Blog Promotion

Traffic is one of the most important things you need to succeed as a blogger because traffic is what makes the sale, brings an increase in subscribers and traffic is what brings opportunities. No matter how great his knowledge of monetization is or what kind of influence they have, and if you do not have enough traffic to your blog can not go anywhere. This article gives you five solid ways to get traffic to your blog.

1. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the best and most effective ways to get traffic to your blog and is one of the things that helped me build a successful blog from zero to zero in less than a year.

While blogging is great guests, a large percentage of the assessment of blogs today people are receiving little or no results of their efforts blogs guests, they do not know how. Most of the guest bloggers who only thinks about getting traffic to their blogs and others do not even matter if the blog is presenting a set of customers and readers benefit or not.

His guest post should focus on two things: what you earn and what readers of the blog he is writing for profit. Make every effort to make the best evaluation in their messages, as this will increase the chances of your customers as more and more success, while at the same time increasing the number of visitors coming through your blog.

2. Article Marketing

Although this particular method, it ignores the fact that has long existed and is also a very effective way to get traffic to your blog. Many people miss when it comes to article marketing because they are obsessed with the number of article directory that you can get a link from their place of quality article directories. Get the most out of article marketing is not about quantity but quality is always important to present your items to only 5 best places article marketing to deliver results rather than just post your articles to various article directories for the link to give – not all links are equal and so the link building refers to the principle that works is the less the better.

3. Online Contests

This method is so powerful and effective, but very few people are using it. I saw a blogger who was able to build your blog from a fairly new blog in a very successful blog in less than a year, only with this principle. People love freebies, especially if it is cash, and contests can be a great way to create more attention for your blog.

Tenders for which the results are carefully planned and creative and not just run for the sake of it. There is no reason to run a contest if you do not gain anything. When trying to run a contest in which you must also ensure that the best we can to get as many sponsors as possible while its high price – the most irresistible of his prize is the most successful of their contest stands to be.

4. Blog Commenting

I used to underestimate this tactic particular traffic generation, when I was a new blogger, but I’ve learned the secret of successful blog comment and there are links that I have sent thousands of visitors only to my blog comments. Blog commenting for success is not about being fast or working, but be smart. Most will not see me commenting on blogs today, but the 2-3 posts I comment on my send hundreds of visitors per month.

While blog traffic comments may be too big i have found that the best way to ensure getting the best out of your review efforts is making sure you’re not commenting on a post for the sake of traffic received, if you Like a post and you feel like contributing to make sure that your mind, but if not, remains closed. Many people make a big mistake to comment on the blogs of some for the sake of traffic and the end result is that people get very limited traffic stops when you stop commenting on blogs – is the quality traffic that keeps coming even long after you’ve stopped doing what he did to get it.

The secret to the best of the blog’s comment to select blogs that commented on the wisdom and sure to do your best to contribute to the post, not reduce it.

5. Social Networking

Everyone is talking about the importance of social media and how it can help improve your business online, but it is curious that many people will not use this particular tactic to the best. One of the mistakes i regret in my career so blogging is not having a Facebook fan page above, this mistake cost me a lot of fans and traffic and I noticed that any social media is useless. No matter how you hate a network or how ignorant you are about the truth is that you can access it and get more traffic to it, why leave the waste on the road? Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide and not by the user base will be one of the biggest mistakes an Internet marketer will, Twitter also has a lot of users and your business may experience more than expected if can access it.

Can not find an outlet in particular social media as useless or irrelevant if users spend a large percentage of their time in it – you get an amazing result by tapping on it.

There are rules for everything so if you really want to succeed, blogs also is not free and there are several rules to follow if you really want to build a successful blog. Some people are not aware of these rules and some people see as unimportant and that only leads to failure of their blogs. Bloggers do a lot of mistakes and there is nothing wrong with making mistakes because mistakes are one of those things that make us human. However, there are also some very deadly mistakes we should not do as a blogger. This article speaks of seven signs that your blog is doomed to failure.

1. Your writing sucks

Many people make a big mistake to think that what matters most when it comes to building a successful blog is how to market your blog, but they are so wrong. Quality content is the foundation of all successful blogs and now is how to escape this. If you can not write, you can not succeed as a blogger.

Once the idea was that the marketing and promotion is all that matters when it comes to blogging, how wrong I was! I learned the hard way that content is what matters most when I wrote a guest post that sent me over 1000 visitors in one day and I could not retain at least 50 visitors.

2. Who believe that marketing is not important

bloggers Another big mistake that many who end up costing his career blogs is the idea that marketing is important. No matter how large or unique to your content, you need people to read, you need people to spread the word about it and you need people to give their views.

Its content is only the beginning and foundation of your blog, you need marketing to reach greater heights.

3. Inconsistency on his part as a Blogger

Inconsistency is also a fatal mistake most bloggers make. Your readers see him as a leader and expect to meet certain standards, one of those rules is being consistent with the content you produce on your blog. You should not only write in their blog once a month and then start writing every day, if you want to be scrolling when you want, stick to it, and if you want to publish three times a week, make sure you also adhere to.

4. I do not mind your design

Sure! Content is what matters (or at least I heard that on several occasions), but not the design of its importance. Many bloggers make a serious mistake to think that all they need do is put your best effort into your content and forget the rest. Do something like this may look good, of course, but the result was often more dangerous than expected.

Its content is very important, but something else of greater importance is how to present its content. Its design makes your content more attractive beautiful and presentable so be sure to give the best of its content.

5. Just worry about the short-lived

Some bloggers also make a big mistake of just worrying about this and completely forgetting the future. As a blogger, your future is much more important than this and a blogger always wise to make sure that is what determines your future.

A great example of this error is focused on getting more traffic to focus on getting more subscribers. Visitors a day you should visit his blog at any time or you can forget about your blog, but his name will always get the content no matter what and cooking for them is the best way to secure your future.

6. You just take it all the time

Many bloggers also make this mistake without being aware of future consequences. In the beginning, God knew the importance of partnership and be together and therefore created a woman to support the man. You will not go very far doing everything yourself, you need to launch a product, do one or the other you can not do everything alone and using the power of networking is a great way to get all these done without discomfort.

7. Are you too selfish

Selfishness is a murderer and that has crept into the lives of many bloggers know. If everything you think when it comes to your yourself is that you should know for sure that the funeral of his blog is around the corner. A wise man will put himself and others around him in mind before doing anything. Any decision made on his blog that only benefit is very dangerous and you should make sure to see if you rethink the best, otherwise, leave it!
Over to You

The above signs are signs of blog death to fail, if you’re a blogger sure to spread the word about this message so that others can be aware of these errors. Also make sure you share this message to your favorite social bookmarking and networking sites.

If you have an online business blog, or website that you know you need to be marketing. Maybe you’re not sure where to start. These ten tips are things you can start implementing immediately to grow your business and start spreading the word about your product or service. These tips should be used over and over again to continually grow the awareness of your blog / product or service. Use every week, but are easy enough that you can start using today.

1. Interact on related blogs and forums. Just find blogs and forums that are in the same niche or category to your site and start interacting with people. You can leave comments, offer advice and suggestions or just to meet people.

2. Write and distribute the article directories. Write an informative article is something you can do today. There are many article directories that allow you to publish your article for free. This is not only a way of giving readers the relevant information, but also get a backlink in your bio box or resources.

3. s blog. You can not get a guest blogs about today, but you can write the post on the blog and start contacting blog owners to see if interested.

4. Create a compelling e-mail signature. You do this in your signature autoresponder, as well as personal email signature.

5. Create and put videos on Youtube. The videos are becoming more popular every day. You can create several short videos, upload them to YouTube and then share the links with their readers, their email signature, on Twitter and Facebook. You do not like seeing himself on screen? That’s not a problem, you can create Power Point presentations for visual reading, and then a script for everything he has “seen” that is his voice.

6. Write a review. You can write reviews on products I tried, I read e-books, webinars, videos, books I’ve read, affiliate programs. The list is endless of things you can check to help their readers and give you exposure.

7. Tweet your followers. You do not have to get on Twitter every day, bombarding their fans with tweets, but you can use Twitter as a strategic resource to build the next, he created his personal brand and help others for information.

8. Share your stuff on Facebook. You can set your blogs to post on Facebook through blogging network, you can configure the plugins that allow you and others to share your blog on social networks. Utitilize these tools for yourself too. Their readers are not the only ones who can use-you can too.

9. Send an email to the list. This one is pretty self explanatory, you can send your list once or twice a week with updates, promotions and other things. If you do not have a list, start a campaign building the list and start sending people to your opt-in page.

10. Create your free report. You can write a report to give away that contains the information relevant to your website, product or service. Brand your website address in the footer that people know where to go for more information.

All these are very simple methods you can start doing immediately to increase traffic to your blog or website. Do you have a simple solution that does not mention here that would like to share? We’d love to hear from you.

Its most important asset a blogger is not the people who visit your blog every day or those who comment on his blog, but those who take the pain and the time to subscribe to your blog so they can receive more updates from you the future. Many bloggers now make a very fatal mistake of blogs focusing on getting more visitors a day instead of subscribers. His name is that you trust, they are those who read the contents of your order and really knows you and they are most likely to act on the basis of what he preaches or buy from you in the near future. This article gives some tips to significantly improve your blog subscribers.
Focus on quality of traffic

There are many factors that come into place as far as increasing its subscribers blog is concerned, is one of the conversion factors and other important factor is the quality of traffic it receives. You should not expect to see any significant conversion if the traffic of the sites paid to click, pop or other aggressive strategies of traffic generation. Trust is an important factor that has to be associated with the traffic it receives before it can be any significant result, for example, if someone like Darren Rowse interviews with me or write a post in which he encourages his readers to visit and subscribe my blog will bring more results than someone find my blog through a comment on another blog, even if they result in the same number of visitors.

There are plenty of ways to get quality traffic and I wrote a post here recently of getting quality traffic – I suggest you read it. While the tactics are great and important results in real time from the trust only. There will be more interaction and occur when people start spreading the word about you and encouraging others to read your blog. This type of traffic can only be obtained by you produce great content that is gained confidence with your readers.
They have a great design

No matter how great your content is also a need for a great design. While you can give plenty of examples of people who write with great design content wrong the truth is that many of these bloggers are getting fewer results than they would have gotten if they had a better design.

People need to be able to interact with your site and not only read its contents. A great design makes it easy for people to share their contents and dissemination of information on your blog, great design makes it easy for people to find your subscription options, and subscribe to your blog and a great design makes more presentable content.

I saw this in action recently when I paid a custom designer to help me make a unique design for my blog, this design was launched and since its launch I’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of people who subscribe to my blog. In fact, the number of people subscribe to my blog every day has doubled and this was only possible because of the great design of my blog has.
Be transparent

The Internet is a free world, those whose content can be distributed, the Internet is not censored and anyone from anywhere in the world can create a blog and start teaching people what he / she knows nothing. A great way to significantly increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog is that people know they can trust and the best way to do this is through transparency in his blog.

I recently started to show my report in my blog revenue every month since then I have noticed a significant increase in my subscriber base (especially on the first day) and my first earnings report is my most popular post this year – which still get links and traffic, even after a month of my audience.

Not necessarily have to be showing its earnings report on his blog from our reasons and purposes for blogs are different and what we do is different. All you need do is find a way to gain credibility in your blog, this may be showing live examples of the results obtained, making a lot of things to prove who really knows what he is saying and making real expert support in their work.

Throughout my blogging career, I worked hard on my writing style. I’ve improved over time, and I am now at a point where I think I improved my ability to write articles link bait. An article is a link bait article that many readers refer to it in their articles, or linked to it as a general resource.

The only thing I like link baiting is that it allows your blog to build quality backlinks and increase your search ranking over time. It also means additional targeted traffic is attracted to your blog, which can serve more subscribers. Let’s see how you can begin to write such articles, and enhance your Internet presence.

Why go viral articles?

The main reason that the articles go viral because they offer something of value that a large proportion of the population. Usually it is something people feel they can not do without and the way it operates social media, links all automatically sharing the content that spreads like a virus, hence the name “virus “.

Think of the viral content is similar to the latest fashions in a holiday sale (eg, Tickle Me Elmo).

Two types of common link bait post

Some items are so good that they attract the reader’s attention immediately.

An example of such an article is a pole of the list. These are positions that are easy to read, and often provides solutions to problems or why things are necessary. Examples of the list for titles are the “Top 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins” or “5 ways to increase RSS subscribers.” The titles of these articles are designed to attract the attention of the person who needs these things. When they read the article, it is divided into a list for easy consumption.

A controversial position is another example. Consider that the blogger who refused the selection process by the TSA. He recorded the entire confrontation, and published in his blog. Next thing you know, not only was in the news, but everybody was a link to your blog when talking about the negative reactions of the backscatter x-ray machine TSA and aggressive pat downs.

You make a post is

When the first guest post ProBlogger, I knew I wanted to write an article that was referred to in the future. I have written about styles of blogging, and I made sure to create a feature article. So the link bait posts should not be a list of items or articles in question. They may simply be artifacts that cover the topic thoroughly, and any other bloggers can see by their posts in the future. You see this all the time, and of bloggers and site owners who link to Wikipedia.

To make your item stand out, you should write a detailed post and cover the essential foundations of the subject. Break your article into sub-sections and lists, and other reference materials you need. The most important consideration is to be original. If you write a message for me, too, so not likely to get comments, not to speak of inbound links.

Using advantage while being original

Let me emphasize that. Get out of your way to be original. Once I created the banners for free some of my regular readers to show my appreciation for their loyalty. It took only five hours of my time designing these ads, but I knew they would appreciate the effort over a long period. I did not intend to get inbound links of the motion were an unexpected bonus.

Like when I came across an article with massive links to many useful tools. Once, I came across an article on traffic sources. This article has identified hundreds of Web sites that we can use to get traffic to our blogs. I bookmarked this bad boy and it is referenced in my article.

These articles really different to my attention, and easily turn me into a normal player. The person who prepared an article is not lazy, and it took a bit ‘to make a valuable resource for someone else. They do a quick post just to have a link to the bait. And if their goal was to get your bait, they did it right, taking the time to do valuable.

Make an effort Style

When I say style, I’m not saying go out and make sure your socks match. When I say style, I mean how to submit your articles.

* Are the images related to break with what to write?

* Do you use tags H1, H2 and H3?

* Want to change the color of the tag header to look different than the text of this article?

* Want to launch your video or audio out there appears to be in step with the Jetsons?

* Do you like the style of social media seems to share a blog?

* Are you using a random selection like this to make a point?

There are several ways to go about creating style for your brand. The lesson here is: do not be lazy. If you take your blog seriously, it presents a unique way, while they can simultaneously perform maintenance, your readers can expect.

Assembled

You may have heard this phrase from a former girlfriend, but I mean the length of the positions. There is much debate to debate in the coming years: whether or not to write long messages.

I wrote two posts short and long. Some of my items are as small as 200 words and some of them are simply update personal, while others may get up to 5000 words. The fact is that search engines love articles with more original content. So do readers. They can not read the whole thing, but this article will go tomorrow never came. If you compress a long article with many subtitles foreground, you can easily attract links to these articles.

Longer articles are likely to attract backlinks. Take the example of the post titled “7 Ways to find Blog Post Ideas”. What happens if we take the same concept, but created a piece called “100 ways to invent ideas Blog Posts? Guess which attracts more attention. 100 is the best way of 7 ways that your item is a sure sign of a book in the mail.

I’m not saying you can not have a successful blog with articles of 500 words. Many blogs I visit a lot of shipments of all the short days and short articles are easy to read. What I am saying is that they are less likely to create link bait items with short messages. It is not impossible-I did. But if you want to find a consistent solution, then the items are 1000-5000 words are best.

Competition is not only for traffic

Have you ever held a contest on your blog? They are usually used to attract traffic because everyone who enters the contest to promote it. But disputes also generate a lot of incoming links through this promotion. Take for example a competitive position of the user. You’ll probably have many links to various articles in this competition, rather than one at the competition itself. Each poster invited to actively promote their article on as many sites as possible and social media sites and blogs that they own or with partners.

You can really enjoy the competition by soliciting sponsors. To do this, after an article on your site that invites sponsors for an upcoming competition. In addition, contact these companies directly and tell you a contest to come. Give them a significant exposure if they contribute cash, material objects, or software licenses, such as prizes. This is an excellent way to establish a plan of link bait around your competition.

It is broken? Report it!

I recently broke the story on my blog. At first I was going, so I knew what I would step up. History has launched a new web platform, which was coming out of bloggers and readers Newsgrape. I have some quick traffic estimates for breaking this story before the mainstream media got their hands on it.

Recently I started to have some more links to my story, because I was the first blogger to write Newsgrape. Another advantage is that I had a link to the page of my Newsgrape. In addition, the reverse is a PR6 site, I started getting the traffic that the site, which falls today!

If you can get your hands on a huge story before anyone else, you can create a link bait serious. Some blogs have focused on breaking news, bloggers and others who hope to find a story from time to time. But the good thing is that they have to be the first to benefit. If you can handle only one of the first bloggers to write about it, then later the public is saturated with history. His article is also likely to curry favor with Google to become one of the first report is submitted.

How do I find breaking stories to tell, “one of the original? Look at the news sites and stories, like the homepage Yahoo. Do not hesitate to write, publish soon. This would be one of the only times I really recommend the writers to take their time in history. Make sure you have the original, when you type, however: do not be so busy that the report only to the article, which is already written in the second site or news. You can refer to a phrase or two, but give your personal opinion and to ensure that your thoughts with other terms in the near future.

Art Link Baiting

Writing content is easy to link bait. It is an art form, but every blogger can not do it if only to apply the science and avoid laziness. Make sure you’re not being selfish for not looking for links. Instead, work hard to create a valuable resource that others can not resist. What are some tips you can share your experience in writing successful link bait content?

So you’re looking to increase the profitability of your blog for the Christmas period (and beyond). You’ve optimized your AdSense, Chitika and Affiliate programs, you’ve even written a little seasonal content…. but there’s one missing element…. Traffic.

Unless you actually have people viewing your blog it is very difficult to actually earn anything from it.

So how do you drive traffic to your blog?

I’ve written quite a bit of this previously in a number of posts (for example here) but want to spend a little time talking today about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Why SEO?

When you are looking online for information on a topic where do you go first?

While I’m sure there will be a variety of answers given to that question – the majority of average web users would answer with one word – ‘Google’.

Every day Search Engines like Google send many millions of web users to websites in their index. While there are plenty of Web 2.0 web indexing services around that are increasing in popularity – the fact is that search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are still the biggest source of traffic to websites on the web.

As a result – learning how to be indexed and ranked well by them seems like a no brainer.

Writing for Search Engines and Humans

Some bloggers have a problem with the idea of optimizing a blog for search engines. They argue that rather than writing for search engines a blogger’s sole focus should be that they write quality content for humans.

I personally don’t see that writing for humans and search engines have to be mutually exclusive things – in my opinion both can be achieved without compromising either.

Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that – if you do write quality content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in SEO) – however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the only one).

There are other factors that come into play also and I believe that by knowing them and naturally incorporating them into your blogging you can increase your chances of being found by readers in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Of course – some people become a little obsessed with SEO and forget the human reader, don’t fall for this trap and keep a balanced approach and you’ll benefit both from traffic from the search engines as well as a loyal readership who keeps coming back for more quality content.

Basic SEO tips for Bloggers

I’ve written previously on this topic so rather than writing the same thing again in a slightly different way will republish some of my previous tips below. I hope you find them useful.

Before I start – I’ll say that while I do get a lot of SE traffic that I’m not really an SEO expert (it isn’t what I devote most of my time to). If you want to read something by someone who has spent a lot more time and effort on the topic I recommend looking at an e-book by Aaron Wall – SEO Book (aff). I’ve actually been reading through it in the last few weeks (it’s been on my to do list for a long time) and have found it really helpful.

SEO experts tend to divide search engine optimization techniques into off site and on site techniques.
Off Site SEO Techniques

Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control – however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).

It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). – To put it most simply – every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.

Ideally Speaking – The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:

1. they are from higher ranked sites than your own
2. they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
3. they link to you using relevant keywords to your page

Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.

How to generate quality inbound Links?

Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier – its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?

* Quality Content – There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
* Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content – Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links – I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines (more on letting other bloggers know of your posts here).
* Directories – Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy – the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories – submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there – many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with.
* Inter-link your Blogs – Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach – if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
* Buy Links – Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. I won’t go into this too much here but you might like to read more about it in my recent post On Buying Text Links.
* Swap Links – Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) – makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you – I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.

If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs you might like to look at systems like:

- Link Adage
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth

On Site SEO Techniques

Having looked at Offsite Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog – (or Onsite techniques – things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:

1. Keyword Rich Content – identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions

* How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
* What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
* How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
* What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
* What other keywords are other sites using?

The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.

These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:

* Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using keywords in titles)
* Keywords in URL of page (blog herald wrote on this a while back)
* Keywords in outbound links. Of course you should always link to sources of content as an ethical consideration but the bonus of this is that many SEO experts think that linking to relevant and quality sites on the same topic of your post with good keywords can also add credibility to YOUR post also.
* Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
* Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many tutorials online about heading tags – here’s one.)
* Keywords in image alt tags (here’s how)
* Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post – but especially early on in the first few sentences
* Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines – here’s a Guide to meta tags)

Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content – but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% – I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.

One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) – don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings – but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords – these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy – don’t fall for the temptation.

Keep in mind keywords that might be specific to the season we are approaching. While during the year there might be less people searching for posts relating to Christmas, gifts, presents, new year sales etc – this time of year will see an increase in these types of searches.

2. Themed sites – One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.

3. Site Design – Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site – keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).

4. Interlink your Site – The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog. This is a key point in the lead up to Christmas – if you have a few seasonal posts that you particularly want to do well in the SE’s make sure they are linked to from every page on your blog.

5. Update regularly – The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging – make the most of it!

6. Outbound Links – There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO – moderation is the key.

7. Choose your domain name wisely – there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.

8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period – a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.

9. One topic per post – the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.

10. Write optimal length posts – there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either – because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article (looks like this post is in trouble – is anyone still reading?).

11. Avoid Duplicate content – Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs – these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) – my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).

12. Ping – services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also suggest pinging Google’s blog search tool.

13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo – submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.

14. Quantities of Content – I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content – but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites – whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site – it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content – be careful about this – rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.

15. Submit to Search Engines – You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site – submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine. I’ve written a post about his previously here.

You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you – I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.

The Time Factor

One more element that I think is often overlooked in SEO tips posts is that of ‘Time’.

My own experience of blogging is that you can do all of the above things and still not be ranked well in the Search Engines for months and months. Here at ProBlogger it actually took around a year before I started to get significant search engine traffic – despite me doing all the ‘right things’.

This might not be particularly good news for those of you wanting to optimize your site for Christmas this year – but it is yet another reminder that blogging is a long term thing and that it takes considerable time for a blog to become established.

If you’re not ranking well in the search engines – hang in there. Keep posting, keep working on quality content and keep the above factors in mind – as you do this you’ll find that in time your SE traffic will gradually increase.