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Australian Blog Of The Month August 2009

Welcome to the Australian Blog Of The Month Series – where each month we focus on one Australian Blog that reveals their Blogging Success Strategies. This month’s Australian Blog Of The Month is www.ScrapbookingCompanion.com/blog which focuses on you guessed it – Scrapbooking! We have asked each blogger to reveal a handful of their success strategies so that you can learn from them within the context of different blogs and audiences they cater for.

Hi, this is Marie Perrow the from Scrapbooking Companion.

I thought I would share 8 of my successful blogging strategies with you since I was chosen as the Blog Of The Month By Australian Blogs.

Here are some of my strategies to making sure my blog gets the traffic and readers that I am looking for.

Blogging Success Tip #1: Use Keyword Rich Text In Your Blog

One of the strategies that I use for every blog post is keyword optimisation.  You hear about this over and over again how important it is to have your website or blog keyword optimised. I can tell you that I have found that it is just as important if not more so to make sure that your blog is full of the keywords that you are trying to gain higher rankings for in Google THAT ATTRACT the kind of people you want coming to your blog. When you get to know your readership and member audience, you’ll know as I do that they come from a ‘set’ group of keywords.

For example, in my case, there are more people who come for the words Scrapbooking Ideas than they do Scrapbooking Templates. Scrapbooking Concepts is also a popular keyword that has improved my traffic numbers.

What you need to know is basically “What are people searching for in Google to get to your blog?”

Blogging Success Tip 2: Interview Interesting People For Your Blog

If you are running out of ideas for your blog, start to interview some experts in your field.  Not only will this be great fresh content but it also gives further credibility to your blog.  I was very pleasantly surprised to find that when I simply asked to do some interviews within the scrapbooking field that people were more than happy to help and in most cases they didn’t even ask for anything in return!

I generously offered to give them a copy of the original recordings as I wanted to make sure that the time people spent being interviewed was worth it for all involved. If they used the recording, that would bring additional traffic to my blog since I made sure I mentioned the blog and my website several times DURING the Interview! Don’t forget to do this!!!

Blogging Success Tip #3: Teach People Something NEW On Your Blog

After researching how people like to interact and purchase Scrapbooking products and supplies I realised that people really love to be shown or taught something new.  So I make sure that all my blog posts are informative in some way.  I want to be able to help people with their questions not give them more questions.

I know this sounds self-evident, but it’s not. There are a lot of blogs out there that are frankly a total waste of time. They are there for selfish reasons. If you want your blog to be successful, learn to be selfless and make sure you give as much value as you can afford to without compromising your commercial principles and the need to generate income and sales.

Blogging Success Tip #4:  Use YouTube To Promote Your Blog

I often leverage YouTube videos to make sure that my point is covered visually as well as just via the written word.  While I don’t always have the time to film YouTube videos myself I can still use other people’s videos in my blog posts I just make sure the video is not heavily branded and is relevant to Scrapbooking (of course you look for something on your topic!) This is an often overlooked SEO blog traffic strategy because as people watch the videos on my blog it means people stay on my blog much longer and that helps me with the search engine rankings for the words tagged to that blog post.

Blogging Success Tip #5: Out-Source Writing And Research For Your Blog

If I am away or too busy to write blog posts,I’ll often outsource my blog post writing to a freelancer to do the basic writing and research. This way I can have fresh content to put on my blog at least every week.  This is very helpful blogging strategy, but it means that you must make sure when you do this that the content you get written is unique (there are ways to double-check this), fits the overall theme and feel of your blog and it’s based on the topics relevant to your blog.  Who knows, you might even learn something new!

I suggest you edit and make each blog post your own so it does not sound disjointed, but comes across in your personal voice – the voice people are used to hearing.

Blogging Success Tip #6: Register Your Blog With Australian Blogs

I will often make sure that my blog is linked appropriately and registered on other websites that are recognised in my field. This helps me to get better Google rankings, more comments and generally more traffic to my website which ultimately increases sales.  When I first registered my Scrapbooking Companion Blog on Australian Blogs my traffic statistics went up by orders of magnitude and at last check approximately 27% of all my traffic to my Scrapbooking Companion Blog is a direct result of being linked to Australian Blogs.

If you haven’t done this yet and your blog is Australian, you’re missing out on the fastest way to get FREE traffic to your blog.

Blogging Success Tip #7: Comment On Other People’s Blogs

I will often comment on other people’s blogs. This helps me with blog link building. Just make sure that if you don’t know the correct html coding that you reference your site like this http://www.ScrapbookingCompanion.com that way Google and all the other search engines can find your website or blog automatically.

One of the tests you need to make is to determine if it’s better to get people to your BLOG or sales page/website. This is different for each product or marketplace. I have multiple blogs and there is no ‘single best way’ – you need to track your metrics with Google Analytics to know what’s best for your blog.

Blogging Success Tip #8: Stay On Your Blog’s Topic

I’ll say it again stay on topic!  If your blog and website is all about scrapbooking don’t start talking about your pet dog unless you can make this relevant to scrapbooking. It is very easy to get side tracked and discuss your new puppy, the birth of a child, or something important in your life and while that is incredibly important to you it is irrelevant and a waste of someone else’s time if all they are interested in is Scrapbooking.

Now having said that if the purpose of you blog is to discuss your life go for it but if it’s meant to be a professional blog make sure you keep it that way.

I hope this helps

Marie Perrow
Scrapbooking Queen
www.Scrapbookingcompanion.com

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