(c) 123 RF Stock Photos
I meant to have a mini-celebration when it happened, but I crossed half a million page hits without noticing last month. Â I know it’s neither here nor there. Some of you have far more than that, some fewer. And ultimately, page hits don’t matter if you’re not getting the right people to visit your blog or website. While I don’t consider myself an expert, I have learned a few things about free methods of increasing web traffic along the way.
1) Â Know your Key words
Check your stats to figure out how the majority of your viewers are finding you. Â Turns out, most of mine were not searching “Check out my new book!” Let me see what my top searches were for this week (sometimes these are awesome for a good laugh…)
free spanking and punishment videos and stories
mature woman spanked by younger men
renee rose
reneeroseromance
spanked by a cougar
adult figging vidoes
anal humiliation spanking stories
anal punishment
bride spanking and anal storys
Okay, so some of those brought the wrong people, since I don’t have videos on my site.  But I do have bride spanking and anal storys (although I know how to spell stories, heh), anal punishment and anal humiliation spanking stories. So you can see some important key words for me are spanking stories, anal punishment, figging stories, bride spanking, etc.
2. Â Use your key words
Just inserting the tag isn’t enough. Â Using your key words in your headline or title is key. Â That way when you post your link on twitter and Facebook (which you are doing, right?) Â it will grab the attention of the people who love what you write about.
3. Google Plus your Key words
This is the real secret. Are you paying attention?  This may not work forever, but right now it is the best free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool available to you:  Google Plus. Â
My friend just opened a Crossfit in Taos, NM. Â My stepmom forgot the name of it and told me she searched “Taos fitness” but couldn’t find it. Â I posted the link to Crossfit Taos with the hashtags #taos #fitness and my friend’s site was instantly on the first search page for those keywords.
I had another friend who was paying an SEO company $150 a month to get her Reiki website noticed. Â I Google plused it and she was the very first search result–within minutes! Â Obviously she fired the SEO company. Who needs them when you can Google Plus?
(c) 123 RF Stock Photo
3. Stumble Upon
Stumble Upon can send quite a few readers to your blog. Erotic author Normandie Alleman set up a Daily Stumble Facebook Page for authors, erotic bloggers and book bloggers to “like” each other’s pages, which only takes a few minutes and helps get your page recommended. Â I think when I stumble my pages there I get about 35-50 hits.
4. Â Reddit
Be careful with Reddit because they don’t like you posting your own links and they’ll mark you as a spammer. Better to have a login name that doesn’t match your blog, and make sure to post links from other blogs while you’re at it. Â Or if you stick to Casey McKay’s Spanking Fiction subreddit, I assure you that no one there will flag you. Like StumbleUpon, Reddit can yield about 35-50 extra page views.
5. Get Listed
There are sites for spanking that send me a lot of hits just by having my blog listed on their blogroll. There are also lots of sites that offer free author pages. I don’t really think they send me that much traffic, but still, they cost you nothing but the few minutes it takes to send your materials in, so go for it. Â The Romance Reviews, Spanking Romance Reviews, BDSM Writers, and Erotica for All come to mind.
6. Cross Promote
Although we all do it, cross-promoting within your same little group of authors or sex bloggers doesn’t really do much. Better to branch out to an untapped resource. I recently promo’ed for feminist pornographer Pandora Blake because she hoped to reach my female spanking audience and I received at least 1000 clicks on the first day from her readership when she posted the link on her blog.  That was definitely a win-win. I’m not saying you should sit around and brainstorm where to cross-promote, but if you have it in mind, then when an opportunity arises, you’ll seize it.
7. What else?Â
Did I miss anything? As always, the Write Sex Right blog is a community effort. Please let me know in the comments if you can think of another significant source of page hits that I forgot to mention or don’t know about.
Thanks for reading and keep writing sex right! 🙂
I’ve found that I’m less likely to visit blogs with linkbait titles (you know, things like “7 SURPRISING WAYS TO MAKE CUSTOMERS WANT YOUR PRODUCT!”) and more likely to visit ones which are either recommended to me by friends and colleagues, or which have an article directly relating to something which interests me.
Case in point: I’m here, reading this article 😀
Good information, Renee. Thanks.
I like your keyword list. I have ‘spank my ass and call me naughty’! That wasn’t you, was it??? 😉
Hey what do you think of Twitter? I have such a hard time reading or just knowing how to use it that I hop on, share some tweets, post mine and get out of there! I think you’re right on getting out of that little pocket and promoting outside of our group and you’re right in that when the opportunity presents itself, grab it.
Thanks for sharing.
LOL!! It wasn’t me, but I’m definitely going to try that one– I’m sure it produces some fabulous results!!
Yeah, twitter… I use triberr just to broadcast my blogposts out further. You’re right, I should have mentioned that. I do think it works because days when I have a smexier title, I get a lot more hits.
Thanks for visiting!
Thanks Renee. Just started a blog on erotic fiction. This is my first story. Would you care to have a look ?
https://carnalstory.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/night-train-a-secret-fling/
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Thank you for these tips, Renee.