Posted on February 20th, 2010As soon as blogs were introduced, the internet suddenly became buzzing with activity as more and more people found they could post content on the internet so easily using the online platforms available.
In terms of marketing, blogs are a fantastic way to promote a website, new products, events and people because you can constantly post new content and new links back to websites and get people to subscribe via e-mail so that they keep coming back.
Writing your own blog, or paying someone else to do it, has almost become the norm for anyone with an interest in using the internet as a tool to market something. Your website could well act as a blog, but by having a separate blog which generates more pages you are increasing your web presence with a brand new domain and your website will benefit from the additional traffic that it can provide. In all honesty, why just stick with one?
A large web presence and a high number of incoming links to your website from other sites and blogs will not only benefit you in terms of direct traffic from these sources, but will also go some way towards increasing your ranking among the search engines.
Links are an important factor of SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the expression relating to the different techniques of making sure your website can be clearly seen amongst the first few (if not right at the top of the first) pages of the search engine results for some chosen keywords or search phrases. Just like points mean prizes, ranking means traffic, or more importantly, ranking means customers and the huge piles of nicely stacked 100 dollar bills they like to hand you.
Okay, so it might not be that simple, but the truth is that incoming links from other sites are very beneficial. Your own blogs can be a great way to create your own links but there are also other people’s blogs to consider.
Many blogs allow you to place comments on them. These comments often allow links too, so why not add a few? It makes sense. It especially makes sense if the blog relates directly to your blog or website because then the link becomes relevant and you’re more likely to get quality traffic full of people with a general interest in what you say.
Placing links is quite easy, but there are some things you should avoid in order to be successful at doing it and not be classed as a spammer and your comments not being published. Relevancy is one. Making useful comments is another – actually read the blogs. Sometimes it is painfully obvious who is spamming because they will leave comments like ‘thanks! www.mysite.com’.
Some blogs have very few comments and this may be due to the author moderating them heavily. If you think the site is worthy of a link to yours then try to build up a rapport with the owner over a couple of posts and then actually write a lengthy message that is worth reading, which perhaps adds something new to the blog post. And make sure not to forget your link, perhaps just under your name at the end. With a bit of luck they will actually welcome your comment and will probably visit your site themselves.