I’ve been blogging for a long time (okay, a long time for me) but I’m pretty lazy about doing it regularly and even more lazy about networking, and thus, I don’t really get a lot of traffic.

Now, I’ve read probably hundreds of articles and posts about increasing traffic, visibility, SEO (search engine optimization), etc; but doing it is a completely different story.
Welp, I’m about to change that!

For the next six weeks, I’ve planned to do two things per week to improve my blog. From keywords, to backlinking, to commenting, to making new blog friends – they’re all fairly basic but they’re *supposed* to make a big impact. At the end, I’ll see if it worked by checking out my Google Analytics stats. Sound simple enough?
Good! Then I want you to join me!

Here’s how it will work:

• I’ll post two challenges per week – one on Saturdays and one on Wednesdays. There are some things I think that I already do pretty well; I’ll talk about those, too. There are lots of things I don’t do well at all, so I’ll be prioritizing them.

• If you choose to participate, I’ll include a link to your blog here. Don’t worry, though, participation will be casual and no pressure; if you can’t do every challenge, don’t worry about it.

• {Here’s the best part} At the very end, all participants will be put in a random drawing for a giveaway! I haven’t figured out what the giveaway will be for, yet, but don’t worry; I have great taste (wink) and I’ll think of something awesome!

Grab a button, and leave a comment if you’re in! We’ll re-assess on May 5th.

(copy this code and paste it into your sidebar)

<a href="http://hazelandagnes.com/blog-better-six-week-challenge/" > <span class="pibfi_pinterest"> <img src="http://hazelandagnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/blogbetterbutton.jpg" alt="" title="Blog Better Challenge" width="180" height="180" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1152" /> <span class="xc_pin" onclick="pin_this(event, 'http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http://www.hazelandagnes.com/blog-better-six-week-challenge/&media=http://hazelandagnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/blogbetterbutton.jpg&description=Blog Better: Six Week Challenge')"> </span> </span></a>
 

Your First Assignment:

Install Google Analytics, and do it now! It usually takes about 24 hours for it to start recording traffic, so you’ll want to have it installed sooner than later.  In order to see how far you’ve come, it’s important to look at where you were.

If you’re a WordPress user, like me, there are a few neat plug-ins that do the work for you. Google will provide you with a code (usually starts with UA- and has a long string of numbers) and you can just enter it into the plug-in. Depending on the theme you’re using, it might also provide a spot to enter it in the theme settings.

Regardless, Analytics provides pretty good instructions right on their site.

If you already keep track of your traffic, make a mental note of what kind of posts get most traffic and what you did differently on that day.

Stay tuned for Wednesday’s edition! Good luck!

Tags: blog, blog better challenge, blogging, challenge, diy, followers, Giveaway, how-to, improvement, traffic, tutorial

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2012 at 2:23 am and is filed under Blogging, How-To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.