Attracting Readers

How do you get people to read your blog? If your blog is more than a friends/family communication medium and your goal is to communicate ideas, what is the secret to finding readers?

The secret is spreading the word. Leverage your blog for everything imaginable whenever you use the Net. Put a link to your blog in your email signature file. When you post on forums, make sure that a link to your blog exists (see Figure 12.10).

Figure 12.10. If you post in forums, put a link to your blog in the signature.

Several blog-related sites can also help you promote your site. The biggest is Technorati, which helps users keep in touch with all the topics under discussion in the blogosphere by tracking the number of links connected to a particular post and, by inference, determining a blog's popularity in comparison to other blogs. The site is set up to automatically receive notification from updated web log posts so that it can keep in touch with what topics are under discussion within the blog community.

Technorati provides two methods for promoting your blog:

• Ping Technorati A simple service that informs Technorati that you have a new post on your site. Simply enter your site's URL and click Ping. This service captures your new post in Technorati's search engine, which other people use to search new blog posts.

• Add blog tags You can publicize your blog by registering it within the Technorati Blog Finder system. Submit a registration form online (see Figure 12.11), add some code automatically generated by Technorati in your blog template, and update a Blog Finder profile that lets you add subject matter tags to describe your blog. Technorati will categorize your blog and then give it exposure in its search engine. Surfers who visit Technorati can type in any text, or click on a featured tag, and find your blog based on these tags. For example: "Find a blog about hotdogs or hamburgers or sushi."

  Figure 12.11. Create tags within Technorati to help categorize and promote your blog.

  

Another service that you might want to leverage is Pheedo Blogsnob Traffic Exchange: http://www.pheedo.com/publishers/simpleads/exchange.html.

Create an ad for your site, promote other people's blogs on your site, and your blog will be promoted on theirs. An experiment in viral marketing that's free.

Getting Noticed by Search Engines

In the early days of blogging, new bloggers registered their site URL with various web directories such as Yahoo.com and Google.com (see Figure 12.12). You can still do that, and it is an effective way of making sure that your site will be displayed during a search session.

Figure 12.12. Add your blog URL to Yahoo!'s directory with this form.

Google does not have the same kind of form. Instead, the search engine sends web crawlers out to all web pages and adds the information to its databases.

Google.com has posted some tips on how to make your site noticeable to its crawlers: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=745.

Linking to Other Blogs

The best way to attract the attention of search engines and other readers is to have your site linked to a number of other blogs and websites.

A site that is popular with other sites is more likely to seem valuable to the search engine systems. Getting others to link to your site is not that difficult. It's similar to making friends on the playground.

Be FriendlyIntroduce Yourself

The blogosphere is not unlike a neighborhood or town. After you are settled in, make efforts to find other sites that are close to you geographically in the real world or cover a similar topic or philosophy of life.

Blogs that are in the same city or state are more likely to add your site to their list of links. If you live in Columbus, Ohio, use search engines to find sites located in the same area.

Or just cruise around and see what's out there by using a search engine to find blogs with your town's name.

After you have located like-minded individuals, send them an introductory email with your new URL address. Ask whether they will add the URL to their links list. A good strategy is to select a blog with high traffic rates. Search engines tend to rank a link by its placement on a heavily trafficked site.

Do Unto Others What You Would Have Done to Yourself

After you have asked others to link to you, you should also add the links of others to your blog. This is an excellent way to make new friends. Bloggers often check statistics in their publishing software that tells them whether someone has linked to a post or to their front page. Because most humans are curious, it's highly likely that the other blogger will check out your site. Just in case, always say something complimentary, if you can, about the other person's site. No need to burn bridges unless absolutely necessary.

Note

A somewhat new technology called XHTML Friends Network has blossomed in the blogosphere as a way to show relationships among bloggers through hyperlinks. You can read more about XFN at this URL: http://www.gmpg.org/xfn/.