So, “How Do I Get My Blog Seen?”
The person who asked me this question yesterday probably is in the same dilemma as most bloggers are; pressed with the problem of how to get people to find and read your blog.
A little over two years ago when I first started blogging on Friendster, I was not really thinking about people actually finding the blog and reading it, in fact most of my blog’s readers were just people within my network, as Friendster is another one of those social networking sites. I remember one time I hit over a hundred in one day I was ecstatic.
But as blogs have evolved over the years, not only in popularity but as a proven effective online marketing tool, blogging has certainly changed… with more people blogging with the intention of making some money from the blog. The old days when we just sat and waited around for traffic are long gone, and blog competition for traffic and readers today is as fierce as any form of online property like websites, etc.
So now people really have to make an effort to get their websites or blog sites found, seed, read.
Let me lay this out to you like a newbie, and not get technical.
If you want your blog to get found, here is what you got to do… and understand.
If you want traffic, you have to learn where traffic is coming from, and there are generally 3 sources of traffic; the search engines, other websites and direct visitors.
Website traffic from search engines are those people who searched for a set of words on a search engine, and luckily your blog came out was one of the results of that search, and well.. the visitor clicked that link and found your site.
Traffic from other websites are those people who saw a link going back to your site on another website, probably found the link interesting and so clicked it, and then landed on your site.
The third traffic source are direct visitors, people who already knew your blog address and simply typed in the address on their browser, hit enter, and voila.. they are at your site.
So knowing where traffic is coming from, gives you a clue what you should do.
1. If you want people to find your site, create more opportunities for them to find you. Create more links on other sites.
How? By commenting on other people’s blogs.. just make sure that the topic you are commenting on is similar to your content on your blog, don’t forget to leave a link.
You can also join forums and participate in discussions, leave a link or if the forum allows a signature box, use it. Indicate your blog address on your signature box.
You can contact other blog owners who have sites which have similar topics as yours and you can swap links, you put their link on your site and they put yours on theirs; in a link exchange.
If you have a lot of interesting content, especially if your posts convey an authority in you, you can also start writing articles and submit these to article directories. If your article gets approved and published, your link is displayed in the resource box for the article… and the best thing about this method called article marketing is, if someone happens to like your article, they can re print it or publish it on their website, and also include the link; that is one more link back to your site and you didn’t even have to lift a finger.
You can also email all your friends and relatives to check out your blog, like if you have something new posted that you think they would be interested in; in turn you can also invite them to forward that email to all their other friends also who might be interested in what you had to say on your blog.
2. If your blog is a business related blog, it does help to market and advertise it offline. Offline advertising is largely responsible for direct visits, people who either read your ad, got your brochure, or heard your website or blog site name mentioned on the radio, visit your site directly without having to go through someone else’s website or a search engine.
3. Ah yeah, last but not the least… and certainly the major source of all website traffic.. the search engines.
To get found on search engines, the formula is simply. Just keep updating your blog with new, fresh, interesting content, that may also convert first time visitors into loyal readers who may come back to your blog site, or simply subscribe to your RSS feed, that way they will receive and read your content without having to actually go to your website.
Again, search engines are the number one source of traffic and it is long term, unlike the other two sources which are short term and depend largely on a person actually seeing your URL or your link.
Search engines act as virtual yellow pages that categorized your blog under a set of keywords or phrases that they find consistently on your site. It is actually more complicated than that, but to simplify.. that is what the search engine does. When someone searches for keywords that have been associated with your site, depending on how you fare against the other competing web pages listed… your site will be among the results listed.
So go, put these simple strategies into action, and get your site found.
cforms contact form by delicious:days
