Blog Marketing Tips For Free!
It’s all very well having and running a blog, the experts tell us, but to actually make money from blogging, you’ve got to market your blog as if it were an actual High Street business, or in fact, any business at all. So, here’s a few tips to get us started:
By default WordPress gives you the ability to choose if you want Search Engine Friendly URLS for your blog, but let’s take that a step further. You will only be able to follow the instructions below if you already have WordPress installed.
If you have WordPress installed add this line of code to your “Permalinks” section:
/%postname%.htm
Input the above code into the line that says “Custom Structure” and ensure that you have the tick/check placed in the “Custom, specify below” under Common Options.
What this does is give your blog highly optimisable search engine friendly URLS. Every blog post you make will have a keyword rich URL based on the subject of your blog. For example if your blog post was “Caribbean Recipes” your URL would be http://yoursite.com/caribbean-recipes.html.
It’s a nice handy trick to get more search engine friendly URLS out of WordPress to ensure that your keywords appear not only in the in the subject but also in the page URL.
Here’s one of the reasons WordPress is a great option for blogging. WordPress has a built in “Ping” option that will notify all the major blogging and RSS feed directories that you’ve made a new post on your blog. This is automatically activated in the “Writing” section of Word Press. If you scroll to the bottom of the “Writing” section you will see a section called “Update Services”.
Below that you will see a URL link: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/.
Whenever you make a post on your blog, this option sends out a notification to all the blogging directories that you have made a new post and they usually automatically index it. Each time you make a post this ping is automatically done ensuring that your feed is sent.
The best way to learn how to have a successful blog is to review other blogs that are proven success stories. To do this, try visiting Bloglines.com
Link: http://www.bloglines.com/dir
Do a search to find blogs that are similar to your blog and review each to see what they are doing. It’s easy to tell if a blog is doing well by how often they are updating and how many comments each blog post receives.
Take another trip back to Bloglines.com/dir and do a search again for blogs within a similar genre as your blog but not necessarily identical.
Start replying to some of the blog posts made, giving your thoughts about the post or topic. Do this a few times with various blogs, then once you’ve done it on a regular occasion end your post with a signature link that goes to your site. Do *NOT* do this in the initial stages or with your first post. You must first acquire a relationship with the blogs, first by posting comments and leaving positive feedback.
After gaining trust you can simply place a link with your next post comment. Be respectful by replying at least 5 to 10 times before attempting to place a link.
When you’ve first started your blog, comments help your blog look more active. Initially you may find that users may not post comments to your blog. It’s going to be up to you to get things going.
Have your friends or family members start leaving comments on your blog as it can make your blog seem more active. People like to see activity;if your blog seems dead you’ll likely get no responses.
If you would rather not have your family even know about your blog, then you can post comments yourself but as a “Guest” or as registered user instead of admin. Respond to your own posts initially to create activity, then you’ll start to see other real users placing comments as well.
What usually works best is to leave a controversial comment. Start making comments that are guaranteed to elicit a response. I’ve created “characters” before that post controversial statements on my blog to really get user interest going. This “character” may disagree with a blog posting I made, creating a sequence of posts that increase the activity comments of my post.
Once you see that users have taken interest in your blog you can now rely on their posts rather than creating fake ones of your own
Remember if you are going to do fake comment posts, to space the timing between posts. For example never post two minutes after you’ve posted as admin, as it’s too obvious that you’re the same person. Allow some time to pass by before making your “fake user comments post”.
If you would rather not do the “fake posts” yourself, some bloggers have actually paid users to reply to posts on their blog. If you go to popular webmaster forums, you’ll find that users get paid for making posts on forums. The usual rate is about .5 pence/10 cents per post or something within that range. The same theory applies for blog comments. You can hire a set of 10 to 20 people to comment on your posts and pay them a small fee, this way you generate some interest in your blog.
If you post a project on the sites such as Scriptlance.com or Getafreelancer.com for “Blog Posters”, you can find people who can get your blog active, by making comments and paying them a small fee. You can do this until you get users posting on your site in reply to the posters you have paid. Within a few weeks your blog should be very active. This benefits you in the long run as the search engines will be visiting your site often due to the constant updates.
A great way to promote your blog is to have it indexed in the blogging directories. Here’s some of the popular ones that you can submit your new blog to:
Blogarama
Blogdigger
Blog Catalog
Blog Hub
Blog Rankings
Blogstreet.com
Blogsearchengine.com
Blog Wise
Blogz
Blog Lines
Bloogz
Blog Pulse
Blog Universe
Blog Tree
Contents Matter
Feed 24
Feeders
Findory
Get Blogs
Globe Of Blogs
LsBlogs
Postami
Plazoo
Read A Blog
Technorati
Your Web Log Here
A quick way to get your blog indexed is to add it to My Yahoo. If you do not have a My Yahoo account, you should register for one right now by clicking this link here:
Link: Yahoo.com
Assuming that you have now registered, be sure to add your feed to Yahoo’s RSS Directory, you can do this in your My Yahoo user area. This method is considered one of the fastest ways to get your blog indexed by Yahoo.
1) Blog Frequently, at least a few times per week. The biggest mistake made by bloggers is to let weeks or even months go by without blogging. If your blog is not being updated it will no longer be considered “live” to the search engines, by that I mean it will be considered a “dead” blog and they won’t visit as often.
2) Start leaving comments on other successful blogs, and then eventually leave a link back to your site after creating a relationship.
3) Research the most popular blogs within your category; you can use bloglines.com for your research. Look at what they are doing and try to model their success without copying.
4) Add your links to the blog directories to gain more backlinks.
5) Monitor your web stats to see where your traffic is originating. It is important that you use a web stats program that can show you how many people are “bookmarking” your site. A good bookmark ratio is a good sign that people are interested in your blog and have plans on re-visiting it.
Follow these steps and you will be moving forward with a very successful blog. Please remember each blog post does not have to be pages in length. It can be as little as one to two paragraphs. Remember that whatever you post should be valuable to the user and elicit a response.
