In the two years that Sam Winter’s been working on her lifestyle blog, she’s learned one very important lesson: keywords really can increase traffic…

www.sassisamblog.com

Sam’s blogger profile…

Blog: SassiSam

Blogger: Sam Winter

Lives: Australia

Twitter: @sassisam

Visitors per month: 35,000+

What’s it about? The fun and girlie gossip world within the realm of pop culture in a positive and pretty blog space. I love pretty pictures, ad campaigns and the aspiring aspects of the glossy world. I cultivate a Pollyanna policy of keeping the blog as positive and upbeat as possible; nasty comments are not welcome, only constructive feedback.

When did you start blogging and why? In 2008 because of the demand [for extra information] that came from my website’s newsletters. [Sam also has sassisam.com]

Platform? WordPress.org. The back end is easy to use, it’s easily search-engine optimised, and I love the plethora of plug-in options available

What did you know about blogging before you began? I’d been reading blogs for a few years before I started and never thought I’d start my own blog – there were too many other good ones out there. But I started it as a test in 2008 and it became popular and so I decided to keep going and expand it.

How many hours per week do you work on it? Four or five in the early days, twenty plus now.

How’s your blog changed since it began? I post a lot more than I used to, and I am now also posting a lot more fashion editorials – readers seem to like that.

Any big traffic spikes? I’ve had a number of links from high-traffic US blogs now; the biggest one was a story on Kim Cattrall, another was when I did a story on [Australian model and spokesperson] Jennifer Hawkins [when she appeared nude on the cover of Australian Marie Claire]. With the Jen Hawkins story, it wasn’t just one thing [that drove traffic to my site]; it was search engine optimisation – as my stories are indexed quite quickly into Google – and Twitter and Facebook also brought a lot of traffic.

Your blog’s biggest income source? Selling products. I’m [also] introducing a new advertising model for the blog that will be rolled out within the next month, and I hope to increase [my earnings] over the next few months.

The biggest blogging lesson you’ve learned so far? Search engine optimisation is important for increased traffic and Google indexing.”Because of SEO my blog’s traffic grew ten-fold in a matter of months.”

Biggest blogging mistake you’ve ever made? Not using keywords in every post, and I didn’t realize the importance of having standard-sized advertising boxes, so that’s one of the biggest changes that will be happening in the redesign.

Your best advice for fellow bloggers? Do what you love and cultivate a positive blog space.

Any other thoughts on blogging? I’m inundated with information everyday and that can be overwhelming but I love what I’ve created and I love seeing my posts linked back to other blogs.