Internet Marketing Toronto – Post 6: Blogging

Clive Lobo

Internet Marketing Toronto – Post 6: Blogging

Blogging is a fantastic way to produce timely content on your website and participate in current conversations online. Confine this to a local geographic area and you’re now reinforcing your local presence to the search engines.

The first step in this process is installing the blog software – we recommend WordPress as it’s free and powerful. You should always install your blog on your main domain in something like www.domain.com/blog or a folder named after your most important keyword.

Installing WordPress is beyond the scope of this post but you can great information about it on the WordPress site. After installing the blog you should start investigating blogs you can participate in. Here is how you can do that:

Following Conversations In Your Target Locality

You need to find blogs that are publishing content preferably in your industry but not necessarily within the context of Toronto as a location or any geographic area you are targeting. There are several ways you can do this:

  • Use Bloglines & Technorati to query for blogs with Toronto as a term. Visit the blogs and if they are indeed publishing content about Toronto then subscribe to their feed in your Google Reader (or favorite feed-reader application).
  • Use Google to find .ca blogs talking about Toronto with this query [toronto blog site:.ca]. Add another qualifying keyword to target your industry. Visit each site and if it’s appropriate subscribe to their feed
  • Setup Google Alerts to send you current data about your industry with .ca and blog as part of the query. Review and subscribe to those feeds as well.

Now that you’ve identified a tremendous source of content to work with you need to start reading each of the blogs and participating through comments in a very meaningful way. Don’t spam. Don’t use a keyword as your name. Don’t respond to to more than one post on your first visit to the blog. Don’t comment on older posts unless you find it particularly insightful! Use your real name, email and targeted URL and leave well written meaningful comments.

Do this on a regular basis  at least once a week and watch your backlinks grow. These are good links (followed or not)!

Publishing Content On Your Website

Now that you’ve begun participating with the other blogs – start blogging on your own site. Be free with your links and promote the other blogs your reading and commenting on. Overtime you’ll get their attention and they’ll begin reciprocating and your readership will grow as will your backlinks.

Identify timely local news and events preferably in your industry to post about.

All of these activities will serve to reinforce to the search engines your local presence and intent on being known for geographic terms!

Up next: Post #7: Forums. Find out which forums might be worth participating in within the Toronto context.

Clive Lobo

Spark’s resident boss man, Clive possesses the very nature of an entrepreneurial spirit.

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