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Getting noticed

The blogging industry thrives on the success of individual bloggers which in turn depends on the traffic the bloggers receive.

In order to maximize the impact of blogs, there is a certain set of guidelines the blogger needs to observe. Here we discuss the few major techniques a blogger can implement towards this end.

What to do

1. Posting schedules – The foremost thing you need to do is to ensure that you plan and create a posting schedule ahead of time. It is advisable to do this in a structured manner. Here are a few pointers in this regard:

• Numerical goals – Establish a daily/weekly or a monthly pattern of posting you plan to achieve.

• Topic-related goals – You need to plan in advance how many posts per topic in a given category you wish to attempt in a particular span of time.

• Post Style Goals – Decide on the type of post you will attempt to write on each day of the week and follow the schedule.

2.Working hours – Apart from setting posting schedules, it is important to maintain the momentum of your blogging exercise by setting aside specific writing hours in your work time.

Blogging as an activity has so many features to involve you that you can actually skip the most important part – writing posts. You can designate a specific time of the day or even a specific weekday dedicated to penning down your material.

3. Go public – It often helps in posting your schedules, telling readers what they can anticipate in the next post. This also helps the blogger by setting a goal to achieve across posts and working schedules.

4. Add a title – Ensure that every post has a title. Readers get attracted better and search engines are able to spot you easily.

5. Comment – It helps to add comments on other’s blogs. It gets you known and makes you a familiar figure for other bloggers.

6. Time your posts – The gap at which you post your blogs also plays a crucial role. Besides, try and time your posts with relevant events, if any. For instance, if there is a national level sports event in offing, it helps to post a blog on the latest trends and famous players in that very sport.

7. Optimize the page count – Search engines rank sites with lots of pages as having more authority than sites with a lesser number and hence the benefit.

8. Tag your posts – Tagging has surely become one of the most result-oriented tools of the bloggers. You can even modify your template to make it more tag-friendly.

Introduction

A weblog is one of the most preferred virtual destinations, providing knowledge without any complications of web design and the other related components.

This said, it is yet so common for the blogging community to fall into some of the most common pitfalls and mistakes while operating in the blogosphere.

Common Mistakes

Here we list some of the common mistakes bloggers worldwide generally commit:

1. Launching a blog based on inadequate knowledge

The biggest mistake most of the beginners do is to launch a blog without trying to understand the blog culture or the blogging world. This further has a negative impact; both on the quality and relevance of the blog content, as well as on the netiquette norms the bloggers follow.

2. Depriving original blogger of the credit

Since many bloggers subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and get quite a few of their ideas from there, it is absolutely unacceptable for them to post a distinctively similar entry to the original one. Sadly enough, many bloggers end up doing so, hence defying the basic blogging discipline.

3. Dictating definitions

The blogging community strongly spurns new bloggers who go around throwing definitions about what is and what is not of blogging. Existing bloggers react sharply to anyone voicing such unjustified knowledge and hence the negative publicity.

4. Irregular schedule

Most of the bloggers start with a bang, only to come down with a thud. It is important that you treat the blog launch like the launch of a publication. Not releasing regular updates to your blogs is considered strongly against the blogging norms.

Ideally, readers should be able to anticipate the frequency of updates on your blog. Whether you’ve run put of material or time, this is one flaw that will put you well behind in the bloggers’ queue.

5. Inconsistent appearance

One of the biggest mistakes is not maintaining consistency in the design of all the blogs. Owing to this, all of the blogs can’t be integrated together into one.

It’s ideal to pick a specific design and use it for all the domains. It’s also advisable to create multiple blogs for each vertical content area and tie them together.

6. Quality of titles

The content and presentation of titles should reflect good quality. Humorous headlines often fall out of context and should be avoided. Try using descriptive headlines or titles for the representation of your blog in search engines and newsfeed.

The use of ALL CAPS should be avoided as the reading speed is reduced by 10%. Besides, the appearance of shouting is quite an undesirable sight.

7. Improper categorization

Bloggers often make the mistake of tagging a post with almost all of their categories. It is extremely important to be selective and decide on a few categories where a posting most belongs.

It’s advisable to limit the number of categories in the range of 10-20 and also add parent categories for listing.

8. Ill-written content

Avoid the pitfall of using excessive technical jargon or complex sentences. Keep the sentences short, crisp and simple. Also, don’t jam too much thought content into one post. Instead, add another post later.

9. Excessive self promotion

It is a prominent mistake to add an extensive paragraph about your services at the bottom of every post, especially if it is lined with links. This acts as a major put-off for most of the readers.

10. Posting your listings

Akin to no.9, it is highly undesirable to treat your blog as an advertisement; instead your blog should appear as a community resource and not a promotional tool.

11. Using generic themes

Most bloggers don’t realize the value of adding a personalized touch to the theme of their blogs. It’s advisable to lend a individualistic feel using your own photo, editing the header graphic or altering the colors.

12. Baseless questions

Too many bloggers post questions on their blogs that are not substantial or thought-provoking enough. The quality thus appears conspicuously low and hence the loss of reputation.

Missing Components

Apart from the above mistakes, quite a few of the bloggers don’t add some essential components to their blogs. Here we’ve listed a few:

• About section

The reader has a right to know what subject or content they are dealing

with. Absence of the ‘about’ section renders the reader rather aimless.

• Author photo

A personal impression of the author is a must as it provides the valuable link between the physical and virtual worlds. Human nature is such that an individual responds better to you if he/she has atleast seen how you look.

• Links to old posts

Your existing readers might have read your old posts, but many of the bloggers forget to add a link leading to their old posts for the benefit of the new bloggers.

• Search bar

The search feature is a fundamental requirement in any weblog. A homepage without a search bar is sure to leave the reader at a loose end.

• Links to other blogs and source

Most bloggers do not provide links to the primary material, such as a news story, an essay a speech or even another blogger’s entry. This is a clear non-compliance of basic blogging norms and should be avoided altogether.

• Personal domain name

A domain name comes at quite a reasonable cost, yet most of the bloggers don’t realize the importance of having one of their own. Similarly, letting somebody else own your domain name is same as letting someone else decide your destiny on the Internet.

Introduction

The quality of a blog’s content surely rules its popularity. Nevertheless, it is common for the finest pieces of writing to obtain very low SEO rankings.

It is important that the bloggers follow a certain set of techniques to ensure that their content gets more visibility through search engines.

SEO Tactics

In the blogosphere jargon, the SEO techniques for blogs are basically divided into two categories: on-site and off–site.

On-Site Techniques

These are the techniques which a blogger needs to implement while building a blog. Here we discuss the top 10 on-site techniques a blogger can follow.

1. Primary keyword and Domain Name- It is important to ensure that the blogs URL contain the primary keyword in question. You can also use the concerned keyword in the subdomains. For instance, if you are planning to start a pregnancy info site, then the primary keyword your URL should carry is the word ‘pregnancy’ .e.g. www.pregnancyknowledge.com

2. Primary keyphrase and title- Going by the example above, the words pregnancy and knowledge should appear in the blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as should the title of each of your posts.

3. Keyword rich body of the post – Using secondary keywords in the body of the post frequently ensures the relevance of the page for someone searching with those keywords. However, repetition in excess might cause the Google bots to remove your site from the index.

Besides, avoid using duplicate content on multiple pages and maintain optimal length of your posts.

4. Anchor text of links – The primary and secondary keywords should be used often in the anchor text links when linking to the other blog posts or to other pages of the blog. Keywords placed in the links are more valuable than those in the simple text.

5. Themed clutters – The chances get better if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. It is advisable to keep a topic/niche or a theme for your blog.

6. Navigation bar – Another major tip is to ensure that the navigation bar is present on all the pages of your blog. This will make it very convenient for the search engines to spider your blog. Besides, the previous popular posts should be linked to all the pages.

7. Consistency- You need to maintain consistency in updating your blog to get top rankings in a shorter duration. You also need to keep your domain name and the topic selected for your blog same throughout or else you will end up losing readership and traffic.

8. Domain registration – It helps to register your domain name for a lengthy period as this also influences how the search engines react to your site.

9. Ping – Use services that will ping a variety of websites for you and notify them that you’ve updated your content. In this manner, the search engines will also come to know of the updates, thus to your advantage.

10. Submit to Search Engines – After you’ve taken all possible steps to make your content search engine friendly, make sure you submit your URL to be included in the index for the search engine to know of your presence.

Off-Site Techniques

Off-site techniques are those that function from outside the site and are beyond the blogger’s control, but it’s important to be aware of these.

• Obtain backlinks- The most prominent and powerful technique is to try and obtain as many backlinks as you can. To build pagerank and to get your blog rank higher in search engines, you need to get as many links as possible link back to your posts or blogs.

What are Comments?

The Comments feature is a part of the blogging software that provides visitors with the ability to attach instant feedback to a specific blog host.

Enabling the comments feature on your posts would mean that people who read your blog will be allowed to submit their own text or ‘comments’ in response to what you have posted.

Once the comment is posted on your blog, you also have the provision to edit, delete or hide the comments as per your discretion.

Who can comment?

Most of the sites observe the following pattern for allowing users to comment:

• Only registered users: Posts for which only registered users can comment.

If not registered, the system will prompt the commenter to sign in, if it is a

free site.

• Anyone: Any visitor to the site can post a comment.

• Only members of this blog: If it is a Team Blog, only members of he

specific blog can post comments.

How to be a good commenter?

To build your online social capital and become a great blog commenter, you need to come across as a knowledgeable, informative and friendly individual. Here we list a few simple guidelines to become a good commenter:

1. Focus on topic – Bloggers enable comments on their specific posts so that the commenter can add to the content of the post. Don’t stray away from the subject and talk in line of the blogger.

2. Add a new point to the discussion – If there are ten people in one thread and all of them voice the same opinion about the post, the thread itself is rendered redundant. Make sure your comment offers some new perspective or point to the ongoing conversation.

3. Comment only if you have the content – The blogosphere labels those who comment for the sake of commenting as spammers who do so just to add their name and URL. So post a comment only if you have something valuable and substantial to add.

4. Comments vs. Emails – A wise commenter knows the difference between a comment and an email. A comment is a non-personal public conversation while an e-mail is a private interaction. You need to be clear whether you want to add a comment or send an e-mail, based on your content.

5. Don’t flaunt knowledge – Knowledgeable as you might be, its unacceptable for a commenter to flash around his wisdom, especially when contradicting another commenter. Even when pointing out an error of another commenter, be subtle and respectful.

6. Be clear – Don’t expect your audience to imply meanings from your statements. Exaggerations, in-jokes and sarcasm are undesirable in the commenting community. How you use your punctuation marks can also alter the meaning of the sentence altogether.

7. Anonymity – Though commenting anonymously can be necessary at times, it can also convey wrong messages to your audience. Be bold enough and build your identity by placing your name and blog address wherever you can.

8. Brevity – Longwinded text across paragraphs are a big put-off. Be straight, crisp and to the point in what you want to say instead of making a huge narrative background.

9. Cite Links – When you are referencing someone else’s work while commenting, don’t forget to cite links and give due credit to the primary source of material.

10. Observe courtesies – Even if someone’s comments irk you beyond limits, stick to the basic rules and norms of netiquette. Be respectful and objective in your approach, regardless of any provocation, whatsoever.

What is RSS?

RSS is a web content syndication format, from the family of web feeds and specified in the XML language, called an RSS feed, stream or channel. It is primarily a format for syndicating news and content of news-like sites.

RSS feeds are mainly used by news websites, weblogs and podcasting. The abbreviation RSS is used to refer to the following standards:

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)

• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

History

Prior to RSS, many similar formats existed for syndication, but most of them were designed to be able to work only with a single service.

The first version of RSS, the RDF Site Summary, was created by Dan Libby of Netscape in 1999. This version came to be known as RSS 0.91 (Rich Site Summary, 0.91). It was in the year 2003 that The New York Times first offered its readers, ability to subscribe to RSS news feeds related to various topics.

The RSS version in use confirms to the norms of the World Wide Consortium (W3C).

Utility Features

RSS has today evolved into a popular medium for sharing content between sites, including the likes of BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet and many more.

Web feeds are widely being used by the weblog community to share the headlines of the latest entries or alternatively their full text. The feeds also allow the users to attach multimedia files. Major news organizations including Reuters, CNN, PR Newswire, Business Wire and the BBC now use RSS feeds in their operations.

RSS feeds are now also being increasingly used for multiple purposes including marketing, bug-reports and other activities involving periodic updates or publications. Infact, RSS is one of the easiest and most economical ways to promote a site and its content without the need to advertise or create complicated content sharing partnerships.

Channel Elements

At the top level, a RSS document is a element, with a mandatory attribute called version. This specifies the version of RSS that the document conforms to.

Subordinate to the element is a single element, which carries information about the channel (metadata) and its contents.

Here’s a list of the main channel elements required:

• Title: This is the name of the channel. It’s how users refer to the service. If the information of the HTML website is same as that of the RSS file, the title of the channel should also be the same as the website’s title. For instance, ABC.com News Headlines.

• Link: The link is the URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel. For instance, abc.com/

• Description: This is a phrase or a sentence describing the channel. For instance, ‘The latest news from abc.com, a XYZ-Daily website’.

Some of the optional channel elements are:

• Language

• Copyright

• Managing Editor

• webMaster

• pubDate

• lastBuildDate

• category

• generator

• docs

• ttl

• rating

• image

• textinput

• skipHours / skipDays

Sample

This is what a typical RSS feed looks like: