Publicising Your Blog / Website - How Not To Do It

There's one helpful and knowledgable guy, in a tech forum, who would, at one time, end each post with

Please link to my blog.

And there are some online communities with a "staff position" of publicist or recruiter. The "job" of the publicist / recruiter is to go into the Internet, and convince folks to check out the community being started. In some cases, the first thing the person starting the community does is to "hire" the publicist / recruiter, before there are even any articles to read, or members to interact with.

And still other online communities will be formed with one purpose - to have everybody link to everybody else. You can go into discussion areas in some forums, where everybody posts

Hey everybody, check out my web site.

Neither of these strategies make any sense to me, for technology websites. In technology communities or web sites, you provide peer help. That is content, that's relevant, useful, and valid, to your peers.

• Answer questions, that are asked by your peers.
• Ask questions, that can be answered by your peers.
• Provide information, that your peers are interested in.

People read your advice when you provide information that they need, or want, to read. If you have more advice to give, elsewhere (your personal website), you have hyperlinks in the text. Alternatively, you might indicate in your advice

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

You make your blog or website part of the World Wide Web. The word "Web" refers to websites linked to each other, and having a common interest.

It's always good to have your friends (folks who know you personally / have linked to you in the past) linking to your website. Some friends will link because they know you, and others even though they know you. Although you and your friends share common interests (maybe another website), those common interests may not reflect the content of this website. Your friends will have other friends that won't be interested in your website, and those friends won't link to your website, nor will they visit your website with any interest.

What you really want is folks that you don't know, but have interests similar to the content in your website, linking to your website. When their friends check out the other website, and see links to your website, those folks follow the links, because both websites contain information that interests them. That's where you get good traffic, from referrals that involve common interests.

People linking to your website because they read

Please link to my website

will not necessarily have the same content in their website, as you have in yours. Their friends will not be as interested in checking out your website, when its content differs from theirs. If they do follow the links, they'll probably not stay so long. Why? Because your website doesn't interest them.

Spammers send 1,000 pieces of email, to get 1 live customer. Genuine people know that real sales (visitors) come from repeats. If you have a visitor meter on your website (and if you don't, you absolutely should get one or two), look at the visits that show only one page read. In many cases, this was somebody who came, and said

Nothing here, move on.

People who are going to link to your website will read a few articles (or a lot of articles), and say

I'm coming back here again soon.

The search engines are looking for blogs that inspire more of

I'm coming back here again soon.

and less of

Nothing here, move on.

This requires original and relevant content about and by you. If the subject of your blog is your business, make sure that it's a legal business, selling a legitimate product.

If you pay folks to read your blog, or to click on the ads in the blog, you'll probably get some initial traffic improvement. This may lead to later classification as a spam blog, though.

Repeat visits come from content. You develop content based upon what folks want to read. When your visitor logs (from the visitor meters) indicate interest in a particular set of articles, you look at those articles, and maybe expand upon them. Add more inlinks (from elsewhere in your website), and more outlinks (to elsewhere in your website, and to external websites). And make all links relevant, useful, and valid.

With relevant, useful, and valid content, your visitors will bookmark you. When you're lucky, they will post the bookmark in their BlogRoll. And when you're real lucky, they will have lots of friends with common interests. And that's where your hits come from.

>> Top