Best Blog Promotion Techniques
By erigena, published 21st March 2007
Some or all of the following techniques may be employed to promote your Blog. Blogs need exposure and readers, and having a good readership and good search engine rankings can monetize your web presence. If your Blog rockets in success, you could make your living as a career Blogger.
Following the steps below will help you improve the number of visitors and subscribers to your Blog, as well as boosting your earning potential.
Target
Target your niche: You have to be an expert on something, you need to specialize in one field, and keep abreast of happenings in the world of that niche; this is your professional duty as a `Blogger proper'. If you do this, other Bloggers are more likely to link to you, resulting in desired cross promotion.
Networking
Build a relevant network for your Blog. Network with other Bloggers in your niche area. Post comments on their Blogs, and add relevant Blogs to your Blogroll to increase the chances of a reciprocal link.
Get "The Scoop"
Getting "The Scoop" is getting and publishing the news first! This means that you are likely to be cited when others later Blog about the same event, as well as by other news channels.
Quality
Without this, content your Blog will sink like a Zeppelin made of lead. Articles should target your chosen niche. If you are a poor content writer you have the option of buying articles or using a "ghost writer". You might find it useful to target your content / articles to use long tail keywords [1] to drive more traffic to your Blog (try Hittail [2] if you want to find popular long-tail keywords for your site/Blog).
Fresh Content
Search engines and humans alike enjoy fresh content. In fact, many say that "content is KING!". Strive to publish something relevant and new on your Blog daily or at least twice a week.
Marking up for Search Engines
Your content should include relevant keywords, occasionally in bold or italics, and used in header tags.
Comments
Comments - Take the time to reply to your comments (this will increase the chances of converting each poster into a subscriber), and delete spam comments.
SEO
Good Search Engine Optimisation is essential. Having your own domain, containing keywords which are relevent to your niche is a good idea. Your own web-hosting is essential to allow tweaking of your Blog software. Customise your Blog software to enable seo-friendly urls, pings, trackbacks and other useful Blog functionality/plugins.
Unique design
Design - Break away from the norm! Give your users a unique experience - abstain from using unmodified Blog templates. If you are not technically savvy, don't worry - hire a good web designer to do it for you.
Syndication
Syndication of content is trivial with RSS feeds. People can subscribe to your content, it can be syndicated on other sites or viewed on RSS readers like google reader, yahoo, feedburner etc. Track how many users you have subscribed to your feeds, and use this information later.
Article Directories
Article directories e.g.Article Dashboard [3] allow you to submit your articles which they syndicate, and which may also contain a footer link to your Blog / web-site. This is a good example of viral marketing.
Linkbait
Linkbait is essentially content placed on a web page (an article, Blog post, picture, or other form of e-media) - designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Linkbait is usually timely, current and controversial.
Press Release
If you are doing something newsworthy or likely to turn heads, a press release can give you a lot of exposure.
Trackbacks & Backlinks
Linking to authority sites is a good idea, and linking to authority Blogs / posts with trackback enabled will result in links to your post.
Blogburst
Blogburst [4] is a Blog network which syndicates Blog content.
Give it away Give it away now!
Competitions may be a good way to encourage users to subscribe and participate more actively with your Blog. Any competition which involves subscribers posting links to your Blog is extra chocolate sprinkles. Big names in your niche may donate prizes in exchange for some free exposure on your Blog / site.
Interviews
Attempt to interview specialists or celebrities in your niche area, This can generate hoardes of traffic to your Blog from the Blogs or websites of the influential individuals interviewed, as well as from other sources.
Blog Networks
Forums
Forums relevant to your niche can be an excellent source of targeted visitors (if you are permitted to advertise your Blog in your signature or profile). Some forums have a Blog aggregator plugin which will show users a link to your most recent post. If you use a forum, you can ask the forum administrator to install such a plugin.
PPC Campaigns
You can drive traffic to your Blog using adwords, Overture, adbrite or other PPC engines if you want fast targeted traffic, and have some money to spend on promotion.
If you employ some or all of these strategies (and perhaps some evil Blog promotion techniques[5]), in 12 months you will have a popular Blog with a good number of subscribers, prominent search
engine result page rankings, as well as a large earning potential.
Resources
- Long Tail Keywords - Long Tail keywords explained.
- HitTail - Find long tail keywords for your site / Blog.
- Articledashboard.com - Article Dashboard.
- Blogburst - The Blogburst Blog Network.
- evil Blog promotion techniques - Article covering some techniques of "evil" Blog promotion.
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Search Engine Optimisation Ireland
- Irish