Type the top keyword, relative to your business, into Google’s search engine and get . . . → Read More: Steer your Blog with Wonder Wheel]]> Google’s Wonder Wheel is an embedded tool found on the Google search results page. This terrific free tool is not only great for discovering related keywords, it can also be used to enhance your marketing efforts, as we’ll see below…

Type the top keyword, relative to your business, into Google’s search engine and get the results. Now look to the top left portion of the results and you will see “More Search Tools.”

Click the dropdown arrow to expand the options and you will see the “Wonder Wheel” listed about 2/3 of the way down.

Click on “Wonder Wheel” and you will see the following result – a wheel showing the most popular keywords or phrases pointing to your original keyword.

Now let’s take a look at how to maximize the use of this wonderful gift from Google.

Your original keyword phrase “designer bags” is the most popular keyword to your main site, or where your products or service is located. Don’t worry about the competition factor of this keyword, the more popular the better.

What we are going to do is take one of the spokes of the wheel and run it through your “keyword tool” to find the related keywords that have the most hits with the lowest competition. Let’s use “fake designer handbags.”

AdWords keyword tool returned “handbags imitation” which has fairly low competition and 9900 hits a month. We’ll use this for our first blog.

Now go to Blogger and create a new blog using “handbag imitations” as the title of your blog. Create a few short articles around this keyword phrase and stagger the postings. Use the keywords in the article titles for example: “Handbag imitations exposed!”

Do not place any advertising on these wheel blogs. The whole idea is to drive traffic to your main site.

How is this done?

Place a HTML widget on the top of your blog, above the article, using large text. Say something like “Get the best deals on designer handbags here” and link this to your main site. You also want to do the same thing with a sidebar widget (slightly smaller text) located at the top.

Delete everything from the sidebar except for the archives and the HTML widget you just created.

You don’t need a fancy blog layout or any graphics. As long as you have a blog title, post titles, and content that are related, and relate to your main page, you are good to go.

It’s now time to promote this blog. Social bookmarks, Twitter, forums, whatever you can think of to get “Handbag imitations” out there.

Once you finish the first blog, go back to the wheel and repeat the process with another spoke, and another, and another, until you have used them all. If one or more of the spokes is not related enough you can ignore it.

When you have finished with this wheel, click on one of the spokes, let’s use “fake designer bags,” and you end up with a new wheel to start with. See below.

Go around the wheel repeating the same steps as above and you will end up with 10 – 20, or more, micro blogs pointing to your main sales page or site, all optimized for the lowest competition / highest hit keywords.

This strategy requires a lot of repeat, monotonous work, but is worth the time and effort in the long run, and doesn’t cost a dime.

Promoting your site is much more than submitting to search engines. As the internet grows so grows the opportunities to advertise your business.

The strategies explored below will help you start a solid promo campaign for your blog.

Make sure your site is optimized before you begin promoting.

Directories . . . → Read More: Basic Site Promotion]]>

Promoting your site is much more than submitting to search engines. As the internet grows so grows the opportunities to advertise your business.

The strategies explored below will help you start a solid promo campaign for your blog.

Make sure your site is optimized before you begin promoting.

Directories

Directories are search engines that are compiled and powered by human beings.
Getting listed in directories is very important because many people will see these listings plus, crawler-based search engines are more likely to find your site and add it to their listings for free.

Prepare your submission information in advance in a word processor like notepad. Write different versions of your site’s title at 50, 75, and 100 characters. Range your description from 100 – 250 characters and set up your keyword list with and without commas.
Now you can quickly copy/paste as needed.

List your site with the top 5 to 10 directories. Some are free… some are paid.

DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) is a volunteer-built guide to the web and provided as an option at many major search engines, including Google. Being listed with the Open Directory is a must for any website promotion campaign.

If you plan to manually DIY check out BestWeb Directories and VileSilencer. They both have extensive lists of free SEO friendly directories.

Search Engines

Submitting your site to the search engines is a waste of time (and money) nowadays. Your blog content, automatic pinging capabilities, directory listings, and backlinks, is what will get you noticed.

Sitemaps are another useful tool to let the search engines know you exist. They are basically a layout of your site, telling the SE’s where to go, and what’s new.
Fortunately, there are plugins for your blog that will automate this process and notify the SE’s whenever new content is added.
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin

The following links are for manually submitting Site-Maps. If you don’t have one, or don’t know what I am talking about, go to “Using Sitemaps” at Google where you can learn what and why, then create one. It’s free.

NOTE: You should first upload your .xml (sitemap) file to your website server’s root directory .

Google Sign in to your google webmaster tools account. If you don’t have an account (shame on you) you can sign up there.
Click the sitemaps link shown on the left side, check the sitemap.xml option, then submit. You’re done.

Yahoo Here is how you submit your sitemap to Yahoo. Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and log in with your Yahoo name and password (same as your Yahoo email if you have one). Once you log in you will want to choose Submit a Site Feed. Follow the instructions and you are done.

MSN Live Search (Bing): Login to your Live Search Webmaster Center account. If you need to register for a Live Search Webmaster Center account you can sign up here. Make sure to follow their instructions on how to add your website and verify it. Click on the website URL in the list that you wish to supply a XML sitemap for / Click on the “Sitemap” tab located near the top right / Enter your full web address to your XML sitemap / Click “Submit” and you are done.

ASK.com: Ask.com supports the open-format Sitemaps protocol. Once you have prepared the sitemap, add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt as follows:

SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml (The sitemap location should be the full sitemap URL.)

Alternatively, you can also submit your sitemap through the ping URL:

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

Social networking

Social networking (SN) sites are basically online meeting places. Most SN’s are niche focused and encourage you to share your interest by discussing relevant issues, asking questions, offering advice, and socializing in general. SN’s are quite diverse and cover every subject from A to Z. which makes finding a target audience fairly easy.

As a SN site member it is important to follow the rules. SN sites may have restrictions regarding the posting of links and not adhering these restrictions could result in you being banned. Read the user agreement and play by the rules.

Do Not spam the boards with links. Creating a professional signature with your link included is the best way to promote your business. Obviously if you are involved in a discussion, and the subject is relevant to your service or product, a properly placed link would be fine.

Avoid arguments and topics which could spawn them, remember, you are representing your business and you want everybody to like you. Taking sides on any issue will alienate a certain percentage of potential customers. If you feel the need to debate and participate in heated arguments, create a new identity that has no connection to your business.

Mashable.com lists over 300 SN sites with a brief synopsis of each. This is a great place to start.

Article Writing

Articles are a great way to generate links, boost your search engine rankings, find new prospects, and target traffic to your web site. Search engines love content articles and many people will read and link to those that are interesting and informative.

Most article syndication sites allow you to post your content for free. Once published, your content is available for everyone to read, and possibly reuse. Some sites allow you to include HTML links in your articles and some don’t… read the T.O.S.
Almost every site allows links in your “Resource Box” which is your signature, profile, bio, or whatever. You can tell a little about yourself and, more importantly, include a backlink to your website.

Publish well written, informative articles, that attract many viewers and you have a good chance that someone will re-post it (requiring the inclusion of your resource box) on their site, thus creating a backlink.

A great way to find “writing ideas” is to sign up with Google Alerts and receive e-mail once a day, week, or month announcing news articles that relate to any topic you choose. Read through these articles and you may find new inspiration.

Article Writing Resources:

Effective article writing…
A nice step-by-step to article writing.

Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing…
Interesting things to think about when writing articles.

Forums

Forums and Discussion Groups are a terrific way to promote your online business. They are almost always free to join, and offer more than just social interaction.

Active participation will enable you to discover new business strategies by sharing your ideas with other members.

Look for forums that are related to your business niche. Board Reader, Big Boards, and Board Tracker are great directories to search through.

Be somewhat selective in choosing the forums to join. Aside from being relative to your business you will want forums that are active.
See how many members there are (1000 or more is good) then check out the postings for the past week or two and make sure that there have been multiple contributions on a daily basis.

Read the user agreement and posting guidelines for every forum you join, they are not all the same. Make sure that you are allowed to place links in your signature and promote your business.

Remember, simply joining a Forum or Discussion Group does you no good unless you take part in the discussions. Build a good reputation and you will build your business.

Viral promotion through social bookmarks, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are extremely effective and will be discussed in a future post.