The Power of Blogs for “getting targeted traffic” – “low cost seo” Tip 6

If you don’t have a blog, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Simply put, blogs open up doors for you to certain aspects of web promotion, and make it a lot easier to rise up in the search engines and get “top rankings”

Blogs are one of the most successful ways of expressing oneself one the Internet. The whole concept of blogging revolves around the need to express ideas, share opinions, spread news, promoting products or to simply have fun. A blog is actually a small individual web page more like a diary that you keep online.  The beauty of blogs is that they are easy to update and allow the blog owner to easily publish links, photos, videos, documents and more.

Blogs often receive more traffic than other web pages. Why? The answer lies within the way the major search engines work.  Search engines like fresh and high quality content. This is the main benefit of blogs and why they often rank ahead of normal web pages.

Blogs started out as web diaries but have taken on other dimensions, one of which is the commercial aspect. I’ll give you an illustrative example here: let’s say you you’ve started your own home business promoting an internet based business opportunity like Infinity 100 (http://infinity100.teamwork10.com).  A blog about Infinity 100 and why it is
such a great business opportunity would meet the requirements of other people who share your interest and it is also a great promotional tool for the development of your business.  (Disclosure: I am was an affiliate with Infinity100.)

Therefore, web marketing and the need to easily and informally communicate with others fits right in with blogging.

If your main website isn’t a blog, you should consider adding one, such as: http://mywebsite.com/blog//

By adding a blog to your website you will be able to draw traffic towards your actual website.  Plus, most blogs are free.

You can set up your own self-hosted blog or you can get a free blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com. (For now, we won’t go into how to set up a blog.  We shall cover that in future tips.)

One of the great things about WordPress blogs, especially self-hosted ones, is that there are many plugins that you can install (also free) that will further enhance your blog. This makes it possible to do things like notify the search engines when you have posted new content, automatically bookmark your post to the social bookmarking and networking
services, create a community of subscribers, setup future posts to go live automatically, and more!

ACTION ITEM: Get a Blog in your area of interest and start publishing.

Why Commenting on Blogs Works for “getting targeted traffic” – 05

There are many ways to get targeted traffic to your website or blog and one of the more popular methods is to find blogs and blog posts related to your topic or business niche.  Then you enter comments for each appropriate blog post that you find.

I’ve always been an advocate for being an active blog commenter because it can play an important role in your overall online marketing strategy.  It can help in “getting targeted traffic” for many reasons, not just SEO.  (Although it is an extremely effective, “low cost seo” tactic that many “seo experts” use.)

By taking the time to comment on blogs, even one or two comments per day can lead to extremely positive results such as reputation building, expert positioning, and the building of inbound links (even if the blog you are posting comments on uses the “no follow” attribute in their comment fields).  Commenting on blogs is therefore, more of an indirect way of getting “top rankings” with the major search engines.

One of the neat things about blogs is that are not a one-way conversation between the site author (blogger) and their audience. Commenting on blogs allows readers to continue that conversation, feel involved, offer their opinions, and to start a debate, etc. When readers visit a blog they like to see a vibrant community with a lot of post comments. A lot of comments show that the blog is active and thought provoking.

When you meaningfully participate in a blogging community, you are creating meaningful relationships with people who can send you significant traffic.

When you enter a blog comment you are also entering your name, email address and website.  So if your comment is interesting, readers may click on your link and visit your blog or website.  Your comments may also get re-tweeted, get social media votes and even bookmarked.  This is the way that content spreads and is the way you get real traffic that actually matters.

Do not spam your comments! If you try leaving a comment like “Nice Blog, Check out My Website” it is NOT going to get approved by the blog owner and will not be posted. The key here is to show the blog owner that you actually are interested in their blog and want to contribute towards it.

If you really want to make the most of your time, only focus on blogs that have Google page rank. This is a nice way to gauge the quality of the blogs you come across.

TIP:  To start out, find 5-10 related blogs with high page rankings and become active in them.  Don’t try to become active in too many blogs at one time as you will spread your efforts too thin.