It?s great to blog, especially about things you care deeply for and have opinions that you want to express and discuss with others interested in the same area. But if you want to make a living of your blogging, you may find out that?s just not as easy as you thought it would be, particularly if you are at the very beginning of your career as a blogger. When blogging for profit you must not only create relevant and useful content for your readers, but you must also be effective in your blog?s promotional activities in an effort to gain more and consistent traffic. And this won?t happen overnight; it takes time and persistence to build reputable online history. Here are some of the things your blog?s promotion should include:
Consider the appearance of your blog
You want your blog to appear well to the eyes of your readers, and you want them to be satisfied from their experience as a user. This includes many aspects, from the choice of blogging platform, to the font, colors and navigational layout. WordPress, Joomla, Blogger and Drupal are some of the most preferred platforms by bloggers, and they also allow users to build their own blog sites. WordPress is currently the most popular, but they all feature some dynamic functionalities, ecommerce features, social networking and different modules and plugins.
Also consider the navigation on your blog ? is it easy enough for your readers to find what they want? Organize your links and blocks, make your recent posts and most read articles more accessible, and test to find the best positions for your ads to increase the click through rates. When you share and promote your content and new visitors come to your blog, you want them to be satisfied with what they see and how everything appears, so they?ll feel comfortable to come check it again. The Internet users today have higher expectations, so it?s better to be prepared ahead.
Make sure your blog and content are search engine optimized
To be able to drive more traffic to your blog content you should also aim to rank higher in the results of the popular search engines. This means making sure that the articles and your whole website is well optimized for the search engines to be able to ?read? it and recommend you links as relevant when their users search the web.
Google is the main search engine in the world and its latest algorithm updates have significantly changed the way blogs and websites appear in their result pages. Relevant content for your targeted niche that is interesting, useful and brings value to your readers is one of the best ways to ensure optimization. If the visitors on your blog find your posts helpful, think you are interesting and share those links with their friends and networks, if they like reading more and coming back again to check out for new things, they will also get you higher in the ranking positions when others search for your queries. Make sure to publish new content on regular daily or weekly basis. You can also submit your blog to ping sites like Ping-O-Matic to remind the search engines to index your pages as you publish new content.
Higher page rank is also determined by the number of back links to your blog; higher link presence on the web increases your website relevance. But we are talking here of quality back links ? link building as we knew before does not apply anymore. You should now look for more meaningful and deeper relationships with the relevant authorities in your industry and use these connections to create quality links to your blog. By submitting articles or writing guest posts for other blogs and websites, through social networking and press releases, you?ll be able to increase your backlinks, promote your blog and get greater exposure for your content.
Promote your blog on social and blogging websites, forums and niche-related online community
We cannot talk about promotion and not mention social media; in today?s world that?s simply not possible. If you want more traffic for your blog, hence more revenues for your blogging activity, you must invest time, effort and money into building a substantial network of fans and followers on the popular social networks. Your social presence is now also a deciding factor in your website rankings ? the more people are talking about you, sharing your stories, blog posts and images on Facebook, Twiter, Pinterest, Reddit, linkedIn, you name it, the higher your blog authority, relevance and rankings. This doesn?t mean that you should have profiles on absolutely every network; you can?t even physically manage this workload. Think about your niche, about the type of content that you post, about your readers and their preferences, and then select few social platforms that work best for you.
Also get involved in your niche online community to help build your brand as a blogger and get recognized by the audience as an expert whose knowledge and experience can be trusted. Register to forums and make a list of authoritative bloggers in your industry whose blogs you?ll regularly visit to read their content and make contributions commenting about your experiences, answering questions users have asked and being as helpful as you can to provide extra value to the posts and the readers. Being active member of the community can help your blog promotion a lot.
Be creative with your email marketing, and don?t spam your readers
Email marketing is an important promotional activity, but also one that you should be very careful with. You can?t bomb your readers with emails when they haven?t given you a permission to do so, and spammy mail can even cost you your regular visitors. Use tools like FeedBurner to create a pitch block on your site where users can leave their emails if they want to receive your messages and newsletters. Create attractive and interesting e-newsletter with a creative layout and quality readings and provide links directing to the content. You can also add games, rewards, promotions and other calls to action to interest your readers in visiting your blog.
Gain exposure through guest blogging
Guest blogging on various authority industry-related websites will get you more quality online presence and will improve your image as a blogger, helping you promote yourself and reach out to the communities built around these blogs. Writing guest posts isn?t the same as writing your own content, but it has many SEO and social media benefits attached to it, particularly if you are not only writing for others but also inviting them to publish guest posts on your blog too.
These are just few of the things you can do to gain maximum exposure for your blog. Keep up with the new ideas and methods evolving each day as the internet marketing keeps developing further.
Author?s bio: Alice McLean is a writer at bestdissertation.com with background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.
Source: http://www.thegrizasonline.com/5-ways-to-best-promote-your-blog
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