Advice on optimizing your blog from Computer Shopper

I picked up a copy of Computer Shopper today - not, as you might expect, because I'm looking to buy a new computer, which I am; the computers listed in magazines like Computer Shopper tend to have all the bells and whistles I explicitly don't need. No, I picked it up because of the headline tucked in the lower left of the cover: "5 WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG - FOR FREE".

I've been looking for something like this. Not for me; well, not just for me. I get lots of hits, though I would always enjoy sharing my love with more of the blog-reading public (ALL OTHER BLOGS ARE INFERIOR TO ANOTHER MONKEY!!!! VISIT ANOTHER MONKEY 100 TIMES A DAY EVERY DAY!!!! YOU WILL OBEYYYYYY!!!!!!!! ), but I'm really thinking of someone else, somebody who blogs her heart out and writes lots of interesting and heartfelt stuff and is essentially writing to an audience of two. (It might look like three, but two of the visitors are me - one from home and one from work.) When I first set up my blog I added little bits of code that would automatically ping various blog directories and let them know when I had posted something new. But that was two years ago, and the blog world has moved on since then, and I realize that there are probably newer and more comprehensive sites out there.

There are. While Most of the article "Optimize Your Blog" (by Kevin Savetz, on pages 94-95 of the August 2006 issue of Computer Shopper) is pretty mundane stuff ("Make it look good", "Write well", "Leave comments on other people's blogs", "Track your site traffic"), there are several syndication services mentioned that I've never heard of before. These are:

- Blogwise (http://www.blogwise.com/) (now giving a "403 Forbidden" error) and
- Bitacle (http://www.bitacle.org/) ("This site can't be reached") , blog directories;
- Feedshot (http://www.feedshot.com/), a service that adds your blog to multiple directories (according to the article, it will add you to nine directories for free or nineteen directories for $1.99 - UPDATE: Free service no longer offered; and
- Ping-O-Matic (http://www.pingomatic.com/), which updates blog search engines whenever you've updated your blog. (I do a similar thing with Technorati.) (UPDATE: Now owned by WordPress.)
(Updates February 12, 2018.)

So. I will have to see about getting listed on these directories and pinging the Ping-O-Matic - there are possibly a few Cathy Baker and Hee Haw fans out there who have yet to discover Another Monkey. If you're looking to increase your blog traffic by making the information on your blog more accessible to people who might be specifically looking for it, you should check out these sites, too!