How to Grow Your Site By Posting To Blogs And Forums
One of the best things about the Internet is that given time, you can grow your site into an authority in its given niche with just focus and daily legwork. Given 20 to 30 minutes per day, a site can grow into what the search engines consider an “authority site” within about 4-6 months. The span of time will depend on how large your niche is and the amount of competition within your given area of expertise.
Becoming An “Authority Site”
So, how do you become an “authority site” with no outlay of money? One of the pieces to the puzzle is to post to relevant blogs and forums. By relevant, you are looking for blogs and forums either within your specific niche or in the general area of your niche.
For instance, let’s say you’re an electrician. You have started a website about your electrical services and you may even offer a small store with products like wiring kits, specialty light bulbs, etc. You may find it difficult to locate other blogs dedicated to electrical services and products that are not considered spam. By spam, these other sites would not have any quality content or a reason for a reader to return or stay on the site.
In this case, the niche “electrical services” may be too narrow. You can then broaden out your range to maybe “do it yourself.” Here, you may find more sites dedicated to what you are looking for.
So What Are You Looking For?
The goal is to create a list of blogs and forums dedicated to your specific niche or general niche. (ie. “electrical services” or “do it yourself”) In the beginning, the more you can find, the better. What you will want to do is whittle down these sites to 2-5 blogs and 1-3 good forums as your targets and start up a habit of adding valuable comments to them.
How Do You Find These Blogs And Forums?
Finding forums to post to is pretty straightforward. In any search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, simply type in your keyword and forum (ie. “electrician forum” or “electrical forum,” – without the quotes). This should return some results for you. If your niche is too narrow or you don’t see the results you desire, start thinking laterally to your niche as was discussed earlier (“do it yourself forum”).
You can follow this same process with blogs, however in Google there is another method that may yield better results. Instead of going to Google.com, go instead to http://blogsearch.google.com/. This is Google’s blog only search engine. Once there, enter your desired keyword and see what results you find.
For Yahoo, you will want to go to http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Blogs, enter in your keyword and immediately above the search box, check the “this category” button. This search will then find blogs directly related to your keyword in the Yahoo! Directory.
NOTE: If you don’t check off the “this category” radio button, however, it will only return websites and not blogs, so make sure not to miss this step!
Which Blogs & Forums To Choose
Once you have a list of possible blogs and forums you would like to start posting to, check them to see how much traffic they get and what their Google pagerank is.
To check how much traffic a blog or forum is getting, use a service like http://www.Alexa.com or http://www.Quantcast.com . Compare sites to each other and go with those that have the highest levels of traffic.
Another important factor to consider is the Google pagerank of the blogs and forums you are considering. Pagerank is on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best. You can use this tool to check a sites Google pagerank.
again, when comparing sites, you will get the most bang for your time by posting to sites with the highest pagerank on your list.
In most cases you will see that the sites with the most traffic also have the higher pagerank, but this is not always the case.
What To Do Once You’ve Located Some Blogs
As mentioned earlier, you want to narrow down your search to 2-5 blogs. Since you’re going to be commenting on these sites on a daily basis, make sure they have content you like and are willing to read. You can always change your mind later and move to another site, but the more you like the blog and forum you’re posting to, the more likely you’ll be to follow through on your marketing tasks.
Once you’ve found your 2-5 targeted blogs, start up a habit of adding valuable comments to them.
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If you can leave a solid comment every day to just three blogs, which shouldn’t take longer than twenty minutes, you will have success with this process.
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The key here is “valuable comments.” Make sure to read the post you are leaving a comment on. When you leave a comment, make it something meaningful. Stay away from short comments like “great article!” or “just wanted to say Hi!”
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Let the author know you appreciated what they had to say and why. This not only adds to the quality of content on the blog you’re reading, but will encourage readers to come to your site as well.
Most blogs have what is known as a “blogroll.” This is essentially a list of related blogs that the site owner likes and recommends to his or her readers. This is a great way to find new blogs you may have missed in your Google and Yahoo! Search. You can find some of the best blogs in this manner, by looking at blogrolls and seeing where they go.
What To Do Once You’ve Located Some Forums
Once you’ve found the blogs you want to work with and have some idea about how you’re going to comment on them, it’s time to start targeting some forums. Ideally, you will want to find 1-3 forums to work in.
Forums can take more time, but if done correctly can yield quicker benefits. This isn’t to say that you should skip the blog commenting process. These two steps should be done together to get the best results over time. Remember, you aren’t paying a cent for this traffic; it just takes time for you to introduce yourself and get better known in the community.
This is essentially what you are going to do with the forums.
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Prepare a unique and original article, about 600-1000 words long, make it story based if possible and teach people how to do something (reveal your best stuff), and post it to three popular forums. This will work better if you do it after first building a little profile in the forums. Again, people are suspicious of new members so build a little trust first before attempting any direct marketing approaches in forums. Do this task once every other week.
Follow these methods and you will see results in as little as a couple of months. The key is consistency. If you post once a week, it will take much longer to see results than if you post daily.
Creating A Signature
A signature is basically a couple of lines that are included at the end of every post you make to a forum and the idea is to use a compelling call to action - a sentence or two with a link - to lure people to your blog from the forum. An example would be:
“Learn the secrets of a Master Electrician to save money on your next DIY
Click Here For Details”
To make this link more relevant, you will want to link it to a specific article on your blog about saving money and not just your homepage. This will make people that click through happier, because they found what you were promising and the search engines happy because you were relevant. Remember, each time you post to a forum and you signature is used; a link to your site is created. This adds credibility to your blog in the eyes of the search engines.
Forum Etiquette
As in any social endeavor, there are specific do’s and don’ts in the forums. Already mentioned was linking to anything commercial before you have a reasonable profile built up. A reasonable profile is typically considered 50+ posts, but be sure to read your forums posting rules. Some forums never allow commercial linking.
Also to consider:
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Non-relevant posting. Similar to blogs comments where you have nothing to say. If you have nothing of value to add to a conversation, don’t post in the forum.
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Off-Topic posting. Nothing will raise the ire of a moderator quicker than if you post in the wrong part of a forum. Make sure that your post going in the right section. If you aren’t sure, then start your post with an apology and say something to the effect of, “I wasn’t sure where this should go, please feel free to move this post if necessary…” This will go a long way for keeping you in good stead with not only the forum “locals” but also the moderators that have the power to ban you.
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Profanity. While some forums seem to encourage it, remember, you are here to promote your site. Don’t become known as “that guy” or “that woman” that always has a problem with something (or everything) - unless that is the specific slant of your blog. In the end, it will drive away more traffic than it will attract.
By posting to relevant blogs and forums on a daily basis and having a specific plan of action, you can build your site from zero to authority in a relatively short period of time. This is with no outlay of funds, just time and effort on your part. The other benefit is that you will get to know other people in your niche that can lend their assistance as you grow your site and they grow theirs.
