Essential Blogging Tips – Part 2
I hope you all have read Essential Blogging Tips – Part 1 of this series where I covered the first 10 tips . I’m only going to list tips 11 through to 14 below. I have split all my remaining tips into 2 posts.
I have not listed them in any particular order as I think they all play an important role in defining our blog and us as authors/owners.
11. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is probably the most important aspect of any blog. Without SEO, it’s hard for people to find your site. You need your blog to be search engine friendly at all times.
I’m using Thesis theme and it comes already with panels when creating a post for the purpose of SEO. It has options for title, meta description and keywords. Go have a look, you might be interested in buying the theme.
Your site gets indexed by search engines depending on your keywords which makes it easier to be found and you get ranked according to them as well. Serradinho.com currently has a page rank of 4, which is very high if you ask me.
There are many posts on the net which help you in upping your page rank and getting better SEO status. You could use a WordPress plugin called All in One SEO Pack to help with SEO
Go read the following posts to find out more about SEO:
- Wordpress SEO : 5 basic practice you should implement
- Improve Your Search Rankings with Internal SEO
- The Top 46 SEO Posts of the Year 2008
- Importance of Keyword for Search engine optimization(SEO)
- Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008
Do you spend time with SEO? What’s the page rank of your site now?
12. Blog Traffic and Statistics
It’s nice to know where your traffic is coming from and what the behavior of your visitors are. Are you getting more traffic from search engine, referring sites or is it direct traffic.
Which posts are popular and which ones aren’t and need more attention. Which browsers are being used, what your daily visitors/page views are, how long are your visitors staying on your site for, what keywords are being searched, etc
Google Analytics is a free service from Google and they have many graphs to help you know what is going on. There are also many WordPress plugins and sites which can help you find out this information, you will have to find out what is best for your blog.
13. Post Content
Content is always one subject up for debate. Some will tell you that they can generate income from a blog when content is not up to scratch. They do this by having affiliate and Google ads all over the place, but you want to actually retain your visitors and maybe get them to subscribe to your blog.
Content that is unique and then offer them something in return for reading it. Don’t copy content from other sites and post it as your own, that’s a big NO NO.
Take your time and do a bit of research on your topic at hand, proof read it to make sure there are no grammar or spelling mistakes. Use trackbacks to your advantage and maybe refference your sources of information.
14. Interact with commentators and build a community
For a blog to become successful, the author or owner needs to interact with the commentators and try and build a sound community. Commentators will start to interact with other commentators thus starting to build a community which would enable the blog to thrive in the end.
One way of promoting comments on posts is to ask questions in your posts whereby you want some kind of feedback from your readers, this can be done at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the post.
It’s nice visiting a site where the author has replied to a comment left by a user. I’m not saying you have to reply, but it makes the commentator feel welcomed and appreciated. The commentator could ask the author a question and wait for a reply.
Installing WordPress CommentLuv plugin also promotes comments as they will have their last blog post listed below their comment. When I leave comments on other sites, I usually check out other commentators last blog post and if it catches my eye, then I visit that particular post and browse the site as well.
Another WordPress plugin which helps a lot to build a community and promote interacting between commentators is Subscribe to Comments. Commentators check the box when leaving a comment and will be updated when another user leaves a comment.
Are you using any of the plugins I have suggested? Do you promote commenting on your posts? Are you trying to build a community around your blog?
Conclusion
I hope that Essential Blogging Tips – Part 1 and part 2 have helped you a lot in knowing more about what is required of you and what to look out for, part 3 will come out tomorrow. I’m keen to hear your feedback and thoughts, they are all welcomed and appreciated.
Other Interesting Posts:
- WordPress & Thesis theme Enhance Serradinho Blog
- Adding Google Buzz to your Posts & Pages using Google Buzz WordPress Plugin
- Watch OUT Digg, there is a New Kid on the Block (Shoutmeme Review)
- Professional and Personalized Twitter Backgrounds and other Designs: Twarks.net Review
- Serious Monthly Roundup – December 2009
WordPress & Thesis Customizations
This webiste is using Thesis theme & WordPress. I can create you a similar website or update yours.
Author Information
Article by George Serradinho
I am the proud owner of Serradinho and have made this my second home. I'm into blogging, downloads, WordPress and the internet in general. I also love meeting and helping others and learning new techniques.
Dennis Edell
Tony
Taksali
{ 22 comments }
again nice tips George
Atul´s last blog ..All About Swine Flu : Symptoms, Precautions, Treatment
@Atul – please try and leave a better comment than you have. I will start deleting comments like this, you have been warned.
George… good going on the Commenting Warning (I like that).
Great part 2 of the series. How do you like Thesis so far? I have heard both good and bad about it and I keep thinking about getting it just to play around with.
I like how you went over all the points; SEO, Stats, Content (I’m with you on quality content to retain visitors), and Interaction… and then went into detail with each one.
I was going to say some are more important than others, but they really are not. Each thing you mentioned plays a major role in one’s success.
Doug Dillard´s last blog ..How to Twitter?
@Doug – I have listed my tips I would give others. Part 3 covers other tips that one has to remember, but that comes out tomorrow.
Thesis is so much fun for me as I can do most things with ease and it’s really not as hard as you think. I have been helping others with Thesis and I only started to use it recently. Some people will say it’s hard, but that depends on your knowledge and dedication to learn. If you need help with Thesis, let me know and I’ll gladly help where I can.
Thanks George… If I end up buying it I might be asking you for help
Doug Dillard´s last blog ..How to Twitter?
@Doug – you know where to find me, I will be waiting for your call
Hey George,
Good list. But there is one article reading “the top SEO posts of 2008″. There have been changes in the Google algorith since then, Do these posts still follow the current SEO guidelines?
Tech-Freak Stuff´s last blog ..Reveal the Real Long URL behind the Masked Shortened URL
@Tech-Frak Stuff – this is just a guideline fo you to use. I think some have changed.
Atul is a regular visitor on my blog. for some reason posts only single line comments.
i thought of the same as you did…
Nice post. this is 11 to 14 are very important to get to the other level of blogging…
Nihar´s last blog ..Bhuvan India by ISRO is India’s Google Earth
@Nihar – I accept some of his comments, but will be stricter from now onwards. I have nothing against him at all besides some of the comments he leaves. I hope I have not upset him in any way.
Hi George,
Nothing to disagree with here, but of course, me being me, I just have to pick on you. On #13, when you’re talking about post content, you end by saying to check for spelling and grammar mistakes. You might want to read that entire point over again; kind of funny to say to do that, and have a couple of grammatical errors.
By the way, Sire wrote a similar point once and he did the same thing, and I picked on him also, so you’re in good company.
Mitch´s last blog ..Do Something Out Of The Ordinary
@Mitch – you are so right. I check point 13 and saw my mistakes, thanks for pointing it out for me. You are a STAR
Great article.
Google Analytics has been a favorite of mine for quite some time.
I have a client who recently redid their website using Analytics and it was going to be mentioned in a TV show that was broadcast mostly in Montreal and Quebec area.
They were thrilled when they saw their traffic increase from those areas.
Yves´s last blog ..Found helpful traffic building tips in Podcasts in iTunes
@Yves – Google Analytics is awesome and helps a lot to identify certain things. We can learn from it and improve on certain tasks.
No problem; I’m glad you took it as I meant it.
Mitch´s last blog ..Awkward Family Photos
@Mitch – no problem, I would never get upset by your kind of comment. It’s just funny that you were the only one that pointed it out.
Thanks for the link love George. Meanwhile For people who are planning to buy thesis, You need not need to worry about SEO much and more over throw your all in one SEO plugin and use the thesis inbuilt SEO functionality…
Another things : Analyzing your Google webmaster and Google analytic will give you great insight and you can use it to boost your blog productivity.
Socializing has a great advantage , For an example you can see the no. of comments here …
Great Post George.
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Google Reader Goes Social with Twitter, facebook and more social features
@Harsh – you are correct in what you say. Yes, the Thesis theme does not need the ‘All in One SEO’ plugin, but you can still use it.
Page rank 4 that’s is great. How long did that take you? This is a real good serious will have to check out these seo links working on an seo serious myself right now.
Jared P Little´s last blog ..Learn SEO in 15 Minutes Part 1
@Jared P Little – PR of 4 is cool for me, I think it took me just over a year, maybe less. I did not really notice it at all and I was not looking for it either.
Personally I think the community is the most rewarding part of managing a post. Even though you can have a thousand of unique visitors each day it’s simply numbers if you don’t interact with them. I always try to answer and visit most of my commentators simply because I want to know who are reading and following my blog.
Stefan´s last blog ..How to Backup and Restore Your Wordpress Blog
@Stefan – you are right and I also visit the commentators site, I try and return the favor
Comments on this entry are closed.