Saunderslog has posted an awesome little manifesto on blog promotion. Incorporating some well thought-out SEO tips and general blogger sensibility, this post is a keeper for anyone serious about increasing traffic to their weblog. Here's a snippet:
The majority of my traffic comes from Google. I optimize my site for Google searchability:
- Optimize your page count. Google ranks sites with lots of pages as having more authority than sites with few pages....
- Use a Google Sitemap. Again, this is easy to do with WordPress. Arne Brachhold has written a great little plugin which re-constructs your sitemap each and every time you post.
- Make sure every post has a title....
- Make the titles eye-catching!....
- Link and trackback to others. The point of blogging is to have a conversation. Make sure you’re having conversations, then....
- Make sure you have a top level domain. Buying http://saunderslog.com increased my traffic dramatically over being http://radio.weblogs.com/0111520....
There's much more. Definitely click through and read the whole post. Then print it, cut it out, and stick it on your fridge.