- Blogging -
If you want to increase your blog’s audience, whether you are making money online or just want more readers, you might already know from numerous blogger tips spread over the net that there are some golden rules. You also might know already that there are two different visitor flows. One is formed by visitors coming from search engines and another one is formed by those who follow external links to your site. Sure there is third one, loyal readers - those who return, and mainly dependant on first two flows, so I will not discuss it here. Both, search engine and external links visitors flows highly depend on three holly cows of web publishing (or blogging) - Freshness of content, Original content, and Regular posting.
Fresh content. Google is smart (and quick) enough to determine freshness of two articles talking on the same subject, and position them in search results in order of time they published. This basically applies to news. News about new products, events etc. For instance, you was the first (after manufacturer itself) to publish press release of some consumer product. What you will get from Google? Your post will be positioned next to original press-release and for some period of time when people will be searching for that product they will see your page on top of search results. So, what rational seeds we can take out of this rule? Hunt for news! (Like crazy) and be the first or among those who published first.
Original content. This term is sometimes misunderstood by bloggers. Basically it means “your own writing” or “your own thoughts” on the matter discussed and not that the article should be the only copy on the net. This may apply to reviews, discussions or any subject to which you applied your own thinking. Google’s view of Original content also include the “non-duplicated” term, which means you shouldn’t have substantially duplicated content on your sites ( two exact same sites or pages). This doesn’t mean that you cannot republish (from time to time) content from other sites (not only quotes, but the whole article). In latter case you will not be penalized by Google, but be prepared for problems with publishers, if you republished their content without permission or did not link back to them. And be prepared for low search engine position for that article as well, because Google is smart enough here as well and will place your content in search results according to “originality” of the whole post if the article is republished. Sure If your article is original and relevant to search term then it will be placed on top of search results. Rational seeds here are: be creative, share your experience on any subject (in your niche), you put your hands on, with others .
Regular publishing. This rule applies when you met and followed first two (fresh and original). Actually you cannot avoid this rule if you tend to post fresh news and consumer products info and press-releases. You will find those news every single day and regularity of your postings is guaranteed. If you publish reviews or discuss some subject then regularity helps to get the most valuable thing in terms of boosting search engine position and audience - you get known on the net and as a result you get natural back linking (people quote and link to your site content) which in turn boost your search engine ranking. Just publishing regularly some (both not original and not fresh) content will not help getting or increasing the audience. Publish fresh, original content regularly.
What about linking campaign? If you just started blogging then just get registered in some major blogging directories like Blogtopsites.com and Technoratti etc. These days you don’t need high page rank to get indexed by search engines. And BTW, most valuable links are natural links - those which you get when follow three rules mentioned above.