Getting traffic to your blog or website is a tough thing to do when you are starting out. If you have a constant  amount of traffic to your site, increasing your traffic is, yet,  a lot more challenging.

For example, when I first started my website at Elegante Entertainment, my traffic was between the 0 ( zero) to 10 visits per day range for a long time (approximately a month or two). However, This was not the Case for HoustonPartyBooths.com since I already knew what I was doing. I had a rush of over 70 visitors the first day I launched the website… Today it averages 16 unique visits a day (according to Google Analytics), which is better than an average website. Whereas, Elegante Entertainment is averaging 106 Unique Visits each day (according to Google Analytics).  Note: Google analytics is usually a lot lower than the actual number of actual visits. Since Google uses Javascript to track visitors, if a visitor disables Javascritpt on their browser Google cannot track them.

For those of you starting off and even some of you bloggers that are looking to increase your traffic, I am going to give you a great (super secret ninja power) Idea to try…

Before we continue, let me just say that lately, I’ve been looking for blogs to read. Blogs that are part of the whole wedding industry. I think that I can increase the traffic and readership to this blog by finding other great blogs, whether they are photographers, coordinators, cake designers, or any other type of wedding vendor, and placing some great comments on their blogs.

You know what I found out…

The majority of wedding vendors that have a blog, host it on an external domain… WHY?!?!?!?

I can think of 3 reasons; lack of knowledge, a very low self concept, and/or laziness…

Here’s why I think that…

Lack of Knowledge: Most people don’t understand how the search engines work. They don’t understand that when a search engine indexes a blog or a website, they associate a lot of the keywords with the website that it is hosted under. For example, most people get a blog at Blogger.com, typepad.com, blogspot.com, or wordpress.com. When they write good content and targeted keyword content, their host, Blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc…, gets all the credit for it. If you host your blog on your website, then guess what… All the great content and keywords are associated with your site. If you happen to write one article that brings tons of traffic, you will see right away that Google will move your website very high on the search results for many of your key words. It’s gradual and it’s exponential. It’s really amazing to see it happen.

People have a very low self concept: Most people want to try blogging but don’t immediately want it associated with their business website. They do it to ‘get started’ with blogging and to see if it ‘fits their lifestyle.’ I guess that’s a good idea, I am more of the type to say, if you are going to try something new, go at it 100% not just to see if you are going to like it. Right there, you are leaving a door open to fail. Never start something if you think it’s going to fail. Why even do it at all?

Laziness: Ok I am going to combine laziness with cheapness. Some people are too lazy to install a blog on their website host or don’t want to pay someone to do it for them. It’s so easy to just go to one of the free blogging hosts and sign up for an account there and start bloggin. I would avoid that at all costs and invest the money to install it on your own business domian name. The benefits are endless.

Back to the super secret tip I was going to tell you about…

The reason I went off in a tangent was because when you host your blog on an external host, you have so many limitations that you are unaware of and you will have a much harder time increasing traffic to your website and to your blog. It’s almost as if you created an extra job for yourself to do; drive traffic to your website and drive traffic to your blog. Additionally, this super secret tip you cannot perform if you don’t have your blog installed on your own web host or your business website…

Before you proceed, you must have already installed the Google Analytics Tracking code, if you have not already done so, please do so before you can continue. Get an account at google, if you don’t already have one, log into your Google Analytics Account and get the tracking code. This post will not go into detail on how to do that, maybe later I will do a quick step by step process on how to do it, but there are already many articles out there on how you can add the code to your blog.

So here are the steps for this one Idea on how to grow your traffic…

1. Log into your Google Analytics Program.

2. Change the date range to go as far back as you can. I would set it to start at the beginning of the calendar year or to cover one entire year.

3. Select the ‘Traffic Sources’ link on the left hand side and Select to View

4. Select to display the top 100 Keywords

5. Select the Keyword(s) you want to target.

6. Write an article geared around those keywords. People are landing on your website or blog looking for information related to those keywords. Give them what they want… the #1 rule in selling.

7. Watch your traffic grow for those keywords over the next few months.

If you do this one action, over and over you will: 1.) Target traffic that is related to your specific division of the wedding industry, 2.) Get some great ides for writing more articles, 3.) Grow your web traffic, therefore increasign the number of inquiries on your website.

If you notice above, you can see that I’ve targeted 10 new ideas for posts on my blog. All of them have the potential to bring in the traffic that I want… Brides and Quinceaneras.

Happy Bloggin!

–
|0| Simply Frank |0|
Blogger Wedding DJ in Houston

Why? u ask?

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who also happens to also be in the wedding industry. She stated that this month (September ‘08) was really, really slow for them. Their bookings were down a noticeable difference from previous months. She also stated that a few other of her wedding vendor friends (2 photographers and 1 reception venue owner) had a slow month of September. I was puzzled because for me, this is a normal/average month.

So I decided to compare this years 2008’s online traffic with that of last year’s. I logged onto my  statistics portion of my website and saw the same trend going on for this year as last as far as online traffic goes.

It, of course, was consistent whit their statements. September is not necessarily the slowest month for online traffic, August is. September is the month that online traffic starts to pick up. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the long summer vacations and getting back to school, but there is a small dip on my online traffic during the month of august. Which makes sense, most people do not want to pick September as the month they are getting married. I believe it’s because of Back to school, because they will have to spend their entire summer finalizing their wedding, and because of the expenses most people have during the month of September.

The Website Traffic Numbers

So here is the graph for traffic visitors logged through google’s Analytics program.

If you pay close attention, you can see the same trends from early in the year 2007 show up in the year 2008. Even though my traffic grew overall this year by 100%, the trends remained the same. During January of 2007  there was a huge spike of visitors, the same as you see for January 2008. March had a spike in both 2007 and 2008. July had a spike both years as well. Now if you notice in 2007, August was low then September had a slight gain, and October just exploded with traffic.

This month you should start preparing your website for that explosion in traffic. Fix you landing pages, Prepare an email autoresponder, place an online form on your website, get started bloggin, aim for those keywords, rank high-er on the search engines… do something anything to get as much of these brides/clients as you can. There is an upcoming opportunity and you should be doing something, the slightest thing to get a piece of that. Because if the trend is the same as last year, and I’m sure it will, you have until the end of this month to capture all that traffic and maximize your profits from your website.

Happy Bloggin!

–
Francisco H. Perez
Bloggin Professional DJ in Houston

Wedding Online Marketing!!!

The best thing that could have EVER happened to my Houston DJ Business

How did my business become successful? Well if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that online marketing is the bread and butter of my business. The bloodline that keeps my (bad) spending habits alive.

However, it was pretty hard to find the correct formula. A formula that I have worked on and (I think) perfected over the last few years.

When you look at it, it’s pretty simple and easy for anyone to implement. Don’t we all love that word: EASY(sarcasm).

Main Objective: Gain the trust of your brides/website visitors and Convert them into Interested Clients. AKA Website Conversion.

What I am going to dissect or explain in detail here the actual website itself in hopes that you can make some few changes to your website, if it’s not bringing you any more clients, so that you can start capturing those brides/clients you never knew visited or viewed your wedding vendor web page.

What I will ignore here, or not cover, is how to get those brides / clients to your website, that will be covered completely separate. We just want to focus on how to direct your prospects through from the moment they arrive to the moment they become your clients.

So here is the formula of my DJ in Houston Wedding Vendor Websites Success.

1. The first thing you need is an aesthetically pleasing website.

   There is nothing that will kill trust or conversion faster than an ‘ugly’ website. Spend some time, money and energy designing a nice looking website, logo and look for your business. Your website more and more is becoming your centralized point of marketing. Just to clarify, a website is not a business, it’s a marketing tool. Make it look good and make it fit all your your other marketing materials. Jennifer Schafer with Premier Bride Magazine and Brandit Bandits in Houston is an advocate of creating an image, a brand that your clients can buy. Also consider the question, how many clients do I LOSE because of my website?

2. The Second thing you need is Compelling, Creative Content.

   The WEB is known as the “information superhighway.” Realize that brides visit your website looking for specific information that relates to their upcoming wedding. They want to be informed, they want to know what you can do for them, how you can take the worry away and create their beautiful wedding day, you need to gain their trust, they need to be convinced, they want to make the best choice available to them. Arrange your content to gain the trust of the bride and then drive, push them, convince them them to call you or submit their information into your contact form. A lot of wedding vendors with the most beautiful websites fail in achieving this. It is not easy, however, there are techniques and websites devoted to teaching people to create compelling sales copy on your website. Ask yourself, what do I offer the bride, what is the bride looking for, how do I help her find it, what is important; in the mind of the bride, what are some common concerns, etc… Then you set to create content on your website that answers those questions with how YOU or YOUR service can help them. NOTE: A reader pointed out something to me, that I already knew, but ignored for a long, long time (as you probably do too).

   Hi DJ! I have a couple of suggestions for you. First, put some contact information on your blog so readers can contact you privately. Second, use spell checker on your posts. I found typos in both of your first two posts that I read and then I lost interest in reading any more. Typos undermine your credibility as an expert. Good luck!– Tracy

Happy Bloggin!

–
DJ Francisco

Last month, June 24th 2008, I wrote an article entitled:How POWERFUL can your Blog be?

Pretty much I wanted to show you how powerful blogs are and how much Google loves them.

As a marketer, your objective is to get your logo or your website in front of as many brides/customers as you can, where ever they may be or go. I know that a lot of brides use the internet to find information about whatever they may need at that time.

So I got an idea to get in front of the brides that would attend the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston. I knew they would be using key words such as “bridal extravaganza,” “Houston bridal extravaganza,” “Bridal Show July Houston.” So I wrote an article on my DJ in Houston Website and called it: Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show – July 2008.

It immediately ranked extremely high (1st page results in Google.com) in the search engines for terms related to the Bridal Extravaganza Show. I am talking about, hours after the post, I was indexed and ranked on the first page of Google for most of those keywords.

Luckily I use a visitor tracking program on my website and here are the results of the additional traffic and the keywords used to access my website.

For a Complete list of all the Google Tracking Details from my DJ in Houston Website Download the PDF Report Below.
2008_07_30-google-details-fhpentertainment

This report show ALL the traffic that came into my website as a result of Google.com only. In the month of July, Google.com provided me with 52% of my total monthly traffic, Yahoo 18%, and MSN/Live with 6% of my total monthly traffic. At the time of this post, July 30th, 2008 12:00 pm Central time, I’ve had a total of 3,651 visitors to my website this month. Note: This tracking program will count one person as 1 visitor for each day he or she visits the website. EX. if you visit it today, it will count you as 1 for the entire day (no matter how many times you return), if you visit it tomorrow it will count you again, so you become 2 visitors.

Now, I understand, these are just traffic numbers, they really don’t mean nothing to you until I report income as a result of that traffic.

All I can answer to that is that 85% of my DJ Business Income comes as a result of my website. I have one Ad in Premiere Bride Magazine, and that is ALL the advertising I do. Even that traffic is directed to my website.

Happy Bloggin!!

–
DJ Francisco
Blogger and DJ in Houston

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Are you ready to work 2 (TWO) hours a day?

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The Doors are already open for Yaro’s Blogmastermind Program, where he will take you by the hand and show you how he has done, and more importantly how easy it is for you to do it.

As an incentive for being a loyal BlogginforWeddingVendors.com reader, I am giving away one month free for one lucky reader who registers through this LINK-Bogmastermind Coaching Program.

If you sign up and pay for the entire course up front, you will save $85 dollars, and if you win the raffle, you will save a total of $182.

Head on over to Blogmastermind and get all the information about the program.

–
DJ Francisco

P.S.
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I ask you to just take one quick look at his website, read the information he has about his program and you can decide if this course is right for you.

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