Blog Promotion: Blog Directories, Blog Forum & Blog Resources (Part 3 of 3)
When promoting your blog, there is a number of really simple
things you can do to help boost traffic coming into it. Unlike promoting your websites, where
submitting directories, to a degree, has gone the way of the dinosaur, Blog
Directories currently seem to be a legitimate source of decent, quality
traffic. These directories also help you
boost your inbound link count, too, as the links coming from some of the
directories would be considered “relevant” sources.
In researching blog directories for this last of the three
installments on Blog Promotion, I found a lot of the directories work in a
similar fashion. Some of these blog
directories require reciprocal links back, some do not, and some pose
restrictions on blog types or how old the blog is. Understanding that everyone is looking for
traffic and promotion of their services, and carefully choosing which
directories you really want to reciprocate links with is ideal. The list below is not in any preference,
basically its in alphabetical order with a few notes onto the type of
restrictions the directory may have.
Blog Directories
|
(blogs older than 6 months) |
(British bloggers only) (business only blogs) |
There’s a few forums out there dedicated to blogging. Some search engine forums also have special
sections of their forums dedicate to blogging in general, but the Blogging
forums really break out and expand all of the different topics that come up
with blogging. If you are not only
looking to promote your blog, but are looking for fresh new ideas, answers to
questions, to chat it up with fellow bloggers or even looking to exchange links,
get registered with the Blogging forums.
Blogger Forum –
This forum is probably the best resource out there currently for Bloggers. It has an extensive list of forum topics and
is very active as well as being moderated for spam postings. Blogger Forum also has an area for newbies,
great place to ask questions, get advice and even critiques on your blog.
Blogger Talk Forum
– This forum has been around since 2003. It’s a lot like Blogger Forum, where it is dedicated to the blogging community
and has various forum sections dedicated to specific issues that Bloggers face
day in and day out. Although not as
extensive in topics as Blogger Forums, Blogger Talk is still a great resource
for new, middling and professional bloggers looking for new information or
ideas for their blogs.
Forum4Bloggers –
Just like the other forums, Forum4Bloggers is specifically dedicated to
Bloggers and their blogging needs. This
forum has 4 sections with different subtitles, not too much emphasis on the
newbie side, but still another great resource for bloggers.
Other forums like HighRankings,
Search Engine Watch, Webmaster World and Cre8asite Forums all have
sections that members can post blogging questions too, but again, they are not
totally dedicated to the Blogosphere, and usually more geared toward Search
Engine Marketing or Website Design.
Other Blog Promotion
Resources
Finally to wrap this three part segment up I’m just going to
briefly touch upon some of the more known “must haves” in blog promotion. These are resources that help you monitor,
promote and keep track of what’s going on with your blog.
Technorati – If
there was just one thing that you could do to promote and keep track of your
blog, Technorati should be it. Fortunately we don’t live in that kind of world, but still the point is
made. Technorati is the “recognized authority on what's going on in
the world of weblogs. We help people search for, surface, and organize bloggers
and their daily posts”. This is the
best way to find out who’s linking to your blogs, you can set up “watches” on
particular postings you make and it can be a very indispensable tool in your
ever day blogging.
Feedburner – If you could do just two things – add
Feedburner to the list with Technorati. Feedburner is another indispensable tool that can help you promote your
blog through RSS syndication methods. It
can also give you valuable information about which news readers are picking up
your feeds, how many subscribers you have and a ton more of information. Feedburner assists you with providing your
feed in many different formats for different readers to pick up – best of all,
its free.
Sitemeter - If you are looking for a free way to monitor
the traffic coming in and out of your site, beyond the basics you blogging
provider gives, check out Sitemeter. Sitemeter is a nice basic web analytics package, if you are just
concerned about the traffic and where its coming from. For a fee you can upgrade your account to get
more specifics about your traffic, but what comes with the basic account,
really can help you understand where people are coming from to get to your
blog.
Ping-o-Matic – Last but not least is Ping-o-Matic. This service is free, and is a nice little tool that lets other news reader sites know your blog has been updated. Blogging services like Typepad, Blogger, etc. hit the “big sites” like Technorati, but smaller sites like IceRocket won’t know about your blog and its updated information unless you Ping them, or they stumble upon your blog. What’s great about Ping-o-Matic is that once you configure the ping, you can bookmark it, and then just come back to the bookmark whenever you update your Blog.
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