I’ve been using blog carnivals for a few years now. Blog carnivals are really just a page or two of web addresses linking back to quality articles or content. These articles must be related to a certain niche, though. A finance blog won’t link back to a health article, for example. Any website can host a blog carnival, though hosting one isn’t easy. You’ll need to review many articles submitted to you and choose the best ones to display in your carnival. People host blog carnivals because it creates a buzz and encourages other bloggers or webmasters to talk about it if their article is featured. As a result, you receive more backlinks and blog traffic, which will ultimately help with search engine optimization.

Photo by Stuart Seeger (flickr)

However, submitting your articles to blog carnivals is easy. The idea is to submit a link of your best article to various webmasters who are hosting blog carnivals, in hopes that your link (as well as a short description of the content linked) will be selected to be displayed in a blog carnival on the webmaster’s website. In other words, you post an article on your website. You then copy the web address of that article, find someone hosting a blog carnival and submit the web address to the webmaster, also providing a short description of what was linked. The webmaster reviews the article and emails you saying whether or not your link will be in the blog carnival. You can then promote the blog carnival by posting an article about it or linking back to it on your website’s sidebar.

Participating in blog carnivals this way increases backlinks and blog traffic, depending on how many blog carnivals you submit your article to and whether the webmaster likes your article. For this reason, only submit articles that are unique, have a higher number of comments than usual or are your best work to insure acceptance. You can find a variety of blog carnivals by visiting Blog Carnival, a network of websites hosting blog carnivals. Start by going to the archives at the top of the page, clicking the “Browse All Carnivals” link on the top left and choosing several carnivals to submit your article to that are related to your blog’s niche or article subject. Some blog carnivals in the list have already hosted a carnival on a previous date and may not be hosting another one, so make sure there’s a “Next Edition” date.

If you’re an active contributor to blog carnivals and link back to other articles you like that were featured in the same carnival you were featured in, you may increase your blog traffic and readership. You may even be sought out by other webmasters and receive a few backlinks that way. On another blog I write for, I like to make a new post every time an article gets featured in a blog carnival. This post lists the other articles that I liked, while also linking back to the carnival page and each article. I then send the author of the article a message saying that I thought the article was wonderfully written and, as a result, I linked back to the article on my own website. This method encourages other webmasters to link back to your blog as well, though it doesn’t work 100% of the time. The main reason why I take part in this method is because I’m able to then network with other bloggers in the same niche, increase my long term readership and make some friends in the process. The backlinks that come from it is a plus and motivates me further to increase my promotional efforts.

Post Your Input

• What do you think about blog carnivals?
• Were you able to increase blog traffic by submitting to blog carnivals?