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@Kyle, That's an interesting point of view, thanks! Anyone else some tips, advices?

If you used software to submit those links and they were accepted, then I can say with almost 100% certainty that 100% of those links are weak and low quality and are probably sending you "negative vibes" as we say here in the caribbean. Nowadays, there's less than a dozen (maybe a handful) of 'general directories' that you can get your site listed on that are within Google's guidelines on paid and editorial links.

Anytime you see "traffic exchange" beware...

Nice article! Thanks!

In addition to everything that Anthony said (AKA, build relationships) you can also promote the blog article through writing other guest blog articles. I know this is going to take a lot of work, but that's what inbound marketers are good at... Hustle. Find someone who will let you write a guest post for their site, and then fiind a way to organiclly mention your blog article in the middle of your guest post. This will help your first blog article rank higher in SERPS, and it will send more refferal traffic to your blog. Good luck.

Wow, Joel, Keith, Shane, thank you for your interesting contribution!

@ Adam, thank you for your advice!

@ Ryan, thank you for your detailed answer!

Hi Thomas, Great question. Fortunately, there's a super awesome resource on just this topic. It's called: 21Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (updated for 2012) To be fair, the best ways to promote a blog really haven't changed that much in the wake of Penguin or other algorithmic updates. If you are creating useful content in a way that engages your audience, and then apply smart marketing to promote that content (see Rand's post above) then your blog will be above 95% of all other blogs out there. If you're specifically looking to build links, there's a ton of good ideas here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 Best of luck!

You can choose any of the platforms on a self hosted domain. What you should be focusing on is the quality of content. The content should be unique with your thoughts and inferences/inputs even if it is about a generic topic that can add value to the users. Also, share your posts and participates in discussions on social communities to create a buzz as as as gain authority as an author in the respective niche. This is the only way forward if you want to future proof it from Google's algorithmic changes.