Another study that I decided to do when I was checking out my results on search engine traffic on Balkhis. I realized since last month, I have made a significant increase on my Search engine traffic. In this case when I am saying Search Engine traffic, I am basically saying Google traffic. Well, I am sure you are interested in knowing the stats, so let me start with that.

Total Google Hits on Balkhis

Comparison of Image Search and Total

These traffic stats are from before and after the new design. Now you are probably wondering what changed in Balkhis. Well maybe Google just started loving me more because I was being a good kid writing quality content. Or maybe some of my tricks that I was trying worked.

Site load time was not the only issue with my previous design. There were a lot more to it that I changed. So hold tight while I cruise you through my journey.

Design Optimizations

In my previous designs, I was not using my heading tags very well. Content was not organized very well either. There was too much clutter in my header, so it took google bot a while to get to my content, therefore it couldn’t index everything like it was suppose to. So I cleared up the clutter in my header still a lot going on there right now, but there was a lot more before. Next thing I did was refined the use of my heading tags (<h2><h3>) through out the post titles, and inside the posts as well.

Before, my website didn’t look so good in google cached. What I mean was, it didn’t look like how it looks to users in main browsers. I don’t know how much of the effect that had, but I fixed that issue. I organized the content through out the site well. I also made image implementation in the content better than before.

Next thing that I did was I improved the navigation through out the site highlighting the important categories by putting them in the home page content area, where as others stayed in the sidebar. I also added one of the important things to my post and that was Bread Crumbs, so below each single post page, you should see a breadcrumb which gives you a path to where you are. I also added rel tags through out the site. Now what do I mean by rel tags? For example, in my profiles link I added rel=”me”. For Uzzz Production, I added rel=”designer”. We all know that there are rel=”nofollow” and such tags, but I got creative and made up my own tags. No where in an SEO book says that this type of creativity harms anything, but I said what the heck lets try it. It worked….

Lets move on towards how did I optimize my images.

Image Optimizations

I optimized my images. Jeez you all can see that through the page load time. No image size is not the only thing guys. I added alt tags through out the site. But you guys are wondering, I had those before too. Yes I did have them before, but before it was to satisfy w3 markup. So often, I left my alt tags blank. But this time, I can say that I have nice coders in the house We had a good talk about laziness, and avoiding those. So we took care of that problem. Another issue was that my last design wasn’t using name for images. I mean real names. Before it was names generated from Photoshop such as index_01 and so on. This time, I decided to change those to appropriate names such as logo, and each. Having a keyword name in the images, helped the ranking.

Next thing I did with images, that I started using images more often. Didn’t you notice that. Yes me too. One because my readers liked it. Two because google liked it. Hey if that kills two birds with one stone, I am all for it. By having more images, I increased my chances of getting indexed more.

Did I do any extra promotions? No, I didn’t. Actually I cut down my commenting on other blogs. Mainly because I was busy, but also it helped me because when I did reply I was posting even better comments. I focused on writing better content. Hence, I got more backlinks. But that is just normal as your blog grows and get more credibility you will get more backlinks, but the design changes are necessary.

So perhaps people who were thinking that design was not important in coding think again. By having such a great outcome, It increased my love toward magazine style themes even more. Heck I even wrote a post about What, When, Whys of magazine style themes at John Chow’s Blog.

I think that is where future of the blog is shifting towards and we will see more and more blogs turning that way as time progresses. If you want to switch to that direction and get an awesome SEO Friendly design for your blog. Contact Uzzz Productions. Or you can contact me through this blog.

Did you ever wonder which blog posts get the most traffic? Well, I have in the past. And after I tried out various different types of post and analyzing my stats, I have came to the conclusion about which type of blog posts get you the most traffic. The most important thing you need to consider when taking anyone’s study on this idea is that in various niche, the results will vary.

So as I want my blog to grow just like the rest of us, I began to wonder what type of articles should I write? Well which ones get the most traffic. If I am getting traffic, it means I am getting linked from a lot of places. People are liking the post thats why they are mentioning it. So I started analyzing my stats and after doing my report these are my results.

List of Resources

After analyzing all the posts that I have written on Balkhis, List of resources seem to do very well. Resource lists are very general topic that you can write about that targets your audience as a whole rather than a niche (for example all webmasters rather than just bloggers). Now the biggest example of this can be seen at Smashing Magazine. I won’t link to any specific post because there are too many. But just because of their awesome resource lists and content, they have over 100k subscribers. But it is my case study, so here is the post on Balkhis that is a good example of Resource List.

Speed up your Designing with these 50 Awesome Shortcuts

An advantage of these type of resource posts are that they attract a lot of Social Media Love. Thats why, this post has received 15,725 views since the day it was posted.

Tips and Advices

Useful tips and advices are the second most popular in my category. Simply because your readers like to see what you are doing. Not just your readers, but a lot of other people as well. Why? Because these are very straight forward, so the reader know exactly what they are expecting from this article. I don’t know how many of you remember but I wrote a post on Balkhis:

13 ways I promoted my Blog to success

This post single handedly generated 34,517 views since it has been posted. Now this post is also a social media lover. Specially on forums. People really want to know what you are doing. Specially if you are sharing some of your insight secrets. They love it. Therefore posts like this were a killer success on Balkhis. Which explains Karma.. Be Nice to others and give them tips, you get lots of new subscribers and more traffic.

Anything that sounds good

These posts are very hard to come by and are solely dependent on what type of audience you have. Just have a killer headline. It is a gift that people have. Some can come up with these super fast while others have to brain storm for 15 minutes to 1 hour to come up with a decent title. But if you want any of the social media love, you need to have a decent title on your post. Something that people wants to know. Tell them that. An example of a killer title post on Balkhis would be

Killing a Giant Lion Turtle with your Site Load Time

This post above has received 7980 views since the day it was posted. Not that long ago. Anything that sounds really good will get tons of social media love from Digg, Stumbleupon and more.

Best of Lists

Best of Lists usually come toward the end of the year, but thats only if your category is by year. But the word Best attracts audience in the social media which is the main source of sudden high traffic. People want to know the BEST, so they will visit your site. They will either like it or not but you should let them decide it. Just put your 110% in the post. I made a post like this in early days of Balkhis which still generates me a good amount of traffic

Best Design Practices of RSS and Free Icon sets collection

This one was posted back in April, so I added up the views. It has received 43,032 views since the day it has been posted. Basically my point is that these type of posts will keep getting traffic even when they are outdated because it have the word Best in it.

Popular Point of View

People like to know what you think about an important issue. So those tend to grab attention of new readers from Social Media as well as search engines. This type of post grab both positive and negative attention. Some who support you will link to you in a good way. Or those who are against you will link you anyways.

Host Gator committing a federal offense?

Try to avoid this route because it can seriously take you down the whole unless you do it properly. I don’t like to flame people or companies, but this was just one of the times that I chose to do so because my client was the victim. Since Apr. 2 this post has generated 65,291 views.

That was result of my case study. Reference that I used was Balkhis.com You are very welcome to share your own ideas here.