Blog marketing

Does your blog need traffic? I found this site that lists 55 places to which you can submit your blog to, for free, in an attempt to increase traffic:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Link Development in Blogs

An interesting forum post at WebmasterWorld.com, with tips about how to develop links in the blog world:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum12/3073.htm

Site Promotion & Forums

A little over a month ago, I started a new website. For the first month, I promoted the site in forums only. Here are the traffic results over the period of its first month:

Jan 12th - 45 pageviews/day - Release day
Jan 25th - 136 pageviews/day - Some self promotion in forums
Feb 2nd - 1,214 pageviews/day - Main page appears in Google results
Feb 12th - 10,136 pageviews/day - About 40 more pages appear in Google results

Instead of the "old forum promotion method" of joining a billion forum sites and making one post with your link on it never to return, I participating in only 2 forums relevant to the site's topic. I kept a link to my site in my signature, yes, but that is not the whole story. I strived to make high quality posts whenever possible. I used material from my site on the forums where appropriate. I did not just make new posts, copy and paste an article into it, and say "Hey doods, visit my site!" I did my best to become a contributing member of the community.

The expiriment payed off: all of a sudden, my logs were filled with one-way incoming links from places I had never even heard of. People were taking the information I had posted on the forums and were sticking it in their blogs, other forums, and even some websites.

Were there a lot of sites that just copied and pasted my information with out giving me a link? I'm sure there were tons, but what is important is the sites that did link back to me and the effect they had on my Google rankings.

So, to sum it all up: Quantity is not better than quality, because quality breeds quantity.

Web Development in 2006

2006. Wow. Thirteen years since the release of Jurassic Park. Also... um... thirteen years since Mr. Bobbitt lost Mr. Winkey. Well, the point I'm trying to make is things change on the Internet, and fast.

Gone are the old days of submitting your site to a billion directories and instantly shooting to the top of Google's search results. Search engine algorithms, not just Google's, have advanced considerably in recent years. Links from unrelated pages, such as a directory, seem to hold little or no weight now. Reciprocal linking strategies are quickly losing value and keyword stuffing can actually result in search engine penalties.

So what can you do to promote your page? Aim for traffic - not bots. Don't buy a link from a site just because it has high pagerank. Get your links from relevant pages where you will get traffic from - real people. Get involved in forums relevant to your site's topic and make high quality, original posts. Don't be over-the-top obvious that you are advertising your site, though. Just drop a small link in your signature - if people like your posts, they'll no doubt check out your site.

So, instead of "Link Development" the name of the game is now "Traffic Development". Design your website for humans first and foremost. The bots are now smart enough to follow.

Snakes on a Plane

"Snakes on a Plane", starring Samuel L. Jackson, sports perhaps the greatest movie title ever in the history of Hollywood. What is it about you ask? Let me refer you back to the title. IMDB says "an assassin, bent on killing a passenger in a witness protection program, lets loose a crate of snakes onboard an airplane." If I'm not mistaken, that definitely sounds like an Academy Award winner right there.

I know I'll be going to see it.

How long until we see, "Snakes on a Plane 2: Planes on a Snake", I wonder?