Publicising Your Blog

OK, you now have a kick ass blog. Congrats.

But nobody's looking at it. So what now?

Now, you have work to do.

The Obvious Ways To Publicise Your Blog
The most obvious way, to let everybody know about your blog, is to go into every forum and post

Hey everybody look at my blog! http://myblogexample.blogspot.com

Please don't do that. If you do, you'll be labeled a newbie, or maybe a spammer. You don't want to be labeled a spammer at Google Blogger Help, for instance. Spammers lose their accounts.

And there are still more ways of increasing traffic, to your blog, that make no more sense. The task before you is obvious (to some), yet paradoxical (to others).

1. Write content.
2. Get linked.

Write Content
This is the obvious part, to some. If you're going to be indexed by the search engines, you have to have content for them to link to. Make your content Accurate, Attractive, Complete, Relevant, and Timely. The more you publish, the more random traffic you will get.

Get Linked By As Many Sites As Possible
This is the paradoxical part. To publicise your blog, you have to be indexed by the search engines. To be indexed, you have to have weight. To have weight, you have to be linked already. This part takes hard work, and relevance.

1. Post comments on web sites, of relevant content, with links to your blog.
2. Participate in forums, and other social networking venues, with links to your blog.
3. Share your blog, and link to key articles, in social networking sites like FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter.
4. Get your friends, with relevant content, to link to your blog.
5. Make your blog part of the Blogger community, by Following and being Followed.
6. Be observant here! Follow conventions and regulations, in each forum and venue, regarding links and other advertising techniques. Be polite - don't spam!!

Why Is Relevance Important?
Why is relevance important? Because relevance brings the right reputation, and the right reputation brings repeat traffic. You want the right reputation. Don't be like Doug Powell of BibleDesk fame. Doug is "gathering souls for Christ", by being devious.

Relevance is based on content (what is in the blog), not on name or title (what is outside the blog).

Get indexed based on your content, not on what you think will attract traffic.

Search For Relevant Blogs and Forums
Start out by identifying blogs and forums, which are relevant to your blog's content. Two ways of finding relevant blogs and forums are Google Blog Search, and Blogger Profile Surfing. Even if you don't identify immediate targets, you should find some ideas how to identify good places to start.

Read and Comment On Relevant Blogs
When you find blogs with posts relevant to yours, make polite and relevant comments. You can link to your blog and / or your posts, discretely. If you're allowed to post comments anonymously (anonymous comments are optional for Blogger blogs, and chosen by each blog owner), you can link your name with a URL. If you post under your Blogger user name, you'll link back to your Blogger profile. Or, you can put an in text link to a post, in the comment body.

Participate In Social Networking
If you want to post in a forum, participate in the discussions. Answer a question or two. Build a reputation.

After you help or participate for a while, you'll know what needs saying. Write some blog articles, based upon what you posted. When you have relevant articles, you link to them in the body of your message in the forum. Don't advertise the blog in the body of your posts - that's for spammers and trolls. Always link to specific blog posts, and always cite relevant links.

Don't depend upon your ISP, or your blog host, to get traffic to your blog. You need the search engines - that's how folks look for help, and that's how they will find your blog.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2006/07/publicising-your-blog.html

Forums were the original social networking venue. Blogger actively encourages us to participate in many social networking activities, such as FaceBook and Twitter, which provide better opportunities for interacting with our peers.

Social networking, properly exploited, will get you a reputation. That's good. But if you really want traffic, you have to write articles that people need or want to read, and you have to get your blog indexed by the search engines. People looking for help use Google ("Google for it!"), or another search engine.

Use Blogger Native Features

Many search engines will index your blog, using native Blogger features. Under Settings - Publishing

• Set "Add your blog to our listings?" to "Yes", to get linked from "Next Blog", which helps to get you initial visits.
• Set "Let search engines find your blog?" to "Yes", to get indexed by the search engine spiders, which helps to get you later visits.

Be sure to activate the native syndication (Atom / RSS) feeds, provided by Blogger. Many search engines will use newsfeeds to track updates on your blog. Checkout the Blogger Help article Blog Search FAQ, for more ideas about Blogger native tools useful in publicising your blog.

Get Indexed By The Search Engines
You can submit your blog to the search engines anytime it pleases you, but your best results will happen when you understand what the search engines are looking for. Here are 3 default Blogger values, which describe your blog to any search engine spider.

• $BlogPageTitle$
• $BlogMetaData$
• $BlogTitle$

(Note): There are significant differences between an Old (Classic) Template, and a New (Layouts) Template blog.

You will generally find these 3 values used in the template.
Near the top...

<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<$BlogMetaData$>

And far below...

<h1 id="blog-title">
<ItemPage><a href="<$BlogURL$>"></ItemPage>
<$BlogTitle$>
<ItemPage></a></ItemPage>
</h1>

Those 3 values are provided by Blogger, when you setup your blog. You can improve your chances, though, with just a little work. To get The Real Blogger Status properly indexed, I add the meta description and keyword entries.

1. Meta Keywords. The Keywords tell the search engines which terms or topics are most important in your blog; they are the words which generate the hits. This gets your blog listed in a search hit list.
2. Meta Description. The Description describes the contents of the blog; it is what is displayed in a search hit list entry. This is what gets the visitor to click to your blog, when your blog is presented in a search hit list.

Both entries are essential. You want clicks. Without list entries, there will be no clicks.

Note: Both "meta description" and "meta keywords" should be one line each. What you see below was broken artificially, to avoid post / sidebar alignment problems. If you copy code like this, into your blog post, remove all gratuitous line breaks.

<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<meta name="description" content="What Blogger Won't Tell
You"></meta>
<meta name="keywords" content="Blogger, Blogspot,
blogger.com, blogspot.com, outage, maintenance, 
inconvenience..., Permission Denied"></meta>
<$BlogMetaData$>

Here you might want to note how many different ways you can format a meta tag.

Now, the meta tags describe your blog as you see it. Think of how the search engine spider might see it - are all pages (posts) in the blog easily accessed from the main page? Think about that question, then check your blog (website) using Sala's HTML Graph Applet, and see how many nodes you have in your website (blog).

Having setup my meta description and keywords, I can now submit my blog to the search engines

• Altavista.
• Bing.
• Dmoz.
• Dream Submit.
• Google:
  • Blog Search (for Blogger blogs).
  • Google Crawler, Googlebot (for all web sites).
• Technorati.
• Yahoo.

These are but a few examples; there are dozens of possibilities.

And next, I create a Google Sitemap.

Finally, remember that you need people who will return to your blog. And you need people who will bookmark your blog, or better yet, post links to your blog, online. You'll get this most readily when you make sure that your visitors leave your blog, happy.

For more information:

• Blogger Help Forum [FAQ] How Do I Get Traffic And Followers To My Blog?
• Blogger Help: Promoting Your Blog.
• Google Webmaster Help Center: Webmaster Guidelines
• The Real Blogger Status: Google Webmaster Tools.
• Vinu Thomas How Do I Submit My Site To Search Engines?.

Having done all of the above, don't expect to be listed on the first page of the hit lists, overnight. And, don't expect to be listed on the first page, forever. Even so, remember that SERP Page One Position One carries a surprisingly large advantage, over any other SERP page / position.

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