Here at SeanSEO.com we know that commenting on blogs can help your site’s SEO. We knew this already but we especially know this when we look at our spam filter in the back end of this blog!

If you’re not already commenting on blogs, you might consider doing so because:

• Blog commenting can get you relevevant links pointing to your blog which is good for SEO
• Blog commenting can get you reciprocal comments from the blog owner you visit
• Blog commenting can bring you new visitors to your site (when you post in relevant topics to your topic)

Some people go off and try to get their links at any cost. They simply go off and comment with links in their comments and little other value.  Chances are that when you do that, the blog owner is going to just zap your comment out into spam oblivion instead of approving it.  We get all sorts of comments from adult themed blogs as well as non-sensical comments and paragraphs filled with weird links or strange characters.  We don’t approve them.  We love Askimet (a free anti-spam WordPress plug-in! as it catches a vast majority for us so we don’t even have to look at 90% of the spam that comes in.

When we do get comment notifications, what we do approve includes:

• Interesting comments that provide value to our readers or the topic
• Questions that are genuine, not just an effort to get a link published
• Comments that aren’t filled with obvious self-serving links
• Comments relevant to our niche here at the blog

P.S: Don’t build nofollow into your comment. Talk about obvious!

When you go out into cyberspace to promote, look to related blogs and provide value when you comment. Not only does that value help you get your comment approved but you may also get interested people clicking on your link so see what your site is all about.

Happy promoting!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Ping your blogs, ping your status! Why?  Letting others know you’ve updated or done something specific can bring you new traffic.  A lot of ping services are available. Here’s a list of pinging services but let’s have a look at two: Ping-O-Matic and Ping.Fm.

Ping-O-Matic

Ping-O-Matic gets the detailed URL you want to ‘ping’ and will then tell all the services you ‘check’ that your blog is updated. Why does Ping-O-Matic do what they do for free? They like to play with data. (Shrug.) This is something a lot of people make sure to use when they first start a new blog to get people visiting it sooner which can help speed up the search engine indexing process.

Ping.Fm

Ping.Fm is a new service just out of beta. It pings your status to multiple places esepcially if you’re a prolific microblogger. It works great if you’re doing the micro blogging thing and are tired of stopping by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk and a bunch of other places to post the link to your new site or blog post, to wax lyrical about the cool new pair of shoes you got for half price or shout to the world about the massive ClickBank check that just arrived in the mail.  Instead of visiting all those places, Ping.Fm tells them all for you after you post the update once.

These services are definitely beneficial because not only can you spread the word on something but you can also save time! Time is money in internet marketing so go ahead and start pinging and you just might make more of it!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Brand building is vital in internet marketing. If you’re trying to get a name as a trusted advisor in your niche, you want a good reputation so you’ll need to seoize more than your site. You’ll want to seoize yourself too.

Your name is your brand and people who are thinking of buying from you are definitely going to look you up.  Optimize yourself in Google and keep an eye out on what’s happening under your name searches on all the major search engines; especially on the first two pages.

Here are some great profile building tools you can use:

LinkedIn: LinkedIn gives you a professional looking business profile and will rank well in search engines so people will often see this positive page on page one when they go looking for you.

FaceBook: Set up a FaceBook profile and that can land on page one as well.

MySpace:  Despite the newer tools out there, MySpace is definitely not dead. Your MySpace profile can help you and you can definitely capitalize on this tool to make money.

Blog posts: If you can, get your own blogs up but also ask others to ‘review’ you on their blog. Talk to friends in your niche and consider doing a review swap to promote one another.

Google Alerts is a great tool as we’ve said on SeanSEO before. Set up a Google alert for your name so you can see when new things about you go online.

Your Name is Your Brand

There are a lot of things you can do to promote yourself such as joining social media sites and participating in online forums. remember that everything you do and say online can be traced back to you and can impact your internet marketing career in a positive or negative way.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

People love free stuff and there’s a huge online industry built on the internet user’s desire to win something or get something for nothing. Use the giveaway or contest to help you with several areas of online business.  You can use this to your advantage in internet marketing in several ways.

What Should You Give Away?

A free report, a gadget, even something small like a gift card or a free book can help you in several ways including: increasing subscribers, generating traffic, building a mailing list and increasing your SEO.

Subscribers and SEO and Mailing Lists-Oh My!

You can do the above in several ways including asking people to write about you on their blog with a link or referring others to your site. They can also write in comments on your blog as well as do social bookmarking to tell others about your contests.You can even really utilise the contest entry by building a mailing list and starting to build an autoresponder series. Use names of contest entries to try to sell other products or services of yours (do be sure you offer an opt-out link.).

In terms of building a following and getting attention, the small investment you make in a giveaway can result in your making more money online overall.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Are you using widgets on your blog? Remember the plain old WordPress themes like Kubrick? Today blogs can be much fancier.  WordPress is the industry standard in blogs and can be great for monetization and SEO and it’s quite widget-friendly.

What do widgets do?

Widgets can simply dress up your blog or they can provide function as well. They’re simple to insert and generally you can just paste the code into a text widget and place it where you like.  Many sites offer widgets for you to grab and use.  They can help you put advertising on the site as well as direct your traffic elsewhere. Here are some examples of blog widgets you might consider using:

Twitter or Plurk

These widgets can sit on your site and tell people what you’re doing. You can get the widget from your user settings and it’ll allow your website visitors to read your statuses, click to subscribe or follow your updates as well as let them see others on your friends list.

EzineArticles

Ezinearticles.com has a widget that feeds your articles to your site which can be great for your marketing efforts.

My Favourite Widgets

I’m a bit of a self-professed widget junkie.MyBlogLog has one of my favourite widgets. There are a few to choose from that look great and can show people your various blogs or your activities in social marketing so people can see the sites you Digg or Stumble as well as links for new posts in cyberspace. Wink offers my other favourite options as it also lets people check out a lot of different aspects of your online activity and is customisable so it’ll blend well into just about any template.

Social profile sites often have widgets you can use that can help you with social bookmarking and networking as well as dress your blog for success. There are also functional ones that feed internet marketing ads and other blogs for advertising and link exchanges. What widgets do you use and why?

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008