Small Business Blogs Directory
small business blogs directory
Small Business Blog Marketing: What Does it Entail?
Blog marketing can be quite complicated for anyone that has never even blogged before. If you are considering getting into small business blog marketing, you will want to first have a blog and see what that is like before you get into something more. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You have to update your blog on a regular basis in order to keep your readers happy. Doing so will keep them coming back for more and to see what you have new to say.
Small business blog marketing consists of blogging about your business. It definitely is a great tool that you should use to get your business out there and known by others. However, you will need to be patient because it is a long process that will require much of your attention. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone is going to find it and read it. You are going to have to make it known. If you have a website for your business, you can link your blog to it and that will let the ones that know about your business and business website know about your blog as well.
Small business blog marketing is something that anyone can do. Having a blog and keeping it up to date with the latest information is not hard. All you need to have is a plan and you will be set to market any type of business from your blog. Whether you are selling a product or a service, it does not matter. A blog that is marketed the right way will be beneficial to any business whatever it might be.
So you are probably wondering how you are going to accomplish this small business blog marketing. When you are marketing a blog, you pretty much do it the same way that you would market a website. It is going to need keywords, and content. You can write the content yourself, or pay someone else to write it for you. That part is totally up to you. However you will want to be sure that the content is decent and something that your readers will want to read. This will keep them coming back. Make sure that the content is written from special keywords that you choose. You will also want to become familiar with SEO which is Search Engine Optimization. SEO will help you to optimize your blog to get a better ranking with the search engines.
Once you have chosen the keywords, and gotten some content published on your blog, you will be ready to get it out there some more. Link exchanges are wonderful for marketing your small business blog. You want to try and exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours, but not in direct competition. If you try to exchange links with sites in competition with yours, you are going to find that many of them will turn you down in fear of losing business to you.
Paid directories are a big part of small business blog marketing as well. You can pay some directories to list your blog URL in their directory under the specific category that it falls under. However, some of these even have specific qualifications that you must have to get in. Follow all of the application steps, and you should be ok. Just do not try to submit your blog to a directory that it does not qualify for, or fit in.
Another important thing to remember when you are into small business blog marketing is that if anyone leaves you a comment on your blog, you should acknowledge it and respond. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, and leave a link to your blog as well. This will help bring in visitors to your blog, and you will begin to see more and more traffic.
Small business blog marketing is not rocket science, however someone that has never marketed a single thing before in their life may have problems. Just be persistent, and don’t give up.
If you want to start blogging for cash, check out Atomic Blogging.
About the Author
Li Ming Wong is an internet marketing entrepreneur. Visit Making Money Online Blog for tips and guides to starting your own online business. How To Make Money Online – Free Ebooks Download, register for free.
Is there a way to create a buzz online through blogs or some other medium?
We’re a local Southern California online advertising directory who focuses on small to medium sized businesses and we’d like to know a way to get the buzz out about us online before we launch our ad campaign, anybody have ideas on how to accomplish this? (Maybe some specific sites or methods that have been tried)
One way is by doing a press release. Below are suggested PR web sites
PR Directories
http://www.press-release-writing.com/
http://www.brandrepublic.com/directories/
http://www.prweekblackbook.com/
http://www.online-pr.com/markpr.htm
http://www.netpreneur.org/Resources/prservices.html
PR Announcements
http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/index.html
http://express-press-release.com/
http://www.theopenpress.com/index.php?a=index
http://www.publicityinsider.com/PRlinks.asp
http://www.free-press-release.com/
http://www.prleap.com/
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/News_and_Media/News_Services/Press_Releases/
http://www.prfree.com/
http://www.pr.com/press-releases
http://i-newswire.com/
http://www.freepress.net/press/release.php?id=73
There are two easy ways to get your link on other sites that you should be using.
#1. Find sites that you want to get links from and then custom write articles for each site and send them to the editors. Include your link in the “credits” at the bottom of the article, of course.
Make the articles interesting and useful to the readers of the sites and you can be sure that most of your articles will get published.
Take some of the articles you have already written and customize them for a niche. It’s easier than you think and it does get results.
#2. The second way to get articles (with links) published is to submit the articles to sites that accept articles for distribution.
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.goarticles.com/
http://www.articleblast.com/
http://www.valuablecontent.com/
FACTS ON IMPORTANCE OF YOUR LINKS ON OTHER WEB SITES
Link building has changed and this change is more precise in what engines look for. I cannot recommend a specific company. What I can do is provide you with information so you can be sure that whom ever you use provides the best in getting your site linked to other sites
You do not want to join link exchanges or link farms. Websites to house your text link is not easy. You need to do searches by keyword phrases and check out the top sites. their links partners and so on. Then develop a personal email to send to the sites webmaster requesting the placement of your anchor text link. Below is lots of info and details to help you.
Building Link Popularity is one of the most important and critical aspects to obtain high rankings campaign today. The ‘off-page’ factors such as link popularity, anchor text in incoming links play a major role in your site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Search Engines consider your site more important if more links point to your site. Building link popularity improves the popularity of your web pages. The higher the popularity of your website, the higher its importance for search engines and higher it gets ranked in the search engine result pages. Search engines also take into account the popularity of the pages that link to your site and its industry relevance to your own industry. Links from higher popular pages and industry relevant sites give your site a higher value.
Types of Links
There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links (where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites.) The second method is to establish one way links which can boost you even higher
Page Relevance
Most sites offering links have several categories listed on their sites. Try and get a link from a category that closely matches your own industry. For instance, if you have a site related to hotels, then, on your partner site, a tickets site for example, try and identify a resource directory pertaining to hotels, resorts, reservations, vacation packages, travel, tourism, food and beverages etc. If the concerned site has a directory on hotels, you should request a link in that category, as a link from that page would be relevant to a hotels site, thus getting you more benefits. An algorithm called “Applied Semantics” determines the industry relevance of a page within a site. Applied Semantics algorithm studies various keywords on a web page and tries to determine the industry or business segment of each page. Applied Semantics estimates the industry segments that are relevant to a particular page. If the link to your page is coming from your business specific segment, then you are likely to draw more benefit.
Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the visible hyperlinked text on a web page. Since anchor text is very important, make sure that your most important keywords appear in anchor text from the link pointing to your site. You should try and work with at-least 10-20 keyword and link text options. If you are creating a large number of links using only one standard link text, then the search engines are likely to detect a pattern. It is possible that future algo updates may do away with all repetitive and similar looking links to your site.
Pre-Indexed Pages
Try and find link partners in Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, and check if the links page is already indexed in the search engines. Search Engines frequently re-index the pages in its database. They are likely to detect your link faster on a page already existing in their database as compared to a ‘yet-to-be indexed’ page. The safest way to check is to copy the prospective link page URL and paste it into Google Search. If the page is indexed, Google would show a result in response to your search, otherwise it would respond with a ‘no result found’.
Dynamic Link Pages
You should also watch out for any link pages that are generated dynamically. Chances are that such pages would not get indexed soon enough, which means that a link from such a page would not benefit you. Some dynamic link pages are intentionally generated in such a way so as to prevent them from getting indexed. Some unscrupulous webmasters do this to trick you to prevent any PageRank leaking from their site to yours. Links from such pages therefore do not give you any benefit.
Java Script Link Pages
It is also important to identify pages that are generated through Flash or a Java Script, as Search Engines cannot read flash pages or the links embedded within flash. These are some of the tricks unethical webmasters use. While a site can claim to have placed a link to your web page, in effect they are not giving you any benefit.
Re-Directed Links
A link that is first re-directed to another page within your partner site before pointing to your site is a re-directed link. You should watch out for such links, as search engines do not give weight to re-directed links. It is very unlikely that your site would draw any benefit from a re-directed link.
Frame Sites
Avoid getting links from framed sites as search engines cannot read texts within frames. A link placed on a frame site would not get your site any benefit, as search engines would not be able to recognize such a link.
Directory Depth
It is important to evaluate the depth of the directory of the linking page. Avoid getting links from pages that are embedded in a very deep directory or pages that are more than two directories deep (e.g. www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/linkpage.php is not a good link page). Deep directories seldom earn high PR. They are also slow in getting indexed, if at all.
One of the important factors in ranking high in search engine results is link popularity. It is not enough to just have the best website in the world—other sites have to point back to you. The thought is that if your site is good enough for others to link to you, then you must have a great site.
How do I increase link popularity?
Building link popularity is hard work. You’ve searched endlessly. You’ve sent every reciprocal link email you can think of. What else can you do? Surprisingly, writing articles on your topic can lead you to a wealth of link popularity.
What are the benefits of writing articles? Think about it. If you write articles, you get to use them on your website and you build your website content. You can also submit your articles to other sites. With both methods you get a lot in return:
You build your content. More is better when it comes to site content.
You promote your website. With more keyword-rich text on more pages, you will increase the number of pages indexed by the search engines.
Other websites link back to your website content. Sites focused on related topics link back to you.
You receive a link back to your website from the site you submitted the article to. Remember to include a link in all guest articles you submit.
You become an authority on your topic. Search engines reward sites with a larger number of inbound links from sites dealing with similar topics.
What do I write articles about?
The saying goes “write about what you know.” Sometimes it takes thinking in a creative way to open the door to a new route for link popularity success. Think of what your visitors might be looking for. Why do they come to your site? What can you help them with when they arrive on your website? Answer their questions about your topic. We all search to find information, so give them what they are looking for.
So what are they looking for? That is easy enough to find out. Review your web server logs to see what keywords and phrases your visitors are using when they find your site through the search engines. Run your own searches using those keywords. What kinds of sites are returned in the search engine listings? Pay attention to visitor feedback. Know your visitors. Answer the questions they are asking, or even those questions they do not know yet to ask.
Most importantly, write because you have something to say. If in the process of building your content and inbound links, you benefit your readers with your content, all the better in terms of providing visitor satisfaction. This is the best reason to write, which is the way of the web, to seek out and share information.
Where do you put articles?
On your site. The first and obvious answer is to put them on your site. After all, you have all this knowledge; why not share it with your visitors? You may want to create an Articles page on your site. This will give you a place to put your articles, and any new ones that you write. Make sure to add this new page into your site navigation, and especially to add it to your sitemap page. Add a link to your main articles page on your sitemap, and a link to each new article on your articles page, and you are on your way to having your good content indexed. Make sure your visitors and the search engine robots can find your new pages.
Adding article content not only answers your visitors’ questions, it adds to your website. Your visitors will have a richer experience with your site when there is more content. Not only can they buy the widgets you are selling, but they can also learn more about how to select widgets, exciting news from the world of widgets, and so on.
The more pages you add to your website, the better chance the already visiting search engine robots will also pick up your new pages to be indexed. More pages mean more links. Be sure to make an archive of your articles on your website. Always keep your pages in directories close to the root of your site for optimum indexing by the search engine robots.
Submit to the search engines. As always you will want to submit your new pages to the mainstream search engines and directories. In addition, look for specialized, topical directories that deal with your particular subject. There are also many general business directories available.
Submit guest articles. In addition to submitting your articles to the various search engines and directories, think about submitting the articles themselves. Submit your articles to sites that accept guest articles. It may take a little detective work to find some of these locations. You can start small, submitting to lesser-known portals seeking information on your topic. Some sites are focused on one topic; others need articles about all sorts of topics. Get searching and you should be able to come up with a healthy list of sites to submit to. Searching in Google and in categories in Yahoo! and ODP (Open Directory Project/Dmoz) would be helpful.
Once you are featured as a guest writer on a website, you will notice that most sites archive these articles. How many articles can you write? How many articles are archived and linked? How many different search engines indexed those pages? You get the idea.
Always include a bio of the author, article re-print instructions, copyright information and a link back to your website. Add an active link in your link text in your submission or request one for your listing. Be aware of dynamically generated pages—a static URL also increases the chance that the article you have submitted has the optimum chance of indexing by the search engine robots.
What if I don’t write?
What if writing is just not your thing? You are in luck, because there are sites out there that have free content and articles available to you. When you add them to your site, you still build the content on your website.
Legitimate links, no spam
The best part is that your new links are all legitimate and not just junk links. You add important information to your site, and that is good for your visitors and good for your image. Naturally, using your keyword phrases in your Title/META tags and the text of your articles as you would in your regularly optimized pages makes sense for good search engine ranking.
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