This article talking about how to Increase your readers interest, keep people coming back to your blog regularly? And help you with blog link building, link exchange, contents building, title format and many other resources for a succeed blog. It really worth reading.
1. Choose the topic of your blog wisely. You don’t want it to be too broad or too specific. If it’s too broad, then your blog isn’t any different then the thousands of other blogs that discuss almost the exact same topics. If you make it too specific, you will have a difficult time coming up with new blog entries and your audience will be too small.
2. Stay consistent with your blog entries. If you normally post a new entry every day, then try and keep it up. Otherwise your viewers will stop coming back to see the latest posts.
3. “101 Ways to” lists, “Top 10″ lists, “How to” articles, etc are good ways to start your blogs. For some reason these posts get the most attention, are more interesting reads, and in turn get the most back links.
4. Comedy sells. The more humorous your blog posts are the more interesting your readers will be. Sure there are times when you need to be serious, but when your post allows for it, use as much humor as you can.
5. Publish your posts on Weekdays. Sure, you can publish some on Weekends too. However if you only have time to write your posts on the weekends, then write them then, but publish them on the weekdays. More people read blogs on the weekdays. You should always have posts stored on your computer for days when you can’t write. If you have extra time one day, write an extra post and store it away.
6. Encourage readers to digg your posts at digg.com, as well as the other social bookmark sites. There are plenty of social bookmarking sites out there. The more you have your site bookmarked the more traffic you will get. If you are using a WordPress blog there are social bookmark plugins that will automatically add these bookmark links under each blog entry. I highly encourage using the plugin.
7. Make your blog easy on the eyes. For example, don’t used a black background with blue text. You want a high contrast between the text and the background color. The easier the blog is to read and the neater it looks the more return readers you will have.
8. This isn’t always the case, but you should really try and focus your blog on topics that are “timeless”. You want these posts to generate interest for months or even years rather then just a few hours or days.
9. Even though you don’t know your readers personally in most cases, treat them as they are friends and family. Write things in your post directed to them as though they are your friends. The more you make the reader believe you are talking directly to them the more interested they will be.
10. BE UNIQUE – I think this is self explanatory.
11. Link to blogs that are similar to yours. Since most bloggers check to see where their traffic is coming from, if they see you linking to them they will in a lot of cases link back.
12. Use Meme trackers to find the hot topics. Meme trackers are sites that will track information posted on blogs and news sites, and then provide information about which topics are the hottest. The largest and most popular meme trackers are http://Memeorandum.com and http://Techmeme.com. When you find hot discussions, contribute to them. Your opinions can bring valuable visitors to your site, and will get linked to from other opinions on the topic. If you’re posts are tagged properly, people will be able to find them easily, so make sure you use tags on your posts.
13. Use forums to find topics which people do not understand or need help on. Then write a guide or tuturial on it.
14. Install a text translator on your blog. English is the #1 language online, but Chinese is quickly gaining. Why not cater to both English speakers and Chinese with a language translation script?
15. Set up blogs for other people and add a link within the sites script to your blog.
16. Trade links with other bloggers. It is better to trade them within posts rather then on the blogroll, since you don’t have to put a permanent link up. Check out http://www.lavalinx.com to sign up and trade in post links with bloggers.
Now, I’m sure you want to know how you can make money through running your blog.
There are really 4 ways:
1 – Donation buttons
2 – Affiliate programs
3 – Advertising sales
4 – Paid to Blog Programs
(1) Donation buttons are a great way to make some money especially if you want to keep your blog ad-free. If you don’t have a paypal account, then you need to get one right now. Paypal offers donation links that you add to the HTML code of your blog. Your visitors can simply click this link and donate an amount of their choice. You would be surprised how many people actually donate money to blog owners (especially those that have ad-free blogs). There are a couple ways to encourage donations without sounding as if you are begging for them. The first way is to keep a tally of the total donations you have recieved, as well as the largest donation you have recieved from an individual. People like adding to a tally, and everyone has a little competition in them. Try this out before you add any advertising to your blog.
(2) Affiliate programs are a great way to generate revenue. If your blog is about technology, then you can sell high tech devices on your site. If you blog is about reading, then you can sell books on your site. Affiliate programs usually offer between 2-65% of the sale back to you. The higher range is for online products such as e-books etc where the production costs for 1 more unit is 0. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. We feel Amazon.com, Overture.com, Doubleclick.com, CNET, ShareASale.com and CommissionJunction.com are the best. However there are affiliate programs for just about every product imaginable. If you believe you would be able to sell a certain product on your blog, then go search google for an affiliate program for that product. One good way to really capitallize on commissions is reviewing a certain product on your blog. If the review is a positive one, then why not provide a link for your visitors to purchase that product? Afterall you get a percentage.
(3) Advertising sales are probably the most simple, yet one of the most efficient ways of earning money through your blog. There are 2 kinds of advertising sales. The first is where you manually sell advertising space on your site to people who need it. This is really the old-fashion way. Now there are companies that basically do the selling for you. Google Adsense is the most popular ad publishing agency online. You simply put a little HTML code on your site. Google does the rest. They will automatically crawl your site to determine what it is about. Then it will put ads up that have to do with what your site is discussing. You will then get paid everytime someone clicks on an ad. The amount you are paid per click ranges anywhere form a few cents to $50+. Remember when using Google Adsense, to NEVER click your own ads. This will get you kicked off of their program for life. The most used Blog ad publisher online is blogads.com. There are blogs that earn over $60,000 per month just by putting this code on their site. You name the price you want per advertising spot and then people can search blogads for a blog that matches their criteria. We highly recommend all blogs to use blogads.com.
There are also other advetising publishers out there which include:
- Adbrite.com
- Yahoo Publishers
- text-link-ads.com – similar to google adsense but you get paid a fixed monthly income rather then on a paid per click basis.
- chitika.com – If you have a shopping or technology related blog then try this one.
- usuggest.com
- obeus.com
- blogads.com – This is the most popular among bloggers with traffic of 1000+ unique visitors daily. You can sell ads virtually anywhere on your site through this broker. They do take 30% of your commission though, but you can usually find a good amount of advertisers here.
(4) Thats right, you can blog about peoples services, products or websites and get paid for doing it. If your blog is popular enough you can charge as much as $500 for a simple blog post discussing a service, or website that an advertiser is trying to advertise through you. Here are some of the Pay per blogging sites:
- http://payperpost.com- As you can see offers range from $5-$400 per post and the top bloggers are earning in excess of $1,000 per month here. This site also offers money for posting at forums and even commenting on Youtube videos.
- http://reviewme.com – Another great site for bloggers to make money reviewing products, websites, and services.
- http://sponsoredreviews.com – Same as the sites above it. Also very active.
- http://www.buyblogreviews.com – Advertisers meet Bloggers to have their products or services reviewed, or to buy contextual ads
- http://www.blogitive.com – Once you get approved to Blogitive, you are given instant access to opportunities from companies to post in order to generate buzz. You are then paid per posting
- http://www.linkworth.com/products/partner-linkpost.php – Paid to post a blog about companies, products or services. The advertisers have more control though over what is said.
- http://www.blogsvertise.com – Their advertisers pay you to mention and talk about their websites, products and services in your own blog.
- http://smorty.com – Earn $6 to $100 dollars per post you write on your blog. Amount paid for each post depends on the overall popularity and page rank of your blog.
- http://bloggingads.com
- http://www.payu2blog.com
- http://www.weblogsinc.com
- http://loudlaunch.com
These are only a few of the other companies out there. There are lots more, so just search around.
Remember, starting and maintaining a blog is not like maintaining your yard at home. Whereas to maintain your yard, all you have to do is mow it, and fertilize it once in a while. Maintaining a blog takes a whole lot more. You not only want to maintain it, but you want to make it better every day. You want to set new goals on a monthly basis. Set these goals higher then you believe is a good target. Keep in mind that it takes atleast 1 full year before your blog will even be able to be remotely successful. This is why so many blogs fail. There are not enough type A individuals out there that work their butts off, even though they aren’t seeing much progress. It takes time, and effort. Don’t give up when you aren’t seeing the traffic and revenue that you had hoped for. Just make that another reason to work harder.
Now that you know all about blogging, it’s time to get start. So goodluck. Please feel free to post any of your questions here and we will be glad to answer them.
In the mean time you might want to check out a list of the most visited blogs online (that use sitemeter to publicly trace their stats): http://truthlaidbear.com/TrafficRanking.php
Here are some of the Top Blogs about Blogs:
- http://www.successful-blog.com – This is by far one of the most informative sites for all bloggers.
- http://www.problogger.net
- http://www.johnchow.com
- http://www.copyblogger.com
- http://www.quickonlinetips.com
- http://www.dailyblogtips.com
- http://www.doshdosh.com
- http://www.bloggersblog.com
- http://www.blogherald.com
- http://performancing.com
- http://www.bloggingpro.com
- http://www.successful-blog.com
Get A Top 5 Google Ranking In Under 30 Days!
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Thursday, July 17, 2008
What make a good Blog ?
1. Making screenshots
I often illustrate my posts with screenshots of sites I’m linking to. I’m doing this not only so the post is easy to recognize when you scroll a longer page, but also so that my blog will make a good archive in years to come – when quite possibly, a good portion of the sites I’ve linked to ceased to exist (or changed so much that it’s interesting to see what the site looked like years ago). 2. Not hot-linking to images
I try to avoid to include images from other sites straight within my posts because the other site may move (and, of course, object to this type of inclusion). So even when I’m not changing a picture (which I do most of the time) I’m putting a copy on my own server.
3. Not hosting elsewhere
I’ve moved so often from free sites before I arrived at this, my own (non-free) server, that I can only suggest for you to put your data – images, articles, and so on – nowhere else but on a space you own. On a space that can’t suddenly change the ToS, add pop-ups or other ads, or shut down. For this reason, even when I was blogging on Blogger, I’ve let them FTP-transmit their data to my server so I have a domain (outer-court.com) that’s mine. For this reason, I’m somewhat reluctant to use services like Flickr.
4. Clean code
I’m using as little JavaScript as possible and as much standard-compliant (XHTML + CSS) web code as possible. I want to ensure that in the years to come, I have a good chance browsers will understand the HTML here, or if not, that I’m able to easily convert it.
5. Choosing a top level domain, and sticking with it
Actually, I did this one wrong: I’ve chose a sub-domain on my own server instead of going for a domain name easy to recognize. On the other hand, I don’t want to move as I want the archive permalinks to be indeed permanent. If you’ve still got the choice I suggest you name your domain like you name your blog, and then, never move – your PageRank will increase over time, and your archive will be stable.
6. Explain more than necessary
I’m sometimes explaining obvious words (like “SEO”) simply so that people, years from now, coming from a search engine that doesn’t even exist yet, and stumbling upon one of the articles here, have a chance to understand what the article is all about. (And it also helps those today who may come here from sources such as Google News – in other words, readers who potentially are new to this blog and the search engine world in general.)
7. Prominently writing the date on the page
This one is quite obvious for bloggers: you must put the full date on the page whenever you publish something. But have you noticed that in some mainstream sources, there’s no year given in a date? This creates a terrible archive because in some years, you won’t be able to tell if you stumbled on a “December 8” article from 1999, 2000, 2001, ... and so on.
8. Separating content from layout
As far as it’s possible (and it’s not completely possible), I try to separate content from layout on this blog so that when I later have a redesign, my archive won’t pose a problem. For example, I have an element with a class “more” which is at this moment displayed with a red arrow. When I decide this doesn’t fit the blog layout anymore during a redesign, I can simply think of another visual to represent “more information to be found here.” (If I would have included a “red-arrow.gif”, redesigning the site would be a headache.)
9. Putting the right amount on a page
I don’t want to create yet another page for every little link I post. That’s why I use a multi-post-per-page style for smaller posts. For longer posts, I’m using a separate page. I feel this keeps my archive from “exploding.” (The down-side is that when you arrive on a multi-post-per-page style page from a search engine, you must scroll to find the post you were looking for.)
10. Using your own blog software
As I’m using my own blog software, I have complete control over all past posts. I can create my own archive view, search and replace in older posts when technical changes need to be made. I can also export & back-up to different formats so my archive is save. My suggestion would be whenever possible, install blogging software you have complete control over – i.e., software you wrote yourself, or an open source blogging package running on your own server.
11. Referencing the surrounding
If you want your old posts to make sense you need to be careful about talking about the surroundings of the post. For example, a sentence like “click on the ’Archive’ link below to get to the archive” would be rendered meaningless if you change your template and move the “Archive” link from the bottom to the left, and rename it to “Old posts.”
12. Avoiding too many CSS classes
In the beginning, I’ve used many different CSS classes for many different purposes. After a while, I redesigned the site – and the CSS file felt cluttered and hard to work with. I’m now keeping to a minimum of complexity within the CSS. More creativity can be put into illustrations accompanying the post. But be careful; unless your images are all square, you are stuck with whatever background color you chose for your template (unless you want to redesign all images from your archive whenever you redesign the site). That’s one reason I think white makes a good background color: it’s very neutral, and you’re not that likely to find it annoying. As soon as real PNG anti-alias (smooth transparency effects) work cross-browser, images might be prepared so they work on any background.
13. Avoid too-clever headlines
Easily understood headlines are very important for a successful archive overview page, or search engine result pages, where the visitor has little more than the headline to decide if that’s the wanted content. Puns take some seconds longer to be understood, or can’t be understood at all without further context of the post, and should thus be avoided within headlines for blog posts. On a side-note, headlines without context (microcontent) is also why I repeat the word “Google” in headlines whenever I post about Google.... because reading it out of context, you may not know my blog is about Google.
14. Vary keywords
If your blog has a lot of posts, you find searching it is important to reference older posts, put new posts in context, or find out if you already blogged about something years ago. An easily searchable archive of course helps your visitors too. But how do you guarantee your blog to be easily searchable? When I write posts, I often try to vary keywords I’m using. For example, when I link to a tool called “My Google Portal” at MyGooglePortal.com, I might use both “My Google Portal” in the headline, and “MyGooglePortal.com” in the main copy. This way, when I later search for either variant, I’m able to find the post again. (Naturally, I think the variation is also good style because it doesn’t make readers feel like the introductory sentence to a post is a mere repetition of the headline they already read.)
15. Nice URLs
URLs are visible to the visitor, so having “nice” URLs is not a mere technical issue. Especially with a large archive, a clean URL structure – including the date of the post – improves a blog.
16. Discussing links
Similar to point number 1 – making screenshots of sites I link to – I want to give a nut-shell of the link as well (“the page contains a video about ...”). This is because the site linked to may stop existing, and then it would be hard to understand what it was about, and a worthwhile idea may be lost. Why not make your blog archive into a digital museum for future readers?
17. Providing context
On the web, there’s no easier way to provide context for those who need it than using links – because it’s unobtrusive for those who don’t need this context (they may simply not click on it and ignore the link).
18. Link to the archive
To show newer readers what you’ve posted about in the past, it’s valuable to provide summarized link collections (“all my humor links from the past 2 years...”), to link to the archive in one of the most prominent places on your blog, to make the archive easily searchable, to link to related items from the past from within newer posts, and possibly, to provide “items this time last year” or “best of" style link collections. I often find that for a new readers of this blog, an old link or Google tidbit can be just as interesting as a fresh one.
19. Categories
These categories may then be linked to from the archive or the navigation bar next to every post.
20. Help others do something with your archive
While for all of the above approaches it was mainly you responsible to improve the archive and render it meaningful, there are also strategies to let others help out. For example, by providing an easy download to your whole archive in a structured data format, you are giving creative developers a chance to analyze and visualize your data.
I often illustrate my posts with screenshots of sites I’m linking to. I’m doing this not only so the post is easy to recognize when you scroll a longer page, but also so that my blog will make a good archive in years to come – when quite possibly, a good portion of the sites I’ve linked to ceased to exist (or changed so much that it’s interesting to see what the site looked like years ago). 2. Not hot-linking to images
I try to avoid to include images from other sites straight within my posts because the other site may move (and, of course, object to this type of inclusion). So even when I’m not changing a picture (which I do most of the time) I’m putting a copy on my own server.
3. Not hosting elsewhere
I’ve moved so often from free sites before I arrived at this, my own (non-free) server, that I can only suggest for you to put your data – images, articles, and so on – nowhere else but on a space you own. On a space that can’t suddenly change the ToS, add pop-ups or other ads, or shut down. For this reason, even when I was blogging on Blogger, I’ve let them FTP-transmit their data to my server so I have a domain (outer-court.com) that’s mine. For this reason, I’m somewhat reluctant to use services like Flickr.
4. Clean code
I’m using as little JavaScript as possible and as much standard-compliant (XHTML + CSS) web code as possible. I want to ensure that in the years to come, I have a good chance browsers will understand the HTML here, or if not, that I’m able to easily convert it.
5. Choosing a top level domain, and sticking with it
Actually, I did this one wrong: I’ve chose a sub-domain on my own server instead of going for a domain name easy to recognize. On the other hand, I don’t want to move as I want the archive permalinks to be indeed permanent. If you’ve still got the choice I suggest you name your domain like you name your blog, and then, never move – your PageRank will increase over time, and your archive will be stable.
6. Explain more than necessary
I’m sometimes explaining obvious words (like “SEO”) simply so that people, years from now, coming from a search engine that doesn’t even exist yet, and stumbling upon one of the articles here, have a chance to understand what the article is all about. (And it also helps those today who may come here from sources such as Google News – in other words, readers who potentially are new to this blog and the search engine world in general.)
7. Prominently writing the date on the page
This one is quite obvious for bloggers: you must put the full date on the page whenever you publish something. But have you noticed that in some mainstream sources, there’s no year given in a date? This creates a terrible archive because in some years, you won’t be able to tell if you stumbled on a “December 8” article from 1999, 2000, 2001, ... and so on.
8. Separating content from layout
As far as it’s possible (and it’s not completely possible), I try to separate content from layout on this blog so that when I later have a redesign, my archive won’t pose a problem. For example, I have an element with a class “more” which is at this moment displayed with a red arrow. When I decide this doesn’t fit the blog layout anymore during a redesign, I can simply think of another visual to represent “more information to be found here.” (If I would have included a “red-arrow.gif”, redesigning the site would be a headache.)
9. Putting the right amount on a page
I don’t want to create yet another page for every little link I post. That’s why I use a multi-post-per-page style for smaller posts. For longer posts, I’m using a separate page. I feel this keeps my archive from “exploding.” (The down-side is that when you arrive on a multi-post-per-page style page from a search engine, you must scroll to find the post you were looking for.)
10. Using your own blog software
As I’m using my own blog software, I have complete control over all past posts. I can create my own archive view, search and replace in older posts when technical changes need to be made. I can also export & back-up to different formats so my archive is save. My suggestion would be whenever possible, install blogging software you have complete control over – i.e., software you wrote yourself, or an open source blogging package running on your own server.
11. Referencing the surrounding
If you want your old posts to make sense you need to be careful about talking about the surroundings of the post. For example, a sentence like “click on the ’Archive’ link below to get to the archive” would be rendered meaningless if you change your template and move the “Archive” link from the bottom to the left, and rename it to “Old posts.”
12. Avoiding too many CSS classes
In the beginning, I’ve used many different CSS classes for many different purposes. After a while, I redesigned the site – and the CSS file felt cluttered and hard to work with. I’m now keeping to a minimum of complexity within the CSS. More creativity can be put into illustrations accompanying the post. But be careful; unless your images are all square, you are stuck with whatever background color you chose for your template (unless you want to redesign all images from your archive whenever you redesign the site). That’s one reason I think white makes a good background color: it’s very neutral, and you’re not that likely to find it annoying. As soon as real PNG anti-alias (smooth transparency effects) work cross-browser, images might be prepared so they work on any background.
13. Avoid too-clever headlines
Easily understood headlines are very important for a successful archive overview page, or search engine result pages, where the visitor has little more than the headline to decide if that’s the wanted content. Puns take some seconds longer to be understood, or can’t be understood at all without further context of the post, and should thus be avoided within headlines for blog posts. On a side-note, headlines without context (microcontent) is also why I repeat the word “Google” in headlines whenever I post about Google.... because reading it out of context, you may not know my blog is about Google.
14. Vary keywords
If your blog has a lot of posts, you find searching it is important to reference older posts, put new posts in context, or find out if you already blogged about something years ago. An easily searchable archive of course helps your visitors too. But how do you guarantee your blog to be easily searchable? When I write posts, I often try to vary keywords I’m using. For example, when I link to a tool called “My Google Portal” at MyGooglePortal.com, I might use both “My Google Portal” in the headline, and “MyGooglePortal.com” in the main copy. This way, when I later search for either variant, I’m able to find the post again. (Naturally, I think the variation is also good style because it doesn’t make readers feel like the introductory sentence to a post is a mere repetition of the headline they already read.)
15. Nice URLs
URLs are visible to the visitor, so having “nice” URLs is not a mere technical issue. Especially with a large archive, a clean URL structure – including the date of the post – improves a blog.
16. Discussing links
Similar to point number 1 – making screenshots of sites I link to – I want to give a nut-shell of the link as well (“the page contains a video about ...”). This is because the site linked to may stop existing, and then it would be hard to understand what it was about, and a worthwhile idea may be lost. Why not make your blog archive into a digital museum for future readers?
17. Providing context
On the web, there’s no easier way to provide context for those who need it than using links – because it’s unobtrusive for those who don’t need this context (they may simply not click on it and ignore the link).
18. Link to the archive
To show newer readers what you’ve posted about in the past, it’s valuable to provide summarized link collections (“all my humor links from the past 2 years...”), to link to the archive in one of the most prominent places on your blog, to make the archive easily searchable, to link to related items from the past from within newer posts, and possibly, to provide “items this time last year” or “best of" style link collections. I often find that for a new readers of this blog, an old link or Google tidbit can be just as interesting as a fresh one.
19. Categories
These categories may then be linked to from the archive or the navigation bar next to every post.
20. Help others do something with your archive
While for all of the above approaches it was mainly you responsible to improve the archive and render it meaningful, there are also strategies to let others help out. For example, by providing an easy download to your whole archive in a structured data format, you are giving creative developers a chance to analyze and visualize your data.
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15 Best way to promote your site through Blog
Here are few tips that how can we promote our site through blogs. I got that from about. and want to share you also
How to promote your Blog
1. Write Well and Write Often
Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.
2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines
Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.
3. Use and Update Your Blogroll
By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs.
4. Harness the Power of Comments
Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.
5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed
Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.
6. Use Links and Trackbacks
Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.
7. Tag Your Posts
It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines.
8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites
9. Remember Search Engine Optimization
When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.
10. Don't Forget Images
Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings.
11. Consider Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger's blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog.
12. Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups
Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals.
13. Promote Outside Your Blog
Promoting your blog shouldn't stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog's URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It's important to get your name and your blog's URL noticed offline, too.
14. Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards
There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.
15. Don't Be Shy
The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don't be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don't sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed.
How to promote your Blog
1. Write Well and Write Often
Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.
2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines
Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.
3. Use and Update Your Blogroll
By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs.
4. Harness the Power of Comments
Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.
5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed
Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.
6. Use Links and Trackbacks
Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.
7. Tag Your Posts
It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines.
8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites
9. Remember Search Engine Optimization
When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.
10. Don't Forget Images
Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings.
11. Consider Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger's blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog.
12. Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups
Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals.
13. Promote Outside Your Blog
Promoting your blog shouldn't stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog's URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It's important to get your name and your blog's URL noticed offline, too.
14. Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards
There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.
15. Don't Be Shy
The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don't be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don't sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed.
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