Hey you bloggers we are back again with another stunning interview session!

As part of our BloggersIdeas interview series, today we have  Professional blogger  Adrienne smith, She loves sharing what she have learned over at her blog, adriennesmith.net.

She ‘ve become pretty much a fanatic for all things having to do with blogging, driving traffic to your blog and building relationships with your readers. She is keen blogger and always ready to help fellow bloggers.

Lets explore with Adrienne.

Please tell us about yourself and your educational background ?

I want to thank you as well Jitendra for this opportunity and I’m happy to be here.

My name is Adrienne Smith and I’ve been online now for seven years.  I was an executive assistant for over 31 years while in corporate America.  When our company downsized I made the decision to do something else with my life and eventually found my way to the internet to see if I couldn’t build a business online.

It took me quite a while to understand how this all works and what it was that I enjoyed doing the most.  Blogging just ended up being what I loved and my passion has always been to help others.  Those two things just ended up going hand in hand.

As far as my educational background I didn’t attend college and I’m pretty much self-taught.  Everything I learned how to do I either did it on my own or took a course to learn the skills.

I’ve always loved to learn although at times it can be rather overwhelming.

With increased volatility in the search engine landscape, how do you see SEO’s future shape up in the time to come?  Does it still remain competitive to Paid Search Marketing?

In all honesty, SEO is not my area of expertise and I don’t even write for the search engines anymore.  I did back when I was doing just affiliate marketing and wanting to rank for certain terms.

As I ventured away from that though I started writing more for my readers and stopped concentrating on SEO.

The one thing I know we all can be sure of is that SEO will never die.  Without it there would be no search engines so I’m sure as the years go by that Google will continue to improve how content is being found in the search engines although we may not always agree with those changes.

I don’t want to get on Google’s bad side but I can’t ever seem to please them so I concentrate more on referral and social traffic.

I don’t do any paid search marketing so I can’t really comment on that.

How do you increase your Facebook shared post reach to your audience? Any ideas?

I haven’t concentrated much on Facebook to be honest with you.  Ever since they changed their algorithms in order for us to pay for our content to be promoted I have put more focus on other social platforms.

Now when my product is released hopefully this October, I may concentrate more on their ad network then promoting to just my fan base.

I haven’t taken the time to really grow that mainly because since they changed the way our fans see our content I didn’t want to be obligated to Facebook in that way.  I know I would have a much better reach with their ad network then just my fan base.

What is call tracking in SEO, why it is important. Please give examples?

Again, SEO is not something I do but I have heard of call tracking and I believe this is how it’s defined:

“It’s a way for online marketers to track which sources, campaigns and keywords generate phone calls.

 From what I’ve heard some of the biggest companies in the world use call tracking to measure the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns and SEO efforts. I can see why these companies would value call data significantly.

Marketing agencies also use call tracking. They use it as a way to prove their worth to their clients.  It is especially popular among agencies that do PPC and SEO work.”

How do you optimize 404 page errors on websites?

I have a custom 404 page so that if someone lands on that page I have a cute message waiting for them.  I actually direct them to my “Start Here” page so that they can find the information they were searching for.

Once I release my upcoming product I’ll have an advertisement on that page directing them to that as well.

I think that you should use this page to the best of your ability since people will have issues at times finding what they want.

Google Recently launched Panda and many big businesses got badly affected by it, were any of your sites affected by it?

None of my sites were affected by Google Panda.

What is the reason behind your Blogging success?

I was determined and consistent.

I had listened to so many people tell me what to do that I added what they shared plus what I felt comfortable doing and it just seemed to work well for me.  I did what I knew would bring me results and I did that five days a week consistently.

Still to this day I do those action steps which is why my blog has remained where it is with my readers and I’ve built up a great community, subscriber list and client base.

According to you, what are the best ways to promote a Blog?

For me personally I love blog commenting.  I do promote my posts on the social media sites as well but by commenting on other posts and putting yourself out there in front of enough people then they’re going to pay attention and be eager to see what you’re all about.

Of course, your comments have to be genuine and add value to the conversation because that’s what will make you stand out.

How are you building relationships with your Readers. How do you make them stay on your blog?

I truly care about my readers and they can tell from the content I write and how much I’m eager to help them.

When you like someone and you know they are helping you, you just want to hang around them for a while and learn more from them.

When you reach out to them and let them know that you want to help, no strings attached, people are more open to wanting to come back time and time again.

It’s not just about the content you write but people just want to know you truly care.

Penguin Proof, Panda Proof link building – Do those things exist.(I’ve been seeing link builders package or talk about this one on their services offered) ?

I seriously don’t pay attention to things like this.  I’ve never heard of either of these terms.  I do my best to provide valuable content to my readers that will benefit them so as long as you focus your efforts on delivering in that way I just don’t worry about Google’s next big thing.

Call me naïve if you want but I have yet to be affected by any of their changes so I must be doing something right.

How many years have you been blogging. What do you feel about blogging?

I’ve been blogging for six years and I started on the free platforms.  I’ve been blogging on AdrienneSmith.net for five this past June.

I love blogging and I feel it’s the best way to get in front of your target audience and let them know who you are and what you’re all about.  It’s the best way to help them learn, grow and solve their problems all while building relationships with them that can lead to having them either purchase what you promote or tell their friends all about how fabulous you are.

How many blogs do you have. Which blogs do you follow regularly?

I have three blogs at this time.  One is inactive and I started it because of a course I was taking several years ago.  I wanted to keep it up as a reference.

The other one I have I’m fixing to take offline because it promotes an affiliate product that I believe has run its course.

There are several bloggers that I met at the beginning of my own blogging journey that I look at as really dear friends.  They all write such wonderful content in different niches and I can honestly say I still follow them to this day.  Those people are:

Now there are a lot of blogs I visit regularly so that would be pretty long list.

What are your tips on traffic generation? Please reveal some must use techniques to get more traffic to new blogs?

Well as I mentioned earlier, blog commenting is my favorite way of getting out there in front of people and it’s the reason I am where I am today.  By leaving genuine comments on people’s blog they’ll start to really notice you.

People pay attention to that and will start reaching out to you because they want you to do the same thing on their blogs too.  It’s the best traffic source for me still to this day and has brought me so much success.

The other ways I drive traffic to my blog are by using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Triberr.

There are literally dozens of ways to drive traffic to your blog but you have to find where your target audience hangs out plus you have to enjoy those platforms too.  I’m on several others as well but these are my best sources to date.

If you have any questions  about this interview, please do ask in the comments below !

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Hello Our Dear Readers, You are welcome to Second Interview section of this blog, the “Expert Chat” Section where we have a chat with the Tiroberts.com Author Tiroberts.  She is going to discuss various tricky questions related to SEO and Blogging. So I hope you Enjoy her interview on my blog. She really put her hard work on this interview so do share your reviews in comments section.

First Of all Ti Roberts, Tell me something about yourself and also about your stunning blog!

Hi Jitendra,

First, I’d thank you for having me; I’m honored and really excited to be here!

Well, I’m the owner of The SEO Rebel blog and the creator of Top Bloggers Traffic.

I’ve been involved with internet marketing for over 8 years and I absolutely LOVE what I do!

On my blog I mainly focus on creating content about generating fast, sustainable traffic via social media, inbound marketing and evoking engagement from influencers.

What are your strategies for Google Hummingbird Update & did you see any drop in traffic of your site.

To be quite honest, I don’t really have any strategies for the Hummingbird update. I didn’t even know what the update entailed until about 2 weeks ago. LOL.

I just focus mainly on writing epic, valuable content and sharing it directly with my audience by leveraging the relationships I’ve built with my regular readers and other influencers in my niche.

Seeing as I don’t focus on organic search traffic anyway, I don’t get much traffic from targeted keywords and I didn’t really notice a drop or increase after the update.

Most of the search traffic that I get comes from searches for my name or brand, which is great as I’m more focused on building brand awareness rather than relying on search traffic.

What’s your specialty? Tell me about it.

I specialize in generating traffic via inbound marketing, directly engaging my audience and building relationships with my peers and other influeners in my niche.

In life and in business, I’ve learned that the only real leverage you have when you need help with something or want to accomplish a major goal is the relationships you have and the people that you know. So that’s what I focus 90% of my efforts on, building relationships. The other 10% is spent on creating high quality content that genuinely helps and educates my readers on a particular topic so that they feel compelled to share it with others.

From there, I let the viral nature of the snowball effect takeover to get more exposure and brand recognition.My ultimate goal is to become one of the biggest blog resources when it comes to inbound and relationship marketing.

How much traffic you generate from social media & how you use social media for your blog?

About 90% of my blog traffic is referral traffic from other blogs and social media. I use social media as a venue to engage my current audience and attract more readers. As well as a way to keep a steady stream of social traffic flowing throughout all of my posts, old and new. I’ve actually just got back into meticulously tracking my blog traffic. If you’re interested, you can see my latest traffic stats and numbers in my recent traffic report here.

What SEO strategies do you recommend?

I don’t really recommend any traditional SEO strategies.

I suggest that if you want to gain more organic search traffic, focus more on growing your brand by directly engaging your audience and mobilizing them to share your content on social media.

Three of the best ways to do this is by building relationships with your peers, engaging top bloggers in your niche and writing a lot of high quality guest posts on well-known blogs in your niche.

Oh yeah, here’s a good SEO tip your readers might enjoy…

If your goal is to get ranked high on Google for a competitive search term, say a popular tool that you’re an affiliate of, a fantastic way to do that is to host a giveaway for that specific tool/product/service on your blog and leverage the power of social media.

Have people who want to enter your giveaway share the giveaway post on social media: Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. I would suggest Twitter over the other two as Twitter’s social retweet signal seems to hold more weight for getting content ranked in Google.

All of the buzz around the giveaway post will catch Google’s eye and help you secure a top spot on Google for the keyword of the product/service, at least for a short while. Plus, your likely hood of generating affiliate sales will increase as a byproduct.

To further add some weight to this strategy, you can require people who enter the giveaway to comment on the post. Maybe ask them a specific question related to the thing you’re giving away so they can leave a substantive response – which will add more fresh social content to the post that Google likes as well.

Do you think 3rd party blog post links and ebook submissions are playing vital role these days?

Ebook submission is a good way to get more exposure and traffic to your site. I used to do this quite a bit last year when I relaunched my blog and it worked well for me. Getting third party links are also good, but you want to make sure that those links are high quality and are from authority, reputable sites you trust.

Is Author Rank is the latest technique of off page SEO? Do you think Google give preference to this?

I think it probably is and it would make sense for Google to give preference to their own stuff. However, I don’t put too much emphasis on it and I wouldn’t suggest that anyone else overly obsesses with it either. Just focus on writing valuable content and building relationships to get your content in front of your target audience and you’ll be fine.

What are some examples of how you have worked to sell your ideas in collaborative environments?

I think hosting free live webinars are a great collaborative environment to sell ideas, products or services. I used to hold live webinars years ago, but I haven’t done one in a while. However, I do plan on bringing them back in the near future.

One tip I want to give about hosting free live webinars is to NOT make them longer them longer than 20-30 mins.

An hour long webinar, especially for a busy blogger is just way too long. Try to condense your content into a short 25 minute lesson, no more than 3 main bullet points, packed with actionable content and value. And then, if you must, add a brief pitch at the end of the webinar for your paid product/service, no more than 5 minutes long.

Another good tip is to give an exclusive discount to only those who attended the webinar live. That would do good for boosting sales as well.

What Are Your Relationship Building and Outreach Skills?

In the blogosphere, everything starts with a blog comment. Once you’ve got a conversation going with a blogger in their comments, from there everything else is pretty simple.

If you want to get the full details and process of how I built my outreach strategy solely around commenting, I’ve created an entire blog commenting guide you can read here.

Do You Share Your Strategies Transparently With the SEO Community?

I sure do! I make it a practice to share everything that I do on a monthly basis to sustain and grow my blog. I feel that the best way to teach and help others is to let them learn from my experience and mistakes. Plus, it helps me to keep track of my activities, make changes where necessary and stay on the right path.

I hope you all readers enjoy this great interview with TiRoberts. She is top moderator of Bizsugar community and she always share her best techniques with her readers. I am really glad that she had actively participated in this interview. If you readers have anything to share regarding this interview, drop in the comments below. I will answer you shortly !

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