This is exciting!

For the longest time I couldn’t figure out how
to break much over the 1,000,000 mark on
the Alexa Rankings of my blogs.

Until I found this secret method…

I’ve never seen this mentioned anywhere!

So, I claim this as an original discovery that
is going to boost my internet marketing
capacity – and the additional money that I will be
able to make with this.

I bet you didn’t know that QUALITY content can
significantly influence how well
Alexa ranks your blog.

Well, watch this video for proof, and discover how you can pierce
thresholds on Alexa that you did not dream of ever reaching -
with very little traffic, and no cost (except the cost of brain cells
needed to make your content engaging…)

Have you been paying attention to your blog’s Alexa Ranking?

Leave a comment and share your experiences and tips for getting a boost from Alexa!

25 Things About Me – “you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask…”

I got tagged to do this by the Alex Jeffreys coaching students community, specifically by Julie Newman one of the most creative bloggers I know. So here goes…

5 Things Personal

I was born and raised in Germany (which makes English not my native language)

I grew up near Cologne, Germany

I met my wife, Nancy, who is from La Jolla, CA, in Salzburg, Austria at a “Sound of Music” dinner show that was put on for American and Japanese tourists (she was a singer, I played the piano)

We migrated to Los Angeles in 1996

We have 7 children, 4 girls and 3 boys (current ages 13 to almost 1)

5 Things Interests and Likes

I like to travel to Umbria, Tuscany and Greece (but haven’t for the past 15 years…)

I love music, especially Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, and Brahm’s Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, and Glen Gould’s way of playing Bach

[Afterthought: Come to think of it, pretty much ALL 8th Symphonies are quite extraordinary and most enjoyable (Bruckner, Mahler, Shostakovitch... ]

I like to try something new (every day)

I like to lead and teach, especially groups of young musicians

I like good conversations and visits with friends

5 Things Professional/Career

I have a fairly large list of film and TV credits as music editor, orchestrator and score conductor

I am a “church musician”, and have played the organ almost every Sunday for the past 27 years with very few interruptions

I have been on the Internet since 1994. My first “commercial” domain was audiohost.com which I envisioned to be a hosting service to make it easy for people to add audio to their web sites (talk about cutting edge back then…)

I have been a real estate investor since 2002 – ups and downs included (CaWholesaleDeals.com)

I have been an information marketer since 2007

5 Things Ambivalent and Dislikes

I don’t like negative people who are always looking for reasons why something won’t work

I really don’t like the ups and downs of testing, rejection and mediocrity in marketing. I’ve coined the phrase “Success looks different from the inside than from the outside.”

I like technology, but dislike having to learn something new all the time just for staying on top of things.

I don’t like to do things on my own – but it’s hard for me to consistently step out of my personality to seek help, collaboration and partnerships.

I find most “25 Things About Me” from other people a lot more interesting than my own

5 Random Things

I used to run a couple of my own radio shows in a local radio station in Bavaria (“Radio Untersberg”), and did some cutting edge stuff there, like interview abused teenagers and run their voice through a special effect device for identity protection, having indy bands play live in the tiny studio, or airing a fairly long interview in English (with German translation of course) with Jim Dine about his “Untersberg” paintings when they were exhibited in Salzburg…

I like my son’s (Lukas) videos on youtube -

I really enjoy that I can be around my kids and family most of the time, and work out of my home office. It’s fantastic and a true blessing to see them grow and develop.

I can be persistent and stubborn (2 sides of the same coin to me), but at times persistence competes with eagerness to explore new things.

I enjoy being Catholic (although I didn’t grow up that way), and recently started to go to daily Mass (but I need a nap on Saturday afternoon to make up for that…

Finally I’m getting around to post this video on the blog and showcase some of the Blog Traffic Getting Results from the methods that I talked about in the USTREAM show.

Since I started looking into different aspects of “blog traffic getting” because of Alex Jeffreys coaching program, I found out interesting aspects about both “schools of thought”.

But before I get into that, go ahead and watch this “bonus episode” of “Blog Traffic Getting With Thomas”…

Resources:

Jeff Johnson’s Traffic Getting Plug-In

SENuke Free Trial

About the “schools of thought” on blog traffic getting.

Basically, the two schools of thought are
the “Content School” and the “Traffic School”

In a very simplified way, you could say that the Content School has
a “build it and they will come” philosophy.

They say things like “don’t bother getting traffic before you have
a whole bunch of valuable content”, like Michael Hyatt here.

With this comes the tendency to rely on the blogging community, and on
participating actively in it for eventually getting targeted eyeballs to
look at your valuable content.

Blogging in this philosophy is a focused and centered activity within
social networking, and monetization occurs mostly through
contextually served, socially relevant display ads.

These types of bloggers might also be great targets for
JV proposals if you have a highly relevant product or service
that has social proof and is engaging for the specific audience which
may be subscribers to blog updates via email or RSS feed.

The “Traffic School”

The Traffic School on the other hand is focused on
market research, testing offers, finding “buying keywords” etc.

They like to know for sure that they’re going to be able to
monetize the niche and possibly build a list before they go through
the trouble of creating a bunch of stuff.

In a sense they look at content as something that can help them to
“drill down” into a niche that they’ve found to be highly profitable.

Both schools are really interesting to discover and learn more
about. But before I go on further, I’d like to know your take and
opinion. What’s your experience, which school do you belong to,
and why? Please leave a comment below!

Time to take some account of what happened
since the past episode of Blog Traffic Getting with Thomas…

I have to tell you, I found a great list of action steps and
principles that you can take to increase the traffic you are getting to your blog.

So many people seem to loose focus and track because
they just don’t think what they put up on their blog is
worth the effort (because nobody looks at it – aka no traffic).

Well, here is the cure!

Head on over to Gary Simpson’s blog and read about the
“7 Reasons Why Gary’s Blog Is So Popular”

The cool thing about these 7 reasons is that
you can without any difficulty translate them into your own
action plan that will force you to have similar results with
your blog as Gary has with his.

It’s simple! Is it easy? No, because it takes 3 things that
most people don’t have:

1. A Plan (but you have that now…just make it from Gary’s “7 Reasons”)
2. Commitment (lack of this often comes from not believing that it will work…see point 1)
3. Resilience (uh oh, big word… which here means just stick with the plan)

Watch for my next Blog Traffic Getting show on USTREAM. I will show you how I got
#3 and #4 positions  on Google for “blog traffic getting” in the middle of
Jeff Johnson’s Traffic Getting Launch, and Howie Schwartze’s “Apprentice 4″ Launch…
and how I didn’t make any money from it anyway.

Last, I’d like to give credit to Rob Canyon’s “Blog Copywriting Course” – see if you can
figure out how I used Rob’s secrets to
make this blog post more interesting…

And of course…engage and leave your comment below!

Did you know that Alexa actually has a ranking parameter that you can use to check how “engaging” your blog posts are?

It’s called “Time on Site”, and it measures how many minutes the average visitor to your site spends on your site per day. SO, when you focus on writing high quality, engaging content for your visitors, that would be a great parameter to keep an eye on – you’ll be surprised… Watch this now: