Home Business Blog

My last post in the series detailed on how to get listed in the search engines. More than likely your blog is not anywhere near the top of the results for your keyword choices as of yet. (Unless you have already been working on this or you have a very niche blog) In order to do this you need to understand what increases ranking. One thing the search engines look for is keywords, so be sure you try to include them in your posts as often as you can, but do not get stuck in the trap of writing for the search engines, always focus on your readers, the rest will come. Next they check for popularity, some search engines, like Google, look at a link to your site from another as a virtual ‘vote’ for that site. By submitting to several search engines and directories you have a head start on this, but you also need to focus on site relevant to your content and keywords, as those will often count for more.

In order to get started with link exchange, you need to be ready for critique, make sure your blog has some good content, a focus, and is not just a baby with two or three posts. Make it something of value, write a few articles, give tips, reviews, etc. You want a blog that other blogger would like to link to. Once your blog is ready there are several ways to find links.

1. Run searches on Google with your chosen keywords. The most highly ranked sites will be the most relevant for you. Send an email to the site owner asking if they can add a link to your site. The worst they can do is say no, but often they agree if you link back to them as well. Some of these sites may have comments sections - add comments to the site with links back to your own blog. Make sure that your comments are relevant and not blatant self promotional pieces. Some of the websites that appear in the search results may be forums - if they are forums that do not require logging in to view (search engines will not be able to index private pages), then write or contribute to threads. Do not go off spamming other sites though, try to keep it professional and friendly.

2. Run the searches again, but this time add the word “forum” to your keywords to find forums relating to your blog’s topics. Contribute to these forums as in step 1. Become an active member in a few forums, you can not only gain readership but get lots of help and advice on blogging or your niche.

3. Try running the queries again but inserting the word “blogger”, “weblog” or “blog”. Hopefully this should bring up relevant blogs to your topic. Owners of blogs will often be more than happy to add links as it helps their own site promotion. A lot of blogs have comments sections so add comments with links back to your site.

4. Search Engines also take into account your own links to other relevant sites, so add a list of links to your blog and post to blogs and websites of similar content. A useful tool to maintain your list of links is Blogrolling - this handy tool lets you add new links using a button on your browser when you are reading a site you would like to link to.

Keep this process going through out the life of your blog, promotion is never done. Link exchanges are very popular and a great way to get backlinks.

Read the whole Series on Blog Promotion:
Blog Promotion 101 ~Intro
Blog Promotion 101 ~Search Engines
Blog Promotion 101 ~Link Exchanges
Blog Promotion 101 ~RSS Feeds

Posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 12:14 pm in SEO and Marketing | rss feed for comments| Leave a response, or trackback