ContentRobot

As we head into the final quarter of 2007, we offer a variety of ways to get your blog noticed.

1. Start with a Great Design

Your mother was right — first impressions do count. An eye-catching professional design will go a long way toward:

• Showing you are serious about your blog (and care about your readers)
• Branding you (and your company) properly
• Attracting new and repeat visitors (who may be encouraged to subscribe to your content)

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One of the services that our clients come to us for is, naturally, attracting more traffic to their blogs.

In the past, when you went to market your website online, you made a list of keywords / phrases and descriptions, faithfully popped them in every page’s HTML header, and submitted each of them to the major search engines, such as Yahoo!, Google, and MSN to name a few.

We were under the impression that, perhaps, that technique was valid today when marketing blogs. We now find it to be of limited value, particularly when a site has previously gotten indexed - even if you can only be found by your typing in your company or blog’s name as your search term.

Blogs, as a rule, get indexed quickly in search engines. This is especially true when the authors are steadily offering steady, fresh, and unique content - even without pumping those pages full of keywords. So, as ever, content remains king.

So, why is the keyword of the day “frustration”?

Because it appears that to make keyword magic work for you, you really have to get into the pay-per-click game. And, not surprisingly, search engines seem to frown when you try to resubmit your site just to associate it with certain keywords. It’s all about relevance and value to the readers.

So what can bloggers do? Here are some simple techniques you can use to boost your organic (read: not-paid-for) search engine listings:

Technorati
One of our favorite methods is Technorati. At this point, tagging seems to provide a much nicer return on the marketing investment. Not only can you go and index your blog on Technorati, but you can insert tags in individual posts (manually or via a plugin / widget / or module).

Blog Post Titles
It’s more important than ever to create great blog post titles. Strive toward making them enticing, filling them chock full of keywords, and making them relevant to the post you are writing about. There are blog add-ons that can help you optimize them even more.

Google Sitemaps
You can use this tool to inform search engines via an XML file about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. You can include additional information about each URL, including when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently. Go add Google Sitemaps to your blog.

Go Social Bookmarking Crazy
Got a great story, go share it (and ask others to do so) with Digg, de.lici.ous, and others.

What unpaid techniques do you find effective?

Remember when you just had to submit your blog to search engines to drive traffic? Now, there’s a new cool site on the block - del.icio.us - a collective bookmarking site/service that allows users tag sites and link to them.

The Advantages of Delicious Bookmarks

• They are taggable, meaning that they can be assigned with as many unique keywords as you like.

• They are searchable, as the results will display your tags, descriptions (notes), and titles. You can also view my bookmarks by tag, and chain multiple tags together to narrow the search.
• They are easily accessible, from any browser or RSS reader.

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Built a blog? Will they come? They will if you do these simple things that can attract new eyes.

Link, Link, Link
Include links to other articles, web sites, and blogs that are similar to what you write about. “Social bookmarking” sites, such as digg or del.icio.us, and those with high pageranks can generate good traffic. Referrals to other blogs often can mean links back to you.

Syndicate
RSS feeds can generate a lot of traffic. Encourage visitors to subscribe and make it easy for them to include you in their readers.

Aggregate
Make sure your blog is being “pinged” by technorati, blo.gs, weblogs.com, or pingomatic to get your blog noted by other aggregator sites.

Install: Email This Post
Allow people to simply forward an article to a friend via email. It enables others to publicize your blog for you.

Install a Blogroll
Similar to linking, it puts a list of other bloggers and their sites on your blog. It is a personal statement that says these are the bloggers I like or the crowd I’d like to be associated with. Again, a very simple yet effective social networking scheme.

Add Comments & Trackbacks
You can routinely pickup new readers by allowing them to communicate with you. Referrer and new audiences can spring from trackbacks and other references to your site.

Great Writing
Interesting posts always keeps them coming back. See tips on writing great content.

So you launched your blog, and are posting every day with interesting content, but want more out of it? Consider bringing in revenue by introducing these three methods: sponsorship, advertising, and affiliations.

Sponsorships
If you are writing about skis and skiing you could approach manufacturers (such as Rossignol) or ski areas (how about Aspen) to sponsor your site. Similar to banner advertising, sponsors get prominent placement with a great graphic. You can derive revenue monthly with this techique.

Advertising
A great way to add interest for your readers and money in your pocket, is to include content-specific advertising. There are many programs now that allow you to add this type of advertising right in your blog posts.
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Google announced the launch of Google Blog Search, a new beta search service that enables users to search for blogs and posts that match their interests. Based on the same technology that powers Google’s web search, Blog Search is available at http://blogsearch.google.com and is also integrated with Blogger at http://www.blogger.com.

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