Today Vitaly Friedman from Smashing Magazine answers my question of what one thing helped them improve their blog in 2007.
We’ve tried to improve the quality of our articles. In 2007 we’ve spent more time on research, we’ve refined our requirements and expectations from the sites we cover in our articles.
Also we’ve included more (many more) images in our posts. It helped us to improve the blog and drive more traffic to our site; and it was the main reason why our weblog crashed in the end of 2007.
However, after a couple of server issues we’re now finally back on track.
Note from Darren: Vitaly’s strategy has certainly paid off. If their Alexa ranking is anything to go by they’ve seen some real success with their ranking increasing from around 97,000 this time last year to a current ranking of 4790.
Happy new year to Problogger and Problogger readers. This blog has helped me in shaping up my own blog Web Squared. Thanks and new year wishes!
Darren, you do the same which Vitaly said rite?
Adding images to the post :) I generally see you doing it.. attracting the visitors!
Nice post there..
Smashing Magazine has become one of my favorites…and they’ve definitely become big fast.
Sounds so simple, yet it’s so vital. That’s why one of my goals this year is to have several more in depth posts. I have a number planned out already.
Images seem to work nicely too, at least in terms of making the post look better, and somehow easier to read. I’ve sometimes found it difficult to find just the right image, but most times it’s not that bad.
It’s not surprising that they grew so fast… they come up with excellent lists, which are unbelievably popular on Digg and every single other social media site, which in turn leads to zillions of incoming links.
They got on digg frontpage ~40 times in 2007… and I’m sure they hit the front of every other site as well.
It’s really quite impressive how well they used social media to grow their traffic.
They hit the popularity list because of their lists. Everyone loves lists and they were the first to truly provide undiluted lists. Good on em i say for finally doing what everyone else failed to see.
So it saying increase the quality of your post and so if I refinded all post on my site I WOULD PROBOBALY GET A HIGHER RANKING?
I think the key to Smashing Magazine success is the effort that they put in to research and compiling the items from all over the web (their 50+ designs or icons posts certainly is what this design blog is famous for).
I have been the readers of their blog since last year. They don’t update it often but when they do update, it is a WOW post packed with information or juicy resources.
Efforts do pay your rewards.
I first saw smashimg magazine with their post 80 ajax solutions. The team is very hardworking in building a link bait.
I’ve been following the trends which people like. Including images, links to posts and your own research or examples. This leads to a huge success.
Thanks Darren for you time to interview them and letting us know about their success. If you know what successful people are doing then you just need to duplicate them.
Happy New Year to all!
Smashing is also doing quite good. They also provide quite good helpful materials for bloggers as well as other too. Smashing is also one of the blog sites where I blog in a regular basis.
Cheers.
Yeah, your content definitely stands out from the crowd if you include images in your posts, especially since most of the blogs and websites tend to be text-only. I try to include an image in each and every post. Including an eye catching or a very beautiful image is very important. But never include dull, boring images. I’ve seen many people doing that mistake…