24 effective tips for Blog Marketing.

With thousands of blogs being launched on a daily basis, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog get found on the search engines.  I have compiled a list of most effective blog marketing strategies. Trust me; I have been blogging since 2005 and I have given you my best blog marketing tips below. I am sure these tips should benefit your blog and make it more user-friendly, more easily accessible, and more content-enabled.

There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so here is a -short- list of tips for marketing and optimizing a blog:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.yourblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!

2. Obtain and install customizable blog software - WordPress is the best out there.

3. Install a 100% responsive theme with 3 columns.

 4. Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.

5. Optimize the blog:

 * Template optimization - RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap

 * Add helper plugins specific to WordPress

 * Create keyword rich categories

6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.

7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.

8. Setup Google  Sitemap, validate and submit

9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.

10. Format archived posts, related posts.

11. Enable statistics for tracking - Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks.

12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.

13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.

14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.

15. Submit blog url to paid directories  Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.

16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.

17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.

18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.

19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.

20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog - Google Alerts,  Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.

21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.

22. Make contact with related bloggers on & offline too if possible.

23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.

24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.

Put these suggestions into action NOW!

15 minutes new seo tips

SEO Tips, the title that attracts even the most experienced bloggers even though the feel they are update in their SEO knowledge.

The Google keeps updating its indexing algorithms and the webmasters and bloggers look for SEO tips that would look to counter new indexing algorithms.

I keep reading every blog posts on SEO tips that come my way. I read more than 40 RSS feeds of important blogs. Search Engine Watch leads the pack.

I read their 8 SEO tips that can be implemented in 15 minutes and all of them were new to me. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2144010/8-SEO-Tips-That-Take-15-Minutes-or-Less?

How to write blog posts that people want to share?

Getting on the first page of search engine results page is the goal of every blogger-right?

Since the might Google has changed its indexing algorithm in a major way, old methods of offline SEO have almost become obsolete.  The new SEO method that is preferred by every blogger is social share which means your blog posts should be shared in all the major social media sites and a few other web 2.0 properties by your blog visitors.

Social sharing

This means your blog post should be publicly shared in as many ways as possible:
* Tweeted by others
* Your tweets should be retweeted by your twitter followers
* People should share it on their Facebook walls

* Google plus of hundreds of people should carry your blog post
* Linken and Pinterest sharing is very valuable

How to get this done?
* Your headline should be attention pulling. There are many ways to write such a headline. Email me for a short list.
*Your first line of your blog post should throw a challenge.
*You can reveal a short answer to the challenge in the next paragraph.
* Tell who the blog post is for. Generally, if your target audience is kids and children, it would attract a wide share.
*If you think something is new to you, assume it will be so for at least 1000 people in the world and write about it.
* Spend time to find an apt image.
* Make your blog mobile phone friendly.

Finally, always reveal your source of information or image.

WP plugin for automatic link building.

Link building continues to bother website owners and bloggers after several changes made by Google in its indexing algorithm. Opinions pour in from IM veterans regarding new link building methods but they don't conform leaving me along with millions of bloggers confused.

An email from Brad Callen notified me about a new wordpress plugin that builds automatically every time you publish a blog post. I have great respect for the Callen brothers but I am surprised they promote an automatic product in the Internet marketing industry.

I believe Google abhors auto link building and auto blog posting. Any kind of manual link building exclusively to boost search engine rankings is looked down by Google.

Any more insight on the topic?

Hubpages video tutorials for only $7.

May be I am a bit late in realizing the importance of having my own Hubpages. I did not know they are too picky over the articles submitted. I was ejected by them long time ago.

Well, I am not disappointed at that time but now I regret my indifference. I should have learned the tricks and should have been successfully writing articles for them. That would have surely increased by blog audiences.

Had I known about Hubpages videos even a year ago, I would have bohut them and utilized them to know how to use Hubpages. Hubpages has been quoted as one of the best SEO startegies. Getting you article published in Hubpages is believed to be a honor and that will increase your serach engine ranking for sure.

Now, it is too late for me. My pride has taken a beating and also I am very busy otherwise.

Would you care to buy these Hubpages video Tutorials? It is only $7 buddy!

Image via

SEO guide from Google itself.

I have added one more ebook on SEO in my collection of SEO guides. But this time, this SEO guide in PDF format is none other from the might Google.

I started implementing slowly what I read and I definitely see a better search engine traffic. The comments for my blog posts are from new visitors.

Some of the content in the SEO starter guide from Google.

* How to create unique, accurate page titles
* How to make use of the “description” meta tag
* How to Improve the structure of your URLs
* How to make your site easier to navigate
* Write better anchor text
* Use heading tags appropriately
* Optimize your use of images
* Helpful resources for webmasters

I should thank Search for Blogging for having wrote about this SEO starter guide from Google.

An easy SEO strategy for better search engine ranking.

Today, I have learnt an important lesson in blogging. It is not enough to write useful content to attract daily unique visitors to my blogs.

Probably you might also be under the same impression. Our blogs get targeted visitors mainly from search engine results for the keyword, the searcher uses. And for that, we must rewrite the title of our blog.

I did that just now. Please look at the top of the browser and you will see the following:
Money by blogging| Blog Promotion| Blogging tools
This is what I write about mostly in this blog. Now I have informed the search engine clearly what this blog about is. Earlier, it used to be 'Blog Avenues' which you and I can make out something from it but the search engines could not match our intelligence.

You can also do this now.
Click on 'Edit HTML' of your blog and you will see this almost immediately:
“[title][data:blog.pageTitle][title]”

Please note that I have used different brackets above as I am facing problem writing here. Hope you understand.

Now replace the words in between the title tags with proper words that explain your blog's purpose. Preview and save the template if you are satisfied with what you see in the browser.

If you want to make money...

If you want to make money from your blog.... Ok, let me cut it short. Why there should be an 'if'? I want to make money from my blogs and so do millions of bloggers.

I have been underestimating my blog posts for long and I recently was made to realize that I am not a bad blogger and in fact my blog content is really good and useful. Then what is the missing aspect; why my blog is not fetching me money?

A nail was driven hard on my head. My blog requires search engine optimization and it requires a professional approach. SEO-the term feared by many non-techie bloggers like I.

So I searched the web to gain firsthand insight about the basics of SEO for beginner bloggers. I happen to read an in depth article in about.com that contained an interview with SEO expert Gab Goldenberg.

Would like to have a glance?

Is the additional cost of SEO necessary?

I am an advocate of the necessity of SEO but not as an additional cost. I feel the web designer should take up the responsibility of designing the website search engine friendly.

He should not assume that his client will know about SEO. He should patiently explain the importance of SEO to his client. In fact, if I were a web designer, I would incorporate the SEO factor in it.

Will a house builder build a house that is not occupation ready? Does he charge anything extra for you to move in?

Basically, a web developer is not a professional if he doesn't develop a website that is crawler friendly. But almost all those web designers charge extra for SEO. It is time, we, the clients wake up and educate them. (Smile)

Are we missing something about PPC?

I guess I along with millions of webmasters all over the world am not claiming my share of income from PPC advertising. At the same time, I know that there are equal number of webmasters out there who are happily pocketing major chunks.

I would readily accept that knowledge alone about PPC won’t entitle me to my share of PPC advertising but I do require proper PPC tools created by experts. Mere self learned knowledge is definitely not going to help me.

PPC tools at semhints.com will also help webmasters save a lot of money by using proper keywords.

Similarly, the next important knowledge for webmasters is search engine optimization. Like PPC advertising, information about SEO also can be found in abundance in the Internet. We all naturally read anything that cross our path leaving us confused. So, the best way to learn completely about SEO tools is to buy an all-in-one SEO package

It won’t harm us if we all learn the fundamentals of search engines and how a website or a blog gets a page rank by Google. In SEO forums and other webmaster forums, I have read hundreds of posts on search engine marketing hints and tips that have been useful to me so far. There are also some valid points on search engine marketing I found at semhints.com

Semhints.com is loaded with extraordinary information for bloggers and webmasters.