You’ve written a great article for your blog. I mean award winning stuff. The perfect balance between a masterful work of art for the human reader and carefully place keyphrases for the search engines.
You take a knowing look at your blog article and enjoy the surge of adrenaline as you hit the publish button. There it goes, out into the great void of the internet. But simply writing this great work of art will not get it read unless you promote your blog article.
If you haven’t taken the extra steps to bring your blog post to light after you publish your article, you’ll find that a week later, your surge of adrenaline will give way to wistfulness as you see your blog article being read by just a trickle of people.
So, how do you get more readership? How do you get your post noticed in the great wilderness known as the internet? How do you promote your blog article?
I’ve been running this blog for a couple of months now, and I’m constantly learning and refining the ways that I am writing and marketing this blog. During my journey in the great blogosphere, I’ve found some methods that work for me to market my blog articles.
Today, I’ll share with you how I write and promote a blog article.
However, there are occasions where you want to draw extra attention to a particular blog article from the search engines. In those cases, you want to enter your project with SEO in mind right from the beginning.
In those situations, you’ll want to sit down with your topic in mind and before you even start writing, do some keyword research. Most people discuss keyword research when you start creating your blog, but it certainly doesn’t end there.
Doing your keyword research before you write your posts is really a key first step in promoting your blog article. If you didn’t go through this step when you first created your blog, it’s not too late to start with your blog articles.
There are essentially two tools that I use: The Google Adwords Tool and Keyword Eye. They both do basically the same thing, but presents the data slightly differently.
The Google Adwords Tools displays the information in a listing with competition and popularity information:
Keyword Eye displays the results in a tag cloud format. The size of the key phrase shows the popularity and the color shows the competition. You can hover over the phrases to get exact numbers:
They both appear to be equally accurate as I check the results against each other. I will use them both according to my mood. I encourage exploring both.
With these tools, you can type in the key phrases on your topic and see the popularity and competition. Your goal is to find a phrase that is popular, but also less competitive. Try to keep the phrases centered around your topic. The key is to find phrases that you would naturally use in the discussion of your topic.
Once you select your key phrases, you can begin writing your blog article.
Your target is to use your key phrase about 7 times in the article overall, but when you are working on your keyword density be sure not to overstuff your article.
I must admit that I probably break this rule myself. But try to keep in mind that it will be real human beings who will be reading and appreciating your writing. If the article doesn’t read well then I think it’s better to have a lower keyword density than to have a poorly written blog article.
The best method is to write you article completely without focusing on your keywords and then adding the keywords in your editing process.
I use a plugin called SEO Tool-Keyword Density Checker. This is a free plugin that tells me the frequency that certain phrases show up my blog articles.
When you use this plugin, be careful to make sure that you are still writing in a natural manner that reads well for your audience.
I will write my blog article completely in a word processor and then cut and paste it over to wordpress. Then I will look at my keyword density and do my editing as needed. I think this is probably one of the best ways to write a search engine optimized post in a natural manner.
Publishing your blog article, shouldn’t happen without any fanfare. There are a complete compliment of tools available that help you announce your blog posts to the world when you hit the publish button.
Of course, you can do much of this work manually, but for the sake of efficiency, there are a few things that you can do so that your publish button does more than simply put your blog article on your page.
I have several plugins that assist me with this purpose:
WP Onlywire Autoposter automatically submits my new blog articles to my various social bookmarking sites. So when I publish my blog article it will get sent to digg, reddit, delicious, etc…
I also recommend using the social media manager, which will send out an announcement of your blog article on twitter and tumblr.
You can also use Twitterfeed to send out your rss feed to twitter.
I use both of these, so that my blog post gets tweeted out immediately when I publish my blog article, and then will be re-tweeted several hours later through twittered.
Now, that you’ve got your blog set up to promote your blog articles, your publish button is a little more like setting off fireworks for the world to see.
Backlinking your article has several purposes:
The first is a service that I discussed previously: The Free Traffic System.
The Free Traffic System is basically a network of blogs and websites that have opened their sites up for publication. They have a free service that allows me to publish a blog article with two backlinks to 30 websites.
Typically, for a blog article that I want to rank, I will write a one or two reference articles with backlinks back to my main article and publish those through The Free Traffic System. Often times, those articles get republished and propagate more backlinks.
With 3 articles, I can create a minimum of 180 backlinks through the free traffic system very quickly. Often, I will get much more than the minimum amount of backlinks.
The next thing I will do is go visit some blogs and do some blog commenting.
If you haven’t heard of the commentluv plugin and their network. I highly recommend taking a look at their site now. Commentluv allows you to link your blog article when you leave a comment.
Comment Luv is awesome for promoting your blog article, since the title of your post is immediately visible to everyone reading the comments and it’s a direct backlink to the article itself. If you’re not a member, I highly recommend joining the community now.
Think of this process as engaging with the community. It’s not just an exercise in creating backlinks, it’s a way to connect with other blogs. Don’t just spam these blogs, leave a good comment. If I can’t leave a constructive comment, then I won’t comment at all. Respect other people’s blogs and they will respect you.
These are communities that aren’t as well known as sites like StumbleUpon, but they are popular in the blogging community. I find that I do get a good amount of traffic when I submit my blog articles to these directories.
The main directories that I use are Blogengage, Blokube, and Serpd. These are all free to join and submit, although Blogengage does have a paid service if you want to automatically syndicate all your blog articles through your rss feed.
You’ll find that these sites are well run and if you’ve spent some amount of time in the blogosphere, you will recognize the names of their owners and moderators, who are some of the movers and shakers in the blogging world.
Of course, I realize that this is not an all inclusive list. I’ve left off some things like the traditional article directories, and I’m sure I’ve missed some techniques. There’s probably some techniques out there that I don’t know about yet. Do you have any particular techniques that work for you? Leave a comment and share how you promote your blog articles.
You take a knowing look at your blog article and enjoy the surge of adrenaline as you hit the publish button. There it goes, out into the great void of the internet. But simply writing this great work of art will not get it read unless you promote your blog article.
If you haven’t taken the extra steps to bring your blog post to light after you publish your article, you’ll find that a week later, your surge of adrenaline will give way to wistfulness as you see your blog article being read by just a trickle of people.
So, how do you get more readership? How do you get your post noticed in the great wilderness known as the internet? How do you promote your blog article?I’ve been running this blog for a couple of months now, and I’m constantly learning and refining the ways that I am writing and marketing this blog. During my journey in the great blogosphere, I’ve found some methods that work for me to market my blog articles.
Today, I’ll share with you how I write and promote a blog article.
Keyword Research
A few weeks back I wrote a fictional account of a modern Shakespeare and how he would handle SEO. I’m still a great advocate of writing for the human being instead of the search engines.However, there are occasions where you want to draw extra attention to a particular blog article from the search engines. In those cases, you want to enter your project with SEO in mind right from the beginning.
In those situations, you’ll want to sit down with your topic in mind and before you even start writing, do some keyword research. Most people discuss keyword research when you start creating your blog, but it certainly doesn’t end there.
Doing your keyword research before you write your posts is really a key first step in promoting your blog article. If you didn’t go through this step when you first created your blog, it’s not too late to start with your blog articles.
There are essentially two tools that I use: The Google Adwords Tool and Keyword Eye. They both do basically the same thing, but presents the data slightly differently.
The Google Adwords Tools displays the information in a listing with competition and popularity information:
With these tools, you can type in the key phrases on your topic and see the popularity and competition. Your goal is to find a phrase that is popular, but also less competitive. Try to keep the phrases centered around your topic. The key is to find phrases that you would naturally use in the discussion of your topic.
Once you select your key phrases, you can begin writing your blog article.
On Page SEO
When you write your blog article, you want to keep your key phrases in mind as you write. This is the next step to promote your blog article with the search engines. However, there are some general rules to follow.Your target is to use your key phrase about 7 times in the article overall, but when you are working on your keyword density be sure not to overstuff your article.
I must admit that I probably break this rule myself. But try to keep in mind that it will be real human beings who will be reading and appreciating your writing. If the article doesn’t read well then I think it’s better to have a lower keyword density than to have a poorly written blog article.
The best method is to write you article completely without focusing on your keywords and then adding the keywords in your editing process.
I use a plugin called SEO Tool-Keyword Density Checker. This is a free plugin that tells me the frequency that certain phrases show up my blog articles.
When you use this plugin, be careful to make sure that you are still writing in a natural manner that reads well for your audience.
I will write my blog article completely in a word processor and then cut and paste it over to wordpress. Then I will look at my keyword density and do my editing as needed. I think this is probably one of the best ways to write a search engine optimized post in a natural manner.
Publishing your Blog Article
Now that you’ve perfected your post, you are ready to publish your blog article or are you? This section probably could have gone at the beginning of this post, but this is a good time to take a break and ask the question: Is your blog properly set up to promote your blog article?Publishing your blog article, shouldn’t happen without any fanfare. There are a complete compliment of tools available that help you announce your blog posts to the world when you hit the publish button.
Of course, you can do much of this work manually, but for the sake of efficiency, there are a few things that you can do so that your publish button does more than simply put your blog article on your page.
I have several plugins that assist me with this purpose:
WP Onlywire Autoposter automatically submits my new blog articles to my various social bookmarking sites. So when I publish my blog article it will get sent to digg, reddit, delicious, etc…
You can also use Twitterfeed to send out your rss feed to twitter.
I use both of these, so that my blog post gets tweeted out immediately when I publish my blog article, and then will be re-tweeted several hours later through twittered.
Now, that you’ve got your blog set up to promote your blog articles, your publish button is a little more like setting off fireworks for the world to see.
Backlinking Your Article
So, you’ve set up your loudspeaker and announce your blog article to your world of followers. Now you have to go out in the world and promote your blog article yourself. I’m talking about creating some backlinks.Backlinking your article has several purposes:
- It improves your google ranking
- I spreads news of your blog article by word of mouth
The first is a service that I discussed previously: The Free Traffic System.
The Free Traffic System is basically a network of blogs and websites that have opened their sites up for publication. They have a free service that allows me to publish a blog article with two backlinks to 30 websites.
With 3 articles, I can create a minimum of 180 backlinks through the free traffic system very quickly. Often, I will get much more than the minimum amount of backlinks.
The next thing I will do is go visit some blogs and do some blog commenting.
If you haven’t heard of the commentluv plugin and their network. I highly recommend taking a look at their site now. Commentluv allows you to link your blog article when you leave a comment.
Just as a note, on blogs without commentluv, you can use the permalink of your blog post when you leave a comment to create a deep backlink to your blog article. This is particularly good to do on high authority sites when leaving a comment.
I have an entire list of regular blogs that I read in my rss reader. I make it a daily habit to go through my rss reader and read the new posts. I also try to leave constructive comments whenever I read a post.Think of this process as engaging with the community. It’s not just an exercise in creating backlinks, it’s a way to connect with other blogs. Don’t just spam these blogs, leave a good comment. If I can’t leave a constructive comment, then I won’t comment at all. Respect other people’s blogs and they will respect you.
Social Article Directories
In the blogging community, there has been an up cropping of social article directories. These are directories similar to technorati that allows you to submit your blog articles. Others can then read your articles and vote on their value. If you receive enough votes, then the blog article will be promoted on their front page.These are communities that aren’t as well known as sites like StumbleUpon, but they are popular in the blogging community. I find that I do get a good amount of traffic when I submit my blog articles to these directories.
The main directories that I use are Blogengage, Blokube, and Serpd. These are all free to join and submit, although Blogengage does have a paid service if you want to automatically syndicate all your blog articles through your rss feed.
You’ll find that these sites are well run and if you’ve spent some amount of time in the blogosphere, you will recognize the names of their owners and moderators, who are some of the movers and shakers in the blogging world.
Wrap Up
These are the general step I will take when I want to promote a blog article. I may not do all of these things with every article, as sometimes it’s good to write something off the beaten path, but when I want to draw attention these methods tend to work for me.Of course, I realize that this is not an all inclusive list. I’ve left off some things like the traditional article directories, and I’m sure I’ve missed some techniques. There’s probably some techniques out there that I don’t know about yet. Do you have any particular techniques that work for you? Leave a comment and share how you promote your blog articles.