How Can I Promote My Blog for Free?

So now you’ve got your website started. Hopefully you did your keyword research, using a good tool like Jaaxy and followed my 3 tips on writing a blog post for your website. Now that you have a few posts up, you want to let people know about it. Being that you’re just starting out or are returning to the blogging scene, budget is probably a concern.

At this point you’re probably asking yourself “How can I promote my blog for free?”. That’s a great question to ask. Even if you’re not new or returning from a long break, getting traffic for free is a no-brainer. Let’s take a look at a few ways to let people know about your blog that won’t cost you a dime…

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SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEO should be one of the very first things you setup on your blogging site. Why? Because the majority of your traffic is likely to come from search engine results. SEO literally stands for Search Engine Optimization and that’s exactly what you want for your site.

Optimizing it for the search engines is one of the best ways to make sure your content starts ranking. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t do it, I’m sure you’ll still end up in the search results but, who knows how far down the results list you’ll be. Why make it difficult for the search engines to help you anyway? You really want to make it as easy as possible for them to get your info into their databases and start providing links to your site, should someone be searching for a term that matches your keywords.

Not only do they help get you SEO ready but they also help with preparing your pages and posts to be shared on social media platforms. They allow you to select a preferred image and description to use when your post is being shared by you or others.

Although there are many SEO tools available, I’m going to recommend 3 WordPress plugins for your SEO needs. Please note you should only use one of them at a time, don’t try to have multiple SEO plugins running simultaneously. That will just lead to problems…

All in One SEO Pack

This one is a great option for helping you get your site SEO ready. It’s actually the standard recommended SEO plugin in most of the training on Wealthy Affiliate and what is currently in use on this site. I recommend you go this route if you’re planning to join WA and follow their training.

Yoast SEO

This is another very popular SEO plugin for WordPress. I don’t have personal experience with this one but it does have a devout following and comes highly recommended by many. I believe even Jay, the Wealthy Affiliate Live Training Coach uses it on some of his sites.

Rank Math

This one is relatively new to the game but packs some great features. I particularly like the built-in rich snippets feature and SEO Analysis tool. I actually use this one on my drone site: https://MavicManiacs.com. It’s definitely growing on me and I can see it being a real contender for SEO plugin dominance in a year or two.

Each of these plugins will help you get your site where it needs to be, as far as the search engines are concerned and allow you set things like the meta title and description (shown in the search engine results). Take some time to check them out and see which one is the best fit for you and your site.

Social Media

Nothing goes viral quicker than something on social media. One of your best investments can be using these platforms to further your blog and business.

Here are some tips to consider:

• Don’t join every social media platform out there. This is detrimental to your business. Not only will it be a huge time sink to have to post to each one but some probably just aren’t the right platform for your niche. It wouldn’t make sense for me to join a platform designed for musicians in order to promote my drone site.
• Join a few that fit your niche best. What I mean by this is, take a look at the various platforms out there. Does the platform offer groups or pages and, if so, do any of those groups or pages fit your niche? I use Facebook a lot. There are a ton of drone groups and pages on Facebook so, for my drone site, it’s a great platform. The same goes for Pinterest. There are a lot of collections that are drone related and I find that my pins are shared among them very well.
• Take the time to engage in the group(s) on the platform. Build a name for yourself. Then, when you provide a link to one of your posts, people will be more likely to follow it as you have a good reputation within the group.
• Be tactful in your posts. Don’t just say hey, check out my site. Try to work your links in naturally and not in an advertisement sort of way. Many groups have a no soliciting policy in place and saying “check out my drone site here” will probably get me banned from the group or, at the very least, get my post removed by the admins. I’ve found that answering people’s questions within a group is a great way to post tactfully. If someone asks, “What filter do you recommend for a Mavic Pro?”, I could reply, “I like the Polar Pro Vivid Series myself and have written a review about them here…”, pasting my link to the relative post at that point. By doing this, no only do you avoid the soliciting issue but you’re providing help to someone asking. Others reading that thread will also see your link. That’s free, targeted marketing right there!

There are more things to consider but these few tips should get you decent results in a short period of time.

For more social media tips, check out these great posts:

10 Social Media Statistics You Need to Know in 2022

Social Media Marketing Ideas

Commenting

A lot of people don’t realize that visiting other sites related to your niche and leaving quality comments on posts can get you noticed and even traffic back to your site.

Hit some of those YouTube channels and “competing” blog sites and leave some well thought, quality comments. If you can get engagement with the authors or even other readers, chances are you can get them to your site or even a link back to your site from that post you’re commenting on. At the very least, you might get people searching your name (assuming you used it for your comments) and finding your site that way.

This can bring you a lot of qualified traffic because the visitors to those blogs and channels are in your market too. Yes you’re helping your competition by engaging but, in the end, it’s a win-win for both of you and they might start doing the same on your site.

Guest Blogging

This one is taking commenting to a new level. Content is king and producing that content takes time and resources. Many blog owners welcome guest blog posts. The expectation in return is to have a link back to the authors blog. I actually do this on my drone site and my first guest blog, 5 Ways to Get Clients as a Beginner Drone Pilot – Great Tips to Obtain Huge Results, was posted last week.

It’s a great way to get quality content for your own site with the only cost being you’re exposing your visitors to another source of information in your niche (assuming the guest blogger’s site is related to your niche).

If you find writing content easy and have the time, consider writing an article or two and offering it to authority sites in your niche. This can get you some great traffic in return, as people follow your links back to your site.

Mailing Lists

I touched on this in my Free Email Autoresponders – 5 Great Options for Your Blog article. Building a mailing list is essential to the growth of your site. How many times have you visited a site and signed up for their mailing list because you wanted to keep informed of whatever it was their site was about? Now how many times did you do it because they offered some sort of bonus for free?

Guess what, you’re now part of their mailing database and, because you sought to join, you’re considered a qualified prospect. They know what you signed up for and they know that, if they shoot you an email with a service, product or topic related to that niche, chances are, you’ll at least read it, might follow the link they include and maybe even buy something.

You should do the same thing. You’d be surprised at how someone signs up for something, forgets about it and then gets an email, months later, sparking interest again. Now you have someone who was interested but forgot about it, interested again and, with an email, might even share it with others by forwarding it along.

Word of Mouth

This is still a powerful way to get your blog noticed. Engage your visitors and they may spread the word. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred people to a site or company because of the positive engagement I had with them.

If you do the same, traffic will come from this source as well.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s plenty of options to answer the question “How can I promote my blog for free?”. Do you have to take advantage of them all? No, but why wouldn’t you. The only true cost is your time and I believe each and every option listed above is well worth it.

Please, try one or more of them out and let me know how it goes for you. I’d really like to know. If I were to recommend my top 2 choices they would be the SEO optimization and social media options. They are easy to implement and I believe they will give you the quickest results in the least amount of time.

If you’re still in the planning phases of your online business or don’t yet have your site developed, check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate. They give you all the tools to be successful online.

Do you have experience with any of these suggestions? Is there one you think should be listed here that I missed? Do you disagree with one of my suggestions above? Please let me know by commenting below.

Thank you,

Scott Hinkle

SmallOnlineBiz.com