1. Word play.

When they came up with the name “Google” Larry Page and Sergey Brin were playing with the word “googol,” which is the math term for the numeral “1″ followed by 100 zeros. Since then the word has made its way into our language and is now virtually synonymous with the notion of any Internet search.

If your business or brand name is taken, play around with the words or consider adding a word or two. It could be that adding something like “planet” or “zone” to your name will result in a domain that hasn’t been taken, sticks in people’s memories and is easy to type.

Maybe you’ll come up with the next “Toys ‘R’ Us” or “Pet Smart.”

2. Tack on a keyword.

If the exact name you want is already taken, do a little research and make a list of the keywords people are likely to use when they are hunting down the product or service that you provide. Examine the list and find the one or two that would dovetail well with your name.

In addition to providing you with a domain name that hasn’t yet been claimed, this approach may also give you somewhat better visibility in the search engine world. This tactic is especially useful if your business will depend on organic searches to generate visitors.

If you sold spoons on the Internet for example, you could explore domain names like “silverplatedspoons.com” or “bestspoonsource.com.”

3. Forget keywords and go with a concept.

Perhaps the “idea” of your business is more important than a long list of keywords. Can you state that idea in a short phrase that will make an excellent domain name? This, by the way, is also a great way for you to really focus on what you want to accomplish with your website and sharpen your business plan.

Where would you go if you were in a hurry but knew you needed to get the oil changed in your car before you headed out of town? I’d immediately think of Jiffy Lube and to find the nearest store, I’d go to my computer and plug in jiffylube.com.

If you can capture the idea behind your business with a short phrase, it could make a huge difference in the success of your website.

4. Size matters; keep it short.

You can have a domain name that is anywhere from two characters to 63 characters in length, but the rule here is: The shorter the better. I would recommend fewer than 20 characters, and ideally a lot fewer than 20.

Further, unless you’re starting the next NCAA, stay away from abbreviations or acronyms. It is always best if your web address is the same as someone would speak the name of your business or brand.

5. Cautiously consider an alternative Top Level Domain name.

The Top Level Domain (TLD) of a web address is what sits on the right hand side of the “dot.” I think we all know that “.com” is the most common TLD and the most likely to have already been taken by someone else when you decide you want it.

When you start the process of finding and buying a domain name, you’ll probably have alternative TLDs thrown in your face like “.net,” .co,” “.biz,” “.me” and many others. Don’t immediately take the bait.

Some of these may make sense for you. TLDs associated with different countries could work well if you’re looking for visitors from those areas. And, depending on your business plan, TLDs such as “.tv” or “.info” might make sense.

Be careful and know exactly where your prospective visitors will end up if they accidentally type in “.com” when they’re trying to navigate to your site. Will they end up doing business with a competitor?

6. Hyphenated names.

Lots of marriages today result in hyphenated family names. That’s fine, but it’s not such a great idea for websites. As with different TLDs, if your first choice in a domain name is already taken, they will probably suggest a long list of hyphenated names.

Unfortunately, Internet users often leave out the hyphens when they are entering a URL in their browsers. A name like “north-southtravel.com” might make sense but something like “very-reliable-used-cars.com” is over the top. Be very careful and know where people will land if they forget the hyphens.

The trouble most business owners and website owners face is that they do not know how to start link building properly or in a way that is natural or beneficial to them.

One of the first things you can do, as a website owner, is find a link building service to draw up a link building strategy for you and chase those links. This will take the guess work out of what needs to be done to accomplish certain goals.

You see, a link building service should be able to look at your website or the market your business operates in and, after some research, identify some great places where you can secure links.

Yes, you’ll have to pay for the link building which you wouldn’t have to if you decided to do it yourself, but that being said, if you have a marketing budget and hire the right company, you will find that the benefits far exceed the costs.

What you can gain from a link building service is peace-of-mind, it is their job to stay up-to-date with the changes at the major search engines, it is their job to know what works and what has lost favour, it is their job to know when to work hard to obtain a link and when to move on because the time investment is a waste.

One of the best ways to get a feel for a link building service provider is to get on the phone and talk to them. See what they offer, how much the service will cost, what reports they run and how you will receive them, and what time-frames do they (or you) have in mind.

Remember, you will be paying for the link building service so it is up to you to ask the right questions, the questions that are important to you and your business.

Major tip: See if the link building service will start of small, secure some links for a set amount of money. If they deliver on what they say they can do, then you know you should be able to trust them with a larger portion of your marketing budget.

Here are seven ways to help ensure your site will always pass the constant tests of search engines.

1. Vary Anchor Text

You may be focusing on a few keywords such as “business cards”, but always vary your anchor text. Use longtail keywords, your brand keywords and even obscure keywords for your anchor text such as “visit them here”. People don’t always link back to sites using the perfect keywords pointing to the perfect URL, and search engines know that.

2. Avoid Spammy Sites

Avoid adult sites, gambling sites, auto blogs, very new sites, blogs that haven’t been updated in years and so on. When possible, try and stick to sites in your niche and most importantly, avoid sites that obviously sell links, especially unrelated ones.

3. Quality Over Quantity

Always go for a few quality links over hundreds or even thousands of low quality ones. Excessive amounts of links acquired in a short amount of time from poor sources such as blog comments and article directories send bad signals to search engines.

4. Focus on Your Brand

Building a strong brand with a great product or service is an easy way to get links and social votes naturally. People simply like recommending things they love and Google has been putting an emphasis and showing authority brands people “love” in the search results more.

5. Be Social

Social votes are becoming more important for search engine rankings. Get social votes on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ from real sources to various pages on your website such as your home page, social profiles and blog posts.

6. Avoid Patterns

Search engines are great at finding patterns, so avoid things such as getting all of one kind of link, submitting 5 articles exactly every week or creating lots of mini sites to get backlinks to a main website that can easily be tracked backed to you.

7. Timing

When you start a linkbuilding campaign, try to time it with other online marketing promotions such as PPC, banner ads and social media. These increases in traffic can help justify any new backlinks that may appear, especially if in large quantities.

Keep your links and link profile as natural as possible and you will be better able to stand the storm coming from any algorithm changes.

And that simple fact, the fact that many people have no clue what the acronym “S.E.O.” even stands for, means one thing for people in the Internet marketing business: SEO’s (what you call someone in the Internet marketing business) are able to charge big $$$$ for Internet marketing services. Services that most anyone on this planet can do with the right information.

And I don’t mean to say that anyone can do this because that, realistically, is not true – because it takes a certain type of person to create for themselves on the Internet. You have to be wily – and you have to have a good mind for business. But theoretically and technically speaking – anyone can get into providing SEO services, because a lot of them just require two things: Time to learn how search engines operate, and a basic set of writing skills. With those two things, anyone can do what even some of the top SEO dogs do, and everything else will fall into place.

Why am I talking about this when the question is: Should SEO be taught in high school?

I have sought out other opinions on the debate on whether high schools should teach students about SEO or not (many of these opinions coming from SEO’s) and a lot of them have shared the some opinion on the topic. Many believe that SEO should not be taught in school because it would overflow the SEO business. Students would realize that you do not need a college degree to make a lot of money in this world and you would have 17 and 18 year old kids providing SEO services for much better prices – which they are very capable of doing.

But personally – I feel as if that is a terrible argument, and the only reason I would say that including it in a high school class would be a bad idea would be because the Internet and SEO is ever changing – now more than ever – and who knows how long the fundamentals of SEO will be around. That being said there could be an ever adapting class – which would obviously be an awesome idea!

Every student, and every person on this planet, should have a right to know just how Google and other search engines feed information to people. In fact, the basics of SEO like content creation for the Internet, what link building means, and why we see what ads we see when we use a search should be engraved into every single person’s head that uses the Internet. Millions upon millions of people use search engines like Google every single day – those people have a right to know how the information they arrived at actually got there and what agendas were at hand.

This is the exact reason that to prep for the algorithm update titled “Panda” Google used qualitative research that included asking people questions like “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?” Both Google and searchers were tired of low quality content showing up in the search engine results pages – sites that were there because of manipulative SEO tactics rather than providing what it is exactly that the searchers are looking for. People of this planet should be able to recognize when agendas are at hand – and when content ranks because it should rank – or at least have the option to learn at a young age.

Wouldn’t You Love to Teach SEO?

One cool thing about this is that there would be tons of people that would be able to teach SEO in high school. Online projects could be completed within a semester and it is the perfect side job for many people that are in the business that prefer to work at night or have wacky hours.

Young kids have very creative minds. In fact it’s been said that all of our greatest ideas as humans are thought up by the time we are 18 and we spend the rest of our lives working on them. Not only would SEO be a beneficial class for the students – but it would probably turn out to be the most fun! Isn’t that why we as SEO’s go into it in the first place? Because it is fun?

Add a blog: If you want to boost the traffic to your website and also the visibility, make sure you add a blog to each site so that you may give the opportunity to the clients to add fresh and unique content regularly. Search engines always love fresh content and therefore, if you allow your client to keep on updating the blog with fresh new content, you will be giving them an SEO advantage. Blogs naturally attract search engine traffic and you must use this to your advantage.

Implement Google Analytics to your website: Google Analytics is a free analytics software package that may allow your client with a wide range of crucial data about their website and how it is being ranked in the search engines. Look for Google Webmaster Tools that has a ton of information that you can use to get yourself educated about the keywords and web pages.

Make ever single page unique: Google will rank each webpage according to the content it contains and therefore you must make sure that each website has unique content that is relevant with the website. This demands that each page must not only be different from any other website on the web but also completely different from the any other page on the same website.

Create separate webpage for every keyword: The best way in which a website can rank for a particular keyword is by creating a web page that is targeted to that phrase with the keyword in the title tag, meta-description tag, body copy and also the URL. This implies the critical importance of creating separate pages for separate keywords.

Thus, by integrating all the above mentioned suggestions, you can easily design a website that can help you boost visibility and also rank better in search engine results. Search engine optimization is the main part that contributes to your website’s performance. Therefore, make sure you take the right steps to get best results.

Well, Simpleology is about to break the 1,000,000 member mark! Set up your account before they break 1,000,000 and you’ll also get a free download – “The Top 5 Most Inspiring Video Clips of All Time” – sign-up here: Simpleology.

Social Media Optimization is a fairly new concept and still somewhat vague, meaning different things for different people. It was first defined back in the mid-2000s, but has been re-phrased since. It was originally very link-building focused, but the recent re-phrasing has moved the meaning more towards content and sharing. Wikipedia has a nice article about social media optimization, but to my mind it’s not covering all sides of the concept, so here’s a little something for you.

Some say SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is dead and the time of SMO (Social Media Optimization) has began. I don’t see it quite like that, it’s just not that simple. I’d rather say they together make a brilliant strategy to build on. SEO creates value in attracting people to wherever you want them to go – your blog or website most likely – and SMO then again let’s people find you in closed networks where the search engines are not allowed to go, and drive traffic from there to your website.

And regarding SMO, having perfectly tuned social media profiles helps ranking high in search engines as well, as the networks themselves are real search engine magnets – well, the open networks are. Some of the networks don’t allow search engines to crawl the profiles and discussions and some do.

Where SEO and SMO literally meet, is in optimizing your website or blog for Social Media. Adding RSS/Atom feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and other sharing methods to your site to increase the possibility of someone carrying the torch for you, is one of the most important things you can nowadays do to gain visibility on the web.

The Content

What ever you do to get more traffic to your blog or website, or what you do in order to be found at social media, the one thing that needs to be in place is creating great, useful content. If you don’t do that, all your other efforts are in vain. Even if people found you or your web presence in any form, it doesn’t lead to anything unless you can provide useful content or some other means to prove your skills and expertise.

If you manage to create content that people appreciate, you’re in the path of getting referrals, Likes, fans, followers, ReTweets, etc. that all enable you to expand your potential client base and that carry your message for you. That’s the first thing to take care of before doing any kind of web optimization.

Likes, fans and followers are a new way of optimizing your visibility even before any searching is done. That’s one of the most important things social media can offer you. And like said, in order to get those you need to have the right content. It’s not enough to ReTweet other people’s articles or leave comments to blogs, you need to be able to create something unique on your own.

If you consider the social media rule of 80-19-1, where only 1% of social media users create original content, it also means that only 1% of all these people can achieve the top spots and reach for the masses to carry the torch for them. And how many of those 1% optimize their social media presence? So far not so many, there’s still a good chance to achieve great visibility with social media optimization (SMO) when it’s done correctly.

Let’s say you are a frequent user of social networks and social media in general, and also have a website and a blog. Now try searching your name with Google, Yahoo or Bing. How do the rankings look like? I bet in most cases some of your social media profiles come before your personal website and blog. The blog probably ranks higher than your website, doesn’t it?

When I did the search for myself with Google, my personal blog only came up as number 16 – second page for crying out loud! Now, there are reasons for that; first of all, I’m very active with a multitude of social networks, have been for years, and thus I’ve created content to many networks that rank high; secondly, my blog is very new and hasn’t gained that much trust in the eyes of search engines yet, and it’s actually quite poorly optimized so far. But why does this happen to so many of us in general? Because social media sites are highly search engine optimized, and they naturally build lots and lots of in- and outbound links as well as have great amount of fairly good content. So should you forget SEO and go full speed with SMO? Let’s see where this thought leads us.

The Strategy

First of all, think about what you want to achieve with ranking high in search results. Why do you want to be on the top of search engine rankings with your chosen set of keywords or phrases? Do you want to drive traffic to your website, blog or similar, or do you just want to be found so that you can showcase your skills and sell consulting work (or perhaps find a new job)?

There’s a fine difference here that not many of us think of. If you want to drive traffic to your website, you try to build content that links back to your own website, right? But if you just want to be found, it doesn’t matter that much if you have great links to your site, if your contact details and skills can easily be identified from your LinkedIn or Plaxo profile. In this case you could even argue what good is a blog or a website anyway, if your skills and experience can be showcased at a social network profile that is easily found.

Wouldn’t it be enough to build a profile that ranks high with the internal rankings of LinkedIn search or Plaxo search with the chosen keywords, or that ranks high in search engines generally but as a social media profile? Did you know there are actually ways to optimize your social media profile for the internal searches in places like LinkedIn?

Having the right keywords placed in different parts of your profile and having filled the profile in a certain way you can do that quite easily. Though I need to state here that in most cases your profile may rank high, but it also looks like crap, like something that’s only built for search engines and not for common use. But the profiles can be optimized, tried it myself and it works just fine.

‘The Other’ SMO

Social Media Optimization means also something else. For many businesses the next big things are Social CRM and Social Business Intelligence. Having had the customer and other business data stored in your old stand-alone CRM or ERP for ages and not having had much added value having those, the times are about to change. There are already a handful of big CRM and ERP companies (e.g. Oracle, Salesforce, SAP) building tools and plug-ins to bring in data from social networks, chat rooms and discussion forums.

In some industries it’s been clear for years that there’s a great amount of very useful business data out there for grabs at social media, but only recently there have been tools supporting the process of accessing the data centralized, automatically, and brought into your own internal systems. The tools were soon to be called Social CRM, and the process of harvesting the data from all over the web and social media especially, was to be called Social Business Intelligence.

Some of the tools were adjusted to do just that, to bring in data from various sources and analysing it for various purposes. And suddenly this kind of way of working was called Social Media Optimization, too. In other words, optimizing the accessibility of external information from social media is also considered SMO, but from a totally different point of view.

Some people even call optimizing company blogs, discussion forums and other social media tools SMO, but that’s where I draw the line. That’s just plain old SEO to me, just done to a social media site or tool, not SMO. But feel free to argue, let me know what else you’ve heard being called SMO, and what other means of SMO are out there that weren’t covered here.

Regards,

Tom Laine

SocialMediocracy.com – all things Social Media and then some…

Well, the guys over at Elegant Themes, probably the cheapest WordPress theme club on the planet, have just released a plugin that should be in every WordPress site owner, designer and developers toolbox, the Anticipate WordPress Plugin.

You see, the Anticipate plugin allows you to create an elegant landing page for your visitors (as shown above), allowing you to log-in and work on your main theme without people seeing the changes on the front end.

You can set a count-down timer allowing your visitors to know exactly when your site will be live.

You can give a visual representation of how complete your site is with a stylish progress bar.

You can even add your logo for pre-launch branding; here is what it looks like on my up-coming site.

I have to admit, although these elements are much welcomed and needed, I like the additional of social media icons and an RSS feed button allowing you to build your subscriber list, Twitter followers and Facebook fans before you’ve even launched your site.

A feature that I love, is that you can display a number of pages of your choice, allowing your visitors to maybe see an ‘about’ page, a ‘newsletter’ sign-up page and a ‘contact’ page.

All this is easily managed in the dedicated Anticipate settings area that is found inside your WordPress admin panel as soon as you’ve activated the plugin.

I guess you are wondering how much the plugin is going to cost you?

Well, you can get your hands on the Anticipate Plugin and over 50 premium WordPress themes for one insanely low price of just $39*.

Compare this to the price of any of theme club out there and you will see that this price just cannot be beaten; most theme designers charge more than $40 for one theme.

I can’t promise you that access to Elegant Themes will always be at such an amazingly low price so be sure to look in your membership now to save from any future increases in price.

Here’s the link again: www.ElegantThemes.com

To your success,

Karl

That is what this post is about, to say ‘Thank You’ to one of our most treasured readers.

To many of our readers, this person is going to be instantly recognisable!

Introducing…

Ileane Smith

Ileane, from Basic Blog Tips, is someone who you simply *MUST* take the time to get to know.

Ileane has dedicated a lot of her time to writing great introductory articles for new bloggers’ taking their first steps into blogging and social networking, but, I would argue that her advice is far from ‘basic’ like her site title suggests.

You see, beyond what you read and learn from Ileane’s great content and the articles written by guest bloggers on Basic Blog Tips, you can learn so much about the social side of blogging just from watching Ileane’s online activity.

I say this because if Ileane finds a well written post, something that is worth sharing, that is exactly what Ileane will do.

Not only that, Ileane regularly tells others about the great content that she finds on her travels around the blogosphere or links to that content from her own site.

With this in mind, Ileane is YOUR ideal blog customer; someone who will give you the greatest WOM (word of mouth) marketing for free.

Ileane is so active across many social media platforms that your content has the potential to be shared far-and-wide.

Additionally, Ileane loves to get involved and leave great blog comments and you can be sure, if she lands on your blog that you will get some great feedback or a thought-provoking question or two.

Giving Something Back

This post is dedicated to you Ileane, for being a great blogger, a real ‘go-giver’ (as is often said about you) and someone who every blogger should have reading their site.

If you are new to Basic Blog Tips please take the time to visit and introduce yourself to Ileane.

Be sure to check out Ileane’s posts:

Ever Consider Blogging Without SEO

Power Twitter User in the Making

How to Customise Your Amplify Page

Connect with Ileane:

Ileane on Twitter

Stay-up-to-date with Basic Blog Tips:

Grab the RSS Feed

Again Ileane (if you are reading this), we know this post doesn’t do you justice but here is a big thank you from us to you!

Karl Foxley and Kelly-Anne Foxley

Image: Felixco, Inc. / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Well, that’s what a lot of the ‘Get Rich Quick’ e-books say!

This is how a lot of people who would like to make money from the Internet initially step into blogging, they see the success of someone like Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger and decide that they too want to make ‘blogging’ their day job too.

The reality is, a lot of people start blogging with this goal in mind and, after only a few months of hard-work and no results, give-up and abandon their blogs to collect dust in an ever-growing Internet graveyard.

You can literally find thousands of these ‘failed’ blogs in Google, some even have great content. You can spot these blogs a mile away as they generally haven’t been updated since 2007 and there’s no trace of life except the comment spam promoting the latest ‘get rich schemes’.

Why did these bloggers fail?

Your guess is as good as mine but I would hazard to say that they suffered from some common complaints that many bloggers have today…

• They didn’t receive enough traffic to build an audience
• They didn’t make enough money to turn blogging into a lucrative full-time venture or, at least, a worthy part-time activity
• They didn’t plan each step of their blog and blog promotion (remember, if you fail to plan you plan to fail)

I want to help you get past these sticking points and take you on the journey of becoming a famous blogger.

You see, it is probably even easier now than it ever was before to become a ‘known’ person in the blogosphere and this is how to do it!

Before you continue, I cannot promise you that you will become a famous blogger, that relies on you, your content and how it is received by your audience, but what I can promise you is this:

If you follow each suggestion in this post you will dramatically increase the exposure of your blog, earning you more visitors, readers and subscribers and, maybe, even making you some money along the way!

The Foundation

Before you start to attract visitors to your site you need to ensure you have a blog that people will want to visit.

Not only that, you will want a blog that is user-friendly for ‘you’, the content publisher, and for your visitors.

With this in mind, I recommend a self-hosted WordPress blog. Yes, there are other great blogging platforms out there, some that are free and others that cost a monthly fee, but I will always recommend WordPress because it is probably one of the easiest blogging platforms to use, customise and optimise.

To run a self-hosted blog you will need a hosting account and a domain.

I recommend Host Monster as a reliable web host because of their great customer support. Plus, as an additional benefit and keeping things simple, Host Monster have Simple Scripts installed meaning you can install WordPress with a simple click of a button.

If you want to see how easy it is to install WordPress with a Host Monster account be sure to read ‘How to Install WordPress Using Simple Scripts‘ as it will guide you through the process.

To get your hands on the domain of your choice be sure to check out Name Cheap. You can use our free Domain Registration and Whois Lookup tool to find the domain that is the best match for your blog.

You should also have a lead capture set-up to build an email newsletter subscriber list. You can use an ethical bribe to get people onto your list, a free ebook or report of real value that people will happily trade you their email for.

You can use a dedicated email service provider such as AWeber to manage this for you.

Lastly, to make your blog stand out from the crowd be sure to take a look at our compilation of premium WordPress theme designers and choose the right theme and look for your site.

Now, with the initial set-up of your blog out of the way, it is time to move on to the fun stuff, blog promotion 101!

1. High Profile Blog Comments

You’ll need to take some time to identify the influencers in your target niche before you can get the ball-rolling on this one.

The things you are looking for are blogs that have an active community, a decent amount of traffic and exposure where the chances are that when you leave  a comment, it will be viewed by a lot of readers.

You can do a search in Google, ‘SEO blog‘, ‘gardening blog’, etc, to see what is ranking for the terms related to your niche and work your way through the search results one-by-one.

When you’ve found your authority sites, grab the RSS feed, RSS to email, newsletter opt-in and any other way you can stay up-to-date with the site.

Why? Well, by doing this you can increase your chances of being alerted to a new blog post as soon as it goes live, allowing you to be the first to comment.

I’ve tested this a number of times and when my comment is one of the first on a post I receive a higher number of click-throughs to my site than if my comment is buried under twenty or more comments left by other people.

You can dramatically increase your chances of generating more clicks from interested readers by making a valuable comment related to the post and maybe offer some additional information that expands upon the post and tell people where they will find more of this great info… ‘on your site’ of course.

BONUS TIP: Look for influential Twitter users as they usually have a blog with a decent sized audience as well.

Image: Pro Blogger homepage.

2. Write for High Profile Sites

With the rise of guest blogging you can quickly boost the number of eyes that are exposed to ‘you’ and your writing by appearing on high profile sites.

One of the easiest ways get accepted on these sites is to become a regular reader, share their valuable posts across your social networks, and be a ‘helpful’ person in the comments section and answer other commenters’ questions.

This never goes unnoticed and can increase your chances of being approved as a quest blogger.

When you are ready, write some great content and ask the blog owner if s/he wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.

Just like with article marketing, be sure to include an ‘author bio’ that says something about you, your experience and your site. You can even get creative and share one of the benefits people will get by visiting your site.

Writing guest articles on high profile sites will instantly raise your ‘authority’ within your niche, giving you instant credibility.

Image: Kikolani logo – you can submit a guest post at Kikolani here.

3. Find Related and Target Blogs

Just like above, you will want to spend some time finding related and targeted niche blogs that you can write for and comment on.

The only difference is that these sites may not have the same reach as an influential site in your market.

That being said, you may find these sites to have a much greater response rate when it comes to approving your comments and accepting you as a guest blogger so never overlook this avenue. You may even find the readers are a lot more responsive and share and promote well written posts a lot more readily.

Same tips apply, leave valuable comments and help other commenters’ with their questions.

Again, when sending in guest posts be sure to make your content valuable and include your author bio.

You can take some serious leg-work out of finding blogs to guest post on by signing up to My Blog Guest.

My Blog Guest will allow you to quickly identify sites in your market who are looking for writers; it’s free to sign-up so do this as soon as you’ve finished reading this post.

Image: My Blog Guest logo.

4. Become a Famous Blogger

I couldn’t write a post about being a famous blogger without telling you about my friend Hesham Fathy and his site over at Famous Bloggers.

Famous Bloggers is an awesome site for bloggers to gain instant exposure to their original content.

You’ll find Famous Bloggers has a very active membership and readership of bloggers who will read, provide feedback, tweet and socially share your article so make sure it is a good post.

Be sure to read my 5 Tips for Guest Blogging Success that I wrote for Famous Bloggers; you’ll be able to see by just looking at this post that the community is very involved in the site.

Image: Famous Bloggers logo.

5. Get Engaged

Instead of writing content and waiting for people to find it, you can use this site, Blog Engage, to get instant exposure.

Blog Engage allows you to submit an article that you want to be ‘engaged’ so that other BE members can vote on it.

As I’ve written in previous posts about BE, the community is very active and will often drop in and leave you with some valuable comments and share your posts.

Again, this is another sure-fire way of getting some instant exposure to your site and building your authority.

You can find out more about Blog Engage by reading Blog Engage Can Make You a Better Blogger.

BE is also free to register so visit the site today.

Image: Blog Engage logo.

6. Get Some Luv

Another website that allows you to get instant exposure to your blog and content is Blogger Luv.

Blogger Luv has many layers to it so you will have to take some time to really learn what the different sections of the site are about.

You can gain additional exposure to your content by joining the relevant Blogger Luv groups and sharing tips and advice that benefit the other users.

The part of the site that allows you to share your content for the other members to vote on can be found at the Blogger Luv community page.

Image: Blogger Luv logo.

7. Get Social

This one is exclusive to you if you are in the Make Money Online niche. You see, Hesham has put together another cool site for bloggers to share their latest make money online tips with their fellow bloggers.

The site is called MMO Social Network and it is another site geared to get you more exposure for your content.

Again, along with Blog Engage and Blogger Luv, MMO Social Network is best used by being active and voting on the posts you like and visiting other submitted articles, commenting and sharing alike.

Image: MMO Social Network logo.

8. High Profile Forums

It may take some research to find the high profile popular niche focused forums in your target market, but the work you put in will be well worth it in the long run.

Most forums, as a general rule, allow their members to have a signature at the bottom of their posts.

Just like finding niche related blogs, simply perform a search in Google for ‘your keyword forum’ to find the best places that are relevant to you.

By writing valuable content for the forums and responding to other peoples’ topics, you will start to generate traffic to your site through your forum signature.

Be sure to make your form signature click-worthy by including a question such as:

Would you like to discover the 1 simple tweak that you can make to your website right now to generate instant income? Visit ‘your website link’ to find out what this is right now!

Bonus Tip: A quick and easy way to find targeted conversations on Forums is to use Board Tracker (my secret weapon).

9. Interview an Expert

Many people are surprised to discover how many experts are happy to be interviewed.

Interviews are interesting for the end-user and bring about some great free promotion for both the interviewee and the interviewer.

The only way you will get an expert on board is to take the leap and ask them. So, face your fear of rejection and get asking!

Some things you will need to detail when approaching someone for an interview are:

• the format in which you will deliver the interview to the end user (audio, text, video, etc)
• how you will promote the interview
• your website or page where the interview will reside
• and a quick outline of your potential questions

For an example of a great interview be sure to check out the Rank Fiskin interview by Aaron Wall.

Another great way to establish yourself as an authority, as a famous blogger, is the flip side of this coin, meaning that you must…

10. Be Interviewed

In the same way that you approach people to be interviewed, you can approach people to interview you, or better still position yourself in front of those that may invite you for an interview.

I remember being interviewed by Hesham for his New Media Bloggers site, The Famous Bloggers Club.

The interview put me in front of a new audience and brought us many new visitors that we may not have reached through alternative means.

You can read the interview here.

11. Killer Promotion

Is your site offering something new or maybe something tried and tested but improved, then you can get lots of exposure by submitting your site to Killer Startups.

You will have to complete a form about your startup and, when approved, people will be able to vote on their favourite ‘startup’ of the day.

To be taken to the submission form click here.

Image: Killer Startups logo.

12. Do Follow Luv

This is a new one out there but it is going to be big.

Think Google News for Bloggers!

Well, that is what Do Follow Luv is going to be and it has the right people on board to make this site a runaway success.

Not every blogger will be accepted, so as a member to the site you will receive a level of exclusivity that will certainly work wonders to increase the authority and promotion for those that do qualify.

Image: Do Follow Luv logo.

Summary

The Internet has so many ways of promoting ourselves that a new blogger, with a new blog, can quickly establish themselves as an authority in record time and start laying the foundation on the path to becoming a famous blogger.

It goes without saying that your content must be good to stand you in good order of becoming an authority but using the tips I have shared above will see you generate the traffic and buzz you need in very little time at all.

Be systematic about your blogging, have a clear path mapped out and stick with it.

I’d love to hear what tips you would share with someone looking to become a famous blogger. What tips would you share on establishing yourself as an authority? What ways would you get your message in front of a target audience where you can become the established authority?

I look forward to reading your suggestions.

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you liked these tips be sure to check out Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.