Three Things Bloggers Should Do to Promote Their Posts, But Don’t

There are many blog posts out there that offer advice for bloggers of ever level on how to promote their posts.

We certainly offer our fair share here, and will continue to do so as we add new features to the For Bloggers By Bloggers experience for your enjoyment!

However, what about the stuff you forget to do? Or don’t even think about doing? Today we’re going to take a look at just three things you should be doing to promote your blog posts.

Careful positioning of keywords within post

This is a delicate operation. Recently I read a post that was so peppered with keywords it was virtually unreadable. How did I know which were the keywords? They were the ones that were repeated in nearly every sentence.

Actually this is detrimental, as not only did it annoy me, it is very likely that the search engines will penalize the post. Yes, they may be robots, but even algorithms can recognize saturation when it hits them between the eyes, and anything over 10% will not receive any extra brownie points.

The best places to position your keywords are the headline and page title, alt tags behind the pictures or within the picture caption, in the first sentence or paragraph, somewhere in the middle and in the final paragraph, not forgetting the tags which supplement the post.

You could pop a few more in for good measure, depending on the length of your post, but be careful not to overdo it, and it certainly should not interfere with the syntax, grammar and editorial flow of your writing.

Uploading ‘Yet Another Related Post’ plugin

The problem with blogs is the posts. They are the main reason why readers visit, as they are attracted by the post’s headline or subject matter, and once they’ve voraciously consumed the contents, are quite happy to disappear, or ‘drop off’ as Google Analytics describes it.

This is no good when it comes to maintaining a regular readership, or encouraging them to read more posts (notwithstanding reducing your bounce rate). If your blog is fairly mature, it may contain other posts related to the subject, presenting more information or another side to the argument.

A blog visitor is very unlikely to explore the blog under their own free will, so you have to present your other posts to them on a plate.

The ‘Yet Another Related Post’ plugin searches your blog for matching posts, usually via the tags and keywords, and adds their links underneath your post for the reader’s consumption, should they be interested. I always find the automatically generated selection amusing, if not revealing.

Connecting to and commenting on social media

It’s very easy to feed your posts into your social media profiles via RSS or other related applications. And it’s equally easy to incorporate social sharing buttons within with your posts, to encourage visitor interaction.

But if you want to increase your posts’ exposure, share them further within the social network, like in LinkedIn groups and on your Facebook page.

But don’t fall into the trap of becoming a social pariah.

One blogger described it as being a seagull: land, deposit post and then fly away without doing anything about it. Social networking is sociable, so say something, monitor responses and comment appropriately, and if you can spark a conversation, not only more the merrier, but also more attractive to the search engines too!

And whenever you leave a comment anywhere on the net (which I heartily recommend), and you have a post you could relate it to, try and weave in a contextual link (more keyword usage here) into what you say to encourage your readers to visit back to your blog.

The contextual bit will give you extra kudos with the search engines, and it won’t seem to be so blatantly advertising if it’s relevant.

How about you – what are your favourite tips for promoting your blog posts?