Vaasiyogam | Madurai Sinthamani | Sivaguru Sivasiddhan | Shree Vilvam Yoga Centre

There are few tools at an Internet Marketers disposal that are more effective and useful than the blog. They are loved by search engines, can be completely customized, and are perfect platforms for branding yourself in your niche, giving you the opportunity to demonstrate authority and gain credibility within it. You can then attract a targeted group of readers and potential customers with whom you can nurture a relationship that could last long into the future…. that is, if you can generate the traffic. Here are three free methods that I employ and find most effective.

1) Write your own quality content. Search engines “love” blogs because of original content that they often contain. Search engines are NOT “excited” by blogs that are put up with AdSense revenue as the main motivator. These types of blogs are given black marks and often find their “quality score” (Google’s page rank indicator) fall to ZERO, and find one of the best sources of targeted traffic unavailable to them.

2) Promote via Email Marketing. Whether you have your own list or not, you can still employ email marketing to effectively advertise your site. Promote your site in your signature, or even better, write to your mailing list (or a Safelist) when you’ve written an entry with opening “teaser” copy and direct them to your blog to read the material in its entirety. This method can similarly be employed using article marketing: Rework blog postings into articles, submit them to article directories (EzineArticles is largest and most well known) and include a link to your blog in your resource box, directing the article traffic to click through to your blog for more information about the article subject matter.

4) Join Blog Networks. Getting connected with the top blog networks is a great way to bring quality traffic to your site. They allow you to list your blog on their site, usually in exchange for installing one of their widgets on yours. The good news is that most of the widgets are actually quite useful, and perform functions like click tracking, rankings, tracking where traffic to your site is coming from, and even who is visiting your blog, picture and all! They are also a great way for you to get involved in the blogging community, and you will find that if you engage and visit the sites of others, you will find that often, they will return the favor. I recommend the following networks that I utilize with success.

1) EntreCard: This blog network allows you to earn credits to promote a thumbnail sized graphic advertising your blog by “dropping” in on other blogs in the network. 200 credits for signing up to this free program.

2) Networked Blogs: This network, based in Facebook, allows you to create a following for your blog on the giant social networking website, and create a widget displaying all of your readers, promoting yourself and your audience at the same time. It also reblogs your entries on Facebook.

3) BlogCatalog: Get a quality score as well as useful statistical tracking of your traffic data via this popular blog directory.

4) Link Referral: Very effective and free directory website will drive quality traffic to your blog via four channels: forum traffic, search engine traffic, directory traffic, and referral based.

Promote your blog consistently with the above methods and provide quality content about your niche to your target audience and you will see great results, directly proportionate with your efforts.