We all love to get more traffic to our blog, don’t we? And I’m always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to get more blog traffic.

The first time I heard about Pinterest.com the newest social network on the block was when I visited the lovely Brankica Underwood’s blog. I invite you to pay her a visit and read her “Complete Pinterest Guide.”

Although I loved the idea of pinning pictures of what you are interested in to a virtual pin board, I was apprehensive to join because the last thing I needed was another distraction.

Who wouldn’t love to be on the first page of Google or even occupy the very first spot on the very first page of Google? I know I would, wouldn’t you?

Well, actually I have been there a few times already (on the first page and even in the very first spot with a particular keyword or keyword phrase).

As a matter of fact you can find me on the very first page of Google right now when you do a search for successful network marketers. And this particular blog post has been on the first page for about a year now.

Gosh, I don’t know about you, but when I find out about some cool kind of ninja trick I get all tingly inside and just can’t wait to implement it and experience how it will work for me. And you know I will always share it with you guys.

So, what did I learn today?

Well, I was watching a recorded webinar with Mari Smith (you know THE top authority when it comes to anything to do with Facebook) and Mari mentioned that having Networked Blogs installed on your Facebook Page is really beneficial for getting more SEO from Facebook.

That’s when my ears perked up. Really?

Well, it totally makes sense as Facebook has an Alexa ranking of 2 and is the second most trafficked website in the world after Google.  It is also ranked #1 in the world for site visits for the length of session time.

Has this ever happened to you?  You are getting ready to write one of your weekly blog posts and nothing happens. You have been staring at the screen for 10 minutes and you are drawing a complete blank.

Writer’s block, arrgghh!  Not a single usable blog post idea comes to mind. Nothing! Zilch! Nada!

If you are anything like me, you are starting to get pretty nervous right about now. You know that your readers are waiting for your blog post. You don’t want to disappoint them, yet for the life of you you can’t think of anything that would provide the value your readers are used to.

Pretty horrible feeling, isn’t it?

The wonderful thing about blogging is that if you regularly read the blogs from other people in your niche you can learn a great deal. The amount of valuable information that is shared for free online is unbelievable.

There are about a dozen internet marketing and MLM blogs in my Google Reader that I follow on a regular basis and then there are a few more that I check for updates every once in a while.

As suggested, I installed the WordPress Jetpack plugin a couple of weeks ago because that was the only way to update the WordPress Stats plugin I had used up until then. Little did I know what this little plugin would reveal just a short time later.

Well, on New Year’s Eve I received my first annual report titled “Your 2011 Year in Blogging.” What I found out in this report was very interesting to say the least.

For example it showed me…

Here we are at the 1st of December. Just a few short weeks from now we will be saying goodbye to 2011. I hope it has been a good year for you as it has been overall a good year for me except for a few minor health hickups.

Considering I haven’t even had as much as the “sniffles” for the past 8 years and I am really  a lousy patient when I do get sick, I sure hope for a very healthy 2012 for my family’s sake.

But back to the subject…

For the very last time this year I have the privilege and the immense honor to highlight the…

The first of November logically always follows the spooky night of Halloween. Did you have many trick or treaters knocking at your door? It seems like every year we get less and less here in our community. Not even all of our neighbors’ children visited … or maybe I just didn’t recognize them in their Halloween costumes.

The first day (or first week) of the month is also traditionally the time when I acknowledge and say thanks to my top commentators. At least it’s been like that for the past year or so.

FreeArtisticPhotos.com

Finding free images for blogs is not as simple as performi­­­ng a Google Image Search. As a matter of fact, doing that might land you in hot water because you could be violating copyright laws.

Many of the images that will show up in your browser when you do a simple image search on Google are actually copyrighted and belong to whoever upladed them to their website or blog.

See, when you upload an image to your blog, it will be indexed by the Google search bots.

For example, if you do a search for anti “spam plugin” you will find that an image I created for a previous blog post will show up in the search results.

I am very honored to have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by my friend and fellow blogger Stacy Claflin. Thank you so much, Stacy for thinking of me!

To be quite honest with you, I had to look up the word “versatile” in the dictionary as I had no clue of its meaning. Cross-checking various online dictionaries as well as my trusted Harper Collins German-English dictionary I came to the conclusion that it means…

1. Capable of doing many things competently. 2. Having varied uses or serving many functions.

Pretty cool!  Now that I know what it means I’m even more delighted and only too happy to pay it forward.

This weekend I was just leisurely glancing over my fellow bloggers tweets in Hootsuite, when I noticed a tweet by my friend  Adrienne Smith. I can’t remember exactly what it said but it definitely caught my attention. As it turns out Adrienne had come across a great new resource for bloggers, a free directory for dofollow blogs.

Always on the lookout for high quality blogs I couldn’t resist clicking on Adrienne’s tweet and boy am I ever glad I did.  I would have missed a big one.

Today I need to get a couple of issues off my chest. Honestly, I really don’t like writing this post, and have been avoiding it for quite some time. But it has become necessary for me to step up and address these issues. So here it goes…

First: Faceless Blog Commenting

I have addressed this issue before in my post “Invasion of the Face Snatchers,” but it’s time to do it again.

Blog commenting is one of the best strategies I know for not only getting quality backlinks but to build profitable and long-lasting relationships with like-minded people as well.