Are you trying the increase the popularity of your blog, but you have already tried all of the conventional methods? MyBlogLog is a great service that you can use to increase your traffic.

Here’s how in 3 simple steps:

1. Create a profile that contains your information as well as your blog’s information. You want to be as detailed as possible and make sure you fill in your contact information because you want to welcome an open channel for communication.
2. Next, you want to search MyBlogLog for competitor blogs or other blogs that may have your ideal reader base. Once you find a good amount of them create a list for your own record.
3. Once you have a list of blogs that may contain your ideal readers then you want friend MyBlogLog users that are subscribed to those blogs and could also potentially benefit from your blog. The key to this is not the spam those users, but instead just friend them because a good portion of them will friend you back and visit your blog which should increase your traffic and readership.

Leveraging social communities can be an easy and effective way to increase your traffic and readership. Just be careful when leveraging them because the last thing you want is for people to accuse you of spamming.

Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal has been doing a SEO site clinic which has been helping website owners increase their traffic, rankings and links. Because of this I decided to do a short interview with him:

What is Search Engine Journal’s benefit from doing a SEO site clinic?

Search Engine Journal benefits by helping the SEO community and companies which are starting their initial SEO by total transparency. We are working together, with our co-authors and guest contributors as a team to offer SEO advice to not only the sites which we have accepted into the SEO Clinic project but also the readers of our column who are working on their SEO. For example, when doing an SEO Clinic for a WordPress powered blog, our goal is that numerous WordPress bloggers will benefit from our SEO recommendations.

Our Resident SEO Pimps benefit via expanded recognition of their expertise and services to the SEO community. I think that it would be easy to charge anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 in consulting fees for such SEO oriented information and recommendation, but our ultimate mission is to help smaller sites and charities which cannot afford such SEO consultancy fees. In essence, such transparency should benefit the SEO and search marketing community as a whole.

How popular are your SEO clinics? Are they heavily linked to?

These posts have become quite popular throughout the SEO industry and the searchosphere. Many blogs and informational sites have linked to our SEO Clinic pieces, and our hope is that for each Clinic we provide, more sites which fall into the categories of our Clinic "patients" and link to the recommendations.

Do you have any recommendations for bloggers or website owners who looking to increase their links?

In each SEO Clinic, to date, we have discussed ideas for sites, such as TechSmith.com and BigOceans.com to attract links. In essence, the SEO Clinic will attract links to our patients from SEO blogs which cover the free SEO Clinic advice, but in each clinic we provide recommendations to improve links via building relationships with blogs in the niche categories our patients appeal to, and via social media marketing via Digg.com, StumbleUpon and other major traffic and inherent link building avenues.

There has been a lot of buzz around the word "mashup" lately. In case you’re unfamiliar with the word, Wikipedia defines it as a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. An example of a common use would be a local, region based website that combines Google Maps with local business reviews.

Mashups are a great way to improve the usability of your website because you’re ideally offering something of value to your users. But mashups are also great for link building because the good ones are highly viral.

Mashups aren’t limited to websites and don’t always require programming either. A couple of weeks ago someone mashed up Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial into a Barack Obama ad.

The video has spread like a wildfire. It has been viewed over four million times, featured on every news station in the country, and has managed to collect thousands of inbound links. Not bad for a mashup that someone created on a Sunday afternoon.

If you have a WordPress blog you need to read this Complete Guide to SEO for WordPress by Jim Westergren. Jim breaks down step-by-step instructions for everything from optimizing the code to getting links to crafting good posts and increasing user interaction.

Readers, let me know who can make it up to our ProBlogger meet up!  Details below:

THURSDAY, March 29, 6:30pm to 9:30pm at:
Connollyâs Pub and Restaurant
121 West 45th St (between 6th and Broadway)
(212) 597-5126 phone

http://www.connollyspubandrestaurant.com

*please note this bar has three locations in the area so use the address above.

We are putting the event together with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net who will be in attendance!  There will be an open bar and food available all on TLA’s dime.  Let me know below if you can make it, looking forward to meeting you all in person.

I am currently attending the Elite Retreat San Fransisco conference where Shoemoney, Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, Darren Rowse, Kris Jones and I spoke about online marketing. I know many of you wanted to attend and could not make it, so Kris Jones blogged about the whole event. Make sure you check it out!

After much demand, we’ve added the option of opening a new window when a visitor clicks an AuctionAd. This is optional, as some ad blocking software will block any kind of popup. To use it, go into your Get Code page, and check the “Open in New Window” checkbox. To add to existing code, add this to your code:

auctionads_options = “n”;

We hope this makes AuctionAds an even better fit for those who choose to use the option!

Readers, SEO BlackHat is putting on a SEO Poker Tournament Saturday, March 24, at 9pm GMT.  Instead of a $100 entry fee you instead get in by antying up quality links!  Real cool concept, more sign up info here.

Jeff Kuntz, adNet’s SVP of business development, was featured in an article in iMedia Connection. The article was focused on how ad networks can maximize strategies with brand advertisers. Read the full interview here.

Media Whiz co-President, Jason Cohen, was recently interviewed on MediaPost’s EmailInsider. The article focuses on email acquisition. Here is the full article.