Thousands of people have personal blogs. Unfortunately, many bloggers don’t have the necessary expertise in link building, social media marketing, and search engine optimization to promote their blogs on the World Wide Web. This post is targeted to individuals who run their own personal blogs by themselves as a hobby or semi-professionally. The tips below will enable you to unleash the potential of your pages!

Generic Directory Submissions May Be a Waste of Money

While directory submissions are beneficial for e-commerce websites, this may not be the way to go for personal bloggers. It is better to save your money and invest it in other things. Directory submissions are often overused, and as Google has become significantly more complex, they provide limited value. If you spend the same time, effort, and resources in other activities, the benefits can be tenfold.

Submit Your Site to Niche Blog Listings

Personal bloggers will benefit more from submitting their sites to niche listings. For example, if you write about gardening, then look for directories that compile gardening ecommerce sites, blogs, and other related websites. Similarly, if you are writing about lifestyle in your area, submit your blog to local directories to improve your web presence.

Answer Questions in Q&A Websites

Q&A websites are gaining in popularity and search engine rankings. Participate positively on these sites and include your link in the suggestion. The traffic you will receive from viewers can help you earn links and referrals. Q&A sites that immediately come to mind include Yahoo! Answers but there are newer platforms that can similarly generate a lot of traffic for you.

Submit Selected Pieces to Social Portals

If you have a brilliant piece that can potentially become “viral”, make sure to submit it to social portals. Some examples of good social portals include Hacker News (community on startups, entrepreneurship, and technology), Care2 News (non-profit & environmental issues), and Kirtsy among others (focused on arts, style, and fashion). Take note that your article will be carefully reviewed before it is published. But once you get in, the advantages are huge.

Use Social Media

Make it a point to submit all new blog posts for voting. Unlike social portals, there are limited barriers to entry when submitting your posts to social media sites. In fact, your followers might be disappointed if they don’t see a stream of updated content in these channels.

Submit Guest Posts Strategically

Guest posting is growing in popularity for a lot of very good reasons. Basically, it entails writing content for another blog site to earn recognition, readers, and referring link. The strategy creates value for both parties so it is a valued technique that you should consider. In the last few years, however, there has been a lot of low-quality work that have been passed over as guest postings. This abuse can damage reader trust (both for publisher and you). So be sure that if you decide to submit guest postings, the work is of high-quality and will provide value to the readers.

What are your link building strategies?

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