This is a great technique that I learned about from other bloggers.  Basically you use google blog search to find blogs that cover simillar topics to the ones you write about on your blog.  Pick a post they wrote and write your opinion on it, be honest, and if you don’t agree with their views state that in your post.  In your post make sure you link to their post, and also ping it (or do a trackback) if you can.  That way they will see your post and probably write about it on their blog linking to your post.  Their readers will be checking out your blog and will often become regular readers of your posts.

Image Source: wetwebwork

Since my previous post 33 Reasons to Start a Blog generated a lot of interest, I thought this post might be a good follow-up. Also to clarify, By blogger I’m referring to any kind of online content contributer or publisher.

I’m guilty of all these mistakes myself and thought I’d come clean

1. Spending too much time on SEO – Search Engine Optimization. In certain weeks I have made the mistake of spending more time on learning and implementing SEO techniques for this blog than I spent on writing original quality blog posts. While SEO is important, I’m realizing now that original unique interesting posts is what creates loyal blog reader. SEO will bring new visitors, however only the quality blog posts will turn them into regular readers. I like how Steve Pavlina sums it up “write for people first and search engines second”.

2. Spending too much time on social news networks like digg, reddit etc. Submitting my blog posts to social news sites is a great way to generate traffic, however I try to make sure it’s not a priority. Using digg, reddit and other social bookmarking sites has been a very big destraction for me at times. I realize now that putting more of that time into writing quality posts will generate a lot more traffic in the long run.

3. Trying to write perfect blog posts. I have fallen into this trap myself whether I’m trying to find the perfect words, worrying about capitalization or constantly going back into each post of my posts and editing it and making it prettier. I now try to think of a blog post as food for thought not a piece of art

4. Not being personal in your blog posts. I think what makes a great blogger is the unique combination of their past circumstances and experiences. Sharing those circumstances and experiences allows readers to relate to a blogger’s writing on a deeper level.

5. Sharing the good and leaving out the bad. I notice that when sharing a personal problem that I’ve dealt with, I’m tempted to not talk too much about my shortcomings and focus a lot more on how the “powerful strong immortal me” overcame it . This ends up creating this image of a super-star blogger who no one can relate to.

6. Writing about subjects of little interest. There can be various motives for this, whether it’s to generate more buzz about a new blog, or just feeling the need to regularly publish content. This takes away all the fun of blogging. The most successful bloggers tend to be very passionate and genuinely interested in their topics of choice.

7. Constantly Checking Blog Stats. I’ve noticed that this is a big time waster for me. When I first started blogging I would even check my blog’s number of visitors multiple times in a single day. I now realize that this is just a waste of time. I now try to only check my blog’s traffic and performance statistics once or twice a week.

Noticed I have some free space in my sidebar. If you are a regular reader of this blog, and maintain your own personal development blog, leave a comment with your blog’s URL. Comment must be left by May 20, 2008. I will select up to 10 blogs to link to from my sidebar. Links to these 10 blogs will appear on the sidebar of every page in my blog for at least 1 month.

In the case there are more than 10 submissions, I will select the blogs with the best original content that offer the most value.

Maybe you are a blogger.  Or maybe you have your own personal site that you want to promote, and get more traffic for.  The following Tips will help you get more search engine results for your website.  They will also teach you how to get backlinks to your site.  In other words get other websites linking to yours.  These will raise your search engine ranking, and bring you lots of good traffic also.  Here are the tips:

1. Submit Your Site to Google. Visit google webmaster tools, login with your google account, add your site and verify it.  After verifying site, it will usually take a week for google to crawl your site.  Check the diagnostics section for google’s crawling results.
2. Submit Your Site to Yahoo.  Visit Yahoo to Submit Your Site.  Add Your Site. Authenticate Your Site. It takes Yahoo a little longer than google to verify that you own the site, usually a day or two.  After authentication it takes Yahoo another 7 days to start crawling your website.
3. Submit Your Site to MSN. Go to MSN Webmaster. Sign in with Your MSN account.Add Your site.  Upload XML file provided to you by MSN to verify your site.
4. Add Your Website to Web Directories. This will help you get lots of backlinks.  Backlinks increase your search engine ranking.  Visit The Strongest Links which lists lots of web directories you can submit your site to.   Read these common web directory submission mistakes.  With many of the directories you have to dig down into their categories before you’ll see a “Submit URL” or “Submit Your Site” link.
5. Get Backlinks from Similar Sites
   Step 1 – Build List of a few keywords that you think users will search for to access your site.Step 2 – Also think of related terms and keywords that users might alternatively use when searching for your site.

   Step 3 – Search google for your terms or keywords.  Note url’s of those sites.  Visit each one of those sites.  Use Firefox SEO plugin to learn more about each site.  Find contact information for each site owner.  You can usually find this in the contact page.  If you can’t find the contact information on the page enter the website’s url in a whois site.  If you can find a phone number in the whois site, it’s best to call rather than email.  Calling is much more dependable.

   Step 4 – To get site to link to you it’s better to get a one-way link: A link from their site to yours without your site linking back to theirs.  Sometimes the only way to get a link is to pay for it.  If that’s the case then try to pay for a permanent link and have them sign a contract.  Most websites will give you a permanent link for $50.  If you don’t or cant pay for a one-way link, then do a link exchange where both your site and theirs link to each other.

   If you want to get a one way link for free from another site, here is how to do it.  You must create a friendship with the webmaster.  Write an introductory email, build a friendship before asking for link.  Another way to do it is to contact webmaster in a very honest direct way including your link in your email.  The best way is to call webmaster and talk to them in person.  It’s much harder for people to say no on the phone.  Let them know that you enjoy their site, value it, tell them about yourself, how you can help their site, maybe by writing content (that their site is currently missing and would be helpful).

   When getting a back link, try to get a deep back link.  Instead of just linking to your homepage, try to get links to deep portions of your website.  This helps the search engine make other sections of your website more popular and give them a higher rank.

   Also when getting a back link, try to get the webmaster to put a phrase or keyword that you want to rank for in your anchor text.  Make sure to change the anchor text for different backlinks.  If you don’t and Google sees that you got a 1000 backlinks with the same anchor text they might think you are spamming.

If you are a blogger chances are you are very familiar with Blog Carnivals. Blog carnivals are a great way to get Links to your posts and your blog, increasing your search engine ranking and your traffic. If you don’t know how blog carnivals work then check out this video.

The best thing about blog carnival traffic is that it’s targeted traffic.  Blog carnivals usually revolve around one or two topics, and therefore by submitting your posts to relevant blog carnivals you can easily reach your target audience.

If you have submitted your posts and articles to blog carnivals then you probably know all the hassle and time that goes into it.  While submitting your articles to blog carnivals is very effective it’s also a long boring process that you need to do weekly to see a significant increase in your traffic.

This is why I created my Blog Carnival Submission Service.  If you already submit to blog carnivals, how would you like to outsource your blog carnival submission process and watch your email inbox fill up with blog carnival submission receipts every week?

If you are new to blog carnivals, but would like to increase your traffic and search engine rankings why not give my service a try risk free?

If you sign up today you can try it Free for 30 days. I would really appreciate your feedback on my Blog Carnival Submission Service. What do you think of the idea? What do you think of the pricing? Do you have any questions or concerns?  Please share in the comments, thank you in advance for your feedback

If you are a bloger or an online editor or content contributer I’m sure you had this dream.  You write a killer peice of content, or create a killer online video.  You submit your site’s link for the killer article or peice of video to Digg (or any other social news or sharing website) and poof, you hit the front page, your content is featured, your getting so much freaken traffic that your site goes down from all the traffic   Oh and you get lots of new readers to your site of course, generate more income either from ads or whatever you are selling on your site, and live happily every after

Now back to reality, it probably hasn’t happened yet.  You have probably wrote many articles that you thought were killer peices of content, or made awesome kick-butt videos.  Yeh they never got the traffic you thought they deserved.  How come?

Well maybe your content is great but I’m guessing your Headline stinked.  Yes this is a problem I noticed even with my content.  Which is why as I’m learning about headlines from copyblogger I wanted to share my notes and findings with you.

Writing that Killer Headline, start taking mental notes, or even better bookmark this list and come back to review:

• Usually 8 out of 10 people will read your content’s headline first and if their attention isn’t hooked they are off to the next site.  This is especially true for Stumble upon users, and others on social news websites.
• Start with the headline first.  Your headline should attract the reader by communicating what they’ll get out of reading or viewing it.  Writing your headline first will also help you stay focused when you write your post or make your video.
• Target keywords in your headline and content.  Don’t target the most popular keywords, target the variations instead.  These don’t have as much competition and will get you ranking high on the search engine in different smaller niches.
• How To type of articles are the best for hitting digg’s and del.icio.us front pages.  People want useful information.  Start your headline with “How To”.
• Your headline should be all about the benefits.  Everyone is busy.  As they are browsing the net they want to know the short and sweet end result before investing any more time in your content.  If the benefits are attractive, the browser’s attention is hooked and he becomes a loyal reader.  After the “How To” you gotta focus on one or two benefits. If you can link the two benefits it’s even better. A famous headline is “How to win friends and influence people”.  A few more are….
  • How to Save Time and Get Things Done
  • How to Get a Better Job and Make More Money
  • How to Save Money and Retire Rich
• Quick way to come up with such a headline is to use this formula.  How to [some boring task] That [Rewarding attention hooking benefit]
• Another formula that works is leaving out the to portion.  How [I got or to get] [an awesome benefit the reader probably wants].  Like “How I ranked in Google’s top 10 results from Day 1″.  This actually is true, my latest niche blog ranked #9 out of 3.5 million related sites in Google search results the first day it was indexed by Google bot.  Leave me a comment if you’d like to find out how.  If there is enough interest I will share my secrets
• List posts get attention.  The bigger the list the better.  10 reasons… 20 tips to… 10 steps to …
  • check out copyblogger for examples
• Copy blogger also has some more good headline formulas

1. Blogs are a great way to express yourself and your unique personality, whether it’s through what you write, or your blog’s colors

2. A blog is a great way to build a small network of readers with similar interests or hobbies

3. A blog is a great way to promote a business or a product

4. A blog is a great way to make a difference and raise awareness about certain topics mass media ignores or would rather not discuss

5. Writing on your blog is a great way to express your freedom of speech

6. Writing on a blog and attracting a wide readership might make you famous one day

7. It’s easy to make money if your blog becomes popular, all you have to do is insert ads

8. Posting on your blog is a great way to vent

9. A blog can land you a job opportunity, especially if it attracts a wide readership and you become recognized as an expert in your niche

10. A blog can land you an offer to be a on a reality show, this has happened to me personally. At this time I cannot provide any additional info, however if everything goes as planned and I do participate in the show, I will be posting more about it.

11. Starting a blog and maintaining it is very easy and it’s free. It doesn’t require any html or programming knowledge, you can start your free blog right away by visiting Blogger or Word Press

12. Having a blog and posting on it frequently allows you to reflect back on your growth and development

13. Writing on a blog will help you become more aware of your common spelling mistakes, and automatically improve your spelling, it sure has improved mine feel free to point out any spelling or grammatical errors in this post

14. Posting on a blog is a great way to get regular feedback in your niche and on your ideas

15. Your own blog can be a great place to post your own reviews and recommendations

16. Adding a blog to your existing site can regularly bring in a fresh stream of visitors increasing traffic and exposure

17. Regularly posting to your blog can allow you to focus more on your passions and dreams

18. Blog posts are a great way to generate some criticism from others. Criticism can be either entertaining if it’s stupid and shallow, or it can be insightful and help you discover more about your personality.

19. There are many blogs out there that duplicate information and news, if you have unique original thoughts and ideas, your blog will be a great addition to the web

20. You have got nothing to lose, worst case scenario you’ll have a story to tell about how that one time you read this stupid post and decided to start a blog

21. Blogs are not just for computer nerds and geeks anymore, even small businesses are encourage to start their own blog for marketing and promotion purposes

22. A blog is a great way to stay in touch with your friends and family, just give them your blog’s URL

23. Blogging can be fun, especially with many of todays add-ins and plug-ins that let you customize your blog

24. A blog is a great way to get more myspace and facebook friends with similar hobbies and interests, just post your myspace or facebook profile link on your blog

25. Many bloggers have turned their blogs into published books, who knows you might end up with your own book one day, and then I’ll just magically appear like a crazy genie screaming “I told you so”

26. Your blog can be a great place to post online voting polls and find out what other people think

27. Through your blog you can get to communicate and know people from all over the world, people you wouldn’t have gotten to talk to otherwise.

28. Once you start writing on your blog, you will realize that you know much more about certain topics than you thought

29. Sharing some of your life lessons on a blog is a great way of giving back to the community

30. By having your own blog you can help publicize your friends and family’s writings. A friend of mine has a great book coming out that I’m very excited about. She has discussed with me the possibility of posting a chapter or two on this blog to get feedback from readers. This is a great opportunity since I really like many of the concepts she discusses in the book.

31. Having a blog will help you stay up to date on what else is going on around the web. I have discovered many great personal development articles written by people who left comments on this blog.

32. Regularly posting on your blog is a great way to build accountability and stay on track. Many have started blogs to declare their weight loss or fitness goals publicly and regularly post on their blogs with progress and pictures. Having a community know about your goal and support you makes it a lot harder to slack off

33. A blog can be a great source of entertainment whether you are into posting funny jokes or cute pictures of cats and dogs.

I’m sure I missed some great reasons to start a blog, if you can think of any more please share them in the comments section