Improve Your Blog's Reach & Search Rankings

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Resources for Improving Blog Posts

• How to Write Great Blog Content – from ProBlogger
• 7 Types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links & Traffic – from ProBlogger
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang – from Copyblogger
• The Day You Became a Better Writer – from Scott Adams
• Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision – from SEOmoz

Resources for Bringing Search Traffic to a Blog

• The Blogger's Guide to Search Engine Optimization – from Aaron Wall
• Wordpress SEO: The Definitive Guide to High Rankings for Your Blog – from Joost De Valk
• How to Deal with Pagination & Duplicate Content – from SEOmoz

Resources for Growing a Blog's Popularity

• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic – from SEOmoz
• Blogging Tips for Beginners – from ProBlogger
• The Art of Linkbaiting – from Performancing

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15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic

1. Write Well and Write Often

Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog’s audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.

Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog’s content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati.

Google ReaderUse Google’s web-based blog reader to keep up with blogs and news.reader.google.com


2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog’s URL to them. Most search engines provide a ‘Submit’ link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.

It’s important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn’t mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine.


3. Use and Update Your Blogroll

By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It’s an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs’ blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers.


4. Harness the Power of Comments

Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog’s traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.

Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog’s URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor’s website. It’s important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more.


5. Syndicate Your Blog’s Content with an RSS Feed

Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.


6. Use Links and Trackbacks

Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.

You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you’ve linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links!


7. Tag Your Posts

It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it’s worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They’re also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati.


8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog.


9. Remember Search Engine Optimization

When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don’t overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google’s search entirely.


10. Don’t Forget Images

Images don’t just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.


11. Consider Guest Blogging

Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger’s blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog. Both methods are likely to increase traffic as your blog will be exposed to the other blogger’s audience. Many of the other blogger’s readers will visit your blog to see what you have to say.


12. Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups

Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals. Add a link to your blog in your signature line or profile, so each time you post on a forum or participate in another online network, you’re indirectly promoting your blog. Chances are many people will click on that link to learn more about you.

13. Promote Outside Your Blog

Promoting your blog shouldn’t stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog’s URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It’s important to get your name and your blog’s URL noticed offline, too.

14. Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards

There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.

15. Don’t Be Shy
The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don’t sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed. Let the blogosphere know you’ve arrived and have something to say!

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Search Engine Marketing

What good is having a web site if nobody can find it?

Search marketing can be the most cost effective marketing a company can do. The Internet has replaced the Yellow Pages as the search method of choice for most Americans. When someone wants to find a business, product, or service they go online to a search engine.

Our marketing services partnership with Google means that we are prepared to work with all advertisers no matter the size -- you don't have to have a huge budget to take advantage of Pay-Per-Click marketing, some of our customers have gotten more business than they could handle for less than $30 a day. Put the Power of MDI and Google behind your search engine marketing strategy. Don't hesitate, this could be the best decision you ever made.

Search marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing, such as:

• budget flexibility -- redefine, change or pause your campaign anytime you want without a long term commitment
• pay for clicks to your web site and set the price you are willing to pay for a click
• run concurrent campaigns with different budgets and goals
• pay for your ads to be seen by a set number of viewers on web sites and set the price you are willing to pay for the views
• regional targeting down to the city or ZIP code, or even exclude cities that you don't want
• crono-targeting -- run your campaign only during the best time of day, week, month or year
• track sales and conversions to constantly improve your marketing ROI
• stop, start, pause or cancel at any time! (like when you have too many leads

Who is your biggest fan?

The power of "word-of-mouth" has long been the driving force behind many small businesses. Today, word-of-mouth is spread online through tools such as Facebook.

All web sites we create are designed to be integrated directly with Facebook so your potential "Fans" can read updates from your Facebook business page directly from your website. We also offer marketing consultations designed to train our customers on how to use Facebook to gain maximum effectiveness including Facebook Ads Placement, Facebook Page Setup and visitor growth.

With Facebook your business can:

• Use the power of social networking to expand your potential business leads.
• Update your customers on current business specials, deals or whatever happens to be on your mind.
• Target advertisements to a very granular market including Age, Sex, Geography and Language
• Grow your business through the online "word-of-mouth" and leverage friends and business partners to spread your message.