SEO Clinic

Are you doing poorly in the search engines? Loren Baker and his crew from Search Engine Journal are doing a weekly site clinic where they give one lucky winner free SEO advice.

Getting Bloggers to Notice You

A couple of days ago I wrote the post about how to ask bloggers for links. While emailing can be a very effective way to get on a popular blogger’s radar, it is by no means the only way. There are a number of others ways to get these people to notice your content, here are a few of the things that have worked for me.

1. Comments – One of the most effective ways to get a blogger to notice you is to comment on their blog. This is also a great way to get others to find your blog as well. It is important to make sure you leave well thought out comments that actually contribute to the conversation. If you just leave things like "nice post" no one will really pay much attention to you. Leave original, well thought out comments that intelligently add to the conversation.
2. Trackbacks – Bloggers are generally egomaniacs, they like to see who is talking about them and linking to their content. Even if they aren’t egomaniacs a good blogger will always keep track of who is linking to them and talking about their posts. The key here is to contribute to the conversation in the same way that you would with comments. The blogger who you are linking to is just about guaranteed to read your post, this is your chance to "prove your worth" so make the posts really good.
3. Email – We already covered this technique in the last post.
4. Social media sites – Getting your content popular on social media sites like Digg and Delicious is a great way to get noticed. If this happens your content will be in front of thousands of bloggers and the links will come pouring in. Make sure your next few content pieces are extra good because you’ll have a lot of fresh new eyes and good content is the best way to keep them around.

There are millions of blogs on the web these days. Every day it’s getting harder and harder for new blogs to get noticed, follow some of these tips above and you’re sure to be in the fast lane for gaining new readers.

Do you have any other tips that have helped you get found by other bloggers?

Building Links through YouTube

There are many ways webmasters are obtaining links these days such as submitting sites to directories. But with new media emerging why just stick to the conventional methods when you can get a little creative?

If you look at the picture above it shows that the site has incoming links from YouTube. The way this works is that if you are one of the
top 5 sites that drives the most traffic to a particular YouTube video, they link back. So the next time you embed YouTube videos into your website, check to see if you got a link back.

Do you know of any other creative ways to pick up a few links?

Asking Bloggers For Links

Emailing popular relevant bloggers can be a great way to pick up some extra links and get your great content noticed when otherwise it might go unnoticed. But it’s important to remember a few simple things when firing off these emails to ensure maximum results.

1. Get to the point – most popular bloggers receive hundreds of emails per day and the last thing they want to do is get a page long email from you giving your life story when a couple lines will do. The longer your email is the less likely you are to get that link. All you need to do is say something along the lines of… "I came across a post on your blog that I really enjoyed. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at this post that I wrote on the same topic and let me know what you think. Thanks and I appreciate your time." It obviously wouldn’t be those exact words but you get the point, short and sweet.
2. Make sure your content rocks – do not email bloggers unless you are absolutely sure that your content is unique and very good. Otherwise you are wasting both your time and theirs. Also make sure you do some research before hand so you know exactly what kind of content the blogger likes.
3. No reciprocal links – bloggers don’t want to trade links with you, so don’t even bother asking. The best you can hope for is that they will review your product, or write a post with a link to your post. If you do end up getting a link on their blog roll consider that icing on the cake, but never ask for it.
4. Once in enough – don’t send more than one email. Just because they didn’t link to that post right away doesnât mean they won’t in the future. Possibly they even added your feed to their reader and it’s possible they will link to your other posts in the future. But if you continue to send them emails they will probably get very annoyed and you can forget ever getting a link.

The main reason it’s important to remember and follow these few simple steps is that you will usually only get one shot. That’s right, if you email them once and fail to impress chances are they will ignore any future emails from you. On the other hand if you do manage to impress them you will probably be on their radar from now on. That means you should put extra care into all of your content from that point forward, keep them reading and they will likely link to more of your posts in the future.

See What You Are Missing At ReviewMe!

Readers, as you may know in addition to running TLA we also run ReviewMe.com  The reviews completed at RM have been outstanding.  Clients have received: valuable feedback and targeted traffic through direct links back to their website.  Here are a couple of examples of ReviewMe reviews:

Graywolf’s review of SoloSEO

Devlounge’s review of a Ruby on Rails book

We are still offering 50% off reviews for the rest of the month.  Just enter "trial" into the coupon field at checkout. 

RM just released a feature allowing our bloggers to set their own pricing and we are launching a very* cool affiliate program this coming week.  I will say I have gotten very interested in taking RM to the next level and there will be many new features in the coming weeks so stay tuned.  If you have any suggestions for improving the service please let me know below in the comments, thx!