The 17 best ways to market you blog
This is a guest post by Neil Bergh!
I have listed the 17 best ways to market your blog. You can write the best of contents but if nobody visits your site nobody it won’t matter. To gain visitors you have to work for it, and this guide tells you just how to do it.
1. SEO you want to be found by the search engines. If you have a wordpress blog there is an excellent plugin that is called “All in one seo pack” that makes it all so much easier. You can find it on the wordpress website.
2. Submit to article directories. I think the best ones are www.ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com and www.buzzle.com It may take a few days to a week to get your articles published in the beginning but it will be worth it.
3. Sign up for blog communities. I like www.blogcatalog.com you can meet other bloggers in the same genre, exchange links, and help each other out.
4. Arrange a contest. Although you might want to be careful with this. The prize should of course be something relevant to your readers. Do not change the rules or prizes if you find that you didn’t get the attention you wanted. Instead you may want to start with a smaller prize, and improve it if the contest turns out to be successful. Nobody will complain if you make the prize better.
5. Submit your sites to blog directories. Submit to the free blog directory.
6 Use google sitemap. It’s related to number one with the SEO. If you have a wordpress blog there is a great plugin for this. It’s called “google sitemap generator”.
7. Join forums. You can usually have a link to your site as a signature for your posts. If you can create a name for yourself you will get some traffic. Check out the list of blogging forums.
8. Write comments in other blogs. You don’t want to spam. Nobody likes a spammer, that will do more harm than good. Write good content on large blogs in your genre and you should get some traffic. If you post some really good content the admin might create a post with some of your thoughts and a link to your site.
9. Youtube. This depends very much on what your genre is. For music or movie blogs this is pure gold. You can post clips of yourself teaching a guitar lesson. Also computer blogs tend to do very well on youtube with helpful guides to photoshop or wordpress.
10. Join the social networks. Sites like stumble upon and digg can bring a huge amount of visitors if you get enough votes. It requires some work to get enough friends on these sites that can help you vote for your posts. You should also put the logotype links from these sites in your posts to make it easier for people to vote for you on the social networks. Of course there are plugins for this if you use wordpress.
11. Market your feeds. Put the feedburner on a good spot on your site to make your visitors sign up for your RSS feed. People rarely unsubscribe to feeds.
12. Do something unique. If you can get an interview with a famous person or can be the first one to write about something in your genre, you might be picked up by the big blogs which will skyrocket your traffic.
13. Press release. If you have something very special you might be able to get some media attention. Just look at the guy who sold pixels on his website. Huge media attention.
14. Trackbacks. If you use wordpress you can link to posts in other blogs that are relevant to what you are writing about. In their comments it will show that you have written about their post. Some blogs have shut this feature down since there is so much spamming, but I think it’s still worth thinking about.
15. Guest blog. This is basically a win win situation. You want more traffic, and the admin of the blog want more good content. You can also bring another perspective on things with your posts. Usually it’s great way to help each other out.
16. The design. You need to have a decent designed blog. It is just so important, otherwise people will stop reading, no matter how great your content is. I have also found that alot of wordpress themes have this fluid post area.
This means that it changes if you change the size of the window. So if you look at the blog in fullscreen the post area is huge. It’s really bad. The posting area of the blog must be fixed otherwise it’s very hard to read anything. I have no idea why people design themes otherwise but apparently they do.
17. Spend some times exchanging links. Do it with other blogs and sites in your genre. Links don’t only provide visitors, but also help your google ranking.
This post was written by Neil Bergh. For more guides check out this post in my blog: The 17 best sites to ping your blog
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 am
Well arranging a contest surely helps to promote your blog doesn’t it? :p
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:27 am
Excellent ways given out there, worth reading and implementing
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 am
Hey Those tips are fab..
Would use all of’em Soon
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:17 am
Those are some good tips Neil
Nice post. Although i felt these are always mentioned, it just refreshes someone’s mind with the tips for those who are missing a few points.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 am
Great post. I didn’t know about these sites http://www.ezinearticles.com, http://www.goarticles.com and http://www.buzzle.com.
I will try to submit posts on it. Will also join in http://www.blogcatalog.com
Thanks for all the tips…
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Submitting to article directories is a great idea especially to me as i have a dental blog, i used to do it in ezine but stopped now will have to stick to it,
Thats a great list you got there keep the good job going!!!!
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I am actually doing nos 1,4,6,7, and 8.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
@Hussein – Not the 10th point?
Social networking is a must, and you should be doing that too.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
instead of arrange contest I take part in sponsor contest. I join some forum but not active member.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Thanks a lot guys!
It’s always great when your writing is appreciated.
For more tips on the subject you could check out my blog, but I would also recommend Derren Rowse http://www.problogger.net I think his blog is just outstanding and probably the best you can find about blogging.
// Neil Bergh
October 4th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Neil, your post is great info.
October 4th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Article submission is very effective, when it comes to that, it is more of quantity than quality.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
great I’ve learn something new here
October 4th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
yeah lisa, we can learn so much from the post.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
nice tips! this are fabulous! I am already doing some of this things but not all of it.. ill try to do my best to do it^.^
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Hey Guys,
I tried few this.. and they help a lot
getting good traffic
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Thanks for such great tips here. I have done most of these except doing interviews. I think it’s a great idea too. Thanks for sharing.
Peter Lee
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:52 am
I think if you going for interview you need to have the set of question in mind.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I haven’t tried #9, but I will soon.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
@Work From Home Business Blog: I think I will not try interview because it doesn’t fit the niche of my other blogs.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
@BM I like to see them after you did it
October 24th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
@Aroah: You mean submitting at Social Sites?
October 24th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@Sherry: I said I will NOT
October 24th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
@BM okay. 17 bet ways are the best tips!
October 24th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
@Sherry: What?
October 25th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Hey guys,,
i am sure one of the best ways is to comment on other blogs..
how often you comment on other blogs and which are your fav blogs ( Chetan, is it ok if they type the site’s address ? )
October 25th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Yeah Amar i too think that commenting in other blogs is the best way i am new to all this but still figured it out
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:10 am
Wish I could do half of them. Useful list.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
hi i really thank you for the tips though my blog is still not getting more traffic
December 25th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
The interview tip is really a cool one, gonna implement all this stuff on my blog.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Hi its really a interesting tips but i am still confused that what’s the google page rank criteria?
February 20th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Great Tips.
Thanks for the post. I recently wrote a post on the 10 Golden Rules For Massive Website Hits.
If your interested please check it out.
http://gerrywalter.com/tips-for-website-traffic/ten-golden-rules-for-getting-massive-website-hits/
Regards
Gerry Walter.