Advertise your blog for free in less than six minutes
There are no free lunches in this world. But there are discount coupons for sure.
Minute 1: Add your blog name in your signature
Die-Hard Social Web participants today fancy themselves with their avatars and signatures while communicating over the web. Whether it is a social networking site or a community building forum, you will always find these two things related to you and differentiating your online identity from others.
Having signature is not something new. We had this since long back associated with your email. So why not use it for promoting your blog. Put your website’s URL in the signature. It won’t even take a minute and is a one time affair.
Note:
Please make sure if your forum permits having URLs in your signature.
Definition:
Avatar: A digital representation of a user in virtual reality site.
Signature: A group of lines attached to the end of a message that identifies the author and often includes additional information such as contact information, organizational affiliation, or a favorite quote.
Minute 2: Submit your site to a Search Engine
Ok, this sounds dumb. You have already done that. But how many search sites you have submitted to? Ask yourself, is there any search site with global presence that you missed out. If your blog cater to a niche segment or local flavor, have you submitted to the local search engines?
Local search engines and small players have less competition and thus chances of yours listing higher are more.
Minute 3: Submit to free Web Directories
Hunt for free web directories and list your site on them. Make sure you list it in the proper categories assign for it. Last thing you would want is your blog for interior designing categorized under lifestyle section.
Few places to start would be www.dmoz.org, www.worldsiteindex.com, www.domaining.in, www.webworldindex.com, www.searchsight.com .
Minute 4: Create Blog replicas
What is a Blog Replica? Now this may be considered as Black Hat practice by some but the idea works nevertheless. Say you have a blog abc.com on your web hosting space. Create blogs with same name at free accounts like Blogger (abc.blogspot.com) and Wordpress (abc.wordpress.com). These are your Blog replicas or redirects.
Now for every time you post on your main blog, make sure you post the same headline on these blogs and few opening lines of the post. After which you can add a link to your post on the main blog (abc.com). This should not take much time. Later check with Google Analytics to see if any traffic is directed from these sites to your main blog and accordingly decide if you should continue.
Minute 5: Join Yahoo and Google Groups and notify them each time you post
Subscribe yourself to Yahoo and Google groups which cater to your blog’s niche. These group generally have a common group address, through which you can mail to the entire group participants. Every time you write a post which you thing the community would be interesting in reading, send the link to be delivered to the group’s participants.
Be warned though, it may tarnish your image if you send loads of posts or post which does not have mass appeal.
Minute 6: Make sure your post gets at least one Digg / Stumble.
Last tip consist of Digging or Stumbling your self once for your post. Do this only for posts which you think have high quality content and have mass appeal. Also avoid doing this every time.
Digging yourself using another ID or with the help of a friend falls in the grey area. Some people argue that it is a bad practice while some say it is perfectly alright. Whatever it may be, remember at no point of time would you like to get your blog blacklisted by a major bookmarking site.
So that’s it. Six simple steps and in less than six minutes you have started advertising for your blog for free.
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