First – WHY should you integrate your blog with Twitter?

Because when you post to your blog, aside form pings and RSS feed updates and other updates you already have set up (Technorati, Stumbleupon, etc.) you should also have an update notification hit Twitter,

This is to create yet another avenue to market your blog

You can have Twitter integrated with your blogs whether they are Blogger, WordPress, Typepad or other blog platforms.

Every time you post

That is the benefit here – increased exposure from such integration.  Every time you post to your blog, if you have your feed tied into Twitter, they you will gain more followers and attract more traffic, inlinks, and PageRank.

This is No Panacea

Integrating Twitter and blog posts is not a super solution.  It is only one of many ways to get more traffic and exposure to market your blog.  Consider it yet another of one of many ways you should be marketing your blog.

How to Integrate Twitter and Your Blog Posts

First, get an account with Twitter

Second, get an account with TwitterFeed

Third, get an RSS Feed.

Fourth, integrate your RSS feed for your blog(s) – so hopefully you’ve set up a feed – if not use Feedburner (now owned by Google) to do so.

Once you have your feed set up, get your feed address / URL from  Feedburner under the details tab, and be sure you include it in TwitterFeed.

Also, be sure you have a script you get from Twitter added to your blog so people can follow you – get one of those “follow me on Twitter” scripts.

People will sign up and again you will have yet another way to market to others and stay in touch with them even on their iPhones, cell phones, BlackBerries, etc.

Be sure you do this with all of your blogs.

Now you’re set, you have successfully integrated Twitter into your Blog – and more people will be instantly notified and you will gain more downtown southern exposure for your blog.

Here is another site with some more ideas and information about twitter and blog integration worth reading.  Also, here is an eHow article about how to start seeing your Blogger updates on your Twitter account.

TwitterFeed is the key to doing this, and can also make your posts appear integrated on your Facebook and several other social media sites.

Only One RSS Subscriber?

I found this to be the case for two of my feeds recently.  After about a month of this (way too long), I decided to do something about it and look into it.

After all, how could I only have and maintain 1 RSS subscriber when I post daily to those 2 blogs that become RSS feeds?

My Feedburner Feed Was Broke and Irreparable

That’s right, I could not fix it.  So I deleted it and re-submitted for a new one.  This was a bit frustrating.  But I am finding out in this niche and field, there are so many quirks that take up too much of your time – the admin stuff!

I hope to get more subscribers and traffic, now that this is fixed.  Worth a look if you are having the same issues.  I hope to see a dramatic rise in subscribers soon.

How Important Is This?

Since feeds are so important for traffic – and traffic monetizes, this should be a key metric or analytic you track monthly or if you are really dependent on huge volumes of RSS based traffic, weekly!  It could mean the different between lots of money and LOST money.

Autopinger is One of Many Ping Tools for New Blog Posts

Autopinger is one of the first ping tools I used when I started updating blogs regularly. I figured out that I needed to ping after updating my blog since that was the only way I could tell the world I updated my blog.

Hopefully, once you use this tool, you’ll get spidered, indexed, and above all get noticed and start building serious web traffic and a reader base.

Using the free tool known as Autopinger, pinging several engines and other venues was easy, and the site gives feedback about which ones were successful and which ones were not.  I wanted to give you as many options with ping tools as I could.

Remember, search engine optimization and building traffic is not an instant or overnight process. It takes time, but this is one of the best steps to getting there.

Happy pinging and best of luck for your SEO, marketing and promotion  efforts and settling on one of these many ping tools!  Don’t forget to ping each time after you post – not just for your homepage but also for your specific URL of your posted page.  Many people forget that!

Why Submit to DMOZ Directory for Traffic?

DMOZ is known as a directory, not a search engine. So is Yahoo, actually, though they seem to be doing both a directory and a search engine that’s pretty competitive with Google.

A directory is set up to better capture relevancy when related to certain subject matter. You find things based on subjects and links, not really keywords in a search. The structure is more organized and hierarchical.

If DMOZ links to your site, you will receive traffic from the directory searches in DMOZ, that is one advantage.

A second advantage is that a search engine may also rank your site higher for searches related to the subject under the directory. For instance, say DMOZ links to this site SEO-tools under the DMOZ directory tree for SEO related sites.

A search engine will then probably give more weight to SEO-tools as an authoritative site about SEO because the directory goes through a manual (human) review process and said it was a SEO related site, because it listed you under its directory for SEO.

This means someone who reviewed your site for inclusion into the DMOZ directory decided your site was relevant to the topic, and a search engine takes their word for it as additional weight in its search rank formula (or algorithm).

Some have said lately that DMOZ is not as big as it used to be for ranking your site higher in a search page. That may be so, but my gut tells me that it is still worth something and therefore worth one of the several things you should do for SEO optimization.

Just realize you may never get listed, but it’s still worth a try and again takes only a couple minutes, so why not?

How to do this:

Go to the DMOZ submit page and follow their rules and instructions. Bottom line is, find the right (relevant) area of their directory where your site would be best listed, and in that area, click on the “suggest URL” tab at the top/middle area of that fitting page.

Realize that because a person has to manually review your page, this will take some time (several weeks, at least, and perhaps several months). If after a few months you still aren’t listed in DMOZ, I say re-try submitting your site one more time.

If after that you wait a few months and the same happens, then don’t waste anymore of your time on it.  But whatever you do, do not pay Yahoo to get included in their directory.  It’s about $300 and you still may not get listed, no guarantees. What a ripoff for that kind of risk!

Submit Your Website or Blog – Use This All-in-one Resource

Here’s a handy site to submit your website or blog (for SEO) to:

BBL Internet Media All In One Add URL Site Submit Link

Once you land on the page, scroll down and you will see several links to add your URl and submit your site to several search engines and directories!