Reader: Can you give me a list of directories to submit my blog to?
Gayla: I’ve never used any blog directories and they’ve gotten fairly high on the search engines without them. Just make sure to use your keywords and you’ll do fine.
Reader: Is there any place I can go to learn more about how to use keywords?
Gayla: What I do for keywords is:
Watch Technorati to see what people are searching.
Watch this Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool to find what people are searching with the ONE or TWO words in it that I want to focus on.
Example: Say you’re wanting to use the keyword HOLIDAY — the overture tool will tell you all the variations of the word holiday in how it was searched just recently. I personally try to utilize as many keyword combos as I can with searches of 1,000 or greater. You’d be surprised at just how many visitors you can pull in that way.
Go to the Google Blog Search and see what other blogs similar to yours may be writing about, how they are tagging etc.
Yahoo Buzz is another great place to watch to see what the movers and shakers in the search world are. Try to incorporate as many of those top search terms into your blog posts as you can and tag them as the keywords that are being searched.
Another tip I’ve found to help is by bolding out the keywords within your post. You don’t have to do this on every single occasion, but it does help to do it once in a while. In as much as your eyes will pause on the bolded words, so will search engines.
That’s not saying I’m totally against blog directories — it’s just that I’ve never found the need to spend my time submitting to them.
If someone has an opinion that supports directories, I’d love to hear it.
Tags: technorati, tags, keywords, yahoo buzz, google blog search, overture keyword tool, keyword suggestion
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You could throw in BlogPulse for its topic trends feature.
Yup, you’re right. Signing up for free directories isn’t a problem, but I’ve never had measurable hits from them, even when featured as “blog of the day” or some such feature.
I’ve read several places that paying for directories is one of the biggest mistakes bloggers can make, they’re no help and a waste of money.
Thanks for the tip Dawud!
Michelle ~ I’d heard the same thing. In fact, some directories kind of scare me in how they seem to evolve into services that aren’t quite so friendly with those who choose to monetize their blogs.
I think the directories that bloggers should be concerned with will find them anyway — if the blogger is commenting and linking as they should.
Thanks for commenting.