Chapter 5 How to promote your blogs, Linking, just add comments:
We are starting to get in the nitty gritty and fine details, stay tuned and pay full attention we are almost done. I hope that you did not try to finish reading the whole book in one sitting. The last chapters has all the details on SEO and technical jargon and mainly a reference, so you don’t need to memorize anything, and the sixth chapter is built on this one. By the way try to ignore the title and sequence of these blogs, and sub-chapter headings. Most important thing about the sequence is that for the purposes of the book, these blogs and chapters are really in the proper chapters.
Secrets of eMarketing Part 6: Comment and Voila you’ve got Links
You might have heard lately that Google doesn’t care how many links you have to your blog, but how many quality links you have. That is the main reason, most SEO and search marketing firms recommend blogs. Links from blogs and Wiki’s are considered high value links. But, most people don’t know the simplest and easiest way to get these links. I even get top news paper sites such as the New York times and Seattle Times to link to me, and I do it all ethically. How do I do this, you say? I comment on their blog pages, and free event listings such as business calendars.
A lot of people ask me “But what do I blog/write/comment about?“, my answer is almost always just start writing, and you will think of something. Do read the original post, and try to make a personal suggestion, and give someone a focused compliment. Who doesn’t love specific comments, almost always they will publish your comments. My problem is I write too much, as one idea leads to another, and I have spent hours on comments and blogs of other people. So don’t fall in that trap either, you want more comments on your blog, not just at the New York Times. Go ahead try this and start writing, this will happen to you, and you will have enough to blog and comment about too. This is why I focus each post on one particular topic, and as I am teaching you this, to keep it to one or two keyword concepts. For example, this post is all about getting links, and most importantly getting high quality links.
3 Easy ways to get links:
1. Comment on articles on major news sites and blogs> Most of us read our favorite news paper online, or go to our favorite news source on line, go ahead go there. Next time you are there, go their and look for the blogs of the columnist, and if you like their article make a comment with a link to your website. For example, I go to the Wall Street Journal business website. I read an article their about entrepreneurship, and I make a comment like this. “Great article, and I am not sure I agree. I have years of experience in marketing and I have been blogging about this subject for months now. You can visit our blogs at http://mytypes.com. You may go on to write some thing else of importance such as, I would here. Blogs are great for business information, as they are usually current and detailed. As we all know that business news and information is often outdated.” Make sure you write a few sentences of meaningful information that says you read the article.
2. Add your favorite blogs to your blogroll, or Links Pages, and ask them to link to you. Basically, add them first in your Blogroll pages, and tell them you just did. Do it on the main page, and give them a compliment with an address to your link page or Blogroll and say something simple such as: “Hi, I read your blog often love your recent post on “subject of post”, and I just added you to my blogroll. Keep up the good work, and I would love for you to add me to”. That’s it, write from your heart, and not more than 2 sentences.
3. Submit your blog based website to Wiki’s, search engine directories, website/blog directories, tagging engines, feed readers, etc. Sign up for an account and submit your feeds to them, you will get spammed as well as get readers. Most importantly, you will get links, some of the top ones are: blogCatalog.com, myblog.com, Digg.com , Technorati.com, stumbleupon.com, are all major ones. Some hot ones are Zimbio.com, trumblr.com. Most of them can be pinged via www.pingomatic.com.
Secrets of eMarketing Part 5: Link + Text = Contextual Linking
I told my self today that I will not write more than three paragraphs on the topic of add contextual linking. I am going to get to the point very quickly, so here it is. Writing blogs and text or video or photo’s in your blog is great. Keeping your blogs focus to a particular subject and further focused to a couple of keywords is a Must. So this article is about Contextual linking. What is it, Why do it, and How do you do it?
Contextual Linking is The most important SEO tool for competitive keywords. It shows the exact words the blog or website is about. So the more contextual, real contextual links, you have the more you define your blog or website about that subject.
Here is the simple step by step example:
1. Decide the right keywords to link to your website or blog: For example, we will use “SEO Tools” here.
2. Highlight the Keywords “SEO Tools” by clicking and dragging over the keywords.
3. After you have them highlighted as above “SEO TOOLS” click on the Link Icon. It’s a common icon, and it’s used in almost all blogging and text editors. It’s located 4th from the left, in the menu of the text editor, right next to the “ABC” strike through button.
4. It’s very important that you type in the specific URL of the website you are linking to. Be careful and make sure the link works after you are done.
5. Type in the Text of the Link Title: For example for the highlighted keyword “SEO Tools“. You may call this link title “Free SEO Tools and SEO” The title of the link is just as important as the highlighted keywords.
Voila! You are done, you have done your first contextual linking. You just told your readers and search engines that the keyword “SEO Tools” are linked to LinkMint.com and that is what the website is about.
A few tips to remember:
*make sure that the text around your keywords make sense and is about the subject of your keywords.
*Don’t do this more than once for every 14 words.
*Write about the subject and make sure you write for readers, not search engines. Also the following information maybe be repeated from other parts of the book, especially the last chapter, and it’s important to note.
Site Structure, Technical Jargon, and W3C standards are things you don’t have to know, all you HAVE TO KNOW AND Do is provide great blog content FOR HUMANS. Choose us and/or Wordpress and all of your technical issues of content being indexed will be gone, because our content will already be SEOed. Blogs are actually the #1 SEO tool for any search marketing firm, agency, and any SEO services company to focus on, that is why they all blog and so should you. If you type in Google “Wordpress SEO” guess who comes in at the top 2, it’s us, and “SEO“, we are #9 as of today. Wordpress has many automated functions that search engines prefer, such as Search Engine Friendly URL, site maps, proper meta and Heading Tags etc. With all of these new business blogs, how to stay ahead of the pack? Surely not all bloggers know or care about SEO? Business blogs and marketing blogs really are the new craze, but why you ask? Simple answer is because they are much easier to add content to than websites. As you can see I did by adding video to this blog from YouTube on our blogging platform ( this may not show up in the book).
The media types, marketing and business people are always saying content is king, and it is. The issue with websites and content is that they are like water and oil, they don’t mix. Hence the popularity of blogs, and the fact that blogs make it easier to promote your business, super easier in fact. They also make it fun to write content and add it to your blog site. A recent article in the New York times basically said you don’t need a website, just a blog. I obviously agree. So the more compelling content you write, the more targeted keywords you use, the more photos and videos you add to your blog, the more you will blog your way to the top!
Do write catchy headlines, add pictures as mentioned before, BUT always provide valuable information, always always give them info, they love Info. And you will have automatically got yourself on Google and the major search engines. Just because most people don’t get this concept, and I want to hammer it home, blogs = news and search engines will list and rank your blogs, that is why they are the #1 SEO Tool.
Attracting Technorats = Best and Most Links = Get bloggers to blog about you!
First of all what is a Technorat, it’s a person who goes to Technorati.com, Yes? Well, yes and kind of sort of No, that’s not just whom I meant. Technorat in this case is a person who is always staying ahead of the curve, a trend spotter, a super sales person, a person at the Tipping Point. A technical rat is fine to call them too, because they hang out at blogs and message boards and forums:-). Attracting people to your blog or website or having them write an article about your blog or doing something viral to attract links is the way of the best SEO Services Company. Its such as confidence booster too! So the more highly popular your blog or website is, the more linked it will be, and the better for your exposure. But, I take that further, the more you get bloggers to write about you and link to you, the better you will SEO your way to the top. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal how a chair company got a gadget blog to write about them for a trade and they got about 500 orders from the exposure. So go trade for your services and get people to promote you for a trade, especially technorats on their blogs.
So a Technorat in my opinion is a blogger, yes a blogging buddy, a subject matter expert, who writes a blog. Ok, well not just anyone who writes a blog, and gets it listed on Technorati.com is not good enough. Yes, any blog writing to you is pretty good, but what to spend your time is on going to famous and almost famous bloggers and get them write a blog about you, make it worth their while. That kind of blogging is the #1 SEO tool for you, especially the links you get from them. But getting anyone to blog about you is a great start:-), just shoot for the stars and if you don’t get there, start for stars that aren’t quite so far reaching.
Attracting links from news paper websites is very powerful, as Google, MSN, Yahoo and other major search engines value them highly. So being news worthy is a good thing. Hey look we at MyTypes.com is in 350+ news papers every day, woW, due to SEO? No, not actually. But, we did trade with a friend who happens to be a famous Cartoonist, and we custom designed a blog for him. We are usually in all of his cartoons, to the very right border of the Cartoon, Blog: MyTypes.com/brian A world famous cartoonist, yes Brian Basset. He does Adam @ Home and Red and Rover. He is more famous for his cartoon Red and Rover, and we are in all of his comics. I just wish all 350 news papers would Link to us, but no worries our SEO strategies work, we do have links at 78,000 sites, when I last looked. We have already gotten 20,000 plus good links to get ranked #1 for our keyword “Create a blog” in Google. We are #5 for “blogging” and top 1-20 in most blogging and blog related keywords. And, this week we were going from 9-10 on Google for the keyword “SEO“.
You are almost an expert now, right? If not, I want to beat this drum, till you totally get it. So how do YOU get Organic top rankings and SEO your way to the top of major Search Engines? Get more powerful links THAN YOUR COMPETITORS from news/blog websites, it’s that easy. But how to get MORE BLOGGERS to write about you? Focus on creating something of value for them, and they will give you links back to your site/blog. A top provider of SEO advice, well now days SEO tools too, and SEO expert Rand Fiskin talks about getting links from Linkerati ( the technorats as we call them), an active group of blogsphere viral types. Yes these are the Technorats, and they do hang out at Technorati.com.
As mentioned before they hang out at Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, delicious.com and many social networking type sites such as Facebook, and MySpace, LinkedIn, and Ryze to name just a few. They can make a lot of noise in a very short amount of time, and popularize your blog quickly. SEO blogger/guru/writer can give you all the tools for you to check your ranking, get your keywords, get you meta tags, site maps and SEO Tool this, and SEO Tools that. But can they get you high value links? No, but what can you ask? Blogging with your focused Keywords and using them in the title and providing the best content you can regulary.
Keep it simple as we say, give away a free lunch, and people will thank you, ask them the Bloggers to thank you with a link. The best thing as always you can do is write good stuff about them, ask them to write similar stuff about you. If you want to take this to the next level, and really be #1, think of what you could give everyone in the whole world? Give them knowledge of some sort, something different, something they don’t have as easily as you. Blog it regulary, and ask them to link back to you. Voila, you have achieved eSuccess and as mentioned so many times, Blogging is the only SEO tool you need. Now, go do your regular blogging work and eat that free lunch, and thinking of Free lunches, humnh so good:-).
The best and easy way to do this, the how, how, we always focus on the how. We are trying to play a fine balance between the What, The Why, and the How. Now you need to read the next segment for blogging your business.
Blogging Your Business: The Two Way Street
No one really likes to be on the receiving end of the hard sell - it’s awkward and annoying for everyone involved, really. Fortunately, it is easy to avoid engaging in such off-putting activities, thanks to the many promotional tools and techniques out there on the net.
Blogging, is a particularly good way to set up a passive but constant soft sell. Now, you might be thinking: “Of course you’re going to say that! You write a blog about blogging!” Guilty as charged, but it doesn’t change the fact that blogging can indeed be a valuable marketing tool. It lets potential customers find you on their own time and get to know you and your products or services at their leisure.
See, blogging is a two way street. Instead of just broadcasting your message at a captive audience in the manner of most traditional advertising, you’re communicating with your readers instead of talking at your potential customers. The blogosphere is a community, and for your blog to be as successful as possible, you have to participate, even if you’re blogging about your business. Actually, especially if you are blogging about your business.
The key to using your blog as a marketing tool is not to think of it as such, at least in the traditional sense. Besides telling your readers about your business and products, share other details about your life and link to other blogs, articles, and websites that you like. By blogging about varied but related topics you can prevent your blog from being a one-note-wonder. After all, would you want to read a blog that only consists of tons of remarkably similar posts harping on the same product? It’s the blogging version of the smarmy, pushy salesman who gets in your face and refuses to let you leave without making a purchase - but on the web, readers can escape the hard sell with just one click.*
Think of your blog as a mini-portal to your niche. Let your readers start with your blog, check out your latest posts, and then continue on by clicking on your links (naturally, you should link to things that support your message and your brand). Remember that blogging is a dialogue, it is dynamic, and it is interactive, so update often and answer comments and questions. Also, remember that your readers are probably pretty savvy and they can tell when a blog is straight-up propaganda. The best way to draw readers to your blog is to create interesting, useful, and compelling content, and do it regularly. Of course, that is also the hardest way - but that’s what your blogging coach is here for.
*You may have already seen this, but the Cluetrain Manifesto is worth checking out - and getting on.
**As mentioned this and some other blogs used the book were written by our previous blogging coach. Yes we are writing this for to benefit her, but MyTypes.com owns the content.
