How To Get More Traffic To Your WordPress Blog
Getting more traffic to your blog seems to be quite easy. About three weeks ago I installed Semiologic Pro (SP) including the Semiologic Theme onto this blog.
At that time when I checked with SEO Quake, I had just 95 pages indexed in Google. Today I checked again and I see I now have 658 pages indexed…
You can check for yourself here.
Or of course if you have SEO Quake for FireFox you can use that too – that's where I got the 658 and above URL from.
Now, there aren't 658 pages of content on the site, but for some reason which I now put down to Semiologic Pro, Google has now paid attention to all my "tag" pages, all my "archive" pages, all my "category" pages and so on. Yes I do have the "canonical" variable set for all my pages, but it hasn't stopped Google from indexing the tag pages etc.
I've noticed that SemioLogic Pro has changed the format of the tag pages and this is probably one of the reasons that they're now being indexed. Example:-
http://www.frankhaywood.com/tag/pareto/
For good measure, Google is also including a good few cloaked affiliate links (!!!) and some WordPress searches. In case you didn't know, Google started including searches in its index a little while back by using keywords in form boxes and indexing the results.
What this all means is I've suddenly seen an increase in visitors from search traffic. It's early days, but my estimate is somewhere between a third and a half as much more traffic as I was getting before I introduced Semiologic Pro to this site.
A 50% boost in traffic just for installing a new theme and plugins is pretty good don't you think? It wasn't hard to do.
More traffic means more subscribers and more sales, it's inevitable. Knowing this has now given me an incentive to get my finger out and upgrade all my niche blogs.
Now I know that more traffic is something that you want, you've told me so. I asked earlier this year what the number one question was and the overriding response was "how do I get more traffic to my sites?"
I guess a related question that is probably driving that is "how do I make more sales?" or "how do I make more commissions?"
Okay, here's the easy to do solution for your all your niche sites.
#1 – Go get SemioLogic Pro (otherwise known as SemioLogic Reloaded).
#2 – Use the WP Affiliate Pages method to build your sales sites.
For #2, that's what I'm now doing for all my sales sites, and I've set myself another task ahead to convert the ones that aren't yet running under WordPress.
From what I can see, when you add SemioLogic WordPress becomes an extremely powerful platform that pulls in traffic. If you then combine it with the WP Affiliate Pages method you have a dynamite combination.
When you stop to think about this, people agonise over improving conversions, and do split testing in order to make more money. The concept is if you can improve your visitor to sales conversion ratio from 1% to 2% you've just given yourself a 100% pay rise.
Which is great.
The downside is it takes a lot of work.
You can achieve similar results by doubling the amount of traffic of course. And if you can do that with little effort – just by installing a new theme and plugin set - then it's a far more effective way to spend your time.
(Of course there's nothing to stop you from going ahead and split testing too if you have the time.)
I believe this is something you should go and do right away. I dithered over buying SemioLogic Pro for nearly 3 years as I was unsure of the benefits. Let's face it, claims are often made that turn out to be hollow.
What tipped me over the edge was seeing some big name marketers converting their own sites to this platform. Now I've seen the results, I'm really glad I did it.
Finally, the nice touch with SLP is like my own products, it's not a per-domain licence (I hate that), you can install it on as many domains as you personally own.
-Frank Haywood
UPDATE:
Three weeks on from making this post, and there are now 885 pages indexed in Google. I have to say I'm amazed and a little worried that it will all crash and burn, but I have faith in SLP and what it can do. I'll keep my fingers crossed. 
Filed under internet business by on Oct 20th, 2009. Comment. 
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Comments on How To Get More Traffic To Your WordPress Blog
Hi Frank,
Thank you so much for this advice. I followed your link to Semi-logic and found a page on their website listing all the plug-ins. I realise that they have gone to all the trouble of collecting these in one place but I cannot help thinking that there are comparable plug-ins that do all this for free, at wordpress org, or am I missing something? Mind you, your site does look great now. Perhaps the product is more suited to people that do not know their way around changing and tinkering with wordpress.
On the other hand your "WP affiliate pages" looks like it could be ideal for some projects we are planning. Very impressive.
all the best
Annette
@Annette Hogan: You're welcome. You're right there are some free plugins that do part of what SemioLogic Pro does, such as XML sitemaps, human-readable sitemap generators, and all in one SEO, HeadSpace 2, and a load of other stuff. I had all those installed here on this blog.
In fact I've written loads of notes for a product about how to improve the SEO on your WP blogs which is still worth taking on board.
However…
Uninstalling all those plugins and installing SemioLogic Pro instead has made the difference between having 95 pages indexed and 658.
Some of those plugins bundled with SemioLogic Pro are free ones, but the bulk of them have been written by Denis DeBernardy. Part of the above effect may be just the theme alone, which presents an "optimised" canvas to the search engines, but I'm pretty sure quite a lot of it is about the plugins themselves.
The plugins that come with the bundle are tightly integrated with the SemioLogic theme, and there are quite a few I' m not even using that for instance allow you to add some ad blocks to your pages as widgets (there are multiple sidebars with the theme). I would guess that those are also optimised for the search engines, knowing the way the rest of the bundle has been put together.
For a long time I've been wondering why WordPress isn't totally widget enabled across the whole of an installation and not just the sidebars, and I've even seen a few themes that add more than the standard one or two sidebars.
SemioLogic Pro has 11 "sidebars" including for instance header and footer, and wide top and bottom sidebars as well as the regular two sidebars, and even has widget functionality in the posts themselves – "before the entries", "each entry" and "after the entries".
It's by far the most flexible and best kitted out WordPress bundle I've come across to date, and I've looked at a lot of themes and plugins.
As I said in the post, SemioLogic Pro is more of a platform than a theme and plugins, and it really has made a difference to how Google is now regarding this site. My only regret is not buying it 3 years ago, but you live and learn.
There's a threat on the site of the price going up, and knowing that Denis isn't really a marketer, I think he means it.
-Frank
Hi Frank!
I'm tempted.
In fact, I'm very tempted.
But, before I shell out USD 300 for SemioLogic Pro – or 297 to be exact – I would very much like to have your comments on a question or two.
On the SemioLogic Pro site I get the impression that even dad could put together a good site with the SemioLogic Pro software, but as we both know sales copy and reality are -often – different worlds.
So.
Since you, Frank, are now using SLP, would you honestly say that a guy somewhere between a newbee and an "oldbee" (? mediumbee ?) could put together a site that will be attractive to browsers, and at the same time have good, or even great, SEO capabilities.
Next:
I expect that the SLP program will have some sort of install and user guide. Do I have to be a rocket scientist to understand the instructions, or are they written in a form that is easy to digest and understand for simple-minded persons like myself?
Finally:
Will SLP be a good idea as a vehicle for IPK sites like http://www.Christmasgifts-2009.co.uk?
Thanks, Frank!
Cheers,
Jan
Hi Jan,
SLP is a theme plus a set of plugins. The whole thing is still under active development, and I get the impression that it always will be, so it'll always be pretty much up to date with what's going on with SE changes.
All I did was apply the new theme and plugins to this blog. I haven't really done much more than that. I've tweaked a couple of things to show some of the links to pages on the top menu bar, and some in the footer, and possibly a couple of other things here and there, but none of what I've done is really outside of WordPress and how it works.
So if you know how to install WordPress and apply plugins, that's all the skill set you need. If you're unsure, why not just get the free theme, apply it, and have a play? Then if (when) you like it, you'll probably want to go ahead and get the Pro version with all the plugins.
-Frank