Should I create a blog?

[meSingh]

I have a topsite with premium keyword rich domain "ForumTopSite.com". It ranks on the first page when someone searches for a popular keyword "forum topsite" but still i get a lot less traffic what it should get.

I am thinking about creating a blog in my topsite with the same look and in a sub-directory like http://www.forumtopsite.com/blog and make some keyword rich posts over it for SEO.


I am also thinking about creating a new contest on it and the no 1 forum will get a banner space + 1 dofollow link for 1 month.


Will it make any difference? Or shall i do something else? and Is there any other type of contest that i can create? in which users will be more interested

 

[froggyboy604]

I'm not sure if Keyword rich posts are as useful as in the past since sometimes it is hard for readers to read posts which are full of complicated keywords, and sound un-natural with phrases like "Windows XP PC Computer Desktop Tower Personal Computer". Users might be less likely to social bookmark, +1, Like, or Retweet your posts if they sound un-natural, and are hard to read.

Plus, having too many keywords stuff together in a post may make some search engine bots think you are keyword stuffing which can hurt your search engine traffic instead of getting more traffic from search according to some posts on the internet like http://www.rsspieces.com/how-to-avoid-g ... d-stuffing .

If you have a lot of valuable content about forum promotions, forum top sites and your posts are easy to read for newbies to more advance users, having a blog may help you get more traffic from search, and people who link back to your blog, or returning visitors.

Blogs take a long time to gain an audience, and traffic in my experience, and require a lot of hard work, and promotion on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, other social networks, and blog commenting on related blogs.

A static regular website maybe better if you don't plan on posting content on a weekly or monthly basis about forum top sites

 

[David]

I have a topsite with premium keyword rich domain "ForumTopSite.com". It ranks on the first page when someone searches for a popular keyword "forum topsite" but still i get a lot less traffic what it should get.

For you, it highly ranks for those keywords because you've searched for it many times or at least have used the site far more often than 99.99999% of the world. The computer caches your search and usage and remembers this so next time you search, you are able to access it quickly. For me, the main page doesn't even come up in the first 10 pages of a Google search. So a "lot less traffic" is probably accurate in your case.

From experience (I had a reasonably active topsite which did genuinely rank in the top 10), topsites won't be a big hit. You might think so in the first month (I managed for a year) but it will eventually be a waste of time, in all seriousness.

I guess a blog could help with activity, but don't expect people to be browsing a topsite in their spare time. That won't happen, so don't expect great traffic to come. You need people to register and help you gain traffic. The blog will only do so much in gaining traffic, but it's a dying niche/concept when you put things into perspective.

 

[PoBoy]

I agree with David. All strong points. Try using a site like http://www.scroogle.org when checking your own sites SERPs via searching to remove your personalized cookies from the equation.

On the topic, I always liked to attach a wordpress blog to my forum, even if I didn't expect anyone to really read it. It does help for catching some SEO results when setup right. You could even outsource article writing for pretty cheap, or even here on the forum for some FP points.

 

[meSingh]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

What i am am thinking is creating blog and writing a post every week that will be a keyword rich post but at the same time will also be a informative like-- What is a TopSite?
How to increase Google Rank?
etc etc.

It will make my site rank on the first page of google and will also increase traffic (That`s a assumption).

What you think about this?

 

[David]

Worth a try, but in all seriousness, there are many sites which will give you that information, so you need to target your niche indefinitely.

 

[meSingh]

Worth a try, but in all seriousness, there are many sites which will give you that information, so you need to target your niche indefinitely.

Yes, I know that. I will be targeting only on my sites niche 😉

 

[Poopy Head]

If you like babbling off about the days of your life to all the people in the world who actually care about it. I'm not forcing you to, but if you're into that kind of stuff, blogging is your thing. Blogging is today's diary pretty much, except it's not really that secure.... just saying you don't have to put things in there too personal.

Take what I said and if your answer to that is no, a blog isn't for you. 😉

 

[meSingh]

If you like babbling off about the days of your life to all the people in the world who actually care about it. I'm not forcing you to, but if you're into that kind of stuff, blogging is your thing. Blogging is today's diary pretty much, except it's not really that secure.... just saying you don't have to put things in there too personal.

Take what I said and if your answer to that is no, a blog isn't for you. 😉

Sorry if i am wrong. But reading your post, it looks like you didn`t readied the above posts correctly 😕

 

[Poopy Head]

Well okay. If you need any help and you were wrong in the near future I guess you can read that again.

 

[David]

If you like babbling off about the days of your life to all the people in the world who actually care about it. I'm not forcing you to, but if you're into that kind of stuff, blogging is your thing. Blogging is today's diary pretty much, except it's not really that secure.... just saying you don't have to put things in there too personal.

Take what I said and if your answer to that is no, a blog isn't for you. 😉

Blogs have expanded far beyond the day-to-day diary. Smashing Magazine is one massive blog, but it doesn't babble about their lives; it discusses web design concepts and provides resources for its followers. You would be extremely mistaken to assume blogs are just for diary type entries.

 

[Naiwen]

spoken truly, david. I keep an intimate diary, but that's my own choice. Because I like vent off all the pent up irks and frustrations. But yeah, these blogs don't always talk about private lives. They will also talk about foods, about coding, tutorials. Will give others useful tips and tricks for how to fix things on a computer. A blog can be about anything really.

 

[froggyboy604]

Blogs are probably best for sites which want to be a daily online magazine or newspaper style website to talk about a certain category of products and services like electronics, international news, celebrity gossip, web design, and more.

Popular daily magazine and news blogs
http://perezhilton.com/
http://gawker.com/
http://gizmodo.com/

Celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Felicia Day and other celebs are also using a blog to talk about their daily life/career, but their blogs are usually shorter in my experience, and most of their posts are usually already posted on their Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace in my experience of staying informed on my favorite celebrities via social media and their sites. I think they just have blogs just to inform fans who don't use Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace.

http://www.mileycyrus.com/#blog
http://taylorswift.com/media/photos/17363
http://feliciaday.com/blog

Blogging might be hard to get notice and a large audience for the average webmaster who posts only a few posts or less a month since there is so much competition from bloggers who make it their job to post 5-10 or more post a day almost everyday, or blogs like techcrunch has a lot of writers posting on one blog, so it may be easier to make an excellent static site like http://htmldog.com/ http://2createawebsite.com/ with a large amount of informative and unique content, and promote it on a lot of social networks, social bookmarking sites, YouTube, forums, blog commenting, and word of mouth.

 

[Victor Leigh]

A blog, from what I understand, needs a constant flow of content. That is the first requirement. The next thing is that the content has to be of quality so that your readers will keep coming back.

If you are not able to write quality articles for your blog all the time, there is a shortcut. Use The Guardian News Feed. You are allowed to publish their articles on condition that you put their link in there. The Guardian has thousands of quality articles on just about anything.

This way you can have a constant flow of quality articles on your blogsite.

 

[Harvey M.]

It will make a difference, but only if you're 100% dedicated to it. It takes a lot of effort and time to run a blog and forum at the same time. A blog is usually a dedicated job - those that end up successful anyway.