Tip: Help People Find You!

A few weeks ago I was looking for women blogging about iPhone. It was not as easy as I would have liked (or expected) to find links to posts on that topic.

Today, I was searching for women blogging about the Special Olympics. That hasn't been a very easy search either.

The BlogHer Contributing Editors (aka CEs) are always looking for women blogging about X within their topic areas. We know women are blogging about everything but it's hard to find those posts.

As difficult as it is for us to find you, I know it's just as frustrating to be writing about a great topic and NOT get linked.

It would be fabulous if we could work together to help CEs find great content and help you get your great content linked.

Here are some tips that might help us all:

1) Write about events and issues in a timely fashion. I am notorious for NOT doing this. I have good intentions but my life is crazy and blogging doesn't always come first. I do try and when I'm successful, I'm more likely to get links from other bloggers and traffic from search engines.

2) When you write a blog post about a specific topic, try and use the exact topic word or phrase in the title of your post. If you're blogging about iPhone, put iPhone in your title! If you're blogging about Hospice Care (a topic I'll be looking for posts about soon) then put Hospice Care in the title. Search engines like titles - make your title Search Engine Friendly! (Or to get really technical Search Engine Opitimized or SEOd)

3) Hot link the main subject at least once and preferably in your first paragraph. If you're writing about iPhone or Hospice Care - link off to another blog, site, or even wikipedia entry for those words. And link the topic word, not "click here". Search engines pay attention to what's linked. getting them to pay attention to "click here" isn't going to get your blog noticed.

4) Join Technorati and use Technorati tags, if you haven't already. I use Technorati's search and tag search when looking for blog posts about specific topics. (I also use Google Blog Search and Icerocket)

5) If you write a post you think we'll be interested in, come over here and post it in the forums! Make sure to be clear about what the post is about and include the link.

6) If you see a blog post written by a CE and want to write your own blog post in response, do that and come to the comments and leave a link to your post. You'll probably get a CE visit and you'll probably get visits from those who are reading that BlogHer post.

7) One other interesting thing that some CEs do - they put out a call for blog posts about a particular topic. Check out Deb, she's looking for blog posts about discharging stained t-shirts.

~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings and Fast Times @ Homeschool High