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Tips for boosting traffic to our blog?


youngfulltimers

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We are trying to aggressively post to our new blog, Young Fulltimers.com.

We are using all the basic social media to promote our postings, but we still need people to find us. We know there are plenty of young full-time RV travelers who would appreciate news relevant to them. Help us reach those people! We'd love to learn what other webmasters are doing to get exposure to their hard work! Thanks all.

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YoungFulltimers.com is dedicated to informing non-retired RVers who live on the road. This news-focused online publication should appeal to fulltimers of all ages.

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I would start by adding a "live" link to your blog in your signature line on this and any other forums that you frequent. I'll point out that most of us who keep either a blog or a website have links in our signature lines. The other thing that I'd advise is patience. As you develop your blog and get more content in it the readership will begin to increase.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

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Like Kirk said - time is the best thing that will bring people in. That assumes you do normal SEO and other things to maximize your visibility to the world. Probably the best thing you could do is to get established bloggers with similar type blogs to refer to you. That will increase your traffic more than any single thing you can do, and elevate you in the search engine returns.

Jack & Danielle Mayer #60376 Lifetime Member
Living on the road since 2000

PLEASE no PM's. Email me. jackdanmayer AT gmail
2016 DRV Houston 44' 5er (we still have it)
2022 New Horizons 43' 5er
2016 Itasca 27N 28' motorhome 
2019 Volvo 860, D13 455/1850, 236" wb, I-Shift, battery-based APU
No truck at the moment - we use one of our demo units
2016 smart Passion, piggyback on the truck
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See our website for info on New Horizons 5th wheels, HDTs as tow vehicles, communications on the road, and use of solar power
www.jackdanmayer.com
Principal in RVH Lifestyles. RVH-Lifestyles.com

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I read the RV blogs that post each & every day. I hate it when I go to a blog that hasn't been updated in a month. I end up not going to check those, only the daily ones. Dave

2006 Coachmen Aurora 36ft. Class A motor home. 2009 Honda CRV toad. "Snowbirds" apprx. 6 mos. each year. Travelling to the SW each winter than returning to Wi. each summer. Retired and enjoying our travels along with Buddy the cat.

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I would suggest concentrating on one venue for your blog rather than multiple venues such as you have ie; Facebook, website, where ever else. That will give you a bit more time to keep it current instead of not freshening the two I've mentioned in over 3 days. If you insist on multiple venues then consider each one a solo entity that focuses on the aspects of your story most pertinent to that particular venue and again - keep them fresh!

 

Its great to cross-link articles and forums as a supplement to your own content but it IS a supplement. Return traffic is dependent on building your own story, style and content and use the linking for emphasis.

 

Right now you are seeing an uptick in visits because you solicited input but you can only get away with that a couple of times before losing your audience entirely. Another churn factor is soliciting for input and then clearly not checking back which I've noticed is a fair assessment on the blog and your facebook page.

 

Just my opinion - you get what you paid for.

Berkshire XL 40QL

Camphosting and touring


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I read the RV blogs that post each & every day. I hate it when I go to a blog that hasn't been updated in a month. I end up not going to check those, only the daily ones. Dave

Most blogs allow you to follow by email so when a new post is available it is sent to your email. you don't have to keep checking. This works especially well when someone posts sporadically.

 

Sue

Sue and Paul- fulltimed 2009 -2015 with Dozer, our Gray Tuxedo cat

 2012 DRV Mobile Suites 36TKSB4 pulled by a 2020 F350 Platinum

Our "vacation home" : 2018 Arctic Fox 1150 truck camper

RIP Dozey

http://soos-ontheroad.blogspot.com/

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With your identity's having to be hidden is a detractor to me.

If your blog is interesting enough your followers will spread.

Is your blog going to help people or is it going to be story telling? I tend to read the blogs that I can learn things from.

 

Also, you clicked "Lifetime Member" on your profile. Knowing that is not the case you might want to un-click that box. Just a suggestion.

 

James

2024 GMC 3500HD DRW Denali Diesel

2019 Keystone Avalanche 396BH

USN Retired

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I agree with James that the "Him" and "Her" identity issue really depersonalizes the writing. Maybe you could use "pen names" instead? "Jack" and "Jill" for example, to my mind reads better then "Him" and "Her".

Dutch
2001 GBM Landau 34' Class A
F-53 Chassis, Triton V10, TST TPMS
2011 Toyota RAV4 4WD/Remco pump
ReadyBrute Elite tow bar/brake system

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Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. We've spent the last couple weeks reconsidering our timeline and are now prepared to depart by mid-year! That should allow us to reveal ourselves sooner (we are now less concerned about our employers learning our intentions), but I can understand why that might be a deterrent for everyday blog readers.

 

I'd like to get back to giving basic news/tidbits that are relevant to Young Fulltimers. I'm also working on my journalism project that will hopefully be the moneymaker for us during life on the road. I hope to be able to balance all this hard work...we shall see!

YoungFulltimers.com is dedicated to informing non-retired RVers who live on the road. This news-focused online publication should appeal to fulltimers of all ages.

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The key to lots of visitors to the blog is content. If people fine the site helpful or entertaining, they will return. But traffic doesn't happen over night but takes time to build. We started our site mostly for friends and family. Over the years it has built to where it sees bout 4k visits per month. Return visitors and visitors who quote you are very helpful.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

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Amazing to learn how consistency can earn thousands of hits per month. That shows me what an appetite there is for fulltiming content. Our goal has been and still is to bring something new to this already well-served niche. Cliche, I know.

YoungFulltimers.com is dedicated to informing non-retired RVers who live on the road. This news-focused online publication should appeal to fulltimers of all ages.

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Kirk I saw an old forum post of yours that talked about planning 15-20 years before hitting the road. I could not imagine going 15 more weeks without converting to the RV lifestyle. I'm sure the detailed planning paid off. We can only hope to improvise a bit to ensure our long-term future on the road.

YoungFulltimers.com is dedicated to informing non-retired RVers who live on the road. This news-focused online publication should appeal to fulltimers of all ages.

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Kirk I saw an old forum post of yours that talked about planning 15-20 years before hitting the road.

That early planning came about mostly due to contact with friends who did so and our envy! We first discussed it when we used to meet campground hosts for the US Forest Service in campgrounds that we visited regularly with our 4WD & popup as our boys were growing up. That was probably in the 70's but we really didn't begin to seriously talk of doing so until good friends retired and went on the road at age 56, at least 15 years before we followed in 2000. His health actually improved with his more relaxed lifestyle and the stories that they told each year when they passed through WY were an inspiration. We began to discuss the possibility of doing as they did at that time and also to read as much as we could find about the lifestyle. When we moved from WY to TX after the boys were all gone and I had only 11 years to qualify for an early retirement, we got pretty serious about planning for fulltime but really didn't commit fully until about 5 years out.

 

I encourage you to move ahead with your internet plans as new material is always a good thing! One thing that none of us long term RVers can do is to show the prospective of younger folks because things are always changing and things are quite different today from what we had to deal with. Many things do stay the same, but others are completely different today and so are social attitudes. I will be watching your progress with great interest! :D

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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You have a lot of whitespace along the right hand side of your blog. If you intend on "monetizing" your site with ads placed there you'll probably need a "real" IP address that reverses to your site's domain name not your host's domain name (ns808.dimedns.com).

 

If you're not ever going to run ads then you can fill in all that space with content.

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

1999 Jeep Wrangler, 4" lift and 33" tires

Raspberry Pi Coach Computer

Ham Radio

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You have a lot of whitespace along the right hand side of your blog. If you intend on "monetizing" your site with ads placed there you'll probably need a "real" IP address that reverses to your site's domain name not your host's domain name (ns808.dimedns.com).

 

If you're not ever going to run ads then you can fill in all that space with content.

 

WDR

Thanks for pointing that out, desert rat. That blank space bugs me as well. Of course I'd love to monetize the website in a future best-case scenario, but that is probably a few redesigns from now! I'll have to learn how to fill that space and make better use of my template. I'm very much still learning WordPress. I haven't made a website since the days of Angelfire.

YoungFulltimers.com is dedicated to informing non-retired RVers who live on the road. This news-focused online publication should appeal to fulltimers of all ages.

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Until you think of something better you could link into your photo album with a daily changing or random thumbnail selection. Not too many or you'll slow the page loading.

First rule of computer consulting:

Sell a customer a Linux computer and you'll eat for a day.

Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll eat for a lifetime.

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Tagging is not a bad idea but you'd see far more impact from working the tags into your page text, search engines have been discounting tags as spammers and scammers have been using them to skew search results.

 

Do the tags you want to get good search results for but don't go overboard. Print out the list of tags and go through your page content and mark off every one you find there.

 

Now go back and try to fit the other tags into your page, photo or link captions are good spots as can be some of the dead space down the sides, make your own mini-text ads for other pages on your site for an example. Mark off the tags you use that way and then rethink keeping the other tags as tags on that page.

First rule of computer consulting:

Sell a customer a Linux computer and you'll eat for a day.

Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll eat for a lifetime.

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  • 3 weeks later...

What platform are you using for your blog? If it's something like WordPress you can easily add a plugin for SEO to help you attract Google bots to scan your site. Social media page is good; do you ever interact and share with those in Facebook groups? Spreading the word on forums like this is good too. Who is your audience? I think that's the key... who do you want to read your blog and why? If your content is valuable, your target audience will naturally want to read it and share it with likeminded folks.

 

- good luck and happy RVing!

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