Tips to drive traffic with blog directories (more than just listings)

[beatenduck]

There are hundreds and hundreds of blog directories out there for people to get their blogs listed. But apart from being included so that your blog can gain more exposure to the Internet users around the world, what else can a blog directory help to drive more and more traffic to your blog? Here's the answer!

With all the submitted blogs classified into various categories, bloggers can easily find blogs that are related or similar to your own blog. With this, you can start your own free advertising campaign by promoting in these related blogs. One of the easiest (and of course cheapest) way to achieve this is to leave a comment in the latest post. By leaving a comment, not only will the owner take notice of your blog but most importantly the visitors. Most visitors (me included) like to read comments very much and makes the so-called "comment advertising" so powerful.

Here are some tips you should bear in mind about leaving comments:

1. Never leave short, useless or canned comments like "Nice!", "Cool!", "Great Blog!", etc. Otherwise your comment will be deleted very soon. Take some time and read some of the content and give some solid suggestions for improvements or tell the owner why you love his/her blog. Afterall, everything is free so it takes you some time to do this. (But actually, I got a really nice tip for those who really don't have the mood to go over some tedious blogs out there. Try to give suggestions based on the layout of the blog. In this way, you only have to glance through the blog without bothering to read the content and it's always easier to criticise one's layout. You can try this: "It would be better, in my opinion, if you blend the advertisements in to your blog be setting the background colour of the ad units." By using this technique, you can give long but useful comments and gives the owner a feeling that you are here to help rather than to advertise.

2. Never be rude or too "hard-sell". Try to be humble as you won't want others to leave comments such as "I GOT A REALLY REALLY GREAT BLOG ABOUT ENGINEERING!!!! VISIT PLEASEEEEE!!!", would you? So try to keep your tone nice and kind. Use sentences like "I also got a blog about engineering, you might want to take a look at it, here's the link." or "Can you give me some advice about my engineering blog?" Your comment will always appear to be acceptable and pleasing if you don't sound like a salesperson.

3. Try to visit the blogs you have left comments on frequently and keep an eye on any replies to your post. Be responsive if the owner or visitors reply to you.

4. Leave comments again when you have written a new post or changed the layout. But remember, do this often or when you sense that the owner dislike your doing so.

Starting from today, don't just use blog directories as a listing place only, use them thoroughly by discovering blogs that are of the same category as yours. And drive traffic to your blog by commenting on them. Try it yourself and see how powerful this "comment advertising" is!

Here are some high-quality directories (what means by "high-quality" is that they review each submission to ensure that they are content-rich and blogs are well classified into categories):

Yahoo's Blog Directory http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_I...s/Directories/
Google's Blog Directory http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/...s/Directories/
Blog Announce http://blog.announce.googlepages.com
Blog Top Sites http://blogtopsites.com
BlogFlux Directory http://www.blogflux.com/

Hope you find this useful!

[mala]

Though I am aware of this, I appreciate your thoughtful effort to write about this topic.

Apart from blog directories, I have been submitting to blog search engines and blog feed directories.

[beatenduck]

Glad you appreciated it and thanks for the reinforcement about SE and Feed directories.

[Kalina]

Thank you for the helpful article, I am sure it will help beginners and advanced users alike.

[ariful]

What I say ?

Good and Helpful.

Thanks.