Ok, so you have created your nice shiny new blog, and have been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)... whats next?
Review Your Blog
First, take stock of your blogs set-up, and make sure its ready for debut;
1.) Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you are intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to optimise the page just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
2.) Do your postings contain a clickable link or two back to your site? By this I mean a proper link in the format
The SEO Guys Blog and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!
3.) Does each posting contain your Author Details Panel that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window - thats a kind gesture to those who'd like to return and finish reading the original page...
4.) Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site!
Blog Marketing
You will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody know where its at yet, so you have got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites - pretty obvious, you would think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!
More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you've got to actively market your blog to the places that blog readers go... and Where is that, pray tell me do? I hear you say...
Well, the ping services you've added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt pinging a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.
The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link - not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendeered to you. In other cases, a donation might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site... its got to be high (6+) to be worth it!
The challenge is finding all these blog directories... so we have added a category on our Directory especially for links them, see; Blog Directories
By the time you've spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links, you will be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking. Your postings, and the consequent ping to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along.
Good luck!
