Top 10 Free Ways to Increase Your Blog's Traffic, Guaranteed

When you blog to the www community, it can be soul destroying if you think no one is reading, right?

Here's my Top 10 tips to increase traffic to your blog.  Some of these simple and free tips are obvious and some not.  But they will all increase the page rank of your blog, attract traffic and visitors, guaranteed:

Obvious...

1/ Tag your content: will help search engines to identify and rank your content.  Simple as that.  But make sure they are short and concise and words which you would search for when looking for your content.

2/ Backlinks bring traffic: backlinks is when another site links to yours.  According to Ehow, when search engines sees these links it raises your blogs rankings.

3/ Blog Directories: Ehow also suggest submitting your blog or website url to online directories to get more backlinks.  Search for "blog directories" to get a list, some are paid, but there are still heaps of free ones.

4/ A picture is worth a thousand words: whether food, technology, cars, sports - we're talking about tangible things and experiences and you need pictures to do that.  It was Thai/Laos/Khmer new year recently and the highest number of visitors came through to my blog not from yahoo or ordinary google search, but from google image search.  And of course, remember to put key words in the names of your pictures rather than the numberic identifiers which most digital camera uses, which is useless for google to crawl.

Grilled Chorizo: The picture says is all...

Not so obvious...

5/ Content is still king: this should be obvious, but seems to be conveniently forgotten.  People visit your page for original, useful, consistent and new content.  This means you need to write, or at the very least curate the stuff yourself rather than just copy and past content.

It means you'll need to update your content regularly, when was the last time you went back to a site that never changes?  Online is about getting it faster, so if you're first with ideas, information and concepts or you can present it in an original and useful way, you'll get traffic.

Many blogs I've read are all over the place, one minute it's about food, next it's about technology, next it's about cars - unless you're Roger Federer no one is going to be interested about your varied personalities - own one field and be an expert in that.  If you want several, then have separate blogs, I have thangblog for general ravings, noodlies for food and Destination Saigon for my partner's new book.

6/ Know what's working: using google analytics to find out your blog's popular content, identify popular posts, keywords people search for, images on your site that drives visitors.  If this is what your visitors want, give them more! 

7/ Faster Pages means higher rank: TechPages says the time it takes to bring up your page will affect how your page is ranked by Google, something which is confirmed by this Google post.  Faster pages means higher ranks.  Those of us who have lots of pictures like me with my food blog noodlies, need to optimise our photos and videos for the blog.

8/ Concise Post Names: According to Spice Up Your Blog, having short, concise blog entry names helps google and other search engine identify your content better and this link shows you how.  The tip here is to put key words in the name of your posts, as well as in your tags and labels. 

9/ Comments drives visits: reading and commenting on other blogs especially on high traffic sites will increase the exposure of your blog.  Your comments shouldn't be all about your blog - that's just spam, take the time to read their blog entry and make relevant, thoughtful comments, and don't forget to list your online address for people to click-thru to.

10/ Join a community: you're not in competition with other bloggers, you're in the same community.  If you're blogging about food, make 'friends' with other food bloggers, communicate and share ideas and promote each other.  And it doesn't have to be all online contact, last month, Billy from atablefortwo recently organised drinks (yes physical get together) with other food bloggers in Sydney that attracted over 50 people.  And this month, he ran a very successful paid food photography workshop for bloggers that was sold out.

The No 1 Shopping Centre, Cabramatta

This shopping centre on the corner of Arthur and Hughes street has always been overshadowed by the much larger BKK centre.

However, with the demise of BKK (since the closing of the BKK supermarket) more people are taking notice. The surprising thing is that it's always been busy with local, now it's just more frantic.

Everything you'd need from fresh fruit, vegetables, Asian grocery, food court, popular Yum Cha restaurant, computer, electronics and about four hair dressers how could you go wrong?!

I had pad thai at the No 1 Thai Spicy eatery - how could they resist calling themselves No 1?! It was one of the best I've had in a long time.

BKK Food court

Frantic with people (as usual). Was lucky to get a spare table!

Sent via BlackBerry® from Telstra

Gorgeous Buddhist Statues

We took some friends for a Cabra "temple tour" today and I'm struck again at the many gorgeous Buddhist temples and their statues in my local area.

From the Di Lac Buddha above to Kwan Yins below.

Chinese Temple in Bonnyrigg

Budha shrine

Kwan Yin

Quan Yin my goddess of protection.

Appartments by the Harbour Bridge

If you cross the bridge you may have noticed an appartment building in The Rocks that has prime location.  It also looks like a bunch of concrete cubes stuck on top of each other.

I've been told it's a Housing Commission block... wouldn't it be wonderful to live the public tennants there!

Temple Offerings

While at Phap Bao temple today I noticed a collection of odd food offerings outside the ancestor commemoration hall.

There was fruit including a pomelo, but also uncooked rice noodles, as well as ready to eat fried egg noodles, through to desserts of all descriptions.. red beans, banana cakes.

Watt Khemarangsaram Bonnyrigg

While we were at the Watt Khemarangsaram, Bonnyrigg today, I noticed this note from the Red Cross on their notice board.

From what I can gather, the Red Cross is helping those in Cambodia desperately looking for family members separated through "war and disaster".

This really touched me. In this world of google and the internet, we often think we can find anything.  It's easy to forget that horrible feeling when you've been separated with a loved one and have no idea where they are or even if they're dead or alive.

Khmer temple, Bonnyrigg - Watt Khemarangsaram

Watt Khemarangsaram Gorgeous local Khmer temple, across the road from Bunnings.

Lao Temple Shrine

The beautiful busy-ness that is typical of Lao temples.

Lao temple Bonnyrigg

Local Lao temple, scrubbed up for coming Lao new year.

Big festival is next weekend.

Phap Bao Vietnamese Temple

Phap Bao, one of the first purpose Vietnamese. Temples in Australia.  We took someone who was researching the architecture of Buddhist temples to see Phap Bao.

Luckily the Most Venerable Thich Bao Lac (above) was there to give us the history.  I took pics of the Most Venerable while he was giving answers and even the camera lense can capture his magnificent aura.  I just felt so privileged to be able to capture these candid shots.

On the grounds of Phap Bao temple is probably the healthiest and largest Bodhi tree in Australia.  According to the Most Venerable it was a fourth generation from the original Buddha Bodhi tree.

Clouds over Cabra

Was sunny this morning, but suddenly the clouds have gathered.

New Dr Who Matt Smith

Dr Who with the new Doctor, Matt Smith premiered last night on the BBC in the UK.  The Eleventh Hour, according to the UK's Guardian newspaper, seems to have even won over fans of David Tennant, the previous Dr Who, who many believed was the best ever Doctor.  That's how smh.com.au saw it too.

The Sun reported today that the first Matt Smith episode attracted 8m viewers, the same as David Tennant's first ep. The Mirror thought Smith was a convincing Dr Who.

The Telegraph says Smith takes on the role 'perfectly'.

Matt Smith is the 11th Doctor.  At just 27, he's also by far the youngest Doctor.

In Australia, The Eleventh Hour premieres on ABC1, Sunday night, 18th April at 7.30pm, barely two weeks after the UK premiere.  In a first, fans of Dr Who can watch the episode on the ABC's iView service two days earlier, starting from midnight Friday, 16th April.  It will be interesting to see the numbers on iView!

Crazy shopping in Cabramatta

Yesterday we were checking out the shopping in Marrickville, today I'm looking at the crazy hussle-bussle of Cabramatta.

In particularly the malls which overflow with produce and people.  The Viet Hoa mall is my particular favourite.  As you can see if colourful, crazy and chaotic.

Fruit and lots of exotic fruit is the first thing that hits you.  Lychees, coconuts..

 Paw paws or papaya..

Rambutans...

Savoury dishes to take home for lunch or dinner...

And sweets for later.. in a rainbow of colours

And then there's fresh seafood

Or grow your own fruit and plants...

Marrickville

We used to go grocery shopping and eat literally every week in Marrickville when we lived in the inner city.

Today, on Easter Friday, we happen to be in the area and stopped by for some Pho and to have a peek around the shops.

Everything is pretty much the same.. but of course, now we're in Cabramatta we have better choices... but some of my favourite things were still here...

Rice cooking wine

My fav chili sauce.. that you can find on the table at many Vietnamese restaurants as a condiment...

Pickled prawns (an acquired taste)