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So you have a setup your blog for your business, you have started posting content, doing the basics of researching keywords and adding the right keywords to your titles and posts but no one is reading the blog. Hey you are not alone, I am sailing with you in a similar boat. You see all the big shots have mastered the art of blog promotion but you and I need to learn how to promote blogs online too. It’s no point being stuck with the occasional 10 or 20 people stumbling across your blog. Now as a startup business or entrepreneur you really do not have the time and effort to research all the possible ways to promote your blog to find those loyal subscribers or readers.

Image Credits: marielademarchi

Well I have been doing a bit of experimentation and research with my own blog. Also have been working on a project with my brother on assisting one of our clients to get moving with their corporate blog strategy. I thought since i am doing the research and reading all the blogging guides out there i might as well share my findings with you.

So let’s begin:

Step 1: Keep your niche narrow

Image Credits: Nina Matthews Photography

If you take my example I focus on entrepreneurs and starups wanting to build their business and market their offerings online. I would be a fool if I thought that I could compete with the big boys who talk on the subject of entrepreneurship. What I can focus on is a narrow segment of entrepreneurship where my focus is on a specific aspect of entrepreneurship. It’s assisting an entrepreneur with setting up their business processes, using the power of the web the leverage productivity and helping them build their offerings online through mediums such as social media, organic traffic, paid advertising, email subscription. So my niche is “Assisting entrepreneurs to have the business processes in place and then go to market online”. I recommend that you do the same no matter which target market you plan focusing on.

Step 2: Choose the Right Blog Platform

Image Credits: teamstickergiant

I have covered the topic of blog platforms in my previous posts. I have made the assumption here that you have already chosen your blog platform. It could be anything from WordPress to movable type to Tumblr. It’s your choice.

Step 3: Increase Blog Traffic without competing

If you asked me 2 years ago, how not to compete in a niche i would have told you it’s not possible. When we first started our social network in India we were a team of three individuals and there was no way we could compete with giants like Google, facebook, Myspace, etc. At first we thought we were fools to even spend one year of our lives building a web2.0 social network. It was frustrating but then we saw the light. Guy Kawasaki and Tony Robins were the two individuals who made us click, through their books and videos.

Image Credits: Paolo Camera

We started focusing on creating a community targeting a specific niche, so we wrote a long article about friendship, this article focused on various topics, such as Indian Culture, Western Culture, The society norms, etiquette’s, networking, the do’s and don’t of dating, etc. We wrote this with only one goal in mind and that was to understand what topics and keywords people were searching for. From this exercise we then learnt how to drive organic traffic to our social network without having to spend millions to attract members to join the community there by not competing within the social networking space even though we were a social network.

Here are some of the examples we used

1. How do you be friends with an Indian girl especially if her parents are narrow minded?
2. How do you tell a guy that you want to go out with him especially in India?
3. How do you dress sexy and not get your parents upset in India?
4. Blind dates do they work in villages?

This allowed us to attract long tail searches to various landing pages then focus on top high competition such as friends, friendship, love, dating, etc. Explore this strategy within your niche. Trough your online blogging efforts this will increase blog traffic. It’s a competitive market if your blog is talking about technology like other Technology Blogs.

Step 4: Plan your title tags for people and search engines

I have covered this in depth in my blog post How keywords in my Post Title and Blog Posts got me noticed please do take the time and go through it. It will save you time and money in the long run.

Step 5: Tag it – Leveraging from tags along with categorization

Tags allow you to include keywords relevant to your post. So for example for this post i could have tags such as blog traffic, promote your blog, online blogging, etc. There is a difference between Tags and Categories. Categories are the traditional way we cater for content. So if your startup is around the Printing business your categories could be Business Cards, Flyers, Apparel, etc.

Image Credits: pulguita

Tagging on a blog actually takes two forms you have Internal tagging and External Tagging. With Internal tagging these are tags that you create for your blog within each post. External Tagging on the other hand is using a service such as Technorati, del.icio.us, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogmarks. Tagging your content helps to drive targetted traffic, but make sure you don’t submit each and every post, just your top posts.

So how do you implement Tagging on your blog?
Below is a list of plugins that you could either install or get your technical person to install for you

Step 6: Some say to deactivate comments for a short while and then turn it on

I am not sure if this approach is the right one, but SEOmoz‘ in his blog post recommends this. It makes sense in some aspects to turn commenting off as sometimes you do receive a lot of spam and very few useful comments.

Image Credits: Robert Bejil

Now if no one is commenting on your blog or there are 2 or 3 comments then people get the impression that your blog is not reaching out. So based on this you need to take the call whether you are ok with skipping the few visitors who comment or whether you want to run the risk of giving an impression that your website is not visited much.

Once your traffic has picked up you always have the option to turn comments back on

Step 7: Learning the right linking strategy to promote your blog

This is a science by itself but when you understand the basics the rest will follow over time with practise. Definitely do not focus on overlinking. For now I want you to focus on a specific post or a page that you want to boost on Google.

Image Credits: foxypar4

So for example:
You want to boost your post – “Importance of Business cards in an online world”
You will need to write additional post that would have the anchor text as “Importance of Business cards in an online world” and point that link to the original post. By having a few of your post targeting a specific post you will notice that you will start showing up in Google for that specific keyword higher than you competitors. The logic being that a few links are pointing to that one post. Now don’t go crazy and start linking any and every thing

It’s important to note though that not every mention in your blog needs to be linked. If you talking about Google then everyone knows about Google so there is no need to link Google with its specific URL but if you are talking about a specific recipe that you found on the Internet then providing a link where your reader can access the recipe makes sense. Contribute value and professionalism on your blog.

Step 8: Do guest post and invite others to be guest authors on your blog

Another way to increase blog traffic is by inviting others to post on your blog and at the same time be a guest blogger on key influencer’s blogs. In this manner you get access to a targeted reader base.

Image Credits: tracyhunter

Just remember that you are providing quality posts and receiving quality content at the same time. Invite specialized professionals to contribute on your blog. This draws attention and if your quality is good readers will stick on your blog. Blogs that have less content looks a bit dry and dead.

Guest Post writing is another way to grab attention of an audience you are craving to impress.

Step 9: Use different mediums other than just Text in your blog

When i started blogging writing content alone was a big mission as time plays an important role especially when you are running a business and that too on a shoe string budget. What I noticed though was that people found my posts useful but very long and tiring. So i mixed images into the post and voila i received feedback that the blog post was refreshing.

Image Credits: Oversocialized

This got me thinking about ways to make the post look attractive along with contributing value. I am now trialling the video blogging path and once i have understood the ins ando outs of video blogging shall post about it here, so that your business can also adapt to some of these methods.

Step 10: Format and save your best content for the top traffic days

Image Credits: Tom Coates

Structure your blogs content in a manner where you understand your traffic. If for some reason you see that Tue or Wed you have a higher rate then make sure to deliver the best blog post on those days. This allows you to promote your blog effectively. Here your analytical tool helps you know what days are good traffic days.

Step 11: Invite your readers to take action by writing about it

I have just started this step in my blogging career by requesting my readers to take small actions to support my blogging efforts. I request them to subscribe to my daily feed either via email or through RSS. You could request your readers to do the same, you could request them to connect with you on facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or to subscribe to your newsletter.

Image Credits: 1000zen

These are just a few steps to get you started, blogging does take time and effort, especially for some niche startups who are competing in a crowded environment. Don’t give up, implement these few steps and shall keep my research alive to get you additional tips that you can use to make your blogging experience rock.

Step 12: How to Promote a Blog using Social Media

Darren Rowse explains this well and shows you the steps of how to use social media in promoting blogs.

Found these two great videos that cover the topic increase blog traffic

All the best. If you found this post interesting could you please help by spreading the word
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