You can significantly mitigate the costs of marketing your blog with some careful (ethical) SEO (search engine optimisation) tactics.
Primary among these is to have a blog which is web standards compliant. Search engines love standards compliance – to this end, WordPress is a great blogging tool as it is standards complaint out-of-the-box. Having said that, if you have access to a developer, you can get the developer to design a standards compliant template for most blog apps.
Secondly, generate inward traffic/links. The only way to do this (apart from paid ads etc.) is to generate content on your blog that is compelling enough that people will link to it. Also leaving relevant comments on other’s people’s blogs will bring curious readers of those comments to your site.
And finally, get your blog listed in a directory like dmoz or LookSmart.
All these take time and effort but they will ultimately pay off and are free!
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i’ve recently updated my blog http://www.filmfiler.com from blogger to wordpress and can definitely recommend the switch. wordpress has so many more features and is much more customisable. i’m trying to implement various seo features listed on great sites like this one but with all these bookmarklet sites and whatnot, it’s a pain.
i almost get the feeling that bloggers and people running websites are getting sidetracked into an endless glut of technology websites which suck you into them, just another addition to their ever expanding waistlines.
tom, i wonder what you would recommend as the top 3 seo tools – bookmarklet sites or otherwise…
Rav – apologies for taking so long to respond to your query – I’m not entirely sure what you mean by bookmarklet sites.
To make up for the delay I’m giving you an extra tip!
The top 4 tips I would have for your seo are to:
1. Use relevant keywords in your posts (and your site title)
2. Generate lots of relevant inward linkage (by outward linkage, by commenting on others, by building a network)
3. Write lots of good content – this will give the search engines text to index and will generate inward linkage also
4. Use a web standards compliant theme
What about link building sites such as Link Metro which constitute a reciprocal link exchange ?
Well the real problem is how much passion do you have to keep your blog active and up to date posting.
The spam blogs only now how to post junk content
and search engine love a real blog !
Sorry a follow up..
“What about link building sites such as Link Metro which constitute a reciprocal link exchange ?”
This service sucks I have tons of people who never link back after I link to them and this is the pay version forget it…
Thanks for a really interesting article, most useful I have bookmarked your site and will be calling back. I am fairly new to all this blogging and have just started using wordpress – great application and an easy install.
Cheers
Mike
Social sites like Technorati can also be a great source of traffic for blogs. In fact, I can see that you use the Technorati tags in your posts.
For many years all that was available was html web sites. Using all the exhausting SEO tactics was just that. EXHAUSTING! Keyword density, header tags, bolding, hyperlinks title…the list is endless and seems you are always chasing new ideas.
I have recently started several blogs, the newest being Web 2.0 Marketing Guy, with Wordpress and I can tell you from first hand experience that using the Wordpress platform is a God sent. I have never used anything like it before and the ability to develop and add plugins is breakthrough technology. The closest I ever had a module type system was back in the days of BBS’ing with CNET on my Amigas. I digress
Evidently the search engines love the platform as well. I have been able to get #1 positions in Google results for highly competitive keywords and did NO SEO tricks to get the position. Simply staying focused with my post and making the overall information on the blog relevant to the niche.
I might have to give a little credit to the sitemap plugin available for Wordpress but to early to tell but I am sure it didn’t hurt by adding it.
I like how you start your blog post by stating “careful (ethical) SEO”, especially since a lot of people are using black hate marketing strategies to market their blogs.
You are right. I have found that using Wordpress helps those rankings especially since it is standard compliant. Google and yahoo love ‘em.
Google sitemaps and Serps definitely help as well.
@Stephen: “Black hate” marketing strategies – love it – never heard it called that before!
Why is this post just about business blogs? The principals apply to any kind of website.
It’s nice to find a blog with correct and helpful advice. I understand that search engines now favour one way links ie: websites or blogs with links pointing to them without a return link. This raises the value of a site’s content and penalises link exchanges and blog farms.
I just don’t get it, I’ve created many blogs, updating them with great content, each and every day and they have 0 visitors (www.mcnowell.com). I use google blog – blogspot.com, is blogspot wrong or something else?
Hi Dominik, I don’t know much about blogspot anymore having moved away from Blogger some time back in favour of WordPress.
However zero visitors would indeed be worrying.
I had a quick look at your blogs, I hope you don’t mind the following suggestions/thoughts:
1. You’re blog topics are very generic and highly competitive. Consider finding a niche within these topics perhaps, and also consider a less formal tone.
2. You don’t utilise linking at all – you need to work on building incoming AND outgoing links to and from other relevant sites.
3. Get involved in the blogging community for your blog topics. Join discussions, link to other blogs etc.
4. Definitely consider moving to a hosted solution, like wordpress, where you will have more control, can add great plugins and have access to your full stats using tools like Google Analytics.
Thanks for another great SEO article
As a fellow person of Irish heritage, it is nice to see someone with the right facts and have them presented in a clear and simple way.
Will help me a lot on my blogs. Thanks!
In my opinion, even though Google owns Blogger.com, they seem to favor wordpress when hosted by a reliable web host.
Just my 2 cents.