Easy in theory but a lot of work goes into it. Content, keywords, back links. That’s all there is to it. To put it another another way it’s on-page and off-page SEO. Publishing a lot of content has it’s challenges, getting your initial set of keywords via research is time consuming and getting back inks is an ongoing process.

Once you gotten over the initial hurdles look at how the rest just falls into place by leveraging all that work and it’s all free.

On-Page SEO: Content and Keywords

You need to have lots of continent with keywords. By that I mean you primary keywords. Long tail phrases are more organic than planned and rarely do people find the blog/site with an exact match. It is worth it to have a set a long tail key phrases to rank number 1 in on Google. A lot of the time it’s usually a combination of words that are not planned but appear in the article title and body

You need those keywords at the “code” level (Title, Description and Keyword META tags). Using METAs for you SEO is no where near as powerful as it used to be but why publish a page or post and leave them out? They help. I’ve been “found” by a combination of keywords in the title and METAs many times. How do you do that with a blog? Use Wordpress and get this plugin http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Off Page SEO: Getting Backlinks

You need back links to your site/blog off of your keywords. This is a lot easier than you think with Web2.0. First your blog post ought to be written with basic SEO in mind. Lets say you’ve got 50 posts on your blog and your comfortable with 20 being good enough to bookmark. You could probably do more but heck, it’s your NAME you putting out there and you want the stuff to be good. By the way, it’s OK to use a pen name.

• Get someone to do it slowly over time (a couple a week) and you have 20 back links multiplied by the number of major bookmark sites you use.
• Get about 20 back links per post at 2nd tier bookmarking sites by using www.onlywire.com.
• Using Wordpress.com gets you linked via technorati.com when you use categories.
• Comment on blogs in your niche and link to your site off a keyword. Do this a few times a week and it ads up over time.
• Link to a blog post and you’ll get a track-back link on their blog to yours.
• Of those 20 posts, pick the best (5-10) and article market them on 10 directories. Thats 50-100 back links. If someone uses them…more back links.

That ought to get you A couple hundred back links, or more, in less than 6 months putting you on the road to a profitable website depending on how diligent you are.

I’ll stop here but you can see how the “problem” of getting backlinks is ridiculous. Ok, I’ll admit that high page ranked one-way links get you the most bang for you buck–you will need bucks to get them tho’…all these other methods get you backlinks AND traffic for FREE

–Mike

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The bigger sites will ban you if all you do is bookmark your own post. In my “zest” to utilize Web2.0 and social bookmarking I’ve been baned by www.shoutwire.com and www.propeller.com. Getting baned from a big traffic driver can be demoralizing. They didn’t answer any of my emails so I don’t know why I got banned but more importantly I couldn’t bookmark.

How did it happen?

I bookmarked to many of my own posts…actually all I did was bookmark my own posts and in my quest I probably bookmarked the same article twice.

Not reading their terms of service. Some services don’t allow you to post every day. And some have specific requirements for posts. Shoutwire likes newsy post so bookmarking your sales letter is a bad idea. Trust me I know.

How do you make sure you don’t get banned?

Get someone else to bookmark your site’s posts and then bookmark there’s. Don’t bookmark your own posts on these social media sites. To get the most out of this simple procedure you can create a “bookmarking group”. All you do is get some folks together and create an email contacts list then mail the list with your post, what service to use, category, and tags. You of course are on the list as well. Make sure they all install a bookmarking toolbar in their browser for the service you use and you’re done.

Doing this for one service is easy but it gets hard the more services the group uses. You can use automation like Web2Submitter which BMs boatloads of services for you and it comes with a “Buzz Group” that you can submit your posts to and the group will bookmark.

Social media is THE traffic generator for 2008 and beyond. Learn from my mistakes and don’t mess it up. Getting your account back is HARD. Short of creating a new account with a new email and in some cases a new IP address, you won’t get it back and that can be devastating if your just starting out.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Install a sitemap on your site. Wordpress has a plugin called GoogleSiteMap. It generates a XML sitemap for Google to crawl. If you have a website, then get a sitemap on there and make sure it’s one that search engines can crawl. A sitemap page is cool for a users but you what you really want to make sure you have something for search engine as well. After your sitemap is there go to Google’s webmaster tools and submit it.

Get verified by Google. The webmaster tools section has specific instructions. You’ll need an account to use the tools so just start one.

You may not be able to article market all the time but you sure can bookmark all the time. You can easily bookmark post that may be too short to article market. Smallish, time sensitive posts are ripe for social bookmarking. Posts that go against the grain, excite or shock are great to bookmark as well.

GET SOMEONE ELSE TO BOOKMARK YOUR POST. If all you do is bookmark your own posts the site will ban you. Trust me, I know. Article marketing 2-3 articles a week will surely give your site a boost. However, if your new to writing, work full time job, or have a family, the process is daunting. Start with 1 week and work your way up. One good article/post of 400-600 words, on a subject you are knowledgeable about is doable.

PS if you have to do research to write blog posts, your in the WRONG niche.

Yea…you can have to many plugins. If you happen to see a plugin and go “that’s a cool feature”, leave it alone. Forget all about the cool factor and use plugins that fit into your profitable website/blog plan. The other plugin overload problem is activating plugins you don’t need to. Yes, there are plugins that are useful but only under certain circumstances. Wp-Cache and subscribe-to-comments comes to mind. Unless you’ve got a boatload of traffic theres no point to having these. Don’t get me wrong, Their great…but only if your blog/site is in a position to utilize them.

I found a gem of program called web2submitter. It’s just like article marketing software in that it logs you on to all the sites that you have an account with and set up, prefills all the fields with your article information then bookmarks the article. About 25 SBM sites are used. That’s 25 back-links and 25 opportunities to get traffic. Be careful. If all you do is is bookmark you own post you WILL get banned. I know. I’ve been banned form Propeller, Shoutwire and Digg in my time. They seem to be the most strict. I use the software to BM about 5-10 posts or pages b4 I do one of my own.

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