at the moment my blog has only got 1 page, with about 600 words, then a couple of blog posts. Should i start submitting to directories and linking to it to try and get it indexed now?, so when i add the new pages (once a week) search engines will see it as updates? or will it hurt my SEO if there isnt any more than 1 page of good content to begin with? Thanks!
not sure what you mean swartz. The only way to get indexed is to have someone link to your site, isn't it?
Well, there's the "traditional" method of submitting your site to the search engine(s) and waiting for them to get around to indexing you. It's faster and more effective to get back links (preferably on high PR sites). Blogs are about as easy as it gets. I started a blog on 2-10. I've been adding roughly one post a day and pinging services like technorati. I noticed yesterday that google has it indexed. 3 weeks isn't great, but for something I'm really not marketing at all, it's not too bad.
The way I like to think of blogs (and this is not original nor ground-breaking) is that they are conversations: you are talking to someone (preferably lots of someones ) and they would probably talk back. So think about who would read your blog? For each post you write, who are the people you are talking to? What kind of person are they? Are they science PhDs looking to go into law or are they 50-something men looking to buy a red car? Now that you can answer that question, ask two more questions: 1. What would the people I'm talking to like to hear? The list you come up with is your future posts ideas. 2. Where do the people I'm talking to hang out on the net? What forums and websites do they frequent? What newsletters do they subscribe to? The answers to this will help you market your site. 3. WHY would people read your blog? What's so special about you or your writing? Don't take this personally, but with millions of blogs out there, you must differentiate yourself somehow - unless you're very famous Getting links is fairly easy if you have good content. Answering the above questions should help you write better posts. Ideas for you to try to get links and traffic: 1. Post a link in signatures in forums that your audience frequents. Make the links interesting. Yes, pure blooded marketing comes into play here. 2. Write a great article and submit it or announce it on popular sites your audience likes to hang out. 3. Social bookmarks. Digg, delicious, furl, reddit, etc. These are great to get the word out and to start getting some links. However, you only get a few chances at marketing (I would argue only one), so before you try the three ideas above, make sure your site is worth bookmarking. Make sure that if I read it, I will tell my friends about it. Hope this helps.
thats some great advice mate! at the moment im not completely happy with the content, and it will be my first blog so its abit scary i hope to be ready to start marketing it some time next week. Thanks for the help guys!
Hey. If it's any consolation, I didn't know most of the answers to the questions I posted when I first started my blog. Now, I can virtually see who my audience are and every time I post, I imagine I'm explaining to them something in person. My point is don't fret and hammer away until you are comfortable with what you are doing. If it takes a month, fine, if it takes a week, fine!
heh, im actually using that theme! think its one of the best ones out there, nice and clean, simple. ill post back when i have it finished. Thanks again!
Once you've uploaded your page to your site you've already open your site to the search engines to index your site. But if you're looking for the serious linkbuilding I dont see a problem. Unless your site is not really that se friendly you should put some codes that block SE spiders to enter your site.
I would certainly get started into it now. Plus it looks better for your site to have updated content as time goes by. Will also have people coming back to your site to see if you have posted anything new. Brad
Yup, it's ok to start. Get it up and then start building the links and keep adding fresh content to you website! Manish
Yeah Blix is great, and very customizable. Once you figure out how it does things - and it does them in a more webmaster-friendly manner than the rest - you can really hammer it into shape. I'm currently working on a redesign, but IE is being stupid. I wonder if we can red-rep IE... any IE developers around here? They would do
LOL I think lot of people still using IE.I hope they will encounter mozilla sometime when theyre browsing the net.