10 ways to promote your blog for free

If you have just started a blog or have been running one without success, then a guide on how to promote your blog or website is exactly what you need. There are probably thousands of how to guides on the internet today that will provide you with details on what to do but you have to start somewhere right?

In my experience, I have seen many bloggers become desperate trying to market their blog, they join many programs or social sites where they spread themselves too thin and loose their way. Some pay expensively for blog promotion services which don’t work, they end up getting frustrated.

What I have discovered is that there are handful of simple ways which can greatly promote your blog. that I have personally tested and found to work in a considerably short amount of time.

 Here are 10 quick, easy and free ways to promote your blog.

1. Guest post

There are probably thousands if not millions of bloggers out there who are looking for guest bloggers, some will even pay you to do a guest post. What you need to do is find a blog with a high traffic and offer to write a guest post, this will give you an opportunity to get a quality back link to your blog and increase the amount of traffic.

2. Network with other bloggers

Bloggers out there are looking for opportunities to link up with other bloggers to exchange ideas and improve search engine visibility. these communities will also give you quality back links to your blog, examples of these communities are bloggers and blog catalog.

3. Social bookmarking

This is one of the best and first places every blogger must post their links to. Most social bookmarking sites rank very high in search engines and they can bring you quality and targeted visitors to your site.

4. Participate in forums

Participating in forums related to your niche is another great way to promote your blog. The best way to attract audience in forums is to provide useful information. Do a research on a particular question asked and provide useful answers; this will make other forum participants and other looking for the same solution interested in your blog.

5. Comment on other blogs.

Apart from getting quality back links that will increase your search engine visibility and drive traffic to your site, commenting on other blogs related to your niche will give you more ideas on how to improve your blog. Make a simple goal of commenting on at least 5 blogs a day.

6. Submit your site to blog directories

Sites like Technorati, Mashable and alltop or any other that are relevant to your industry and audience will do a great job in exposing your site. Remember the more people know that your blog exists the more visitors you will get.

7. Email Marketing.

Those who tell you that email marketing is dead are Wrong. in fact one of the best ways to tell your close friends about your blog or post is through an email. Just make sure you don’t spam their inbox or they will ignore you, send at least one email in a week or two.

8. Feed directories

This is probably the easiest way of promoting your blog since you don’t have to always post your content manually. Most feed directories will automatically recognize your new blog post and index them on their sites. Example of these sites are, Feedage and Octofinder.

9. Pinging sites

Pinging is also a very important part of SEO, if you are aiming at making it to the first position in the search engines then its mandatory. Pinging is a simple way of telling search engines that you have published something new.

10. Content is the key

You have to remember that the reason why everyone is visiting your blog is to find something useful. There is no specific amount of posts, it all depends on what you are offering your readers. Write powerful posts that will make your readers want to come back and will be useful for many days to come.