How do you find the best online places to engage in conversations where you
can leave a link to your helpful website and blog? How do you plan for
unique content?
One of the best articles I have seen about both these concepts is on
Problogger. The title as well as the content are instructive.
"How To Build 22,938 Links To Your Blog"
Who wouldn't want to read a blog post with such a title?! Go to
http://www.problogger.net and enter that title into the search window.
Ideas include an example of choosing a specialized and interesting niche for
the topic of the blog and information about how to promote a blog.
Once you have narrowed down a niche, because that is part of trying to
provide unique content, the writer advises identifying the top 10 blogs
related to the niche. Once those blogs are identified, start visiting and
leaving helpful comments.
How do you find top 10 blogs related to your niche? You can search on
Google, Bing, or other search engines. You can do a Twitter search for #
followed by the key words you are seeking. You can sign up for Google Alerts
on the topic of your niche - see http://www.google.com/alerts. Type in your
"Search terms" and select "Blogs" under type of item, choose how many alerts
you'd like to receive per email and how often, and whether you'd like to
receive these by email or by "Feed." You can click to the right on "Preview
results" to see what items are available.
Go to Technorati.com and click on their Top 100 Blogs report - it is updated
daily. You also can click to the listing of blogs by category. Poke around
and see what looks reputable and well rated (higher authority number).
From your various searches, choose one or two of the higher ranked blogs in
your general area of expertise, and set a goal of leaving a comment on each
blog once a week. Choose a few more that relate to an area that you sell to
or partner with for your business. For example, if you are a pet resort
business, you may want to look for a blog that relates to animal well being,
vacations and cruises, home based mommy businesses...brainstorm a list and
try reading a few a day quickly and decide what is worth regular reading and
commenting.
Always leave your blog website URL in the body of your comment - many of the
blogs will leave a place for you to type your website or blog URL but what
you type in that box will not be automatically included when your comment is
approved. Once you have managed to have multiple blog posts on your own
blog, you can leave a more specific URL to a specific article that relates
to the content on which you are commenting. And as you will see in the
Problogger article cited, it is a great idea to get links to internal pages
of your website or blog, not just to the main page with the recent posts.
Twitter and the conversations there are important components of your SEO
strategy. I advise clients to have at least three social media accounts: a
Facebook Page, a blog, and a Twitter, preferably with the same name as your
business or as close as possible. I was able to get saidndone.com for my
business website and saidndone for our Twitter account. If you have the same
name everywhere, and you start doing regular Tweets, people who first find
you through this avenue will have an easier time finding your website or
blog. In any case, make sure to put your blog or website URL on the Twitter
information area. That is a link from one of your sites to another one of
your sites, and that is good for visibility.
You never can tell where Twitter conversations will lead. My son is
interested in the entertainment industry, with talents ranging from DJ work
to acting to planning student TV shows at college. He is a heavy Twitter
user, which happened after a film professor required her students to have a
Twitter account as part of the communications and learning process. While we
were in Florida as a family in June, he happened upon an opportunity to
exchange Tweets with the Queen of Jordan. It was a lot of fun for us all to
see this happening, and perhaps that conversation, or just his ability to
look for those opportunities and engage, will help him in making connections
someday.
And while we are talking about cross-referencing - do you have a link to
your blog on your website? It should be easy to find. See an example at
http://www.saidndone.com - we provide links to the blog as well as the
Facebook and Twitter landing pages.