You’ve worked hard on your latest blog post.

You’ve followed all the advice of the experts, and invested blood, sweat and tears into producing a post of epic proportions.

Your article is, quite simply, the daddy.

This is the post that’s going to get so much Traffic that Google Analytics itself will melt down.

You hit the “publish” button and then…

…nothing…

Talk about depressing.

Digital tumble weeds roll through town.

“Content is king, eh?” you mutter to yourself.

Whatever happened to the dream of content marketing; the dream of producing awesome content that speaks for itself and draws in organic traffic like bees to a honeypot?

The truth is that creating awesome content is only part of the battle. Blog post promotion – that’s the strategy right now that is dividing the winners and the losers. It’s no longer enough to just publish – now you need to proactively get your content infront of the right people.

But how? What techniques really work?

In short, how do you promote your blog post like a boss?

Man, I’m so glad you asked (otherwise the following 12,000+ words and the last month of my life I spent writing them would have been a spectacular waste of time).

Over the next few minutes you’re going to uncover 100+ websites and tools for promoting your blog, you’re going to uncover dozens of proven techniques and strategies, and 50+ carefully chosen supplementary guides, case studies and tutorials all designed to help you kick ass with your next blog post.

Here’s what’s coming up for you below…

Ready? Then grab a pen and paper and let’s commence a veritable buffet of blog post marketing ideas. Prepare to stuff yourself silly ladies and gentlemen…

It Starts With Awesome Content

If you just knocked out a post in 20 minutes and are now hoping to receive thousands of free visitors as a result you’re going to be sorely disappointed; and rightly so.

No, the steps you’re about to uncover work because each one forms another way for great content to spread. Therefore you’re going to need to put the time into actually creating the great content in the first place. No wonder that many of the most successful bloggers around report spending hours writing a single blog post.

Here’s the painful truth: be willing to invest the time into producing truly exceptional content or look for other ways to drive traffic to your site.

What is great content? That’s a great question. It’s content that is so good, so useful, so detailed, so full of value, that even your competitors are impressed. It’s the sort of content people want to share and to link to because it’s so darned good. Get it right and the promotional part because infinitely easier.

Speaking of which, assuming you’ve got a post so memorable that people will be talking about it and linking to it for months to come, how do we get promoting it? In no particular order, let’s get cracking…

Content Aggregators

There’s so much content being produced every day that sorting the wheat from the chaff can be a real struggle. It can be incredibly frustrating to wade through so much mediocre (or worse) content to find the few “gems”.

Fortunately this is where content aggregators can come to the rescue. These aggregators are best thought of as niche-specific social voting sites. Anyone can submit great content that they find, and other members vote this content up or down the rankings. Over time, the rubbish sinks to the bottom never to be seen again, while the “best” content – as voted for by real people – is given the visibility it deserves.

In other words these aggregators are a fantastic way to find high quality content, and I for one visit quite a number of them every day to get my “reading fix”. I’m also not alone. Due to the nature of these sites they often attract strong followings and can drive quite a bit of traffic to the content featured.

How To Promote Your Blog With Content Aggregators

Getting featured on content aggregators is normally a very simple process; you sign up for a free account and then can submit your latest post through a simple form. Be aware, however, that not all submissions perform the same. Posts that get “upvoted” will quickly rise to the top sending you plenty of traffic. Posts that fail to make the grade will quickly drop back down the rankings and may only send meagre traffic your way.

The trick – as with so many others featured here – is repeated experimentation. Try submitting your posts on different days, and at different times. Try including different tags or keywords, to see which combinations get you the best results.

In addition, in almost every case becoming part of the community on these content aggregators will benefit you. Take the time to get to know other people on these sites, submit a range of good quality content (not just your own) and participate in voting and discussion. Not only is this “cool” but when you submit your content you’ll have built up a degree of name recognition that should increase the upvotes your content receives.

There are all manner of content aggregators out there. Below you will find a list of the some of the top aggregators by niche. If you know of any missing sites please leave a comment at the end of this post so they can be added for everyone’s benefit…

Web Design

http://design-newz.com/
http://www.designfloat.com/
http://thewebblend.com/
http://www.dzone.com/links/index.html

Food

http://www.foodgawker.com
http://www.tastespotting.com
http://www.foodepix.com/
http://dessertstalking.com/
http://foodporndaily.com/
http://www.healthyaperture.com/
http://iwannanom.com/

Web/Marketing 

http://www.inbound.org
http://www.growthhackers.com
http://www.blokube.com
http://www.bizsugar.com
http://www.blogengage.com

Development & Design

https://news.layervault.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/
http://www.good-tutorials.com/
http://www.webdesign-ne.ws/submit/
http://zabox.net/
http://thewebblend.com/
http://design-newz.com/submit/

Health

http://www.fizzniche.com/
http://www.healthwriterhub.com/submit-blog-post/

Personal Finance

http://www.pfbuzz.com
http://moneyindex.org/
http://www.rockstarfinance.com
http://www.pfblogs.org/add/

Culture

http://filmwatch.com/
http://www.n4g.com
http://www.11×2.com

Craft/DIY

http://craftgawker.com/
http://www.craftfoxes.com/
http://www.craftster.org/
http://www.craftcrave.net/
http://www.createhappycrafts.com/
http://stylegawker.com/
http://dwellinggawker.com/
http://weddinggawker.com/
http://www.favecrafts.com/
http://findandcraft.com/
http://www.instructables.com/index
http://www.looksisquare.com/
http://inspirationdiy.com/
http://www.hometalk.com/
http://makezine.com/craft/

Content Curation

Content curation is the process of gathering together other people’s content. Typically content is curated to create a “topical hub” of information. So, for example, someone might gather together all the best articles on Staffordshire Bull Terriers or surfing or trekking the Andes.

Not only does Google love these topical hubs of information, but for obvious reasons so do human readers. After all, the curator has dug through dozens of “OK” articles to select just the best of them. These curated pages therefore represent real value for visitors.

They also represent a perfect opportunity to promote your latest blog post. After all, if these curated articles and topical hubs are attracting search engine visitors and repeat readers, all looking for the latest, greatest content on a specific topic, getting your post listed here can drive some very high quality traffic to your site.

There are a number of content curation sites that are worth exploring. All of these allow you to set up a page on a specific subject and then add other people’s content to it in order to create a topical hub. Spend some time on these sites, exploring the options and finding those pages that stand the best chance of accepting your content. Then, next time you publish a post, zip on over and submit your new content to all the relevant curated pages you’ve found.

http://www.scoop.it
http://www.list.ly
http://bundlr.com/
https://www.spundge.com
http://www.closingcall.co/
https://news.layervault.com/
http://www.flipboard.com

How To Promote Your Blog On Content Curation Sites Like A Boss

Relevance Is King – It’s tempting to see the world of curated content as a huge opportunity for link building. It’s tempting to want to pay a freelancer to submit your link to any and all curated pages they can possibly find. After all, if you throw enough mud at the wall, at least some of it will stick. However this is the wrong call for a number of reasons; not least because of the ethics of spamming.

No, when it comes to content curation, just like many of the other blog post promotion techniques mentioned in this article, relevance is king. Part of your job is to carefully find and then assess these potential sources of traffic to ensure that you’re submitting your post to only the most relevant sources. Don’t submit your post about fishing to a fashion page. Don’t even submit an article about coarse fishing to a page about marine fishing. Remember: relevance is king.

Stand Near The Money Pipe – Submitting your content to curated pages can be a good source of backlinks for your site. However to avoid the risk of any future “Google hate” I believe the first thing you should be looking at are pages that receive traffic. The late, great Jim Rohn used to tell a story that if you want to get rich, you should stand near the money pipe. What he meant was you should go and work for wealthy people. Go and hang out with successful entrepreneurs and business people. Sooner or later some of that money might just flow your way.

And so it is with traffic. The links you can generate using this technique – or many of those mentioned here – will benefit your search engine traffic. However for best (long term) results I would caution you, wherever possible – to make your primary focus not about SEO. Instead, try to find the pages that have strong readerships and offer a high quality experience.

Track Your Results – Even paying close attention to relevance, not all your submissions will get approved. It’s simply a fact of life. However here’s the secret; keep tabs on exactly which pages are accepting your posts and which ones aren’t. Over time you’ll be able to tweak the list of curated pages that you submit to, ensuring that you only submit to those that have the greatest chance of publishing your post. In this way your submissions will become increasingly efficient over time.

Additional Reading

• Content Curation Tools: The Ultimate List
• How To Use Listly For Content Curation, Traffic & Backlinks

Mail Your List

We content marketers and bloggers live and die by our mailing lists. Google and Facebook may change their algorithms, robbing you of hard-earned traffic at any time, but the list owner is suitably insulated. One email to that list brings traffic on demand.

No surprise then that building a list should be your number one priority as a blogger.

Then every time you publish a blog post you simply fire out an email to your list, letting them know about it and wait for the traffic to start arriving.

Of course this is all quite simple. The skill is in gathering that list to begin with.

How To Build Your Mailing List Like A Boss

To build a list you’re going to need three basic resources. Firstly, an autoresponder subscription that will let you gather the email addresses of your visitors. For this I personally use Aweber though there are plenty of other options like GetResponse and MailChimp.

Secondly you’ll want some kind of “bribe” – a freebie to give away to your subscribers in exchange for their email address.

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, you’ll want a variety of opt-in forms. These forms are how your site visitors actually add their email address to your database. They’re the stripe ad at the top of your blog, they’re the widget in your sidebar, the feature box at the top of your blog and even – GASP! – the popup.

Even more importantly you’ll want to be constantly split testing these forms for maximum results. Keep creating, keep testing and keep improving. The higher your response rates the faster your list will grow.

Personally I use 4 services right now for my list building:

Hybrid Connect – Possibly the most feature-rich optin plugin on the market, allowing you to effortlessly create styish, attention grabbing opt in widgets, popups and landing pages.

Plugmatter Feature Box – The so-called “feature box” is the big, “in your face” optin form at the top of so many blogs these days. And they’re everywhere because they work. Some WordPress themes come with feature boxes built in. For the many that don’t, the Plugmatter plugin is the ideal solution.

Hellobar – The easiest way to create (and split test) those eye-catching stripe ads you’ll see at the top of so many websites.

Q2W3 Fixed Widget – This free plugin, used in combination with Hybrid Connect, is how I make my optin form in the sidebar follow you down the page.

Additional Reading

• How to Build an Email List From Scratch – A Step-by-Step List Building Tutoria
• Email List-Building From the Experts: How to Grow a Massive Email List
• The Ultimate Guide to List Building with LeadPages
• How To Get Your First 1,000 Email Subscribers: A Step-By-Step Checklist You Can Use
• 17 Insanely Actionable List Building Strategies That Will Generate More Subscribers Today

Social Media

Right now, this very instant, your ideal website visitors are out there – somewhere – sharing hilarious cat photos.

Whatever they’re looking at, they’re more than likely to be doing this on Facebook, Twitter and all those other social media sites. The trick, if there is one, is finding an ethical and genuine way to connect with them and let them know about your fantasmagorical blog post.

Facebook

If you have a Facebook page you’d be crazy not to post it to your page. That said, organic reach on Facebook is at it’s lowest level ever so this strategy is becoming less and less effective. These days only 5-10% of your fans may actually see a post that you share which is a dismal situation to be sure.

Bearing in mind how much time (and money) many of us spent building our Facebook audience this has all been a rather sad turn of events, meaning that in most cases the chances of receiving considerable organic traffic from Facebook is unlikely.

That said, it would be wrong to assume that Facebook is dead. Instead, we just need to find other ways to leverage Facebook’s exceptional levels of traffic.

The way that Facebook is becoming ever more “pay to play” is leaving an unpalatable taste in many people’s mouths but done right Facebook can still be a source of high quality (and low cost) traffic.

Personally I’ve been getting good results recently using retargeting. In essence Facebook keeps a record of every Facebook user who visits my site (at my request). Bearing in mind that I get visitors from only white-hat marketing techniques, this means that the traffic I get is very targeted.

I can then pay to advertise to these same high-quality visitors on Facebook. Just as good (besides the quality of the traffic) is the fact that retargeting on Facebook can work out very cheap indeed, and is normally much more cost effective than advertising your post to any old user.

If you like the sound of that then check out Perfect Audience who not only make retargeting easy but will also give you a $100 advertising credit for free to test out the service. What have you got to lose with a deal like that?

Further Reading

• How to Spend Your First $100 on Retargeting Ads
• 5 Unknown Tips To Hack Your Retargeting
• An In-Depth Comparison of Remarketing and Retargeting Services

Twitter

According to the experts, tweets with images receive more interaction – both in terms of clicks and on retweets – than those without. Take some time, therefore, to create a suitable image that can be shared long with your article title and a link.

Note that tweets have a very short “life” – unlike a blog post you’ll normally receive the majority of your traffic within minutes of posting your latest article to Twitter. Timing your tweet to publish it at the optimum time – when more of your followers are active on Twitter than at other times – is therefore crucial to drive as much traffic from Twitter as possible.

For this I rely on the experts over at Buffer who not only make scheduling my posts super-easy but also make sharing an image in my tweets as simple as clicking their magical blue button!

I have plenty of tips on getting more Twitter followers here, here and here.

Further Reading

• 6 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results
• Twitter Cards on Your Site
• Case Study: How To Triple Your Traffic With Twitter
• 3 Twitter Marketing Tips That Really Matter 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn presents two different opportunities for traffic. Firstly, of course, you can add your own posts to your timeline so that they are visible to your network. However a second, even more powerful strategy, is to add them to relevant LinkedIn groups.

Your rate of success will vary of course based on a range of factors such as the niche you’re in, the number of group members and so on but it’s always worth a try. Also, before you go sharing your content check that this is acceptable on your chosen group.

Neil Patel is a huge fan of LinkedIn groups and claims they’re one of the most powerful techniques he uses; so much so that he’s actually bought up other LinkedIn groups so he can post his messages to them.

Further Reading

• 6 Ways to Attract More LinkedIn Leads
• 5 Actionable Tips To Use LinkedIn Publishing To Get More Blog Traffic
• How Top LinkedIn Publishers Get 1000’s of Visitors

Google+

There are three ways to drive traffic from Google+ to your latest blog post.

Firstly, you can share the post on your personal profile. Assuming you’ve made connections with other bloggers and business owners in your niche then your contacts will all be exposed to your new post.

Secondly you can share the same post on your business page, so that everyone who is following your Google+ page (rather than your profile) also gets to see the post.

Thirdly, and most powerfully of all, you can share your post on related Google+ groups. Before publishing your next post it is therefore worth spending a little while investigating relevant Google+ groups. Look for those with a good number of members, reasonable engagement and where posting links is allowed.

Further Reading

• Amplifying B2B Marketing Content with Google Plus
• Finding Influencers on Google Plus
• How to Use Google Plus to Generate Massive Exposure
• How To Use Google Plus Like A Marketing Pro

Pinterest

Pinterest is my absolute favorite social media network for promoting my blog posts. The reason is that quite simply most of my blogs receive far more traffic – for far less work – from Pinterest than any other social media site. Building up your profile, and follower numbers, is also supremely easy (and enjoyable) so what’s not to like?

All you need to do is to make one or more related images for your post and then share this on Pinterest.

Just as with Twitter however for best results you’ll want to ensure you’re sharing your images at the optimum time, which is where Tailwind can come in. This truly awesome tool will not only schedule your images for publication at the ideal time but the analytics they provide also help you to tailor-make your Pinterest strategy over time based on what has worked best for you.

Further Reading

• How to Get Twice More Traffic Than Facebook On One Of The Most Underrated Social Networks
• 16 Tips, Tools and Tricks to Improve your Pinterest Marketing Strategy
• How to Double Your Traffic from Pinterest in 30 Days

Tumblr

The real benefit of Tumblr is it’s “reblog” feature. When one of your Tumblr subscribers likes one of your posts they can “reblog” it, where upon the post is added to their blog for all their readers to see. In turn, their readers can then reblog it if they so desire and so on, creating a viral sharing effect.

Of course if each of these reblogged posts has a link pointing back to your latest blog post there’s a good chance that you’ll end up driving some traffic, not to mention the potential benefit of all these additional links pointing to your site.

Of course, you don’t just want to republish your blog post over on Tumblr; this is the very essence of duplicate content.

Instead, what I tend to do is to share the unique blog title image that I created for Pinterest, together with a “Readers Digest” cut down version of the post, giving the most salient points, and then link back to my main post for the “full story”.

You’d be surprised how often these snappy little posts gets reblogged and how many people end up clicking the links to my site as a result.

Further Reading

• 20 Tumblr Stats Marketers Can’t Ignore
• A Beginners Guide to Tumblr
• How To Use Tumblr For Marketing

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a bit of an enigma. Many posts – even good ones – seem to do very little. Others do very well indeed. There seems no pattern at all and I’ve had many submissions fall flat while others send literally thousands of visitors my way in a matter of hours.

While I’ve found StumbleUpon traffic to be pretty poor quality (and unengaged) some experts claim they can be useful for kick-starting a social sharing avalanche.

Further Reading

• What Content Rocks on StumbleUpon?
• The Advanced Guide to StumbleUpon Marketing
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Blog Writing Inspiration and Posts Promotion

Reddit

Referring to Reddit as a “social network” is perhaps not strictly accurate. However the way it is possible to target specific interest-centric “groups” (or so-called “sub-Reddits”) can make it very useful for accessing a large and targeted audience.

That said, overall Reddit users seem to dislike overt advertising and link drops and sharing your blog post here risks your account being banned. In other words you’ll need to take care. Select only the most appropriate, targeted sub-Reddits and before you share your blog post ensure that this is permitted; not all sub-Reddits allow self-promotion in this way.

To try and make your Reddit marketing rather more effective I’ve got two proven tips for you.

Firstly, there is an awesome list of sub-Reddits that allow you to submit your own content here. Search through it to find the most appropriate sub-Reddits for your needs.

Secondly, it can be handy to see where you competitors have been mentioned. Simply visit the following URL, replacing the end with each of your competitors in turn…

http://www.reddit.com/domain/YOUR-DOMAIN

If any of their posts have been shared on Reddit, keep a note. These are likely to be the best places to target with your content (assuming the feedback your competitors received was positive!).

Further Reading

• How Reddit Can Be A Valuable Source Of Traffic And Links
• Reddit Marketing: How We Got 10,000 Pageviews from Reddit in 2 Weeks
• How To Generate 15,0000 Visits from Reddit
• Two Case Studies On Using Reddit To Generate Leads

How To Promote Your Blog Post On Social Media Like A Boss

Social media marketing is all well and good but it can be a long and painful process building up those followers, developing relationships and carefully analyzing your response rates in order to send messages that will appeal most to your audiences.

That’s not to say such activity is worthless; indeed it’s the way we should all be operating long term.

There are, however, a number of proven tips to get more social media traffic to your site with minimal effort. It is these “social media hacks” that I want to draw your attention to here, in order to help you get as much traffic from social media as possible with the minimum of fuss.

Social Exchanges

In the early days of starting a blog, social media marketing can seem like a fools errand. After all, only a handful of your Facebook fans will see your post when you share it. A similar number of your followers of Twitter will see any particular tweet. Pinterest, too, normally drives most shares in the first few minutes of pinning an image.

As a result one could argue that social media can be quite an inefficient way to promote your blog. After all, if you hustle your way to 1000 Facebook fans and 1000 Twitter followers, if you’re lucky perhaps 200 people (maximum) will likely see your update. Of these only a small percentage will actually click through to read your post. It all seems like such a waste.

Except of course it isn’t.

The real trick here is to leverage other people’s social media accounts, so that your one tweet or status update becomes dozens, even hundreds. And when you have a clan of people all sharing your updates with their followers suddenly traffic can take off like a rocket.

There are other upsides too; getting a lot of social shares in a short space of time can also help your content to stand out elsewhere.

Slideshare, for example, will heavily promote the top slidedecks on Twitter or Facebook so getting a lot of social shares can land you on their homepage. Zite, the content discover app, is largely controlled by the number and velocity of social shares a piece of content receives and can open your content up to a whole new audience.

I’ve had pieces of content receive dozens of shares in the first hour or two of publication suddenly appear in Zite, which has then resulted in an avalanche of extra shares and traffic thanks to the new audience I’m reaching.

Suddenly you’re not getting 10% of your paltry 500 Twitter followers noticing your tweet but tens of thousands of other people’s followers.

The trick is really figuring out how to go about this.

The answer is the so-called “social exchange” sites whereby you share other people’s content on your social media channels and in exchange they promote yours. In this way you’ll become part of an army of social media marketers all helping each other grow their online visibility.

Here are some social exchanges you might want to join:

Viral Content Buzz – Run by Ann Smarty, this is one of my absolute favorite social exchange sites. There are two reasons for this; firstly there is plenty of quality content being shared, which means it can be easy to find posts worth sharing with your followers. The last thing you want is to feel obliged to share poor quality or off-topic content just to build up “credits” to have your content shared later on.

The second thing that makes Viral Content Buzz such a good system is the number of social media sites that are supported. We’re not just talking Twitter and Facebook here. The system also supports Facebook Pages (not just profiles), StumbleUpon and Pinterest so means you can use this one site to drive traffic from a variety of social media properties.

Social Buzz Club – Largely similar to Viral Content Buzz, the team who run this site put on a wide range of high quality webinars and teaching events to help you get the most from your social media marketing. Well worth a subscription for this reason alone.

Triberr – If Twitter is your thing then Triberr can be an incredibly powerful tool. Sign up and join one or more niche-specific “tribes” of bloggers. There are tribes for all manner of niches – from food bloggers to health bloggers – and joining one immediately lets you run shoulders with experienced bloggers and content marketers in your niche.

I’m passionate about Triberr having been a member for years because it’s not only a great way to boost your traffic, but arguably it’s even more useful as a networking tool. Triberr lets you get to know other bloggers like yourself and these relationships can be both enjoyable and profitable.

To give you a perfect example, it is thanks to the relationship that I built up with blogging expert Sue Anne Dunlevie that she was recently generously enough to feature me in on her site (thanks again Sue – you rock!).

Just Retweet – Share other people’s content to earn credits. Then spend these credits having other people share your content. The content here is largely marketing-related so bloggers in other niches may struggle to gain traction here. Works with Twitter and Facebook.

Avenue Empire – Complete “missions” to win credits and boost your social authority. Works with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Click here to learn more.

CoPromote – Seemingly far less content here to share than in some of the other social exchange sites however the reach you can generate is monumental. I regularly have my content reach a six figure audience using this site. Works with Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

Re-Sharing

Most bloggers appreciate the importance of social media as a promotional channel for their content. However what they don’t appreciate is that social media sharing shouldn’t be a “one hit” affair.

The fact is that only a percentage of your followers will see a status update. By the time the vast majority of your fans get online your tweet or Facebook post will be long gone. This is a real shame because your followers want to see your content, and you want traffic.

The lesson here is clear; don’t just post your piece of content once and then move on. Instead, share your content multiple times across your social media profiles to maximize the traffic you receive.

How often?

Fortunately the geniuses over at CoSchedule tested out this exact question and came up with a formula for the most effective sharing schedule.

The problem with this process is remembering to do re-share your content on a regular basis. Frankly, I’ve got better things to be doing (and I guess you’ve got similar problems?) and trying to remember what post we should be sharing when, and on which platform, just isn’t an effective use of my time.

Fortunately there is a solution, in the form of CoSchedule. This awesome tool let’s you create and queue up social media posts to promote your content in advance. In this way you can put all your promotional tweets, Facebook updates and G+ posts into the calendar so that when you publish a post you know for certain that CoSchedule will be promoting your post automatically exactly when, where and how you tell it – without you needing to do anything.

Tweetable Content

You might have the obligatory social sharing buttons on every page of your blog but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re maximizing the number of shares your content receives. One strategy that a number of bloggers swear by is to include pre-written tweets within their content that can be automatically shared with their followers at the click of a button.

This is a simple-enough strategy to implement, though you’ll need to spend a tiny bit of extra time when formatting your post, so as to include these “click to tweet” messages.

Co-Schedule, which I mentioned earlier, includes this feature as standard. Alternatively there are a few plugins that will do the same job for you such as Click To Tweet.

Social Lockers

A social locker is a very simple concept; you offer some form of bonus or free gift in exchange for people sharing your post on social media. A good example of this is Matthew Woodward who has generated tens of thousands of social shares as a result.

Implementation is simple enough with the Social Locker plugin. Simply install the plugin, decide on the bonus you’re going to offer and add the code provided to your next blog post. Then watch social shares increase as your visitors willingly share your content in exchange for the gift.

Onpage SEO

If you’ve spent some time investigating SEO as a way to drive traffic to your blog then you’ll know that SEO success involves two broad categories of work. One of those is the so-called “onpage” or “onsite” work, the other is link building.

Here’s the thing though; Google doesn’t really like us manually trying to build links to our content. Done wrong, it can even lead to a penalty. Frankly, old-school link building can also be pretty boring.

So here’s the good news; when you follow the steps outlined in this article you don’t need to do any link building.

Merely by promoting your blog posts according to the tips included here you’ll start to attract links naturally – just as Google would like. Link building – as a process – becomes less important because so many of the other things you’re doing will be building backlinks to your content anyway.

As a result, assuming you choose to target a suitable keyword you barely need to worry about link building. For our purposes therefore SEO relates purely on the onsite factors.

How To Promote Your Blog Post With SEO

There have been a number of excellent guides written on the subject recently so I won’t try to reinvent the wheel however what I will say is how important it is to select the right keyword phrase to begin with. For this I like to use SEMRush.

SEMRush is different to other keyword tools because it shows you what your competition is already ranking for. Not only does it follow that there is a good chance that you yourself can rank for these phrases, but in addition you’ll likely uncover all manner of keywords you would otherwise have never considered.

Once you’ve selected the most appropriate keyword phrases try to create content based around these words. Broadly speaking try to include the target keyword phrase in the page title, blog post title and within the main content of your blog post – but only where it is natural to do so.

Remember: Google is getting smarter all the time and over-optimization is a very real risk these days. Instead, write content firstly for your visitors, merely including relevant keyword phrases where it is natural to do so.

Further Reading

• The Ultimate Guide To On Page SEO
• WordPress Social SEO Plugins: WordPress SEO vs WordPress Social Sharing Optimization
• Image Optimization Checklists for Beginner to Advanced SEOs

Comment On Other Posts

Commenting on other blogs in your niche has two potential benefits. Firstly, it allows you to essentially place a link to your site on related content around the web where many potential readers may find them.

Imagine, for example, reading a blog post all about how to lose weight on the paleo diet, then in the comments section at the end you notice a comment from another paleo site; there’s a fair chance that you’ll at least click through and check it out, right?

But there’s another side benefit to commenting on other blogs that can be even more powerful; it helps you to get your message infront of specific bloggers. Bloggers who are likely creating content in your niche and who may well have a far greater reach than you. Gaining attention in this way can be very positive for the growth of your blog and can result in natural mentions, social shares and so on. They can even lead to guest post opportunities and more.

How To Promote Your Blog Post With Blog Commenting

My good friend Ryan Bidduph is an undisputed expert in promoting your blog through commenting so I strongly encourage you to take a look at his site for the full skinny. He’s also got an awesome ebook that gives all his secrets. If you’re serious about blog commenting for traffic I strongly encourage you to check it out.

Here are some of the most effective strategies that I personally use when promoting my latest blog post through blog commenting:

Get Gravatar – You know those pictures you see next to comments on blog posts or in forums? They’re typically known as “avatars”. A “gravatar” is in essence a “universal” avatar. Rather than you having to manually upload a picture of yourself to every blog you comment on, when you have a gravatar account every time you leave your email address in the comment section of a gravatar-enabled blog your picture will show up.

Having a picture is important. Firstly it stops you appearing like a spammer (spammers very rarely include a profile picture). Secondly, and just as importantly, allowing others to see your face helps them to build a connect with you. They start to be able to put a face to the name. Assuming you don’t have a face “only fit for radio” (like me) this is a good thing.

Add Value – If you’ve got a blog you’ve no doubt seen the “one liner” comments that get left. “Great post” they’ll say. “Nicely put” they’ll proclaim. Normally with at least one link to a spammy site. Don’t be that guy.

It’s better to leave fewer comments, but make each one better. Make them stand out by really adding to the conversation. That’s what gets you noticed – and gets people clicking through to your website.

Target Carefully – Not all blogs are created equal. Some have more traffic, some have more engagement, some are more closely related to yours and so on. Your goal is to try and find those other blogs where your readers are most likely to be hanging out. Those blogs with whom you have a lot in common. That’s where you should be commenting – because that’s where your target audience already is.

Subscribe To Comments – The beauty of blogging – and commenting – is the conversations that can be held.

Leaving a comment is part of that, but conversations are a two-way form of communication. In other words, if you leave truly memorable comments on other blogs there’s a fair chance that someone will respond to you. Maybe the blog owner, maybe another reader, but someone.

When you subscribe to the comments as you leave them, you’ll be alerted via email if and when someone responds to your comment. You can then return at your leisure to continue the conversation – and keep growing your authority.

Commentluv – While high quality blog commenting can be useful for promoting your blog in general, it can be rather harder (though not impossible) to use this technique to promote a specific blog post.

One strategy is to use Google to find – and then comment on – blog posts that are very closely related to your post. In your comment you can then consider dropping a link to a relevant resource. Done in a classy way – where you truly add value to the conversation – there is nothing wrong with that at all.

The alternative is to use Commentluv, a blog commenting system that allows you to add a link to a specific blog post, as opposed to just your blog’s homepage. Not all blogs are Commentluv enabled, but in most niches you’ll find at least a handful that are. In some there are literally thousands to choose from.

So spend some time not just locating the best blogs in your niche but also pay attention to those with a Commentluv commenting system. Leaving comments on such blogs can be particularly beneficial.

And how do you find these blogs? Easy. Either use the Commentluv blog search engine, one of the various lists of Commentluv-enabled blogs or search for them in Google using search queries such as:

[keyword] + “commentluv which will” [keyword] + commentluv

Further Reading

• Using Blog Commenting for Engagement and Link Opportunities
• How I Generated $25,000 with 249 Comments

Link Out

It wasn’t too many years ago that website owners hated linking out to other sites. The thought of losing a visitor to another site who offered you nothing in return was hard to bare. Infact, I still remember one well-known authority recommending that you only ever link to other sites using an affiliate link. No affiliate program = no link.

Of course we know differently these days. We know, for example, that Google seems to respond well to content that links out appropriately to high quality resources. This not only helps to boost the relevance of your page for related phrases but also adds value that your visitors will appreciate.

However there’s one more reason why linking out is cool; it’s also a great way to get on the radar of other bloggers that you’d love to get to know. After all, what better way to get someone’s attention than to both offer them a compliment and some additional traffic by linking from your site to theirs.

These mentions are known as “pingbacks” and, assuming the site owner in question has these turned on, they’ll receive a notification when you link to them. What you’ll find – particularly in more tech-savvy niches – is that these will get picked up on.

On the other hand less technical niches may not notice – or understand – what these pingbacks are. In this case it’s perfectly cool to drop the bloggers you linked to a quick email. Just politely let them know that you linked to them in your latest post and encouarge them to check it out. Plenty will, and a few might just promote it if they like what they see.

I love linking out, I truly do. It offers additional value for your readers and for the blog you link out to. Basically it’s just a really cool way to make the internet a better place and give credit where it’s due. And the fact that you might in turn be rewarded by Google, not to mention a variety of blog mentions, means it’s well worth the hassle.

How To Promote Your Blog By Linking Out Like A Boss

Relevant, High Quality Links – The first thing to appreciate when linking out is to think of your visitors. The goal of linking out is to help your readers continue their entertainment or education – to expand on the information contained in your article by helping them uncover related, complimentary articles on other sites.

In other words your focus should be on the benefits to your reader. This means only link out to the very best resources around and only link out when it is appropriate.

Target=_blank – When you’re linking out to another site with a contextual link within a blog post I would encourage you to open the article in a new window. Doing so means that your readers won’t lose their place when reading your article, and you won’t risk losing traffic if they don’t like what they read.

Zemanta – Possibly one of the handiest tools of all for creating truly useful, spam-free links to other content on the web is Zemanta. While Zemanta was originally launched as a plugin to help you add related images and links to authority sites like Wikipedia to your content, there is another rather less well-known way to use it.

In essence Zemanta will let you upload a list of all the blogs that you subscribe to. From here it will recommend related posts from the pool of blogs you provide it. In this way rather than having to rely on the standard recommendations made by Zemanta (some of which are, quite frankly, rather lacking in my opinion) you can inst