Whenever you write a blog post, you want to make sure that it gets the maximum attention or at the very least, exposure. Waiting for Google to rank it will take time, and driving traffic through email subscription is not going to work unless you have thousands of subscribers.
So how do you promote a blog post to expose it in the highest possible way?
You can do this with the following techniques:
- Social Media
- Niche Forums
- Swap Links
- Internal Linking
- Guest Posting
While you can also try article syndication and buying backlinks, this approach may expose your blog but hurt your SEO. As you know, Google only wants natural and organic backlinking and blog exposure. It can detect if you are gaming the system, and will penalize your website for that.
Social Media
Many people will tell you to concentrate on only one social media channel to promote your content. There is a truth to this, but there is a way to work around this limitation. Since you are not exactly trying to get followers but merely exposing your blog post, you can post in as many social media channels as you want.
Here are some of the top choices:
But how do you do this without overworking yourself?
wordpress and other blogging platforms have plug-ins where you can integrate your social media channels. As a result, these social media channels would automatically post your blogs after you hit that Publish button.
You no longer have to copy and paste each feature image or paste an excerpt of your blog. All you need to do is to publish a blog post and they will also get published in your social media accounts.
This works best if you have a large following. But then, exposure is still exposure. If some random person goes to one of your social media pages and scrolls down, he may find something that he likes and click on the post. If he does, he will be re-directed to your blog.
Niche Forums
What is a niche forum?
A niche forum is a public forum where people congregate online. This is a place where people ask questions, and other participants would provide their answers.
The great thing here is that there could be millions of people following a thread, and you can use this thread to give exposure to your blog post.
Be careful when using forums, as people do not like spammers and marketers. What they love are people who provide value to them. You can leave links to your website in these forums, giving your blog post maximum exposure.
The trick here is to provide value. You have to answer the question properly and completely. You cannot just tell people that they should follow your blog to get the answer, or this will be reported as spam.
Post long and meaningful answers, and then leave a link at the bottom. Explain what the link is about, and where it would take them. Value and transparency are the two most important things that you must remember so you do not get banned from forum sites.
The most popular niche forum site today is Quora. It is a website where people can ask questions and others can provide answers. It is not as popular as Reddit, but the audience here is mostly entrepreneurs and serious people looking for answers to problems.
Swap Links
Swapping links means you have to build a relationship with other people. You can do this by doing what is called blogger outreach, and then promote a blog post.
Blogger outreach is a method where you contact bloggers and ask them to do business with you. You can make a proposal where you can link the blogger’s post in one of your blog posts. In exchange, this blogger would do the same.
Blogger outreach is a tough job, but it works. For every ten bloggers you reach out to, maybe one would respond and the others would be snobs. Do not be frustrated if you never hear back from them. Just keep looking for other bloggers who are willing to do link swaps with you.
To make this blog exposure method effective, you have to remember the following:
- Search for blogs related to your niche
- Do not spam bloggers if they did not respond
- Look for blogs with high traffic
- Reach out to blog sites that have high domain Authority
What you are trying to do here is to build backlinks. What this means is that you should take into consideration what Google likes. Google does not like random backlinks to your site if the source of the backlink is not related to your niche.
Google also does not like instant backlinks so do not buy them. Grow your swap link backlinks over a long time to make it look organic.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the best ways to expose your blog post to your readers. It works because the people who are seeing this are the very same people who are already reading something on your website.
What does this mean?
They found their way to your website because they are interested in what you have to offer. As such, they are also the best people to show your other blog posts.
You can do internal links in several ways. The first one is by using anchor text in a blog post and link another blog post in that anchor text. Another way is to show your recent blogs on your sidebar. Another method you can implement is to add a blog roll at the bottom of each blog post.
One thing that most bloggers do is to add a space in the middle or bottom of a blog post, and then put two to three bullets under that. This space is called “Suggested Reading” and under that are blog titles related to the current post that your site visitor is reading.
Guest Posting
This approach is similar to swapping links. However, you have to write a blog post here, and have it published on another person’s blog. Somewhere on this post, you have to embed a link to another blog post that links to your own website.
Like swapping links, you must only choose other blogs that have high domain authority and high traffic. The higher the traffic count, the more you can expose your blog site.
And like swapping links, you need to do blogger outreach. You have to make an offer that you would write a free article for the blogger and in exchange, you can put several links in that article—links that would take the reader to your website.
This is easier said than done, as most bloggers out there do not like sending their traffic out from their website. Sometimes, you would have to pay them to be able to do guest posting on their blog.
Summary
You must only use white hat SEO techniques to promote a blog post. It can be tempting to use the services of people who build backlinks, but this can harm your website in the long term.
Google does not like bloggers who use black hat or gray hat techniques. Patience is the key to driving traffic, but it is also the most rewarding.
Recent Posts
Many consumers have divided or negative feelings about marketing practices. Unsustainable marketing breeds distrust—whether it’s the false promise of greater value or convincing customers to buy...
The most significant investment to think about is web hosting to get more traffic and higher performance and run your website successfully after you build it. So it's essential to select the best...