Zen Zoomie’s Place: Chronicles of a (Wannabe) Pro Blogger

Traffic, traffic, traffic. It’s obvious that without traffic, there’s not much chance that anyone will click on any of the ads that this site will eventually host to generate revenue. So how do you go about getting traffic to your brand new blog or website?? The internet is all about how popular your site is—how many other sources think your content is relevant and valuable enough to refer their readers to you. The more respected the source of the link and the more traffic the referring site has, the more traffic you will receive. The art/science of improving your site’s search ranking even has its own acronyms: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

So it sounds simple, right? But we have to start somewhere.

My first step will be to publish my blog information to every relevant “Blog Directory” I can find. This will do a couple of things.

1. If anyone searches one of the blog directories for information similar to what I’m blogging about here, they’ll be led straight here.

2. Search engines ranking calculations (how close to the top you appear in the search results) are based off of how many other websites link to your content. The more websites that link to you the better. Search engines also factor in the quality of the websites that link to you, which helps to reduce the effect of link spammers and other tricks (like link farms) used to drive traffic.

A few quick Google searches later and I’ve found a number of blog directories and I’m ready to begin submitting. There are boatloads of websites dedicated to Search Engine Marketing and Optimization. Here are two great ones that I found with exactly the info you’ll need..courtesy of the folks over at www.toprankblog.com.

A list of blog and RSS directories to submit a new blog to:

http://www.toprankblog.com/rss-blog-directories/

A directory of 350 (!?) blogs focused on Search Engine Marketing & Optimization techniques:

http://www.toprankblog.com/search-marketing-blogs/

I’ll register my blog personally on most of these sites mainly because I’m still a new blogger and I want to learn as much as possible early-on. Exposure to the different types of sites that are out there is good for me at this point. Better yet, if you want to save the time, this is a perfect outsourcing opportunity to hire your first virtual assistant.

Here’s a list of the directories I’ve registered with far. Many of these either request or require that you place a reciprocal link on your website in order for them to list you.

http://www.blog-flux.com (Must be 1 week old with 5 posts)
http://www.bloggernity.com
http://www.answers.com/main/new_blogger.jsp
http://www.all-blogs.net (Requires Reciprocal)
http://www.2rss.com/index.php (Requests Reciprocal)
http://blogs.botw.org/helpcenter/submitblog.aspx (Must have 6 month history to submit)
http://www.blogcode.com
http://www.blogorama.com
http://www.linkwith.us
http://www.blogbunch.com
http://www.blogdigger.com/add.jsp
http://www.bloghop.com/account/join.htm
http://www.bloghq.com
http://www.bloghub.com
http://www.blogintro.com/submit
http://www.bloglisting.com
http://www.blogpulse.com
http://www.blogsearch.com
http://www.blogsbycategory.com
http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/directory?PHPSESSID=&show=add
http://www.boingboing.net
http://www.bulletize.com
http://www.crayon.net
http://www.dailypop.com/info/submit.htm
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
http://www.feed-directory.com/addfeed
http://www.feeds4all.com/NewFeed.aspx
http://www.feedage.com
http://www.feedsfarm.com/a.html
http://findingblog.com/add_blog.php
http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php
http://chordata.geckotribe.com/suggest.php
http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/gpBlogLinkAdd.php
http://www.globeofblogs.com/register.php
http://www.iblogbusiness.com/add.html (requires 3 months of postings)
http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=addblog
http://www.industry-blogs.com/submit.php
http://www.lsblogs.com/index.php
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/Folksonomy.aspx
http://www.feedboy.com/addfeed.html?catid
http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp
http://www.postami.com/rss.finder/submit_feed.php
http://www.pressradar.com/suggest
http://www.rateitall.com/suggest.aspx?topicid=20004
http://www.readablog.com/AddFeed.aspx
http://www.redtram.com/pages/addsource/
http://www.reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/AddRSSFeed.jsp
http://www.search4rss.com
http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php
http://www.strategicboard.com/?s=h:addblog
http://www.syndic8.com/suggest_start.php
http://www.technorati.com/ping.html
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/amember/signup.php

A couple more quick tips and then you’re ready to start submitting your own site.

1. Many of the directories require you to establish a free account in order to register your blog, website or feed
2. Many of the above sites are RSS feed indexes, and you need to submit the feed address to those websites, not just your blog’s URL. If you’re using Wordpress, the following are the RSS URL’s (of course, replace the www.yourwebsite.com with your actual URL):

• RSS 1.0 - www.yourwebsite.com/wp-rss.php
• RSS 2.0 - www.yourwebsite.com/wp-rss2.php
• Atom - www.yourwebsite.com/wp-atom.php

For this activity, I spent the following resources:

Cost in Time: 6 hours
Cost in $’s: $0.00