Many bloggers are transitioning over into internet marketing areas, whether it be affiliate programs, article writing, or paid guest blogging.
I am new to guest blogging myself (this is actually my VERY FIRST guest post on any blog), but I will share some of my experiences with marketing from a visitor and search engine optimization standpoint.
So, let’s get to the point:
1. Know your niche
It may sound silly, but the best way you can optimize and market to your niche is to really get to know who you are targeting. Become active in some communities, write guest blogs, and listen to the feedback. Your goal should be to become the topic expert for your niche. It wouldn’t hurt to get active on Yahoo Answers, MerchantCircle, and other sites similar to those. Answer some questions and generate some perceived authority with the existing networking groups.
2. Know your competitors
Google a few of your niche keywords and make note of which domains are in the top 10. Combine all of those lists and remove any HUGE competitors (Business.com , DMOZ, sites like those). You should be left with a manageable list of who is really your competition for your target market. You can then make it a goal to find out what sites in common link to a few of your competitors. Seomoz provides a tool that does this, and I am sure there are others out there as well. You can also get this information yourself direct from Google searches, but it may take some time to analyze it all.
Once you know your competitors, you should look at their pages. See what they are doing, look at their titles and meta descriptions. I would normally say to forget about looking at their meta keywords since no real search engine uses them any longer, but it is good information to know what keywords they have found success with. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to look at their image alt tags and call to action text/buttons as well. It’s all fair game when it comes to marketing.
3. On-Page Search Engine Optimization
I would never personally start looking for backlinks to my site before I performed some extensive on-page search engine optimization. Be sure every page on your domain has a unique Title Tag and a unique Meta Description. I normally find it works best to have a title like “My Keyword Phrase | Short Site Name” .. your Site Name may be more important to you, it depends on your situation. I also like to use bullet characters ( • ) as a separator as well, which stands out very nice in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Make sure all of your images have widths and heights defined and have ALT tags. I also like to keep my H1 heading very close to the title of my page (and the URL of my page if I am in a sub-directory or on a sub-page).
After my initial changes, I usually head on over to the W3C validator and make sure my page validates as valid HTML/XHTML. If it does not, I make a very strong effort to get it to validate. Not only does it help with cross-browser compatibility, but it can help the search engines to read your page properly. A small item like a missed or incomplete ending tag can cause devastating effects from an SEO standpoint.
4. Get some quality backlinks
Submit your site to directories. DMOZ is the most important, but it can take months to years to have your site reviewed. I usually submit my site here and forget about it. You won’t be notified if it is included, and it’s not worth your time to keep checking day to day. If you have the money, a submission to BOTW and the Yahoo Directory are both valuable for initial link building as well. I usually do not pay for being listed in any directory, but it could work out well for some in competitive niches that need a tiny extra boost. Keep in mind that 2 or 3 dofollow links will not make a huge difference from a search engine standpoint, but being mentioned somewhere big like being featured on Mashable or hitting the front page of Digg can bring you some huge amounts of traffic.
Comment, Comment, Comment. I love to comment on any blog that updates often. I give you extra kudos for subscribing to blogs that have CommentLuv, KeywordLuv, or both installed. There are other blogs and networks out there that will allow you to comment and receive a dofollow link back, so you can do some research and find those as well. It’s nice to know that CommentLuv has a search engine on their home page that you can use to find blogs related to your niche.
Don’t become obsessed with finding dofollow blogs. You never know when a large blog will decide to turn on a dofollow plugin, so make it practice to comment everywhere. You are looking for highly targeted traffic as well, and the larger blogs can help you with some good traffic even if it is not great from a pagerank perspective.
5. Don’t Give Up
Internet Marketing takes time. I have heard of big time marketers that spend hours every day doing nothing but commenting and networking. I have a personal goal to make 20 comments a day minimum. It doesn’t take too long, and you will see the rewards from it not too long down the road. I am naturally impatient, so I try to keep my expectations set low. A few months down the road you will start to see improvement to your organic and referred traffic. Once this starts, you will need to quickly identify where you are receiving both types of traffic from, and optimize and network. If you are getting some great referral traffic from another blog, go visit it and make some comments on more posts. Don’t be spammy — add something relevant to the conversation and be an awesome commenter, it’s what every blogger is dying for.
I hope these tips can help you in your efforts. As I said, this is my first guest blog and I am not the greatest writer. I do feel like I have some great experience in this area and I just want to share it all with you guys.
Article by Aaron
Aaron is the founder and developer of blogReaction.com, a social blogging community. blogReaction provides free hosted blogs on a completely custom platform that was built from the ground up for speed, customization, and search engine optimization.
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Productive information. Thanks for writing this article.
Wow very productive strategies . Very interesting and looks like it needs lot of research and patience
Never give up ! One day you will rock the world !
Ajinkya recently posted..List of all Top Popular Linux distributions
Thanks, there is so much great and useful information here. Have bookmarked so I can return often. Off to implement some of what I have learnt here.
Thanks for stopping by Cheryl. I’ll try to get some more posts done soon.
Aaron recently posted..Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro 750 GB USB 20 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive S
Hi Aaron. You are right about the need to identify a niche. Without that type of focus the “jack of trades & master of none” comes to mind.
I’m looking forward to your next post.
Dennis Camacho recently posted..What do Fish and Your Prospects Have in Common
Thanks Dennis. In my opinion it is always easier to find a very micro niche and then work your way out of that into a larger area of the niche, or a related niche. It’s much too time consuming and difficult to start in an established niche.
Aaron recently posted..Holga Manual Shoe Mount Flash with a GN of 22 meters 72 feet
I am currently looking for a lot of reference to understand more about internet marketing. Thank you very much for posting.
Hi Bambang! What part of Indonesia are you from? I lived in Jakarta and Bali for a few months and have family & friends there.
Dennis Camacho recently posted..What do Fish and Your Prospects Have in Common
Agree with you . but I think off-page SEO works well too
Hieu Martin recently posted..Increase your blog or website traffic just in 3 days
Off-page SEO works wonders, but I’ll save that for my next post.
Aaron recently posted..blogReaction Introduces Revenue Sharing on Free Blogging Platform
Hi Aaron . Waiting for next post
Hieu Martin recently posted..How Social Bookmarking Helps You To Improve Traffic
Excellent Aaron you have done a great job all points are brief and very useful too.
Sachin recently posted..Search Engine Optimization SEO
Good job on your first guest post. The big takeaway for me here is to be patient and “Don’t Give Up”. Thanks for the tip
Larry Sutherland recently posted..Marketing For The Times
You got it Larry. Patience is key. I almost never have any expectations for the first few months. It just takes time to build some authority and rank well enough to bring in some decent traffic. I have some sites that have done almost nothing for a year, but eventually pick up some good links and traffic.
Hi Aaron
Congratulations on your first guest post. I am learning as I go so I found your tips really useful and quite easy to follow. I didn’t realize how important it was to make good comments. I need to go back and look at the “on page SEO” as I am not sure I fully understood that. Thanks for a helpful post.
Marion recently posted..How to Create a Perfect Day
Thanks Marion. On page SEO is just about what you do with your web page contents, while off page SEO is primarily building links to that page. Perhaps it is the topic of a future post.
Aaron recently posted..blogReaction Introduces Revenue Sharing on Free Blogging Platform
Twitter: azblogtips
August 3, 2010 at 9:15 am
Agree but I think sometimes off-page SEO works well too. Thanks
Tinh recently posted..Top 5 Premium Blogger Templates of 2010 for FREE
I think the most important thing is that you don’t give up and it’s also the hardest. But that’s what separates successful bloggers from the unsuccessful. And it always will be like that in life. Thanks.
I agree, in any kind of business or marketing, online or offline, perseverance it an essential trait a person must have.
Rommel recently posted..8 Reasons Why Your Website Could Fail
Great list! Although they seem simple, steps like this can ensure that your website is successful. I think most people pass them off as being too simple and just ignore them. Not a smart decision in internet marketing!
Laura Davis recently posted..SEC to Add Jobs Thanks to Wall Street Reform
Nice tips.. Bloggers need to start thinking like Internet Marketers, if they want to make a living from blogging.
This is nice list that will help.
John Paul recently posted..5 Reasons You Should Not Be A Blogger
Great tips. Because all tips new with me.
Hieu Martin recently posted..SEO Basics – Link Building
Never give up is really the bottomline here because consistency is key. You can already pass a lot of your direct competitors who decide to quit just by being persistent and not giving up too easily.
What a useful article! I’ve even kept the link for future reading! This kind of work is difficult to do if you are just starting out because the results take a while to show up so it may seem a waste of time. But I found your article encouraging and hugely practical too. I’m going to aim to work through each of your 5 points and action them for both our websites. Thanks so much.
Sara recently posted..Cuts, cuts, cuts – but cut your marketing budget at your peril
Exactly Sara.. it takes some time but it will pay off in the long run. Thanks for the comment.
Aaron recently posted..blogReaction Introduces Revenue Sharing on Free Blogging Platform
I think the don’t give up advice is great. I know so many people that start a blog and after a few months just give up because they are not getting loads of traffic. I guess I’m less likely to do this because I’m loving blogging and it’s allowed me to start writing for the first time in about 25 years (since I was at school!). If other people find my writing useful its a big bonus
Ian Tomlinson recently posted..How Imago Couples Therapy Can Transform Your Relationship
Good luck on your writing Ian. I am not much of a writer, but I do try to share from my experience as much as possible.
Aaron recently posted..blogReaction Introduces Revenue Sharing on Free Blogging Platform
These are some great tips, but I haven’t done much of these, except commenting on other blogs. I have taken care of my on-page SEO, but still there are many HTML/XHTML errors, specially from those validation codes of Yahoo Site Explorer and others. I find it a bit complicated to fix them because I still don’t have much knowledge about these.
Sourav recently posted..6 Do’s For Blog Marketing With Twitter Fail
Hi and welcome Aaron.
I agree totally in what you write, on page-SEO and links, but one thing regarding quality backlinks, it´s very important to get backlinks from the same branch or niche that you are in.
Nice article! I really like the “Don’t Give Up” section of your post. I started blogging just to have an online journal where I could vent my thoughts on things. But as I progress, I’m starting to get a glimpse of the big picture, of what blogging is really about, and the importance of marketing your work in order to grow.
Julius recently posted..Who’s Your Blogging Influence?
Lots of solid points – I’ve actually been doing 10-20 comments a day and it is working fine. The trick is to hit a diversity of blogs, because you never know where people will be.
I’m really interested to hear more about on-site SEO from you. I have that All in One SEO Pack installed and I use it for absolutely nothing. If you tell me exactly what I should do with it, I’ll get on using it immediately.
ashok recently posted..Picasso- “Man with a Violin” and “Man with a Guitar”
Just having it installed actually helps. If you have a good theme, it can help a bit as well. Most of the options in the SEO plugins are for “sculpting” of what you want engines to see and how to want them to follow your internal links.
Aaron recently posted..blogReaction Introduces Revenue Sharing on Free Blogging Platform
Twitter: MurrayLunn
August 1, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Looks like you’re really on point with IM Aaron!
One of the other benefits of going to marketplaces to look into a niche is seeing what exactly people are buying. At a later point you could either affiliate with those products, get them on board advertising or create your own product that isn’t being fulfilled by the others.
From there (which I really like that you do) if you can create a checklist much like your 20 comments you’ll build a great habit that will gain you traffic and potential customers.
Murlu recently posted..How-To Setup A Simple Online Store Using Paypal
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