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So you spend a lot of time working on great content but do not get too much love from the search engines? Maybe you should balance the number of hours you spend on writing content and the time you spend promoting your blog. In a perfect world, your blog posts would promote themselves, saving you time in the process. While those who have a large community can somewhat expect their visitors to do this job for them, not everybody is that lucky. Would knowing advanced SEO tactics help you promote your blog posts much more effectively? That may be true, but every little step you take counts. Even if you are not too experienced in the field of SEO, there are simple things you can do to push your blog over the top.

Here are just 5 things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly:

• Submit your website to directories: it’s the oldest trick in the book. Getting a few links to your website from top directories may not guarantee you the number 1 spot on Google, but it does help you outperform those who are not paying too much attention to link building.
• Don’t forget social media: there are hundreds of yes-follow social media websites around that you can take advantage of to build links to your website and give it a better chance to get ranked higher on Google. Every little link could help in the end.
• Add social media buttons to your blog: as a blogger, you spend a lot of time writing content that your visitors want to consume. You build your community and provide value, so why not use your community to help your posts go viral. Adding social buttons (Facebook, Twitter, and …) can give your visitors the call to action they need to share your stories with the world.
• Start guest posting: guest posting is the best way to grow your blog and get links from highly popular websites. If you hit the jack-pot and manage to get your post on one of those super popular sites, you are going to be golden. Such links are worth way more than anything you can get from directories or your social media profiles.
• Leave comments on other blogs: as a part of your blogging process, you should spend time leaving comments on other blogs in your niche (linking back to your own). You can always visit CommentLuv enabled blogs or just use Google to find related blogs in your niche. Even if you are getting no-follow links, there is still a lot of merit to this tactic.

These 5 tactics won’t guarantee you the #1 spot on Google or other search engines. But they do help you get the word out about your posts and gain the recognition you deserve for your work in the long run.

You won’t do any dominating unless you spend some time optimizing your Twitter profile for on and off page factors. We’ll discuss the off-page factors (e.g. link-building) in a separate posts, but here are 5 on-page things you can do right now to optimize your profile for the search engines.

User ID: the name you choose for your Twitter account matters. It is one of the most important decisions you make before committing to your Twitter strategy. When your account become more popular, you’ll have an easier time dominating the search engines for the term you used in your Twitter profile. It won’t be the only thing you need to worry about but you’d be surprised how having the right name can help you in the long run

Twitter Bio: it’s nice to have a chance to tell the world about yourself and your business. But don’t forget about your SEO efforts when doing it. Your Twitter bio gives you the chance to add your top keywords to your Twitter account and give yourself a better chance to show up high for those terms (relevant keywords are key).

Tweet Titles: there are a lot of people who use tools such as Tweetmeme to find and tweet stories. There is nothing wrong with that, but you should always aim to be in control of what goes on your Twitter page. So pay extra attention to the title of things you tweet (and customize them if you can).

Tweet Keywords: don’t forget to add hash-tags and any additional keyword that you see fit per each tweet you post on your profile. Your Twitter page is your web property, so don’t underestimate the power of hash-tags.

Twitter Lists: this is something I started testing a while ago. Your public lists do show up on your profile and give you yet another opportunity to add your relevant keywords to your page. It won’t be a decisive factor, but it never hurts to organize your Twitter friends into groups and add your keywords in the process too.

These tips are so simple to do but they can make a difference for your Twitter profile. You shouldn’t forget about the quality of content your tweet and those you connect with (will discuss those in a future post). Get the above steps right, and you are on your way towards pushing your Twitter profile to the top.

A wise man once told me that if something was easy, everybody would be doing it. That really applies to all aspects of life. Most people are not willing to step out of their comfort zone and endure hardships to achieve their goals. After all, why do that when you can take short-cuts. Unfortunately, short-cuts are going to get you only so far. To pick up a cause (whatever it is) and truly push it, you need to be creative and willing to go places where others have not been or won’t go to. That’s what Nick Newcomen has done. He is the individual behind the World’s Biggest Writing. Nick used a GPS data logger to travel around the U.S. and send a message to the world.

Credit: worldsbiggestwriting.com

Would you travel around the world (or over 10K miles) just make a point? Nick has been very creative with his efforts. It does not really matter what he needed to accomplish with this move. It could have been even a more successful campaign if he used social media and other channels to promote his move. The site behind this project is going to get a decent number of links just for the effort. Many major media outlets have already reported and linked to it. It could have gotten even more links if Twitter, Posterous, Facebook, Foursquare, and all these other sites were involved. Nick has recorded videos of places that he has visited (and posted them to YouTube). These videos could have been even more viral (especially if they were aired live on Ustream, BlogTalk, and …).

Pulling off a project of that magnitude (the right way) would not be easy. But if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. That’s the goal. There are plenty of traditional ways to get media coverage and build links. But moves such as the one made by Nick have the potential to go way beyond what one can accomplish behind a computer.  I am sure Nick did not do this to increase the ranking of his website in the SERPs. But he could have if he intended to. At the end of the day, it’s not about how hard things are but how badly you want to achieve your goal. Would you travel 10K+ miles for your cause?

Targeting Twitter, Facebook, and Digg is a no brainer move. A site such as Mashable gets millions of visitors on a monthly basis, which explains why their articles get so many tweets and retweets. The content posted on these sites shows exactly why content is king. Quality still matters and most of these sites have quality posts each and everyday (multiple times).

Recently, we have started adding Posterous buttons to our websites, and we have gotten amazing results in the process. We do get millions of hits in our network, so it’s tough to give Posterous full credit for the growth in our traffic. But based on our experience, people do take the time to write a post about top quality articles, especially with Posterous button present at the top of posts.

Adding a Posterous button to your website is actually pretty easy. They already provide you with the code. All you have to do is customize it for your CMS (e.g. in case of WordPress, use Permalink function):

Posterous may turn out to be a flash in the pan. That does not mean you shouldn’t test it out on your website to see if it can help your business. Plenty of people are excited about this platform, and that’s a good thing.

Have you seen any results (in terms of traffic) from Posterous?

There are plenty of lazy SEOs that complain about having to come up with fresh content all the time. Let’s face it. In a perfect world, you’d do what you want to do and Google will find your content and rank it high in the SERPs. In reality, you will have to come up with new ways to expand your target keyword list and produce content relevant to your new keywords. Thanks to PostRank, you’ll never be out of ideas.

There are multiple ways you can go about finding new ideas for your articles with PostRank. For starters, you can just keep track of the hot content in those popular categories. Let’s say you are interested in topic x. All you have to do to track it is by using the following URL:

postrank.com/topic/x

That will give you a list of top websites about your topic of choosing. You can also see which sites have moved and down in the rankings recently. Best of all, you can analyze top posts per site to find out what is working for your competitors.

The temptation is always there for SEOs to use the same old content formula to optimize their sites for the search engines. That could still work but the times are changing. Articles and posts that actually provide a unique value to your readers will be winners in the long run.

If you are planning a new SEO project or just want to come up with new ideas for your existing campaigns, Primal can give you some ideas. Under “Think” page, you can enter a group of keywords and let the tool dig up related keywords for you.

The “Search” page does not need any explanation. It displays a set of pages relevant to your specific keyword. The tag cloud at the top of it can help you figure out what areas you need to focus on. Once you are done with your keyword research, you can just download your lists for further clean up.

Primal is not the only tool you’ll need to do some decent keyword research, but it’s a pretty fun tool to use and can provide some value to you if you are stuck. It’s just a tool though. What you get out of it is up to you.

This plugin is pretty easy to deploy. Just add it to your WordPress site, define what you want it to display as your headline, and you are all set. It keeps track of pages that people have visited and links to them from their referring locations. This is significant for two reasons. It not only automates the internal link building process for you, but it also help your visitors find out what other stories they may need to visit on your WordPress website.

You can do a lot of cool things with this plugin. You can choose to display thumbnails next to each post (those can be generated automatically too!  The number of stories displayed per each page can be modified too. You can always give you top stories a better of being linked to by using this plugin with one of those popular posts plugins for WordPress. If you are creative enough, you can get Where did they go from here? plugin to the right pages on your website without you having to do much. It’s worth trying, especially on larger websites.

Let’s say you have a comparison website about laptops. If your comparison table does not change too often, you are going to have to find ways to keep your content fresh from time to time. You can always play with the text before and after your comparison table. Getting fresh links can help you with your efforts too. But in some cases, it may not be enough to help you retain your rankings.

Adding a blog to your ranking website / portal gives you the opportunity to go beyond the limitations of your portal and attach viral content to your website. If you want to give things away on your blog or provide your visitors with all kinds of list, you can do so easily on your blog. Your blog gives you the chance to gain more links to your domain. It also can be used to increase the number of internal links to the portal you intend to push. Best of all, your fresh content will keep you website relevant in the long run.

In order to make this a successful plan, you are going to think hard about the type of content you include on your blog. If your goal is to build links to your website and make people want to check other parts of your website, you are going to need very decent content. Taking a shortcut won’t do it here.

Writing a knol is much different than writing a random blog post. You do need to pay attention to your work’s organization and focus. Your knol can be huge or just a few hundred words long. The length should not matter as long as you cover what you promise to cover in your knol.

If you want to write a killer knol, you want to pay attention to these factors:

• Quality: if you want to get the attention you desire with your Knol, your work needs to be of high quality. You can’t cut corners or miss important things about the topic you are covering. Those who hope to just spam Knol are going to be dealt with by the community. Throwing a page up is not going to do it here.
• Focus: stay laser focused with your Knol. A lot of writers like to act as mad professors and cover a whole lot of things in a single post. A Knol is supposed to be about a specific topic. So stay on topic and avoid going on a tangent.
• Organization: don’t forget to use the proper HTML elements to help your visitors find what they are looking for on your knol without going through your whole content. Of course, we all want our knols to be read in whole by our readers. That’s not going to be the case if you have a long one.
• Links: don’t forget to add links to your web properties and other people’s work on your knol. You don’t want to spam here. However, if your website can be used as a resource by your Knol visitors, then there is no reason not to link to your own website.
• Categories: don’t forget to choose the appropriate categories for your work. If you want your content to be found, you better tag & categorize your work appropriately.
• Community: Knol is a community, so being involved in it is a must. When you are done with your Knol, you can invite others to review your work.

There are plenty of other factors you need to pay attention to when developing a killer Knol. The above steps should get you started.

In order to get the most out of EzineArticles, you need articles that have decent titles, tags, and summaries. This plugin lets you define those easily.You can choose how you want the plugin to behave and what it needs to pick up as for your article summary and keywords.

If you happen to be a premium member, you can schedule your articles for a specific date in the future. You probably don’t want to submit all your posts to EzineArticles but re-purposing a couple of your old blog posts should not hurt. Article directory is never going to be a traffic volcano for your website. But it can help new blogs or less established websites get some needed traffic. EzineArticles WordPress plugin may not right your articles for you, but it does save webmasters time.