Victor, hello. Not so long ago noticed that yours cycling blog increased traffic, now it is about 6000 unique / day. I have never seen anything like this before, especially at first glance it seems, well, what you can write about bikes. AND at the same time, commenting is also good, obviously not strictly under search engines such a blog was made. Of course you have others there posts, about life, so to speak, but still I do not quite understand, as it happened. So I would like to ask you a couple questions.
Hello, Oleg, hello, Daria and Egor, hello readers life-trip. Thank you for the invitation, I will be happy to answer all questions. For I want to start a little boring clarification – I, rather, still a site, not a blog. A blog is a web log, a weblog where The main part of the material is devoted to the author and his life. I have, probably, and ten percent will not be typed such articles. Therefore, I think that my site is an edition aimed at visitors, there is – useful information, instructions, explanations, motivation and etc.
A sharp jump and attendant 6000!
1) First, tell me who you are and where are you from?
I live in Estonia, in the city of Tallinn, here I was born and raised, according to nationality Russian. I clarify, because I noticed that citizens RF look at us, former compatriots, as on some strange foreigners, streamlined calling Balts. At the very In fact, we are absolutely the same Russian people, we live almost 100 percent in the Russian infopol, listen to Russian music and sit on Russian sites.
On the Internet, I am known for keeping a website dedicated to the spread of the cycling virus. 
In other words, I am the author sufficiently well-known in narrow circles of the resource, the main subject whose – bike and travel. Mission little by little implemented, more and more positive feedback – people find for themselves a new hobby, someone changes their worldview, and someone and the whole way of life.
I’m sure your readers are full of cyclists, just they don’t know it yet. A bicycle is such a thing that just can not not like it: a person sitting down as an adult in the saddle, after a long break, is delighted because it is freedom in its purest form.
Many do not even realize that an ordinary person, not an athlete, can easily travel 60-100 km per day and not really get tired. it provides fantastic travel opportunities for people with any wealth. For example, I traveled more than once with a budget of just five euros a day in Western Europe, and beautifully themselves felt.
Imagine, June, Italy, you roll along a narrow provincial the road, the vineyards to the right, the field to the left where the sheep are grazing. Birds are singing, sheep bells are ringing, a breeze blows in you — the soul rejoice! At such moments, you realize that everything you need for happiness – This is your close and near the road that goes beyond the horizon.
I sincerely hope that my site will help the available information. everyone who wants to rediscover the bike wake up the spirit a wanderer who slumbers in many of us. It is a pity that so far in In our countries, the bicycle is looked at as children’s entertainment, but with every year the number of “infected” more.
2) We turn to the site. What is the recipe for your success? Can you identify some 1-2 basic things? Some after all puzhatsya from all the forces, seo apply, promote, and you have it just kind of like blog for the soul and without promotion.
First, probably, I must say that a personal site is far away. Do not debut on the Internet for me. I have been doing creation for five years and monetization of sites, and before that was working with forums and blogging. Therefore, when you know what to do, you have a plan and do not fuss, then everything happens by itself.
Success, as webmasters see it, is actually not, at least, because there is no significant traffic on the site, 5-6K per season is, you can say nothing. First of all, the site was conceived as my own stool, with which I can read your opinion. As a result, I do not use seo to a sufficient extent, not I buy links, do not promote in social networks.
About basic things for bloggers, I have a lot of that to tell. Firstly, the reason why the vast majority of beginners do not achieves results – they do not fully understand why they need it. At first, they may be amused by the thought of earning, especially reading the Finstrips of some promoted blogs.
But in seo, as you know, there is no money. And blogging too. Therefore, starting to earn after a year of blogging $ 50 a month from Adsense, the thought of enrichment disappears from them. Excuse right there is: after all, a blog is just a hobby, not a job, it’s not should bring money. And at best, the blog becomes The repository for reporting new trips is still accumulated Several hundred readers do not give just throw the case.
Therefore, dear beginners and continuing bloggers, if you say that a blog for you is a hobby – you will not achieve anything. If a you say you are not going to make money on it – you you will achieve nothing. A blog is really not a job, it’s business. Until you tune your attitude towards him as business process, there are no serious results. When the blog becomes business, then you will stop appearing standard type excuses “I can not write without inspiration” – will have to learn.
Now the second. Novice bloggers set wrong goals. The goals of blogging should not be expressed in the amount of money or in number of visitors. And the one and the other tends to increase non-linear, whereas a drop in enthusiasm always happens dramatically and definitely.
The goal for a blogger is to occupy and master his information niche, and ideally, to become its leader. Coming to the internet to create One more thing about Thailand without strategic objectives is a notorious loss of the most important thing – time and vital energy. Many, again, find justification in the allegedly gained experience, but in reality, this experience will only give you the realization that you are not were able to achieve results in this area, whereas in reality – it could change your whole life, come to this right.
Third. Fear of competition. I know that many do not believe truly into the success of your blog because there is a high niche competition, and therefore from the very beginning do not set for themselves ambitious goals, translating everything into the plane “for the soul.” At all, Internet competition is a very capacious topic, and I will not even be be serious about. I can only say that to judge the competition niches by the number of sites and blogs in it are the same as evaluate the search query competition by frequency.
In no case can not be afraid of competition, because it blogging is just not there. For example, as a content consumer, there was never such a thing that in the morning you open the Internet, but to read there is nothing? Would it really be bad if you were interested in Informational niche every morning appeared with a dozen fresh, current, topical posts? But this is not! Consequently, niche is free for bloggers!
Bloggers are not competitors to each other, in any way. Not yet will come to such that several blogs completely clog everything niche information space daily and even hourly publications, any newcomer can break through, even on such obmusoloennoy topic like Thailand.
Fourth. You need to think not as a blogger, but as a publisher. Then an understanding of their audience, an awareness of the mission, and ideas for content, and much more, which print cannot do without edition. Every publisher knows the holy rule “do not overthrow – not burst “- this is me to excuses about the fall of enthusiasm and the lack inspiration. Think about it.
In general, Oleg, you can talk about the main features of blogging even a whole day, but since we have an interview format, not lectures, confine ourselves to these four points.
3) Based on your words, I also fail quite a blog. Yes, personal life is lit here, but 70% of the material is Travel Information and Thailand. But another question interests What is thinking like a publisher? Walking away from creativity / hobby side of “writing what the audience needs”?
Of course, you do not have a blog in the truest sense of the word. AND By the way, the blog is positioned not only by posts about personal life the author. The subject that attracts readers can be his personal opinion on matters that are even far from his competence – people just like to know the thoughts of this person.
Here you can draw a parallel when invited to television famous singer or actor and ask him about politics and the economy. He, nothing in this sense, gives emotional comments, people like, the rating is growing. Take goblin (opera), he has 80% – not search traffic, and I would not be surprised if the main part of the search queries associated with its name and title site. This is a blogger, he does not give any useful information. people, and yet, the traffic is just plague.
However, the online edition does not have to be only blog or just the site, you can and should combine both directions. Ideal – 50-60% of search traffic for information requests from which the readership is formed.
As for publishing thinking, you are absolutely right; the first is a departure from the “clozhek for the soul” towards work for target audience. Actually, you have already started it yourself encounter – recently publicly abandoned articles related to politics and other hot topics. You have something to say for to these questions, but you cannot write it on your own blog, interesting, yes? However, this is a normal weighted position. a publisher who feels responsible to his by the audience.
In general, to think like a publisher is to consider your project like a magazine or newspaper. This automatically means that you can’t afford to depend on your mood, inspiration and other metaphysical excuses. Hence the strategic planning, investing in a project (time or money) and clear understanding of monetization.
4) Do I need a blogger to write about something personal? I’m I post the Finstrips, thoughts not related to travel, success in plan Egor. You, as I know, not a supporter of this.
Well, since we are talking about blogging, then of course, you need to write about personal Another thing is the degree of disclosure; everyone chooses it for himself. myself. I really am not a supporter of frankness to myself, but you – this is you, perhaps, if you stop doing this, then some part of the audience will stop reading you. But generally, it is better if personal on the blog will not be about the life of your family, but about your relation to something. Better people come read yours opinion, what about your successes, failures.
About finstripov – my attitude is: you need to publish them only to those who trade in success. If you do not sell his name as a guru, it is better to keep quiet about money. Envious people are much more than you think. Why give them another reason to envy, because you do not have any profit
5) I looked again carefully at your site: no social network comments, no social widgets and apparently groups in social networks, a fairly simple template, there is no multi-level menu. Thats there is the impression of a simple little blog that is clearly not for earnings. So conceived?
I can not say that I even thought about such issues. I just don’t have enough time to do more activity in social networks. The maximum that I can give my site – it’s a couple of hours a day, yet you still need to work. Well just so create a group and repost your articles – what’s the point, is it not gives a special effect.
As for the design – yes, so conceived, I love the whole minimalistic design. There’s nothing to distract from the content, and so far everyone has said that the site itself seems very stylish to them. what As for navigation, there is something to work on. I am organically I do not digest drop-down menus, so my menu is simple. I sorted the main materials by topics in the Useful section. BUT In general, I advise readers to more actively use the search on site, for it looks great.
6) A couple of hours a day ?! And pretty decent traffic when this! Understand, for internet business monsters, normal traffic tens of thousands, but for most 5-6K bloggers this already an achievement. I, for example, to achieve my performance have to spend all your time. And the articles go to me Regularly, and I cover informational topics that I’m doing. So? Here you can say on a specific example of mine mistake?
Well, probably, with a couple of hours I lied a little, because I didn’t counted here communication by mail and social networks with readers. it it takes a lot of time, for example, 300-500 letters come in a month, related only to my personal site. I try to answer right away so as not to accumulate debris, then with this you can at least somehow cope.
As for traffic, it’s just a seasonal surge, and June-July, it will return to the values of 3500-4000 per day. However, this not so bad, given that the site I started to seriously engage just last april. I opened it in January 2012, but almost a year and a half, I did almost nothing, as I was extremely busy – played the game DayZ, barely enough time to work. Then he took in hand, and as a result – got any results.
You do everything right, Oleg, you just need a little more systems approach. For example, the main mistake (in my opinion) work with semantics – write informative articles only requests with sufficient, in the opinion of the webmaster, frequency. I I consider that it is necessary to work not with disparate requests, but with information pools in which requests are combined in meaning. For example, do you have articles about Samui Island, some of them written for regular readers, some sharpened under the keys. Each article is a clean sheet for search engines, and in order to receive traffic on these pages, they need to be displayed in tops.
But there is a workaround that can bring no less traffic, and often even more, without any promotion and promotion. First you need to go through the WordStatus and collect the main keys, then sit down and brainstorm to reveal all possible requests related to self-rest on Samui, in general – everything. And those that occur in people only seeking information about the intended trip, and those that arise from longsters.
Do not look at WordStat, think about how people can enter requests into search engine, write absolutely any little thing you can remember Frequency – to the bulb. After this comes the routine – isolate informational directions for articles. They should get a lot, so some of them can be combined into one an article. When writing text, headings and subheadings sharpen under the keys. All the little thing you wrote out in the process of brainwashing the assault should be dissolved in the text – it will bring you a lot longtails At least one small paragraph in the article on such mini key.
Now the final chord – you got a certain amount articles under a decent frequency and three times more – under the low (according to WordStat, it may even be zero). All low frequency automatically crawls into the top because there just won’t be competition. Makes a sense of reference from these articles to more frequency – it automatically boosts them in the sickle by request mid-frequency, and strengthens the trust of the site by high-frequency “island of samui”.
For complex semantic areas you can apply such method: a large article is written for a large query, for example, “beaches Samui “, in which you describe in brief all the beaches of the island, their advantages and cons, remoteness, etc. After that you write one by one article on each beach, but in detail, with a full layout, with photographs, maps, coordinates gps and refer from them to main article. Articles about individual beaches with high probability go to the tops and pull for themselves the entire query “Samui Beaches”.
By the way, other complex ones also dock here. destinations, such as “Samui Hotels”. Generalized, saturated correct semantics of the article and links to it from the same individual beaches – and the request can go up, but even if you do not get out on first places, you will get a lot of low-frequency traffic, which lose those who sit in the tops.
The main thing is that the search engine instead of individual articles will be see a structured pool of queries related by meaning, completely overlapping this topic. This is a trust, this is a position and this target traffic. And I want to emphasize – this is not the usual internal linking when weight chases from one article to other, and the transfer of semantic (semantic) authority from ranked in the top pages to those that are in large competition (articles under midrange).
Of course, many people know about this technique, but few of them enjoys. People sharpen articles for competitive keys, because of this we have to fight the terrible competition and buy links that costs a lot of money, and always threatens with Google filters (and in perspective and from Yandex). I recommend everyone to think about direct path of advancement: how are you going to move requests when the reference factor will be kept to a minimum even on information sites?
I think that whoever invests in useful, good structured and semantically coordinated content will receive handicap already in the near future. And by the way, the content is saturated Search semantics is something that copywriters cannot do with Exchange Such texts can be written only by people deeply versed. in question.
7) How do you choose the topic of posts, is there any plan or semantic core? And here immediately, do you use keywords in articles? Just trying to figure out if you are betting on search traffic or is more important to you readership, or immediately and that, and that is important.
Semantics is generally the basis of any site, and here I could again talk for hours, but will have to get off with common phrases. Specifically for my personal site, I do not work out the semantics, and just I rely on knowledge of the topic – I write about what might be interesting novice or continuing bikers.
There is one feature associated with the semantics of the site – using Wordstat will never get truly live traffic. You you can write an article on the mid-range query and even output its in the top, but as a result you will turn out depending on the positions in sickle. Should other sites push you out of the top, how is it lost most of the traffic, because one key came in, let’s say 1000 visitors.
My method is to write articles from the perspective of understanding the question about which write I can roughly imagine what to look for in a search engine my audience, and I try to fill the text with such nuances. how the consequence is that I have almost all low-frequency queries, I do not occupy especially high positions in search engines, but the traffic goes decent. AT Overall, I sharpen turnkey articles, but not too much on that. I bother, probably 70% of the content is natural text.
Regarding which traffic is more useful to me. Of course, constant readers are more important to me, and here I can be proud that at least 40% of traffic is type-in, mail newsletter, social networks and links from other sites. Very important to be able to convert random visitors from search engines to regular readers. Here, too, has its own methods, both in terms of content, and by visual component.
Sometimes it happens that some article, sometimes not even relevant to the main theme of the site, accidentally crawl into the tops and drags tangible traffic. It is necessary to wriggle out, but to make hook some visitors on this request and send it to main content. Carefully look at the page with a look occasional visitor, given that the text is not read, his scan eyes diagonally.
Put prominent boxes in the text with links to other articles with provocative anchors, you can insert clickable images with an attractive image – the word anything, so that the visitor went through several interesting articles and realized that this is not just another article with rewriting, but a live site with its own by the audience.
Do not share other techniques, how to convert random visitor to the regular reader? That’s right specifically What can be done for this from not obvious? Because internal relink now and so everyone uses, and sites at most are immediately obvious, this is a blog, and not a TOS. I say because I recently visited Blogun with Gogletlinks for interest, and there is just a tin, and not sites, immediately visible even to the naked by eye.
A random visitor is a person who has navigated to your site by link, it does not matter whether it is a link in a search engine, in the social network or on the forum. These visitors can be divided into two parts – refusenik, that is, one who almost immediately closed the page for some reason and information seeker who is trying to find something useful.
People leave the page immediately for two reasons – irrelevant content and problems with the site (slowly loading, pops up advertising banner, terrible design, small print). Second solve it’s just a matter of technique. The first one is harder because we don’t know that in the head of the person who clicked the link to your article in classmates and immediately closed it.
Most likely, he is simply not in the mood to read, for him at the moment This information is not needed. Although the text is relevant name, it is not relevant to the mood of the visitor. Therefore, I would not He began to fight for the objectors, the main thing is that people do not leave because problems with the site.
But with information seekers you can work. As I already said, people do not read the text, they scan it with their eyes. Remember yourself clicking on the links in Yandex – I think no one starts on full seriousness to read an article on 6K characters. You just slide glance, clinging to some moments – title, picture, subtitle, frame, selected text, etc. It takes about 10-30 seconds. If the “anchors” interest you, you return to start and start reading.
Therefore, the content must be neat and structured: capacious and catchy title, short paragraphs expressing one thought form (2-3 sentences), explanatory pictures, semantic subheadings that differ in color of the tie-in, possibly with links to other pages. If you have a travel blog and a lot of pictures, then There must be a caption for each photo, and not “this a cat in Bangkok, “but something like” is the same infection that stole the fish from Petit’s plate. “Give the readers an emotion so that they don’t just glanced through the photos and got a little more what gives a faceless image.
I wrote above about the information pools, when in the limit of some Subtopics completely overlap all possible requests. This is useful for search engines, and even more useful for turning a visitor into the reader. For example, the reader is interested in a trip to the same Samui and goes through blogs in Google’s sickle. Suddenly he stumbles upon your blog, in which there is absolutely all comprehensive information, from the first hands, with personal assessments of the author and a lot of photos.
As long as Thailand’s topic interests him, it will remain yours. regular reader. And if your site is neutral enough articles about life, worldview and philosophy, it is possible that It will go to the category of virtual friends.
As for the not obvious, well, it’s you right, like about the button “Bablo” you ask Everything lies on the surface, just need analyze and experiment – for one audience fit Different things. Oh well, if you are interested in ambiguous solutions, I can give such an example – search “refusers” after clicking the cross, a banner with a subscription form is pushed.
You will laugh, but there is quite a good conversion, especially if you subscribe to give any manuscript with attractive title. The list is included in the list once a week. published articles, and the percentage of conversions is quite good. I do not use this technique on my personal site, but not because damage to reputation, but just somehow too lazy to do it, and not I chase readers especially.
More well increases the number of internal transitions (and how consequence, and conversion to regular readers) a small slider with links to interesting articles that creeps in the bottom corner pages when scrolling down. I don’t use it again, but I know for sure that it is not particularly annoying to readers, but it gives result.
9) It was very interesting to know your point of view on blogging and your approaches. The last thing I wanted to ask is why are you do sites?
It all started with the banal realization that I was trapped: I make enough money at my work, but I only have one month to live your life. Therefore, I, like many, I typed in Google “how to make money on the Internet”, read all this disgrace somewhere half a year, filtered and analyzed.
In the end, he began to act, chose a direction for himself – MFA, micronische sites, sharpened by high bids in Adwords by commercial inquiries. It was possible to catch this topic while it is not yet started to die. Further, after Google has ceased to love such sites, I repurposed my activities to create content farms for YAN.
A couple of years ago, looking at all this lack of spirituality, I remembered the fact that I am first and foremost a creator, and decided to open my personal site. My familiar webmasters whom I told about the plan open a site dedicated to bicycles, twisted a finger at the temple – at One and a half people ride us, and there are several large cycle forums, one strong collective bike blog and a bunch led publics in social networks.
I knew that I could not only fit into this market, but even become, sooner or later, the leader of the niche “For beginners cyclists. “So far I can not evaluate their achievements, but judging by the feedback that comes to me, everything goes on to the plan.
P.S. In my opinion a very valuable interview and full the answers. Victor, thank you, I learned a lot of things for myself interesting! Glad you found the time to write all this.
Life hacking 1 – how to buy a good insurance
Choosing insurance is now unrealistically difficult, therefore, to help everyone travelers, I make a rating. To do this, constantly monitor forums, I study insurance contracts and use insurance by myself.
Insurance Rating
Life hacking 2 – how to find a hotel 20% cheaper
First, choose a hotel on Booking. They have a good base offers, but the prices are NOT the best! The same hotel is often possible find 20% cheaper in other systems through the RoomGuru service.
Discount hotels
