading.

  Search engines (Google in particular) can see this as a manipulative practice aimed at artificially improving rankings. The ongoing message from search engines is that they want to see linking based upon the real worth of a site (the value and relevance of its content). I would remove the "Link Exchange" page and work on finding ways to provide reasons for other sites to naturally want to link to your site. The added bonus here is that a natural, relevant, one-way link is much more valuable to your site than a list of unnatural looking irrelevant links. Russ Virante wrote a nice blog post on the link profile and what would be expected from a good quality site that is achieving links based on its value and relevance The Wikipedia Model.

  There are a ton of great posts and Q&A answers here on SEOmoz that will give you a never ending source of ideas and tips that can help you to improve links to your site. I ran a quick site search for link building and came up with an awesome reading list. Some of the ideas I've found in these are just plain FUN too!

• When I looked at your home page I felt that the amount of information there has actually tipped over the line into being a little overwhelming. While I was blown away by the recycled tire sculptures, I'm kinda glad they were there to grab my attention, because I was starting to feel a little like I was drowning in a sea of text, ads and well, empty ad spaces

  I would look carefully at how many articles you keep on the home page all at once, try to ensure that the images loaded for the posts are as eye catching as possible (like the tire sculptures) and make sure that your home page does not become one big category page rather than the home of great content that provides a "hook" to draw your visitor further into the site.

• Although you said that the intent of the site is to "be a leader in Tech Gadget niche" the message your pages are sending (both to a human like me and to search engines) is that your real intent is to earn money from advertising. So, there are a few things to consider:

  If you really don't want to earn from advertising - Do you really need all those ad spaces on your site?

  If in fact you are about earning money from the advertising - what is the best way to make that happen?

  Given that you have 2000 unique visitors a day - Why are you not already earning enough dollars?

  Since the last answer would be that they are not converting - How can you convert those daily visitors to sales?

  Personally, all those blank "Advertise Here" banners seem like a waste of space on your page and as a user seem to say to me that selling advertising is more of a priority than providing me with good information. I would definitely reduce the number of those. After all, you can place one or two of them and when you have sold those spots, add a couple in other positions.

• Lastly, when I went to the Tire Sculpture page (god I want one of those!) the floating cell phone ads seemed to be really slowing the page down (Latest version of Firefox). There are two issues here. As a user, if it had been anything else I was trying to look at other than those awesome sculptures, I would have left the page quickly. Second, Search Engines know this and use page load speed as an important signal for rankings. Google has made it clear that they are very sensitive to this, so anything that is negatively impacting your load speed will be doing the same to your ranking opportunities.

  The thing to keep in mind is that "cool" ads are not selling anything if nobody sticks around long enough to actually look at them.

OK, that's a fairly long list, but I think some things you can definitely take a look at and work on. Overall, if you are wanting to earn from the advertising on your site, you should be really happy that you have 2000 Unique visitors a day and focusing all of your energy on converting as many as possible from visitors to customers

As to "What am I doing Wrong?"

You've done an awesome job getting this far in such a short time! One of the things to keep in mind is that the world of search and online marketing is constantly changing. That in essence means that as long as you follow ethical practices, there is no wrong answer - just the solution that is acknowledged as best practice for today.

Pay attention to what is best practice, listen to the important people in the search industry that work hard to help us discover and follow it, then just take it one step at a time and enjoy the ride!

Hope this helps,

Sha

[Ibbi1122]

As i said, content gets copied from my site.

The "electronic cigarettes " article was actually a sponsored post written by some writer. I guess he posted the same article on some other site. Should i remove it?

What software do you use to check plagiarism?

I used to divide posts on multiple pages to increase internal links and also to get more pageviews. (i don't do that any more)

[Ibbi1122]

I have seen 6 months old sites getting 2 million UVs per month, that's why i think 2000 UVs are nothing.

The site has natural backlinks from quality websites such as Forbes, Business Insider, Yahoo and Msn, but still I look to create them myself.

As far as copied content is concerned, i never copied pasted content from other sites.

Check out the online visitors page: http://whos.amung.us/stats/ouvrlmysf81k/

You can see 49 copies have been made in past 24 hours, therefore, mostly people copy content from my site and don't even give a link back. Should i report them to Google?

[KeriMorgret]

I'm seeing the same thing when I look. In some cases, the article says "originally published on site xyz". A side note, it's not OK to republish copyrighted material in its entirety like that, even if you do give credit to the source.

I also saw things like an article about electronic cigarettes in the medical breakthroughs section, and some pages with very little content with a lot of advertising and navigation.

To be the leader in the tech gadget niche, you need to be a leader and not a follower or copier. Give me a reason to go to your site and keep me coming back as opposed to another site. What's your unique selling proposition which makes you different from all of the other gadget sites out there?

[MarieHaynes]

2000 unique views for a site that's only been around for a year is nothing to sneeze at!

With that being said, I would concentrate more on quality links rather than forums, blog comments, etc.  Any link that you create yourself is not likely to be too powerful.

One other thought...I quickly did a duplicate content check on one of your articles and it was duplicated in several spots on the web.  I'm not sure whether scrapers have stolen your stuff or whether you are using someone else's articles, but either way, unique content is a must!

[Ibbi1122]

Hello,

Thanks for your reply!

1. Yes 2000 UVs a day.

2. Intent is to be a leader in Tech Gadget niche

3. URL: www.gizmocrazed.com

[ShaMenz]

Hi,

Without seeing the site it is a little hard to say exactly what is happening and how things could be improved. Perhaps if you could tell us these few things:

1. Is that 2000 Uniques per month or per day?

2. What is the intent of the site? Are you trying to sell products, earn from advertising, be a leader in your space? etc

3. What is the URL for your site (if you are happy to share it)

4. Do you know how many backlinks you have?

With a little extra information we can better understand the problem and suggest some solutions.

Sha