Do you do keyword research? As this blog progresses I am becoming convinced that while commenting and guest posting are very worthwhile ways to spend your time promoting a blog, SEO and effective use of keywords are even more effective and are often ignored by most bloggers. Including me. At least that was true.
I think now however, that I am going to spend some time learning more about how to use keywords effectively. As I have said before, at some point in the future I plan on monetizing this blog. The best way to do that is to attract readers from search engines. The only way to get traffic from search engines is to rank on the first page of search results, and the higher the better there.
If you think I’m wrong about the importance of SEO and keywords, which is just another way of saying internet marketing, then consider this: Darren Rowse along with a few others has started a new membership group devoted to bridging the gap between “social media cool kids,” as he puts it, and internet marketers. I am NOT getting paid for that link, although it would have been nice. I simply put it there in case you wish to take a look.
This new group represents a synergy for which the term “The Third Tribe,” was coined by a commenter on the Copyblogger site in reference to a post that talked about the two teams or tribes. The bottom line is that there is a recognition now that to make money blogging, you need the quality content a good blog is known for, and the promotional skills of an internet marketer.
I have found a few sources of information that I trust, and I will write more about them in future posts. For right now though, I just wanted to talk a little about the new model for bloggers. For some it probably really isn’t that new, but for many it causes anxiety. In my travels around the internet, I have seen several internet marketers claim that bloggers feel like internet marketing is “cheating,” or somehow dishonest, or else they are just plain uncomfortable with it. I don’t understand how someone would feel that way. You have something valuable to present to people; your knowledge, your expertise in a certain area, perhaps just the style of your writing (Stephen King does pretty well with his style of writing) and it would be nice to get a return for sharing your valuable something. That’s where the internet marketing aspect comes in.
At the most basic level, we’re talking about advertising. That is what promoting your blog is. It’s just another way of saying advertising. No one uses that word when they write articles about getting visitors, or customers, if you will. Nope. What you see are articles titled something like, “How to get traffic,” or ” How to drive traffic to your blog.” An other example would be an article on “How to get readers through guest posting.” It’s nice to get visitors through guest posting, but I think Allyn Hane nailed it when he said that the real value of guest posting is the backlink. He wrote an article with accompanying videos explaining the value of anchor words and backlinks. He pointed out that while it’s nice to get what he termed a “trickle” of visitors from another site, what you should really be after is the value of the backlink. That will help your site rank higher in the search engines and that will lead a lot more people to you if yoou can rank high enough.
Stumbleupon and Digg are also potentially huge sources of traffic. But!!! They are not sources of traffic of visitors who may become customers. For the potential customers you need the help of the search engines. That’s what I am learning now. As I further my education on the subject I will share what I am learning with you. It’s really fascinating, and a little exciting.
If the internet is an oyster, and monetization is the pearl, then I think I found some sources for shucking knives. And I will share them with you as I progress.
As always, comments are encouraged.