Search Engine Optimise and Promote your Blog Part 2

In the previous article, we covered how to optimise your blog using keywords, punchy titles and looked at content. Now, we will look at the promotional angle for increasing your readership, getting better search engine rankings and network with other blog writers.

How Much & How Often

Search engines look for fresh content and regularly updated websites, so post regularly, even if it is only once a month. It is better to post little and from time to time with though-provoking content, than to fill your readers RSS feeds with too many posts that don't cut the mustard.

Keep posts short. Blog readers want something quick and concise to skim. If you want to write at length on a particular subject, write an article, then summarise and link to it in your blog post. Anyone who needs further information can then read the article.

Promotion & Your Blog

Link, link, link! Don't necessarily ask for a reciprocal link, you may not need to. Many good blog owners are on top of who is linking to them and will respond anyway if they are interested in your content. It may take time to establish backlinks, but they will come if you have linked out first.

Make your links within your blog useful - not 'click here', but 'great article on SEO for small business', for example. This will help with how the search engines rank your content, as well as helping your readers.

Look around for other blogs in complementary not competitive topic areas and make purposeful comments. Don't hard sell your content on someone else's blog, but do (deep) link back to your own where permitted. Quite often you can include the name of your blog and a link within the name field of the comment box nowadays, and it is worth considering this for your own site.

Check your RSS feed is optimised, working and set up to be found automatically. Submit your RSS feed to blog directories and any news sites which scrape RSS feeds for their content. This can often bring in additional traffic, particularly if you are writing about breaking news stories in your sector.

There are many other ways to optimise your blog, but just by applying some of these you will find that it increases the ranking of your website on the search engines. Take a holistic and long-term approach to your blog and it will grow to become a valuable marketing and communications tool within itself.

Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency