Over at Problogger Darren Rowse is running a series called ‘31 days to Building a Better Blog’. He’s also asking for people to write their own tips and let him know about them so here’s my go.
Currently being covered is search engine optimization for blogs. My tip is centred around off site tips, ie getting people to link to your blog, or individual posts. Darren comments about trying the blunt approach and may be emailing prominent bloggers about your blog or a particular piece but one way I have found useful has been to just leave interesting comments on these peoples sites.
Most comment forms allow you to put the url of your website so in here you obviously put your blog url. This helps in 3 ways. People who read the article and comments will click on the link to your blog to find out more about you. I find I do this all the time. Perhaps a few more regular readers achieved this way? Second the original author may well check out your link, 1 to make sure its a legit site, and 2 to again find out more about you. You may get one more reader again from this but this time it will be the prominent blogger you are after. Now if you write something interesting you may find they write an article in itself for you.
Third, and finally, you get a link to your site that search engine bots will notice and follow. Getting incoming links is one of the well known way of improving your page rank and search engine results.
This is the way comment spammers also work, so make sure you have something useful and relevant to say in someones comment area or you may be accused of spamming them!