Welcome to the new and (hopefully) improved Traffic Generation Café!
Like my new head banner?
Me too…
I think it’s the perfect image of where the tire meets the road in blogging or any other business, for that matter:
Relationship-based marketing
Yes, it’s the most tedious and time-consuming way to build a business.
Yet it’s also the most rewarding one.
Plus, it’s the ONLY way to survive Google Pandas and Penguins, move on after Twitter account bans, and stop throwing ourselves pity parties.
Those faces you see up there… these are my readers.
I know each and one of them by name.
They made an impression on me.
I am pretty sure I made an impression on them too.
Hmmm… that sounded creepy…
By the way, would love to be the first one to know when I upload my next awesome and very educational, of course, video?
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL! (link will open in a new window)
So if your face is up there - my sincere THANK YOU for giving me your time, your hearts, and even your wallets (like buying an occasional product or two through my affiliate links.)
Feel free to give yourself a pat on the back with this tweet:
If it isn’t, but you’d like it to see it up there some time in the future, read this post:
You can also start by tweeting:
Thank You
In the past few weeks, Ian Belanger has been working hard putting together my brand spanking new blog design, and I’ve been working very hard managing him.
Yes, I am very good at telling others what to do and how to do it…
Why do you think I started a blog? 
Ian - you’ve put your heart and soul into Traffic Generation Cafe new design and I am so very grateful that I found you.
TGC readers - your site design is a crucial step to establishing yourself as an authority in your niche.
If you don’t take it seriously, your potential readers won’t take you seriously either.
It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does need to be unique.
And when you are ready to upgrade the future of your business, Ian is your man.
He is particularly great with anything Thesis (that’s the theme I use at TGC) and WordPress related.
My blog design speaks for Ian’s work more than anything I could ever say about him.
And NOW the Floor Is Yours
I couldn’t find a better way to thank you, my readers, but to give you a voice in this post.
Yes, I am going to stop talking and give the floor to you.
I know every one of you runs a unique business with unique challenges, opportunities, and outcomes.
And I am prepared to answer ANY traffic generation related question you might have.
All at the rock-bottom prices (see the price list =>***).
***Volume discounts are not available; offer valid at participating Traffic Generation Café locations only.
You can ask me any questions about
- creating a popular blog,
- traffic generation,
- SEO,
- social media,
- traffic conversion,
- anything and everything that’s on your heart
…and I’ll do my best to answer them.
One request though: let’s stay away from generalities.
For instance, “How do I generate more traffic to my website?” is a loaded question with no simple answer.
That’s where you get the dumb look “duh… go read my blog!”
However, asking “Can I generate traffic using social bookmarking sites?” is a great way to go.
Also, if I find that your question deserves an answer in a separate blog post, I will let you know when that post is published.
I might even ask other traffic generation experts to pitch in.
What’s Next?
ASK AWAY!
Practicing my dumb look,
What's Next?
- Discover how to bring YOUR website to life.
- Get the insider skinny on free traffic generation.
- Convert more traffic into more sales.
"When it comes to traffic generation, Ana knows her stuff. She provides actionable information about the latest tips, trends, and technology that can result in getting more visits to your blog or business. Not only does she give great advice, but she puts it to the test and shares the results in a regular income report so you know that her strategies really work if you are willing to put in the effort!"
Kristi Hines, Kikolani.com
"Ana has become someone I look to for a unique insight into all kinds of aspects of running an internet business, but especially for updated SEO information. She does the research and testing to back up her claims, so I refer back to her content when I need to see what is fresh and current in the world of generating traffic to your website."
Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
I will never share your email address with anyone.
{ 108 comments… read them below or add one }
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Ana,
I love the new design! Very fresh and it always helps to see my face above the fold (j/k) lol
I look forward to seeing what other improvements you have coming in the future.
Dewane Mutunga invites you to read: Introducing: Email Marketing Insider
What an amazing design Ana! Love the new look!!
Looking at the reader makes a huge difference….That is why your site has been down every time I tried to visit…..I wish you higher conversion rate
Niveen
Ana, love the new design and your site doesn’t makes it easy for your readers to miss the sign up box! Well done Ian.
BTW thanks for including me (though my old pic) both in the site header and on your FB page
I’m honored.
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Thanks Jane! Much appreciated!
Glad you like it, Jane!
Hi Ana,
I really like the new look and features…seems like a much warmer place, although I think your portrait gives a little too much information.
You called for questions, so my question is related to Market Samurai. I have considered buying it from you, but it is quite technical and would have to spend a lot of time to understand it, even with your help. And I have no real grasp on who my competition is, you probably remember that my blog is quite unique. My question is…do you have any general ideas about who is my competition? If I could zero in on that, I would think about making the effort to understand Market Samurai.
As always, keep the faith and many blessings to you and your family.
Lou
Have you seen the post I published today, Lou? I happened to address that specific question there.
However, allow me to elaborate.
1. What I suggest you do is to take time to think through some potential keywords that pertain to your site.
If you were a Google user and you were looking for the type of info your site provides, what keywords would you type in?
2. Once you come up with a list, do a little research on SEMRush.com.
It’s a paid tool, but you can get quite a few results for free.
Let’s say, you want to go for “short stories” as your keyword.
Add that to a search box in SEMRush.com.
Take a look at the list of the results. You’ll see how many searches this particular keyword gets, plus other related keywords.
3. Now scroll down closer to the bottom of the page. You’ll see a section called “Organic results”.
These are the websites that are currently ranking for that keyword.
They are your competitors.
If you need me to do a quick video on this, let me know.
PS What do you mean by “my portrait gives a little too much information”?
Hi Ana!
I had to stop by to say that I absolutely LOVE the new design. It’s amazing and it came as a complete shock (a good one though) when I saw it! I actually saw it before I got the email telling me about the change. Either way, I think Ian did a fantastic job on the design and I think that it fits TGC perfectly.
So, quick question for you or maybe not so quick but here it goes anyway:
If someone is just starting out with their blog or website (it’s maybe a couple of days old) what do you think their first step should be to start generating traffic? Should they promote using social media, passing out flyers and business cards, make blog comments, or maybe all of the above and more?
If that question’s a little too broad, I have one other question: You promote a lot of great resources to use to promote and gain traffic, but which one do you think has been the most beneficial? Was it CommentLuv, Market Samurai or something else?
Again, love the new design and just noticed my smiling face in the banner, hehe.
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Glad you like it, Felicia!
Two answers to your question:
1. Just published a post on the topic today: https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/traffic-generation-starts-here/.
The best way to start generating traffic is to find out what the best potential traffic source for your niche might be (directions in the post), then go after that traffic source.
2. One of the most important traffic generation strategies I employed when I first started TGC was forming my own commenting tribe. https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/drive-traffic-commenting-tribe/
It gave me exposure to potential readers, built relationships with other bloggers, as well as gave my blog the social proof it needed to attract more readers.
Ana,
I love the design. It’s really so important as a blogger to have your face out there, but I’ve never seen anyone put their readers up as well. Bravo.
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Congrats on the new site - it is AWESOME. I absolutely LOVE the clean type-face (yay san-serif fonts!), font-size large enough to read without squinting, color scheme that allows the text to jump off the page without being too busy… all of it. I am currently working on my new site & this is going on my inspiration board!
I like the new banner a lot, Ana. It gets the relation point across and your headshot looks more like a real person. I’ve been meaning to tell you I love the coffee-cup logo at the bottom of your e-mails (not for any technical reasons, I’m just a coffee fan)!
I’m undecided about the landing page. Oh, it looks awesome - I’m just spoiled to reading your latest post without the extra clicks. But it’s nice to have popular topics handy, too.
Congratulations on the redesign!
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Thanks, Elizabeth!
I do understand your point about the landing page; however, it is a better “Start here” kind of page for those who are fairly new to TGC.
Hi Ana,
This is a great new site. I love the header image — Awesome — and it feels cleaner.
I also love your blogging style… Sometimes the post feel long to me? Might just be my opinion BUT anyway you have so much good stuff to say!!!
Thanks
Geoff
Geoff Talbot invites you to read: Understanding Your Journey Will Keep You Dreaming
Hey Ana,
I love it! I like the landing page concept and it’s definitely one that’s on my radar!
Lots of great questions here - and a site full of answers!
Again, love the new design!
~Christine
Christine Brady invites you to read: 5 Steps to Building Your List Using Guest Blogging
Hi Miss Ana!
As a designer myself, I really like your design. Your home page is magnificent! Love the slider : )
I was actually going to use the same color scheme at one point in time, but I believe it works better for you : )
And your header is beyond creative, simply phenomenal …! I really love the idea of actually placing the photos of your active participants! Talk about proof of leadership!
Look for your bounce rate to drop ; )
Marc Bell invites you to read: Importance Of Writing In Your Own Voice
Hey Ana,
I do have a question for you - I’m still struggling a bit with headlines. I found TGC when you were writing about your worst headline (something like “What is SEO . . . ), which is the type of headline I’m prone to write (I like the clarity, and the potential SEO benefits). I’m finding that when my topic is more general, interesting headlines are easier, but when I’m writing about the Benefits of Local SEO, or How to Set Up Local SEO, its hard for me to move away from the mundane. Is there a time for the clear concise title? Any more advice?
I know what you mean, Brent - I am in favor of precise vs creative titles myself. I’d rarely click on a title if it doesn’t give me an idea of what the post is about.
So essentially, there’s nothing wrong with a straightforward title.
HOWEVER if the title doesn’t get clicks, then no matter what we think about it, we need to work on it.
The best “title test” I could ever think of: I browse through my Google reader (which I do very rarely) and naturally, look for the most enticing titles to check out. I usually keep a list of the ones that catch my attention and, when I am stuck for a title or when I have too much time on my hands (right….), I analyze them to see why they worked.
Sorry, it’s getting too late and I am rambling… Have you seen this post https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/blog-titles/? I’ve got a few more ideas for inspiration there.
Hi Ana,
The new design does look impressive but it could be improved even more if you’re able to cater for desktop screens that have a lower resolution. I’ve read that a website should be optimised to cater for a resolution width of 1024 pixels. On my screen the page buttons (on the right hand side) are overlapping. I’m sure on larger resolutions it looks great, but on mine it doesn’t.
If you’d like a screen shot of how it looks on from my end let me know.
Otherwise good job
Sam
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Hi Sam,
I am currently working on the responsiveness of the design, when it come to screen resolution. It should be ready by next week.
You are somewhat correct in saying sites should be optimized for 1024px, but with so many different browsers, devices and screen resolutions out there these days, it is very time consuming to write the code for all of these differences.
Ana was very excited to get the new design out, so the site was designed for the majority of screen resolutions today, which are bigger than 1024px.
If you want to see the site as it is designed, you can always zoom out your browser(if using Firefox just click ctrl -).
Thanks Sam
Thanks for the heads-up, Sam; that’s exactly what we are working on right now. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see my site in all its glory soon.
WOWWWW!!! Love the new look. Amazing! I can sit here and just scroll through your site all day Ana.
By the way you have answered most of my questions through out the months I have been visiting your blog. Ummm,, I don’t see my picture up there? LOL. Just kidding… The Blog design is an absolute beauty!! Have a great day.
Fred Owusu invites you to read: Essential Techniques on How to Create a Successful Blog
Actually your picture IS there, Fred; it’s just behind me. When I created the banner I had no idea where my pic will end up and, lucky you, it landed right on you. Will be fixed though… And glad you like it!
Good to hear but I was kidding though … Anyways thank you.
… You Rock!
Fred Owusu invites you to read: Self-branding – Bringing out the best in you
Wow! Nice design and I love the way your picture looks right at me. Nice touch with your readers on the banner. Looking forward to the sharing.
Hi Ana
The new look of your blog is refreshing, fashionable and outstandingly catchy. It does really grab the reader attention because it’s modern, easy to navigate, and more importantly, as usual, full of valuable content and rich information for traffic generation, showing your especial expertise in this vital element of business success.
All the best Ana!
A new look has always made others think to look at once the changes one has done.This new look has made your blog more easy to read then the previous version.I hope this will bring in some good news for this.
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I’m loving the new look, Ana. And my face is up there! Yay! So… naturally, I tweeted it.
Great work as usual, Ana.
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Wow, not only do I seriously LOVE the new design… like I said in my email, it’s like Traffic Generation Cafe all ‘growed up’. Plus I see I made the mug shot panel… very honoured too
so I ‘made an impression on you’… sounds ominous - in a good way I hope of course!
My question would come under the ‘creating a popular blog’ banner. I would LOVE to know how you get your little teacups to show next to selected headings on your blog posts. It makes them tantalisingly readable and is the perfect branding tool. Not sure if it you or Ian who needs to answer that one - or whether you’re even prepared to divulge your secret!
BTW big ‘Wow’ to Ian too. Great result and I bet you are not the easiest to work with
Hi Mandy,
I will answer that one for you. Adding an image before the H3 tags, which is what I did here, is done using CSS. The cup image is set as a background image for the in-content H3′s and with a little margin and padding I pushed the text to the right so the image isn’t behind it.
The blockquote image is done in the same way, but it is set behind the text.
Hope that helps. I know I didn’t really tell you how to do it, but there is a good reason for that. It would take a whole post, not just a comment
PS. I am going to be writing a guest post for Ana and would love to know what you, the readers, would like to learn about. I can explain how to do what Mandy asked about, in non-techie terms of course or something else. It’s up to you, just reply to this comment with your suggestions and we will see what you want to learn.
Thanks everyone for your comments on the new design.
PPS. Mandy, Ana is kind of picky when it comes to her blog, but hey, I am as well. Sorry Ana
hi Ian, thanks for divulging the secret!
Write a post on it in non-techie terms? For me that would involve just 1 sentence “Don’t even think about it, contact your web designer”! So for me, no that would be a waste of an amazing guest post. For me the words ‘non-techie’ and ‘css’ in the same sentence are just an oxymoron!
So, what would I like you to write about?? Hmmm, I’ll have to come back to you on that one, but I do have another question: Do I need to use wordpress seo plugin on thesis or is it all literally ‘baked in’? Thanks
Hey Mandy,
No problem. I appreciate your honesty about your knowledge of code, and believe me, you are not alone.
As someone who taught themselves to write code, I know how daunting a task it can seem to be, but that experience also given me a unique ability to explain how it works, in somewhat simple terms.
Don’t sell yourself short, is all I’m saying
Now to your question. Thesis already has the same SEO features as say, “All In One SEO Pack”, so adding it or another SEO Plugin to a blog that uses Thesis, is not necessary.
Hope that helps.
Ian
Ian, if you could teach me how to approach code without breaking into a cold sweat, yours would be a rare genius indeed! So absolutely, if you think you could do a guest post with relevant screen shots, soothing music and qualified paramedics on hand, I would be all up for it
I would love to know how to open and go into a css file and dare to edit stuff without fear of certain death 
(ps, I do know basic html ‘commands’ but I have absolutely no idea of how to open a style sheet, ‘read’ it, what it is ‘safe’ to touch, what will break your site immediately, what the curly ‘}’ bits do and the bits, basic commands for changing straight line to dashed lines … Oh my, now you have opened a pandora’s box!!
Just to give you an example, the “curly { } bits” as you called them are used to assign css rules to certain divs within the HTML. This one starts it “{” and this one ends it “}”. So any of the rules in between these “curly bits” will be applied to the div or divs that have that class or id applied.
I won’t go into divs, classes and ids right now, because that would ruin the post, plus I don’t think Ana would want me to write a comment that long
Plus if you have Thesis, which I am assuming you do, then it is much easier to customize different elements on your blog. Basically copy and paste. Plus, I am going to share a tool I use to make it even easier.
How’s that for a teaser
Perfect!! Now I am seriously intrigued! You mentioned my favourite words, “copy and paste” and “tools” - can’t wait!
I know what you mean about ‘non-techie’ and ‘css’ in the same sentence, Mandy - that’s why I have Ian. lol
I love the look of your new design! My question has to do with commentluv. Could you explain what this is and how it works. I’ve done websites, but this is my first blog and I’m now having to learn about comments and subscription lists…things I don’t know about! I know they are simple, but if you’ve never done them, it can be confusing…or I’m just dense
Thanks, Ana, for all your great advice and how eager you are to share it with others. The pictures of your readers is terrific!
Hi, Sheila:
CommentLuv is a Wordpress plugin that taps into your readers’ blog RSS (when they enter their blog URL in the “website” field of the comment section) and pulls out their latest 10 posts.
From that list, your readers can choose one of 10 and CommentLuv will display that link at the end of the comment.
The ultimate purpose of the plugin is to encourage your readers to comment more by giving them the benefit of the extra link in the comments. That extra link is good for SEO and could potentially generate some traffic to their blogs as well.
Let me know if it helps, Sheila, and feel free to ask for a clarification on anything I said.
Thanks so much Ana.
I just did! Thank you so much for including me there
Best,Mavis
Mavis Nong invites you to read: Why September is the BEST Month For YOUR Business & What You Need to DO
What a tagline!! Superb.
Congratulations on your new looks, Ana!
So, I now have a precise question for you. What did it take to realize that you couldn’t do it all yourself? I mean it in the best sense. Your site’s look and feel is an improvement because you involved Ian. How much more could it improve if you involve other specialists at this point in other areas while you focus on what you do best?
I ask because I may be facing a similar circumstance. I’ve built all the fundamentals myself, soup to nuts. It’s been a great journey. I know what I’m doing. But now to gain impetus, perhaps even in a massive scale, I need to involve other resources who can do certain jobs as good and preferably better than me, to release me to do what I know to do best.
This is the whole point of delegation. Without it we can’t grow.
So, what got you to delegate and will you continue to do so, Ana?
Extremely good question, Arturo, and the area where I am still wrestling with myself.
I’ve tried to delegate certain tasks in the past, like some blog commenting, social media “catch-up”, simple blog updating tasks, but found that:
1. It took a huge effort to train someone.
2. It took several times explaining what I needed to be done and they still got it wrong.
3. They stopped “showing up” after all the work I put into training them.
Ian was a breath of fresh air. And it was a breath of fresh air for me to realize that it IS possible to find someone I could count on and they could actually do a better job than I ever could.
So these are still unchartered waters for me, but I am thinking of delegating more tasks at this point.
And you are sooooo right - to be successful, we HAVE TO learn to outsource a lot of work that takes up a lot of time, but doesn’t have a direct impact on our bottom line.
Ana
the ew traffic generation cafe is rocking great job on the design
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