Most blogs are all about content, and this means that you have a rich marketing venue built-in – the search engines. As your content grows you’ll get natural, organic traffic as your blog’s posts are indexed.
If you wanted to, you could forget all about marketing strategies and leave it to the search engines to build your traffic. This is the strategy I use on most of my blogs – organic growth. I have several blogs for writers and many other blogs; there’s no time to devote to marketing each one, so I leave it to the search engines.
If you decide to use the search engines to bring you traffic, here are some tips:
* Realize that the search engines, especially Google, will take time to “trust” your blog. Your blog will be indexed quickly, but you won’t start coming up for searches for competitive keywords for as long as six months to a year. If you’re blogging for your own online profile, or that of your business, this won’t concern you.
If you’re using your blog for affiliate marketing or are monetizing your blog, use other marketing methods until your blog is appearing consistently in the search engine results.
Do realize that your traffic will seemingly explode as soon as you’ve built trust, so a small audience in the first few months is not an indication that there’s anything wrong, it’s just the way that search engine traffic works for a new site;
* Develop a blogging schedule, and stick to it. Since you’re relying on organic traffic, the more (good) content the better. Blog at least once a week, once a day if the blog is in a competitive niche.
However, do keep your focus on your blog’s mission: people read your blog for your stated mission, and if you start wandering off the topic, you’ll lose both your readers AND the search engines. So keep a narrow focus on your topic;
* Watch your blog’s referrer logs to see how and when your blog posts start appearing for searches in the search engines. You may be surprised at some of the searches for which your posts appear. Way, way off-topic searches are common initially – you’re getting the scraps from the search engines. Remember that your blog posts will not appear for competitive keywords for a while, but as you build trust, they will appear.
Using the search engines for marketing your blog couldn’t be easier. Look on it as the slow, steady way to building up your blog. Although it’s slow, it’s an investment of your time and energy which will pay off enormously for you.
Read my Blogging for Dollars ebook for strategies on how to develop your blog; coaching is included, so it’s perfect for you if you’re a new blogger.
Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, SEO, search engines, marketing, traffic, organic
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