Writing superb content just doesn’t cut it anymore.  You can create a website or blog with cutting edge and novel content, but unless you promote it no one will find it.  Well, a few people might accidentally type in the url for your site and discover it, but the market you are targeting will be oblivious to your existence.  In order for people to find your website, you need to market it.

Linking

Don’t be afraid to link out to what you believe may be your competitors.  Obviously if you are running an ecommence site, do not link every product page to a cheaper competitor.  That is just plain stupid.  However if you run a blog, linking to useful and related posts or comments is beneficial to your readers and to your website in terms of seo.  Matt Cutts says that linking out is a smart thing to do.

Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

Not only are there benefits in terms of seo, but I’m sure your readers will appreciate it when they want more information on that topic.

What does it say when you have a website that has no outbound links?  If you fail to recognize your resources, why should other people bother linking to you?  Linking is part of the web, and by failing to link you segregate yourself.

If you start linking out, people will start linking in (assuming that your content is worthwhile).  People are inherently curious; visitors on your website will click on those links.  When the webmaster of the other website looks at his backlinks or traffic referrers, that person is going to proceed down the same path as your visitors.  Curiosity will capture them, and they will visit your site.  When they arrive, that first impression will be lasting.  Would you rather them leave thinking – “God dam copy scrapping blogs” or “wow this person really has some incredible knowledge”.  Even if you only plant a seed in the back of their mind instead of leaving a monumental impression, it’s a start at the very least.

Commenting

Interacting with readers on your own blog, as well as, writers of other blogs helps increase your exposure.  It will alert others to your existence, and allow you to participate in discussions beyond the post. Commenting can have the same effect as linking.  If you write an thoughtful respond or question, people will be overcome with curiosity, and they will want to see what else you have to offer.

Commenting is a means of attracting new visitors, and increasing your visibility within your niche, but it also helps with seo.  The majority of blogs may have no follow comment links, but that doesn’t mean that those links lack value.  These links might be unable to pass pagerank and be treated differently by search engines, but the fact of the matter is that no follow comment links are still seen and thus they provide some benefit.

Networking

It encompasses a pretty wide range of mediums from social networking to networking while at a conference. The means by which you network doesn’t really matter, but the message you convey does.  Whether you are talking to someone at a business conference or expressing yourself on Twitter, it is a powerful tool.  Enlarging your contact circle, sharing opportunities and ideas, and marketing yourself is what networking is all about.

When you are networking, do not be self absorbed and have a one track mind.  Just as with commenting, you need to be interactive, engaging, and care about what the other person is saying.  No one likes a person who just pushes their own agenda, while essentially ignoring the other person in a conversation.  You might as well just talk to a mirror if that is how you are going to go about networking.

Linking, commenting, and networking are resources that can be utilized to improve your exposure and gain you credibility.  They are all tied together in a sense, but if you try to squeeze by only using one of these things, increasing your visibility will be hindered.  Don’t ostracize yourself, instead interact with the people involved in your niche.

If you spent that time writing, how much quality content could you create? A couple fantastic posts probably.

It is time to look at how you budget your time.  I am by no means saying stop reading all of your favorite blog posts, but instead I am pointing out the fact that there should be a balance between how much time you read and how much time you allocate to writing.

Reading –> Ideas

Reading posts from other respected individuals in your niche can provide you with insightful ideas.  You might write a spin off about something they discussed, call them out on a falsehood, or just get the inspiration you need to talk about something that no one else has yet touched upon.  Reading quality posts or content is a useful tool in triggering your own thought development.

One thing to avoid while reading is to steer clear of mindless or rehashed content.  Don’t waste your time reading the same concepts over and over.  If you do that, then you blog posts will reflect just that; they will lack any uniqueness and spirit. You might not realize it initially, but a few sentences into a post your mind will click and say this looks all to familiar.  Too many time are the same points bashed again and again or content that isn’t worth reading is posted.  I don’t mind the occasional rant, but sometime enough is enough – people just need to learn to put a cap on it.  If you find yourself reading something that isn’t different and or lacks true creativity, move on to the next thing.

Once you read a few post from someone, you will know what type of content they are pushing, which will drive you away or will leave you wanting more.  There will likely be plenty of places that you will never return to.  However, after a while of cutting your way through the jungle of rehashing, incompetent, or just plain monotone writers, you’ll find a few diamonds in the rough.  Their content will subsequently generate ideas that you can run with.

Writing –> Recognition and Reputation

Quality writing will allow you to create a reputation and gain you recognition as well. If you just mimic your favorite posters, then your content will suck.  Consider using a text spinner to save yourself some time if you plan on rehashing old news. Don’t turn into the blogs that you read a few lines from and proceed to leave.

What you want to do is build upon a concept someone else started or better yet discuss something that is lacking a perspective or any information whatsoever.  To gain recognition and reputation your posts should

• Be original – Stand out from the crowd
• Challenge people – Have merit to your argument though
• Have purpose – Don’t write for the sense of needing to create something new
• Have personality – Express yourself as who you really are

Writing exceptional blog posts by itself is not enough; you need to do more than that.  Writing encompasses more than creating a new blog post.

When I refer to writing, I am not solely talking about writing articles or posts.  Writing also includes commenting on the thing that you have been reading about.  Interacting with the authors that inspire your posts or just make you think is a favorable thing to do.  By challenging their ideas or adding further input upon the topic, you demonstrate your interest and knowledge.  Ideally, this will help you create a network and encourage them to visit our blog to see what you are writing about.  It might also open the door for guest posting, which is an excellent way to increase your exposure.

Not only should you be commenting on the content you read, but you should be interacting with the commenters on your own blog.  This lets your readers know that you care about their opinions and shows that you’ll take the time to develop the discussion and answer questions beyond your post.

Managing and utilizing the available time you have to the maximum is a challenging task, but by doing so you enable yourself to increase your productivity.  By balancing the time you spend reading and writing, you are better able to create quality, original, and provoking content while expanding your reach.

• Just got out of the shower.
• Is headed off to an exciting day in NYC!!@
• Got stuck in traffic. Sad face.
• Hey babie, check me out…i just uploaded some pics at ***.com
• Victory is ours! (Reference to Ashton Kutcher’s race to 1,000,000 followers)

I could care less about all of those things and so should all of you.

The only purpose I see so far is that if you haven’t gotten your reality TV fix, you can now see minute by minute updates of the exact same garbage.  Oh, there’s one more; for all of you stalkers out there, following your favorite celebrity has never been easier.

Really though, stop wasting your time on Twitter.  Move onto something a bit more meaningful – flash games perhaps.  At least those can improve you fine motor skills and coordination.  Let Twitter continue down the path to the ultimate internet cesspool that ends up becoming synonymous with the spam section of you inbox.

Write one or a couple (if you are felling particularly ambitious) answers including your link(s).  Copy and paste this answer to as many relevant questions as possible.  If you post this answer to unrelated topics, you will greatly increase you’ve chance of being suspended.  Try to achieve level 2 prior to getting suspended, so that the links you leave behind are clickable.  You can do this by voting for questions to gain points (prior to your massive spamming), posting questions on another account and choosing your own answer as the best answer, or by being more conservative regarding what questions you answer.  Have multiple accounts, so suspensions don’t halt you spamming.

Borderline Spammer:

The same concept as being a full out spammer, except you are much more selective with the questions that you pick to answer.  You only answer questions that your prewritten answers match quite well with.  The likelihood of getting banned is slim, but you might as well have multiple accounts just in case.

Genuine User:

You write a custom answer to each question and include your link when appropriate.  One might even include the links of other websites to give an answer more depth and validity is necessary.  The likelihood of getting banned is extremely slim, but it still does happen; luckily, you can appeal all suspensions.

Whichever method you choose to (ab)use, remember that you are creating and defining a reputation for the website that you link to.  I view Yahoo Answers mainly as a traffic promotion source rather than as a means of improving serps.  Granted the links are nofollow, they still provide some benefit when it comes to search engine optimization.

Above is a graph of what Yahoo Answers did for a website of mine; the posting method used would fit into the borderline spammer category.  I started to post ~250 answers over the period of 2 weeks starting on November 13th.  After posting was stopped on November 27th, traffic from Yahoo Answers asymptotes down to ~50 visitors per day.  As January continues though, you can see that traffic rebounds to ~150 visitors per day.  I am not quite sure what caused this slight rebound, but I believe that the questions started to rank for long tail search terms.

In terms of revenue generated regarding time spent, Yahoo Answers has done quite well so far.  The niche promoted earns $10 CPM, which means that approximately $150 was generated from Yahoo Answers traffic thus far.  Estimated time to post an answer is 1 minute, which means that this earned $36 / hour.  Not too shabby considering the fact that minimum wage is only $7.25 / hour.  This may just be mindless copying and pasting, but aren’t all minimum wage jobs exactly that?