As one of the most popular public web forums of our time, Twitter is an excellent way to share information and start conversations. It can also be used to substantially increase organic traffic to a website, if you know what you’re doing. Here are five methods for boosting web traffic with Twitter that are easy to carry out.

Know Your Audience, and Follow Them

Having a million readers who are following you just because you followed them doesn’t really help you out in the long run. 1,000 dedicated fans who actively look for your posts in their Twitter stream are better than 100 times that amount of followers who ignore you. Zero in on a core demographic that’s actually interested in what you have to say, and gear your posts towards them.

Ditch The Spam

While we’re all probably sick of hearing it, content is still king. Quality content is the type of information you should be sharing with your readers. Spamming them with links to your business site or an affiliate sales landing page isn’t really quality. Post links to helpful resources that will benefit your users. In other words, give without expecting something in return.

Pick A Sensible Username

If you’re using your Twitter account to drive traffic to your website, using your given name may not be the best route to take. Let’s say you run a small, local plumbing service. Rather than using, say, “JohnSmith72”, try “DrainMaster” or something else related to your actual business. If you’re a private consultant and your name is your brand identity, a given name is fine.

Find A Good Profile Picture

A little visual color can go a long way towards drawing people in and getting them to pay attention to your post. A generic logo doesn’t really do it for most people. They see business logos all the time on the web. Use your real picture for your profile avatar.

Leverage Twitter Search

Posting relevant information on a hot trending topic is a surefire way to increase your following and boost traffic. You can use Twitter Search to see what’s popular at the moment and use the results to draw in more page views by posting on current topics that people are interested in.

Parting Shot

The nice thing about using Twitter to raise your website’s profile online is that it doesn’t need a large input of time or effort. Work smarter rather than harder when using your Twitter influence to redirect traffic to your blog or website. It’s not rocket science, it just requires that you employ a consistent approach day in and day out when it comes to increasing page views with your tweets.

About the author:
Paul uses twitter to raise awareness about his established business. An automotive company that purchases cars and trucks.

So what exactly do you mean by pinging? Well Wikipedia explains it as:

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more "ping servers," which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material.

In simple words, when you publish a post, your server will notify other servers (like Google) that you have served up new content, so that they may come and index you quickly.

Although sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo do it automatically, yet if you were to notify more sites manually, things do look more cheerful! So how do you do it? Just follow these simple steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress
2. Go to Settings => Writing
3. Now scroll down to Update Services

In the text box that you see, just enter the following ping services:

http://1470.net/api/ping
http://ipings.com
http://www.pingmyblog.com
http://a2b.cc
http://a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.blogblogs.com.br/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://Api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.mw.net.tw/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoles.net/notificacio.php
http://bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blo.gs/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://Blog.iask.com/RPC2
http://Blog.with2.net/ping.php
http://Blog.youdao.com/ping/RPC2
http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php
http://blogdb.jp
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogg.de/ping.php
http://bloggarkivet.net/ping/en
http://bloggrevyen.no/ping
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://blogoole.com/ping
http://blogoon.net/ping
http://Blogpeople.net/ping
http://Blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://blogpingr.de/ping/rpc2
http://blogroots.com
http://blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://blogsdominicanos.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.co.it/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/pingRPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/pingRPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/pingRPC2nd
http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.in/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.lv/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2
http://Blogsearch.google.tw/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.us/pingRPC2
http://blog-search.net/up.php
http://blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://blogstyle.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogupdate.org/ping
http://blogupdate.org/sverige/ping
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://catapings.com/ping.php
http://coreblog.org/ping
http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi
http://euro.weblogs.com
http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2
http://fgiasson.com/pings/ping.php
http://focuslook.com/ping.php
http://geourl.org/ping
http://godesigngroup.com
http://godesigngroup.com/blog/feed
http://hamo-search.com/ping.php
http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping
http://imblogs.net/ping
http://lasermemory.com
http://lasermemory.com/lsrpc
http://mapufacture.com/ping/api
http://mod-pubsub.org
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://newsblog.jungleboots.org/ping.php
http://newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.amagle.com
http://ping.ask.jp/xmlrpc.m
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs
http://ping.blog360.jp/rpc
http://ping.blogg.de
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc
http://ping.blogoon.net
http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2
http://ping.blogstart.de
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc
http://ping.fc2.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://ping.ge.bloggt.org
http://ping.kutsulog.net
http://ping.mitekaite.com/rpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.namaan.net/rpc
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.snap.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.speenee.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se
http://ping.wordblog.de
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://pinger.onejavastreet.com
http://pingoat.com
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://pingqueue.com/rpc
http://popdex.com
http://popdex.com/addsite.php
http://queerfilter.com/ping
http://r.hatena.ne.jp/rpc
http://rcs.datashed.net
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://rcs.salon.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger
http://rpc.britblog.com
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080
http://rpc.newsgator.com
http://Rpc.odiogo.com/ping
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping
http://rpc.twingly.com
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://rssfeeds.com/suggest_wizzard.php
http://rssfwd.com/xmlrpc/api
http://Serenebach.net/rep.cgi
http://Services.newsgator.com/NGWS/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPinExtended.doz
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz
http://Sindice.com/xmlrpc/api
http://snipsnap.org
http://snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://topicexchange.com
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://wasalive.com/ping
http://weblogalot.com/ping
http://weblogues.com
http://weblogues.com/ping
http://weblogues.com/RPC
http://webmaster-talk.com/ping/66385
http://www.31engine.com/weblogUpdates/9.cgi
http://www.a2b.cc
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://Www.bing.com/Webmaster/ping.aspx
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogexplosion.com
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://www.blogoole.com/ping
http://www.blogoon.net/ping
http://www.blogpeople.net
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.catapings.com/ping.php
http://www.feed24.com/?c=add
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?XmlPing
http://www.feedsfarm.com/a.html
http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2
http://www.focuslook.com/ping.php
http://www.godesigngroup.com
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping
http://www.imblogs.net/ping
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc
http://Www.memigo.com
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPC
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://Www.octora.com/add_rss.php
http://www.pingoo.jp/ping
http://www.popdex.com
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.rssfwd.com/xmlrpc/api
http://www.snipsnap.org
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://Www.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.tagclick.net/ping
http://www.veneblogs.com/ping
http://www.wasalive.com/ping
http://www.weblogalot.com/Ping
http://www.weblogues.com
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC
http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php
http://xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xmlrpc.bloggernetz.de/RPC2
http://xping.cc/ping
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php
http://zing.zingfast.com
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://rpc.blogcatalog.com/

That’s it, your done!

This is a MASSIVE ping list of over 250+ ping services. You should note an increase in your traffic little by little after implementing this steps.  If you have any doubt please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The message reads as follows:

Update your templates

Your templates include links to files hosted on Google Page Creator, a service that is soon migrating to Google Sites. Do you want Blogger to update those links now? Learn more

There is a ‘Update and review‘ link at the bottom of the message. Once you click it the new domain,’bloggerhosting.appspot.com’ would ask you to allow permissions to access your account. Just approve it.

Once done, you will be redirected to a page that will show all your blogs and check which one’s have references to googlepages (in their template.)

If any of your blog has a reference to googlepages in it, just click on the ‘Update References >>‘ link. It will now ask you to download (and backup) your template.

After clicking on ‘Next‘, all your references (like the scripts or css files or images) will be automatically uploaded to bloggerhosting.appspot.com. For eg. my script, that was previously hosted on http://myfreehouse2.googlepages.com/lightbox.js would now be moved to http://bloggerhosting.appspot.com/serve/myfreehouse2.googlepages.com/lightbox.js

Now all you need to do is click the ‘Update‘ button at the bottom, and your template will be modified with all the new links. Pretty neat!

So don’t wait much, as it seems the Google will now hurry up the closing of GP, and you wouldn’t want to lose any of your data, eh?

Tagul, a site that is currently in beta, is a free service (currently) that will help you to create wonderful flash-based tag clouds. After you sign up, agree to their ‘terms and conditions’, enter your blog URL or text words and click on Fetch the Tags. Thats it! Your tags will be auto-matically fetched and you could create your tag-clud in an instant. Do remember to change the tag links pattern to link the tags to your blog (for eg. http://techwithric.com/tag/$tag would link a tag ‘browser‘ to http://techwithric.com/tag/browser )

Of course that is an array of customizable options like the shape of the tag cloud:

You can also customize the colors as well as font-family of the font:

Its so simple! After you’ve created your tag-cloud you could preview it (by clicking on the Preview tab) or create it and embed it on your blog. Here’s a demo of the tag cloud created for this blog:

Currently you can create 10 clouds on one account and you can set it to auto-refresh (and include new tags automatically) for 12 or 24-hour periods. You can visit Tagul from here: Tagul

So did you like it? Do share your experiences by commenting..

Its very easy to add this search box to your site. In fact if you don’t prefer to install it directly and want to test it, just go to their site sikbox.com and enter your blog’s address. There is a live preview search box, using which you can test the results. A live preview of makeuseof.com yielded the following results:

To add the widget to your blog just go to http://sikbox.com/ and fill in the preview form. Then just click on the ‘Get the Code’ button. Now you will be asked for your name and email. Fill it up and click on the ‘Customize and Generate Code’ button. Now you can customize the search-box (actually you customize how the results appear) and then select the code generated below and add it to your blog.

Advantages:

• Free and fast
• Ease of use, no complexity
• Easy to install and use
• No programming required
• Extremely fast and lightweight
• Fully customizable via skins or CSS
• Image search support

Disadvantage:

The only disadvantage that I found was that for the search results to appear properly, your site must be indexed by Yahoo. This is because the  widget uses Yahoo API to get the results. Otherwise its a great plugin

You can try it out by visiting sikbox.com

The process of submitting your sitemap is quite simple. If you are a blogger user (blogger.com) the link to your sitemap would be your-blog-address.blogspotcom/atom.xml. For eg http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml

But theres one problem here. A standard sitemap must contain all the links in your blog. However if your blog is hosted on blogger, your sitemap will contain only the 26 most recent posts. But there is a simple workaround to this.

Suppose that your blog (taking an eg. myfreehouse.blogpsot.com) contains 200 posts. So for the first 100 you can use http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

For the next 100 you can use http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=100&max-results=200 and son on.

If you are a wordpress user you can just install the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress. Your sitemap will be auto-generated at your-blog-address.com/sitemap.xml. For eg. http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

Submitting your sitemaps:

So now to the main part Submitting your sitemaps. Just follow the following steps. Remember to replace the text in red with your sitemap’s address:

• Google

  You can follow this tutorial to submit your sitemap to Google.

• Yahoo

  1. http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml
  2. http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

• Bing

  1. http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml
  2. http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

• Ask

  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

If submit your sitempas to the major search engines, it is more likely that they will crawl your website more quickly. So do it! Hope you liked this tutorial. More to follow!

When I started out blogging a couple of years back, I used to just rant about stuff that didn’t matter at all. (I still do that though, keeps my mind fresh!) Back then there were few quality articles that would state what needs to be done to keep up a good blog. So here are the tips that I have compiled through my experience.

• Don’t get disheartened

  Its pretty easy for a first-timer to give-up quite fast. Even I did. But give it a little time. My first blog didn’t even have 20 regular visitors for the first 6 months!

  Even if people don’t come to your blog initially, they will do so later. Just blog dude, no worries.

• Post regularly

  One mistake that most bloggers tend to do is to post about 10-20 posts within the first month, and then only update it like once in 2-3 weeks. Fresh content is what search engines look for. The more fresh your content is, the more will be the people to come to your blog.

• Find your niche

  What’s a niche first of all? Well basically its a category (of a particular product or service) that you would want to focus your attention on. For eg. TWR is focused on the tech niche.

  This is a pretty tricky step in any bloggers life. Its okay if you start out with a broad niche like tech, but as you go further along you need to figure out what your good at, and focus your attention towards that. The more you focus on a single niche, the more great content you can generate.

• Build a community

  Never ever leave your visitors high and dry! Your blog readers are everything to you. Reply to their comments, provide email or RSS-based subscription available for your visitors to follow your blog are among certain things you can do.

  If you can, then building a forum and providing support to them is also a good idea.

• Submit your site map to Google, Yahoo, Bing

  Well it all comes down to one thing, Blog Marketing. If you don’t market it well, you don’t get anything good in return. If you follow the above steps religiously the majority part of your marketing process is covered.

  Submitting site maps is also one great method to increase your organic search ratings. You can read this tutorial on how to submit your site map to the main search providers.

Well hope you liked these tips. I’ve followed them, and tasted success for sure. How about you?