How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections

Today, Henri Junttila shares his 21 day experience of blog marketing that resulted in the Pagerank increase from zero to four in only 21 days. Want to write for us too?

It’s amazing at what you can accomplish when you work hard. My blog is around 3 weeks old and it has gone from PageRank 0 to 4, from 0 subscribers to 155 and from no one commenting to being almost like a community.

I know 155 subscribers doesn’t sound like much, but if I kept this rate up for a year, I would have well over 2,000 subscribers and that’s not bad now is it? You also have to consider that after a while you reach a breaking point where your blog starts to grow on its own, which means that you most likely will have close to 3,000 subscribers or a lot more in a year if you do things right.

I’ve never have a problem with working extremely hard, especially when I am passionate about something. I’ve been making a living online for a long time and I’ve discovered that working for yourself is a lot tougher than working for someone else.

Nobody tells you what to do. You have to figure everything out yourself. On top of it all, you have to manage your time and use the right tactics. In my opinion, I have come a long way in just three weeks and it is largely because I chose to focus on a few main points in building my audience and getting my name out there.

1. Blog Commenting

When I had my launch content ready – which consisted of 4-5 good posts and 5-day e-mail series – I started looking for blogs with good content that were somewhat related to what I was talking about. I currently have almost 100 blogs in my feedreader that I enjoy reading and try to comment on regularly.

Yes, commenting will take up a lot of your time (learn how to become a more productive commentator). It may not bring you huge amounts of traffic or link juice, but that isn’t the purpose. Getting traffic from commenting is a side-benefit. The main benefit is putting your face out there. Oh, before I forget, definitely make sure you have a good and friendly gravatar .

In just three weeks I’ve gotten people telling me that they’ve seen me everywhere. I didn’t even realize that it had such an impact. It seems to work like advertising. When you see 100 Kellogg’s commercials and you go to the store and see 5 unknown brands and Kellogg’s there’s a very high chance that you’ll pick Kellogg’s because it’s familiar. Commenting works the same way. That is, if you provide value in your comments.

2. Guest Posting

Guest posting is the number one tactic if you want to grow your readership and increase your authority in Google’s eyes. Take Blogussion for example – in two posts they earned 200 extra subscribers . I know you might be shy about asking bloggers about guest posting, but it isn’t that hard. Three weeks ago I didn’t know anyone in the blogosphere, and I mean by anyone I mean anyone, I didn’t even know the resident dust rat at Blogussion.

I’ve made a lot of good friends in a short amount of time because I started commenting, connecting and letting people know I appreciate what they are doing. It’s the law of reciprocity at work, which basically means that if you provide value for others, they will be more likely to provide value for you. Leave a mark on the other persons blog, and you will see some benefits.

This doesn’t mean that you should go into the whole thing with the mindset of getting something. On the contrary, I was so happy to be blogging about the subject I love that I enjoyed connecting with people and when I asked for a guest post pretty much everyone said yes.

If you really want to grow your blog, you have to guest post. I know that it can be scary. It is scary for me each time I submit a guest post, but fear is a part of life, it will always be there. The circumstances for guest posting will never be perfect, so start now.

The worst thing that can happen is that nothing changes. If you get rejected, ask them why, politely, so you can learn from the interaction and improve. Start with smaller blogs first and work your way up as you gain more and more momentum.

I have written around 10-15 guest posts during these 21 days and that is all it takes to really gain traction and go from PageRank 0 to 4. Aim for as authoritative blogs as possible, but don’t be afraid of connecting with the smaller ones.

3. Connecting and Helping

You have to care. If you don’t care about people and aren’t passionate about the subject you’re blogging about, chances are that people will notice and not want to stick around. Passion is contagious, because passion exudes positive, addictive energy and being around someone who is passionate feels awesome, even if it is in text.

So how do you connect with a blogging community?

There are many ways. The tools I use almost exclusively are Twitter and e-mail. I try to use as few tools as possible so I don’t overwhelm myself. Talk with people on twitter. Don’t tell them to visit your blog and sign-up, just talk and have fun.

People will naturally visit your blog and link to you if you are interesting and fun. Haven’t you noticed this yourself? If someone is making you laugh and in general helping you, aren’t you compelled to learn more about them?

The way I use e-mail is to let people know that I appreciate what they are doing. If I sincerely like something they are doing I want to tell them that. I’m not going to sell them anything or try to get them to link to me. How would you react if someone did that to you? You would probably delete the e-mail and make a note that the guy or girl sucks.

Be friendly, always provide value and help people. Give before you take. If someone e-mails you, make sure you reply as soon as possible. You want to engage your audience. One person may not seem to matter, but think about it. If you make one person happy and they tell five people, you then make those five happy, they tell five people. Do you see the potential?

What you put out there will come back to you many times over.

What works for you?

With all that said, I challenge you to share at least one blogging tip that worked for growing traffic and readership to your blog!