The other day I was introduced to a brilliant piece of self-promotion in the course of my work. A man had a small business that he wanted to promote. I don’t know the exact number, but there are probably at least 100,000 other businesses in the United States that do the same type of technical consulting he did.
He didn’t want to buy Google or any other ads. Instead he created five or six separate websites with different domain names/URLs that had substantive content and all cross-referenced the content that he had on his main site. He had a lot of content on that main site and it all featured the keyword that he wanted to promote.
Essentially, he took advantage of the search algorithms’ propensity to think a site that has a lot of links to it has authoritative content. And it worked – if you searched his keyword term, his primary company site is returned on that first page of results. He beat out all the big firms like IBM and Avanade by playing the search game.
How Does This Apply To Us?
Not that we want to be queen or king of the personal narrative, story-telling, or philosophical essay search space but I thought this story had some take-aways for blogging:
If you want to be discovered, you have to leave a map. The Hansel and Gretal breadcrumbs will get eaten up in this digital and noisy world so you have to provide some substantive and persistent links to the content you want found.
Networking is as important in blogging as in real-life. Not many people, even the big players, will create the type of inter-connected structure that this man did. Most of us will interact with other bloggers who will at times link to our writing and we build out that interconnected structure slowly. And/or we put links in social media posts which work to point to the content.
Consistency matters. Not only in posting but in using the terms by which we want to be found, if any. More than that, it’s likely that most people reading this have a good amount of content already and can do the back-linking strategy to our own content by simply taking the time to reference old posts when we write.
Examples
And here are four examples of people who are doing it:
Dr. Vicki Atkinson is an author that is fantastic for her support of other bloggers, authors, and creative types. As an example, here is a post We Are One reviewing Julia Preston’s from the Voices in My Head blog boo Voices: Who’s In Charge of the Committee in My Head
Ally Bean of the Spectacled Bean blog is a master of building community. She does things like blogrolls where she will publish a list of all submitted URL’s that meet her criteria. Or she recently did a really fun “ask me anything” post and then answered the questions and published a link to the blog of the people who ask the questions.
Brian from the WritingfromtheheartwithBrian blog is a professional writer and former newspaper reporter that can do it all – interview others, write fiction and non-fiction and support others who are doing the same. Here’s a recent post Hitting the Books that showcases his big heart.
E.A. Wickham of the Bleuwater Blog is a seasoned PR professional and writer who knows how to showcase content she has written in the past. See this example of the article What I Miss About My Daughter she wrote when her daughter went off to college and recently reposted.
You know what I love about the work story that inspired this post? It’s a little guy beating out the big guys by being able to work the system. It’s kinda the best case scenario of what the Internet can do for us – enable us to reach the world wide audience we want.
I’ve published a companion post on my personal blog about the experience when we come together in Community
I also post on Mondays at the Heart of the Matter blog, a great shared blog of personal storytelling with a podcast that highlights inspirational creatives. My book about my journey to find what fueled my dad’s indelible spark and twinkle can be found on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith.
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter @wynneleon
(featured photo from Pexels)
Thank for sharing information on the importance of strategic promotion and leveraging search algorithms to increase visibility and reach in the digital landscape. 👍
Thanks for the comment, muktaverna – glad it was helpful!
I love, love, love learning from you. Networking and consistency…those are two qualities that I’d say serve bloggers well and humans, generally. I love the convergence! xo! 🥰
Bloggers and humans, generally – yes! Networking and consistency seems to help across the board! XOXO my friend!
So insightful. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading and commenting, mukulmanku.
Wow, I admittedly find the content of this article as inspiring as your bio. So I read it aloud for my fiancée who turned 40 last month and struggles with not having neither a child nor a creative outlet. Chapeau!
Thanks for generously sharing your newly learned information.
Thank you, Kevin!
Talk about Brian with a big heart! Thank you Wynne for sharing this great tidbit of wisdom for the undereducated bloggers among us, and thank you Vicki for your mention of Voices in my Head and We Are One. I really admire you who get out there and DO it! Thanks for setting a great example and for spurring me on to work to do better!
Oh, what a lovely comment, as always, Julia! I’m so grateful you are part of my network and community!
Thank you so much for the shout out. I love, love, love every blogger you mentioned. There’s so much to learn from them all. That was eye opening about the businessman who had five blogs interconnected!
Yes, Elizabeth, what a great community of bloggers we have!! So grateful to be connected with you!
I’m am thrilled to be connected to you as well!
Well done!
Thank you. I appreciate you reading and commenting!
Great, informative post! I love hearing the story of this small time operation outsmarting the big timers🤩🤩
Yes, isn’t that fun?? Thanks, Todd!
When I started my blog, I just thought people would magically find my content. Ha ha. After a while, I started engaging with other bloggers and that’s when I started to see real growth, both in numbers and the diversity of content I was writing. There’s so much wisdom here, and a strong sense of community.
I had the same experience, Michelle. And I both was terrified and excited that others would find my content. 🙂 Thanks for chiming in!
Thank you for sharing, Wynne 🙂
Thanks, Maria!
Self-promotion has never come naturally to me. I do try to say “look at me” but the way people in blogland and other social media come and go, those who saw me last week are gone now. There’s a sense of community but a community that morphs over time.
An interesting comment, Ally. I’m sure the landscape has changed a lot in the years you’ve been blogging. So nice to get your perspective!
I also think that’s amazing how a smart guy with a little business can go around and play with super big corporation. Beautiful story Wynne!
Great post Wynne. Thanks for emphasising the importance of linking and networking. It really is important to build up that community isn’t it? 🙂 I agree with others, you and the bloggers you mentioned are all good role models for everyone else. The story you shared with us is also inspiring, but 5 separate sites seems like a lot of hard work – but as you said, we should link to other posts we have written, link in posts of fellow bloggers where appropriate and use social media – that’s one I need to work on more.
I love the points you have made here. The example of the man can be used for good or harm: “Instead he created five or six separate websites with different domain names/URLs that had substantive content and all cross-referenced the content that he had on his main site. He had a lot of content on that main site and it all featured the keyword that he wanted to promote.”
I read an article a couple of years ago about one man who created multiple sites where he shared “fake news” all in an effort to create sites where he could heavily monetize them. He thought that people would be able to tell these stories were fake because they were too ludicrous, but because the same story appeared on multiple sites people then thought they were true!
Unfortunately, this had the effect of other people copying him, and the vortexes of fake news soon spewed out on us. *Sigh!*
Doing the work. Sometimes nothing beats putting in the effort to figure out what we need to do, and doing it. 🙂