Driving Traffic to Your Website

For State Level Environmental Organizations

Ways to Drive Traffic

Search Engines Social Media Blogs Email Lists

Search Engines: Some Perspective

The Big Three - 90%

The Big One – 60%

Roughly 10B

Search Engines: How do they Work? Index

Spiders

Page RankCheck your pagerank:http://pr.blogflux.com/

Learn more about pagerank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

SERPs

Potential Traffic from Search Sky is the limit From 0-1,200/day in 9 months

Three Strategies

For Driving Traffic from Search Engines

Content

Technical Setup

Outreach

Content should be…

Timely

Updated Regularly - Spiders

High Quality – For Humans

Linkbait is Good - Lists, Statistics, Humor 36 Million Americans are Living in Poverty

Content should also…

Include appropriate keywords

Keyword Analyzerhttps://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Global Warming vs. Climate Change

Why Analyze Keywords?

Tools for Developing a Keyword List

SEO tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Keyword Analyzer https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Current Search Engine Traffic

See which Keywords you are currently using http://seokeywordanalysis.com/seotools

What would you like people to be searching for when they find your site?

SEO Tool Screenshot

Technical

Make sure you don’t have any broken linkshttp://validator.w3.org/checklink

Name pages and images correctly Name internal links appropriately Have as many internal links as possible These are just basics, learn more:

http://www.wordsinarow.com/seo-technical-points.html

Outreach

Generating high-quality incoming links Similar Sites with High Pagerank Web directories Press release syndication services

High Quality Incoming Links

.gov and .edu domains are ideal Sites that rank well for your keywords

Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_organizations#North_America

Similar Organizations Blogs Other High Traffic Sites

Especially when you choose the hypertext

Web Directories

Like the phone book, but there are hundreds of them…

Google Yahoo MSN/Live The Open Directory Project Alexa NetInsert Do an Addurl search on Google

Add Your URL to Google

Press Release Syndication

Variety

Purpose

Make sure you always include a link back to your website, preferably to a specific page that is relevant to the release

Free Press Release Distribution

PR Web I NewsWire PR Log FPR 1888 Here are some other great services:

http://mashable.com/2007/10/20/press-releases/

I Newswire Press Release Submission

In Review

The most important thing to search engines is the number and quality of incoming links to your site. Three sources for these are similar websites, link directories and press release syndication services.

People will find your website on search engines by searching for specific keywords and search phrases. Once you have determined which keywords you want to focus on you can optimize specifically for those words both by modifying your content and by making technical changes to your website.

Social Media Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people

use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.

User Generated Content – Little or no editorial control

People no longer rely exclusively on traditional media for their news and information

Find your audience where they already are, go where they go

Comparison with NYT and WaPo

Even the NY Times is participating Blogrunner 50 Blogs

Blogrunner

Reach of Social Media

Types of Social Media

Social NewsDigg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Mixx, Hugg*

Social NetworkingFacebook, Myspace, Change, Twitter

Social BookmarkingDelicious, Furl, Simpy, Google Bookmarker

Social News What are Social News sites?

How do they work?

The three best general interest social news sites are Reddit, Digg, and Stumbleupon. The best social news site specifically for environmental issues is Hugg.

For a list of other social news sites that can be of use to nonprofits and foundations, please visit http://thehatchergroup.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/social-media-sites-of-value-to-nonprofits-and-foundations/

Digg.com – Categories

State Specific Issues on Digg

Driving Traffic with Social Media

Sources of Traffic – 2 Months

Hugg.com

Popular Stories on Hugg

Like GM, Ford Decides They’d Better Start Producing Smaller, More Fuel-Efficient Cars : Gas 2.0

Wildfire Ecology Part 3: Lighting Fires to Fight Fires

Want Your Family to go Green? Read Eco-Friendly Families

The Future of Green Air Travel, 9 Concepts on the Horizon...

Eco-friendly multi-zone stereo amplifier changes power consumption game and wins top award

Bush Administration Proposes Fire Sale of Rocky Mountains for Oil Shale Development

A new book about a personal journey into the heart of the global paper industry

Social Networking

Social Networking refers towebsites where individuals or organizations create aprofile in order to makeconnections, share linksand communicate

Social Networks

Myspace.com

Facebook.com

Twitter.com

NonProfit Pages

Message “Fans” Fans can “Share” the page Branding Links, Videos, Photos Legitimacy Friends can’t directly invite

Facebook Groups

Social Bookmarking Tagging

Searching

It is worthwhile to tag your best content on a variety of social bookmarking sites

Resources, lists, documents, etc.

Large spike in traffic is possible, but unlikely

Mostly useful for attracting people who are very interested and for generating links with keywords of your choice

Social Bookmarking Sites

Tons of them

Onlywire… the only social bookmarking siteyou need

Social Media in Review Social News - Social news refers to websites where users are

able to vote individual content submissions up or down. Anyone can submit content, and anyone can vote.

Social Networking - Social Networking refers to websites where individuals or organizations create a profile in order to make connections, share links and communicate.

Social Bookmarking – Sites where users can bookmark websites, tag them with keywords and search for other sites by keywords. Creates a “folksonomy” in which people, rather than editors, are choosing how content is labeled and discovered.

Blog Outreach Traffic

Survey

90% are voters, 81% have written an elected official and 78% have donated to a campaign or cause online in the last 6 months

More direct connection to readers. Unlike a faceless newspaper columnist, people feel a direct connection to bloggers they read.

For our purposes today, we’ll be talking about things you can do to get bloggers to link to your website and write about your issues.

Successful Blog Outreach

A few hours of personal emails to bloggers generated dozens of links to a No Child Left Inside Coalition video.

http://www.treehuggingfamily.com/no-child-left-inside/ http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2008/04/15/best-hill-environmental-rally-ever.aspx http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_outdoors/2008/04/kids-go-outside.html http://www.politickermd.com/editormd/1806/photos-sarbanes-takes-nature-bill-hill http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5157 http://eco-chick.com/2008/04/15/no-child-left-inside/ http://www.eenrblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=932 http://northtexaskids.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-child-left-inside-get-em-outside.html http://www.thelohasian.com/2008/04/no-child-left-inside-initiative.html http://www.theseminal.com/2008/04/14/the-need-for-environmental-education/ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/14/11929/1778/928/495362 http://www.rifuture.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=2377 http://greenerloudoun.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/kids-can-id-corporate-logos-but-not-nature/ http://green4u.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/commentary-environmental-education/ http://www.diversitytv.net/2008/get-em-outside/ http://randomvid.blogsome.com/ http://ummyeah.com/page/Get_em_Outside http://androidsinlove.com/site/?p=912 http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2008/04/who-knew---kids.html http://wolfman-k.com/post/31775593 http://justinclupper.blogspot.com/2008/04/should-brand-managers-be-so-proud.html http://ideonexus.com/2008/04/15/science-etcetera-marsday-20080415/ http://www.greenrightnow.com/2008/04/16/no-child-left-inside-act-gaining-momentum/

Finding Bloggers in your Subject Area

Technorati.comTracks over 100 million blogs

Authority

1 incoming link = 1 authority point

Any site with authority under 50 or so is not worth reaching out to, unless it is a very specific topic

Technorati

Go to http://technorati.com Search for a keyword related to your issue

(e.g. poverty), then click to “blogs” tab Your results page will show: 345 blogs about

poverty These are all bloggers who have self-

identified their site as an poverty blog Be Selective http://blogsearch.google.com is useful as well

Technorati Screenshot

Learn more:http://thehatchergroup.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/identifying-bloggers-in-your-niche/

Do these things…

Provide everything they’ll need to blog about your issue.

Two way street

Timely, relevant and interesting

Join the dialogue

Treat them as individuals.

Link to them, especially when they link to you

Learn more: http://thehatchergroup.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/nine-tips-for-reaching-out-to-bloggers/

Blog Outreach in Review

Unique and Growing Audience

Great for Search Engines

Use Technorati and Google Blogsearch to Find Appropriate Bloggers

Focus on the Relationship, Not the Link

Email Lists Driving Traffic to your Most Important Content

Timing

Subject Line

Above the Fold

Short

Teaser and Link

Example Email

Growing Your List

Beyond the Scope of this Presentation

Design

Viral Campaigns

List Rentals/Purchases

Related Blogs http://climateprogress.org/ http://www.desmogblog.com/ http://www.env-econ.net/ http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/ http://sustainablog.blogspot.com/ http://www.treehugger.com/ http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/ http://www.realclimate.org/ http://www.solveclimate.com/ http://energysmart.wordpress.com/

Short Term Things to Do

Exchange links with similar websites Analyze your site for keywords Submit your site to search engines and web

directories, using your keywords Start submitting content to social news

websites Start a group or page on Facebook Research relevant bloggers and start

reaching out to them

Longer Term Things to Do

Put together an email outreach strategy Develop lasting relationships with bloggers Develop a powerful profile on social news

sites Submit press releases to syndication services Keep generating those high-quality incoming

links

Learn More:

http://thehatchergroup.wordpress.com

Questions?

Contact Josh Nelson at The Hatcher Group

Phone: 301-656-0644Web: http://thehatchergroup.com

Email: josh@thehatchergroup.com