When I first started blogging, I assumed that using a blog platform, instead of hosting your own blog, would drive traffic to the blog. As it turned out, I was wrong. The platforms themselves, and the community, may get you a handful of hits per day, but only if you blog several times a day causing your blog to appear on the”updated blogs” list for like 30 seconds until you get bumped off by 100,000 other blogs that were just updated. You actually have to put a little work into it if you want to start climbing your way to the top. You should first set your blog up with Technorati if you haven’t done so yet. You’ll immediately start getting traffic from there.

The first time around it took months for the search engines to find me and my ranking was so low that even if I did show up, it was on page 484. I’d say that it took probably 6-8 months before I was receiving steady traffic and appearing on page 1 or 2 of the search engines for content related searches. I didn’t do any submissions of that blog. As most of you know, I moved my blog to WordPress three weeks ago so I have to work my way back up. I’m not willing to wait 6-8 months to rebuild the traffic that I had. 

I used to run a web-based business so I know how to “market” a website. Left to it’s own devices, it could take months, years or never for your site to start appearing anywhere. Referrals and links are important. One thing I should mention is that I don’t do “link exchanges.” It works for some people, but with link exchanges, you sometimes become “affiliated” with people you’d really rather not be affiliated with. Sometimes it becomes bad for business. Once I linked to someone else’s blog that linked to me and then three days later I went back to check the blog and there was a picture of some guy’s wang and lots of F and C words. I was mortified. I have kids! I can’t be linking to sites like that! So that lesson was learned the hard way. And no, I’m not giving you the link.

This time around, I decided to market my blog, just like it was a business website I’d just set up. You need to be your own webmaster. I immediately started submitting it to the search engines. I started listing it in blog directories. I believe in “earning” links- writing something interesting so that people link to you. With just doing link exchanges, it’s very unlikely that someone who has an actual interest in your blog will a. visit it and b. come back. Your readers are your “customers.” You want the people who find you to actually be interested in the subject matter. It is those people who will return, those people who will link to you, and those people who will tell their friends. Again, very much like a business.

So, you ask, where do I go to start submitting my website? First let me tell you something: don’t pay for things you can get for free. The paid submissions are a waste of money. I submitted to several engines and directories that promised if I didn’t pay it would be months before my submissions began to show up. It’s been about two weeks, and lo and behold, I’m getting referrals from those very engines. So what follows is a list of where to go to submit your blog. Make sure that you use a real email address when they ask for it, because many blog directories will ask you to confirm your submission by email. When you submit what topics you talk about, make sure you give an accurate description. You’re cheating yourself by saying you blog about golf when you’ve never even mentioned it. Make sure that you tag each and every blog entry accurately with whatever subject you chose to write about. This helps search engines, bots and people find you.

So here you go, start submitting away. You need only submit your “main” page, the bots will do the rest. Some sites want your feed address. Pay attention to what they’re asking for. WordPress automatically submits your blog to several search engines that would otherwise take time to be listed in- big bonus!

Oh and remember where you found this gold mine of information. ;)

Google (VERY VALUABLE!)
Yahoo (You may need to log in and/or register to see this page. If so, right click on this link to see the address and copy and paste it into your browser after you log into yahoo.)
MSN
Jayde (Requires email validation)
Open Directory (Strict Guidelines!)
Scrub the Web
Exact Seek
Ask Jeeves
EntireWeb
Alexa
Walhello
Blog Search
Free Web Submission
Parenting Blog Directory (Submit only Parenting Sites)
Try such sites as BlogPulse, BlogFlux, Blogorama and Popdex too.

RSS Submissionshas a huge list of blog directories to submit your blog to.

There are several major search engines that power the smaller search engines. So once you start appearing on Google, MSN and Yahoo, your blog will start appearing in the smaller ones as well. It may take awhile to really get a good ranking in the some of the search engines, but be patient and keep blogging. The more entries you write, the more content you have that is searchable. And when people click on those links in the search engines, it increases your popularity and you get a higher ranking. It’s all a very incestuous process. It’s ok if you “overlap” when submitting sites. The more bots that crawl your site, the more traffic you will get from the search engines. You also want to be listed in as many blog directories as you can.

Mention other people and link to them. Give credit where credit is due. If you see a subject that you want to blog about on someone else’s blog, make sure you link back to that person. Good will goes a long way towards link love. Don’t be afraid to leave relevant comments on other people’s sites. Yeah, I’m talking to you, lurkers!

Lastly, think about the content. Good writing, interesting subjects and pictures are what will make or break a blog. No one really wants to read about how you went to the store today. Unless you tell them about how you went into the store, saw your reflection in the glass and noticed you had toilet paper streaming out from your pants like a white, waving tail. You can’t be afraid to put yourself out there. People keep coming back for the laughs. And if you’re wondering how I came up with that creative scenario, it was derived from the time my grandmother came out of the bathroom on the airplane with the toilet seat cover tucked into the back of her pants, waving like the tails on a tux. Yep. Gotta love my grandma. ;)

Good luck! May you have lots of traffic and many comments…..