So How Will They Find My Blog? Four Really Easy Ways

So How Will They Find My Blog? Four Really Easy Ways
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You just started your first blog - probably at Blogger.com. You have written a few posts. You have told your close friends, and now you you would like a few more people to find you blog.

You have seen hundreds of articles, posts, and even whole web sites devoted to "search engine optimization," but it all sounds so complicated. Are there a few REALLY easy ways to let people find my blog?

1. Write a lot of posts. Especially if you are using Blogger, each of your posts will be indexed individually by Google and the other search engines, giving you more exposure with each post you write. There are two Blogger settings that you must leave with their default values in order to get indexed: Enable Post Pages under the Archiving tab must be Yes. Let Search Engines Find Your Blog under the Basic tab must be Yes. You also want to leave Add your Blog To Our Listing, also under the Basic tab, as Yes in order to be linked from Blogger.

2. Use Google's FeedBurner - feedburner.google.com - to make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog or receive it via email.

3. Add your blog's home page and at least a few of your individual posts to a few of the bookmarking sites. There are hundreds, but just focus on a few. StumbleUpon.com is probably the most important. Unless your blog targets a specialty audience, reddit.com and digg.com would be the next two that I would recommend.

4. Add a universal bookmarking button to your site so your visitors can easily recommend you to their favorite bookmarker. Several universal buttons are available, but I use the one at addthis.com

You can see each of these suggestions in action on Blogging Tips and Techniques.