Alexis Kestler
When blog mega-hub Huffington Post sold to AOL in 2012 for over $300 million, it became abundantly clear that there is very real money to be made in marketing blogs. While it’s true that over 80% of bloggers don’t make more than $100 total from an internet marketing blog, nearly 10% made enough in 2012 to pay their bills blogging around 4 to 6 hours per day. Add-ons like Google AdSense, custom search, affiliate programs or even a donation box can all monetize a blog; however, the main key to a lucrative blog is that people see it, spend time on it and come back frequently. Marketing blogs can be challenging. Traffic is king. If you’ve been wondering how to promote your blog, here are the top 10 ways:
1. Love your Topic
This seems like a no-brainer blog marketing, but it’s foundational to success, and not every blogger pays heed in a digital marketing blog. Is your topic something you would enjoy blogging about even if you didn’t make a cent? If you want to create a blog with longevity, it should be. You can’t fake passion, and if you don’t genuinely love your topic, readers will pick up on it.
2. Killer Content
Blog marketing begins with engaging content. Your writing should have consistent value, be creative, impactful, grammatically correct and free of typos. The more well-written and appealing your writing is, the more readers will want to return to your blog again and again. Other bloggers will want to link to you, advertisers will want to partner with you. The most popular and influential blogs are truly unique and offer a fresh perspective, insider information or are eclectic and/or humorous.
3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO helps your blog to rise high in the search engines for your topic. Start by identifying the top-searched keywords for your topic; the Google Analytics tool can help. Next, use your keywords and keyphrases naturally throughout your blog, about two to three times per 500 words of content. Use them in your post titles, meta data and tags. Next, link to a few high-quality, relevant sites or sources within your blog posts. Link to some of your own posts. Embed relevant images, infographics and YouTube videos in your posts, too — search engines love rich, multi-media pages. Every digital marketing blog includes SEO if you need more ideas and details.
4. Social Media
Spread the word using social media. When registering on social media sites, use your blog name as your username so that your blog will be indexed rapidly. Announce each new blog post via Facebook and Twitter. Make use of Digg, Furl, Del.icio.us, etc. to make it easy for readers to bookmark your blog. Encourage readers to comment and retweet your posts.
5. Blog Communities
Get your content in front of more sets of eyes by submitting posts to blog communities such as Blogcarnival.com, NetworkedBlogs and BlogCatalog. Google indexes the blogs in these communities, and you’ll likely start getting an influx of followers from these sites.
6. Blog Directories
The more places your blog is listed, the better, and submitting your blog to directories can be very powerful. How to promote your blog in directories? Find your relevant category or categories within them and have your blog listed. Directories like Technorati, ChangeDetection, thatMLMbeat and BlogTopList are great places to start.
7. Feed Directories
Submit your blog’s RSS feed to quality feed directories like OctoFinder and FeedAdage. They will then keep track of your posts and index them. When users click on your titles within these sites, they’ll be redirected to your original posts, resulting in more traffic to your blog.
8. Google SiteMap
How to promote your blog from the inside out? Setting up a Google Sitemap on your blog is well worth the time and effort to help to get your blog fully indexed. The higher your blog pages place in search engine result pages, the more traffic you’re likely to receive. Check out an Internet marketing blog for details on how to set one up.
9. Pinging Sites
Pinging lets search engines know you’ve published something new and can help you rise higher in the rankings. Ping everything you publish, from articles, to press releases to videos and podcasts. Some of the top pinging sites include: PingMyBlog.com, Pingomatic.com, Pingler.com, FeedPing.com and AutoPinger.com.
10. Social Bookmarking
Share your content with millions of readers by submitting new blog posts to social bookmarking sites. Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com and Delicious.com are some examples, and OnlyWire.com allows you to submit blog posts to 50 social bookmarking sites at once. Be sure to use appropriate tags and keywords within your bookmarks.
