5 don’ts for promoting your blog
Everyone knows that writing a blog post is not enough to get noticed. It needs serious promotion to attract new readers. Without promoting your blog posts you couldn’t be a successful blogger. You have to wait for some time to get organic traffic after optimizing your post as it takes time. But, social media has made it possible to connect with the potential readers instantly once your post gets published. Thanks to RSS. Being a blogger you could connect your blog feed with different social profiles. Once your blog post is live social content distribution sites automatically pull your post and publishes it on social profile links.
It is simply awesome, isn’t it. Bloggers can also get benefited by promoting their posts at relevant places on social media. But, in recent times some bloggers are indulging in bad practices which are really unethical. Bloggers should remember that there are no shortcuts to make your blog successful. Being a blogger stay focused on delivering useful content to readers and one day success will follow you. The 5 important unethical ways you shouldn’t try for promoting your blog are as follows.
1. Don’t ever buy Facebook fan pages
Facebook doesn’t allow any individual or business to buy and sell their pages. It is against to their company policies. I have seen some people auctioning huge fans pages on groups. For instance if a page meant for a specific cause or entertainment and has 30k fan base, these so-called internet marketers selling their pages to bloggers for money. Moreover buyers misuse these pages by spamming their posts or affiliate links. One can easily figure out how ridiculous it would be. Both sellers and buyers may face legal charges if found guilty. So it is always better to stay away from these activities.
Live and let live
2. Don’t ever buy paid traffic from unreliable sources or scamsters
Don’t fall prey to the people promising you instant traffic in return of some money. These scamsters pretend to provide traffic from real people but in most of the cases they manage with bots. Even if the traffic comes from real people they won’t show any interest to read your posts. They would visit your home page not more than 30 seconds which results in high bounce rate. Search engines hate it and your site may land in troubles in the form of traffic drop. Instead of buying paid traffic bloggers should emphasize more on delivering useful and quality content to readers. One should stay away to save their search engine rankings and reputation.
It is really good to have 10 interested readers rather than 100 fake visitors.
3. Don’t spam it everywhere
This is also an undeniable thing bloggers need to keep in mind while promoting their blogs. Share your latest blog posts on the relevant groups or ask your friends politely to share them on their social profiles. It is damn absurd to promote your links aggressively via emails, discussion forums and chat to irrelevant people. I have even saw some people spam their links in the comment sections on the News pages. People may look you as a spammer and report your posts as abusive. It is better to maintain a list of people or subscribers who are really interested in your blog. Sharing your informative articles with them helps you to do gain mileage in the long run. You could probably use relevant Facebook groups for promoting your blog.
Your blog could be successful if your posts get noticed, shared on social profiles, FB liked, +1’d, tweeted and commented by fellow bloggers.
4. Say no to Alexa ranking boosters
Alexa rank helps bloggers only in one aspect i.e. money. If you want to have direct advertising on your blog then advertisers may consider your Alexa rank. Serious buyers may also look Alexa rank along with traffic stats and revenue details before bidding on a blog. Alexa ranking system is purely based on unique visitors and page impressions. In the meanwhile some people started luring greedy bloggers with their Alexa ranking boosters. The funniest part is that they are offering free and premium services to their users. This is really bad. Bloggers may see their ranks moving to magical numbers but one should remember that Alexa rank is not the metric to measure their blog’s success. Don’t just blog for the sake of Alexa ranking, search engines and money.
Successful blogs are least bothered about Alexa ranks because they are more concerned about readership. I am not compelling any one to ignore the ranking completely. I firmly believe that if you are successful in building strong community of readers, reputation and money follows you. Once you convert your blog into reputable one, you could see boost in Alexa ranking.
The success of any blog lies in dedication, consistency, trust, insightful content, presentation and engagement with readers.
5. Don’t join Traffic exchange sites
Newbies generally attract to these sites as they want traffic to their blog badly. They assume that by participating in mutual traffic exchanges or auto surf programs help them to stand in the crowd. This is absolutely rubbish. I agree that traffic plays a significant role in blog’s success but it would be appreciated well if it comes from reliable sources. Moreover traffic from autosurf programs would not benefit anyone. It is a mere waste of time. Some advertising networks like Google Adsense won’t allow its publishers to participate in these type of programs and their account may get banned straightaway if found guilty.
Instead of indulging in traffic exchange do prefer blog commenting on other blogs. It helps in building healthy relationship and reputation.
This is all about 5 don’ts for promoting your blog. I hope you enjoyed the post and please do leave comments below.
What is your opinion on Friend Feed? I have heard it is good to use for easy backlinks and because of it’s Alexa ranking.
Friendfeed is pretty cool and yes you can be benefited with it in terms of traffic and backlinks. Even Matt cutts has praised the credibility of the service. I’ve an account in Friendfeed but my usage is very limited. I wish you great success with Friendfeed. 🙂
Awesome! I like visiting your blog. It’s so nice talking to a human. 🙂
Haha thank you Treathyl 😀
FriendFeed was awesome. Alas! It is no more. It was fun while it lasted. 🙂
Hi,
Thanks for sharing some useful tips on blog promotion. As you have said, many people go for Fan Page liked just to make their blog look branded but finally is all waste. And also I promote my articles virally online in all groups, guess soon it will be a spam. So I should be careful in promoting in Facebook.
Hi Shathyan,
Thanks for stopping by my post and I’m glad you like it. Sharing your articles on promotional groups is always safe. I wish you great success. 🙂
Joining traffic exchange site is not a good option. But what about link exchange from friend’s blogs or people who are willingly there for link exchange?
Hi Ambarish,
Thanks for asking. It would be better if you avoid link exchange. But, if you find your friends site worthy you could put the link in the blogroll. Google may penalize you if your home page contains hundreds of links. So better make a blogroll with limited number of links (4-5) and see that they are very much relevant to your niche. Please keep in mind that Google hates link exchanges. I wish you great success bro. 🙂
Thank you for the tips.
Hi Suresh. I hope this is your first name 🙂
I agree with 4 of your tips. Not with the second one. Think about PPC traffic… It’s a paid traffic method and nothing you claimed under your second headline applies to them. Google sells such traffic. But it’s not a scammer, right? The visitors aren’t fake and the search engines don’t hate Google for that reason. Google doesn’t hate Google, right? 🙂 And there are more legit and very much used paid traffic methods. Another example: solo ads with guaranteed clicks.
You didn’t take them into consideration, did you? 🙂
Adrian
P.S. Your CommentLuv plugin doesn’t seem to work.
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for stopping by my post. I appreciate your comment. Yes I agree that PPC traffic is legitimate but I didn’t mention anything about it. I have seen scamsters flooding social profiles with false claims like ‘Get 100000 visits instantly for $20’or ‘Instant paid traffic within 1 hour for $10’. It is not fair, right. So, I want to discourage people from buying traffic from unreliable sources. Yes I do encourage them if they PPC traffic from Google and other genuine sources. 🙂
Thank you so much for reporting the plugin issue. I’ll try to fix it now. Have a great day Adrian. 🙂
Hi Suresh, it’s true that you didn’t directly mention PPC but actually you mentioned it indirectly. Your second headline is “Don’t ever buy paid traffic”, right? Well… PPC is paid traffic, isn’t it?
There are a lot of scammers out there, I agree with you. But not everyone is a scammer. When you’re saying never buy paid traffic, you’re talking about everyone and every paid traffic method. And that is not correct. This is what I was saying in my previous comment.
Understand my point? For example, there are a lot of honest bloggers but there are also bloggers who scam people, right? But I’ll never say don’t ever visit blogs because they’re a bad environment and you’ll get scammed. Not every blogger is a scammer, right? The same for paid traffic. You cannot say don’t ever buy paid traffic.
My suggestion is that you should modify that headline. Of course that you decide 😉
Hi Adrian,
At last you were successful in compelling me to change the headline. Just kidding. 😀
It’s nice to see you two brothers looking out for each other. 🙂
I got the point about the scammers. I get the point about PPC because my son showed me one of his ads and said “Don’t click! I’ll have to pay for it! I’m just showing you.” 🙂
Hi Treathyl,
Oh really? It is good to hear that your son is a PPC advertiser. 🙂
Hi Suresh,
Well written mate. I am never a fan of paid stuff and thus, I never recommend any to try. It is always best to keep it simple and work hard to achieve such.
Nonetheless, you nailed all of those and thank you!
Reginald
Hi Reginald,
Nice to see you here bro. Yes simplicity and hard work really pays at the end. Thanks for the comment. Happy blogging. 🙂
Hi Suresh,
I enjoyed reading your post. About traffic exchanges, I agree that Autosurfs are a waste of time.
However, I find manual traffic exchanges highly responsive for me. They work if you know how to use them effectively.
1. Use fast loading lead capture pages to build a list.
2. Use traffic exchanges that have social chat where chat ID links to your profile (branding)
3. Use exchanges that enable social connections and allows you to communicate with your downline.
These days, many traffic exchanges are like another form of social media.
Some people think it is a “sellers market, not a buyers market” – that is in fact true – and so they assume that is the reason they don’t work.
The key to getting results from traffic exchanges is NOT to “sell” anything. Instead use it for list building and offer to help people get what they need or want, be that information, tools, or advice in your area of expertise.
~Jude
Hi Jude,
Thanks for stopping by my site. I’m glad you like my post. I haven’t tried any manual traffic exchanges before. I’ll have a try. It is good to hear that traffic exchanges worked well for you. Could you please share some reliable traffic exchanges here? Thank you so much for informative inputs.
While coming to Commentluv plugin, I was struggling with it from past few days. I wrote to them but the troubleshooting tips didn’t help me. I don’t want to trouble my readers with this inactive plugin anymore. I’m searching for other alternative.
Suresh
Hello Suresh,
Thanks for sharing these tips. I’m really thankful to you by heart and soul. One should follow these tips because they are helpful to all bloggers.
Hello Sonu,
Thanks for the comment and I’m glad you like it. Keep visiting. 🙂
Thanks for your valuable suggestion. Can you please help me by providing some information about building traffic fast for my blog. By the way I have owned a new blog which is based on android. It provides free android paid apps,games,launchers,widgets and lots more.
Hi Sakib,
Thanks for stopping by my post. My suggestion is to develop android app for your site and start an Youtube channel. Make good videos relevant to your niche and promote them on social media sites. You could attract massive traffic if visitors find your content useful and purposeful. I hope it helps. Thanks for asking. Keep visiting. 🙂