I’ve never invited you to ask me anything you want about blogging, and I figured it was high time I did. Ask me your questions in the comments and I’ll answer them there. Make sure you subscribe to the comments so you don’t miss your answer. If anyone else wants to help answer questions, too, your participation is welcome. Comments are open, so…
Ask away!
29 Comments
Michael,
I like your newsletter and read it when I get a chance to, and I DO have a couple of questions…
1) I brand companies. I have lots to say about branding and a blog seems like a great way to ‘get the word out’. BUT, there are millions of branding blogs out there, why one more?
2) Should my blog be internal to my web site or through blogging software?
Thank you for considering the questions, and I look forward to the dialogue.
Sandy Wallace
I’m considering starting a blog and I’d like to know (generally) what level or readership archived blog posts achieve?
Is it only the most recent posts that attract 100 % of readers or do people look at archives.
I never look at archives myself because dates give no indication of content so it’s difficult to get motivated to click!
Many thanks…Rob.
Thanks for the “open mic” and opportunity to ask questions!
1. What do you recommended as a “ping list” for Wordpress?
2. Do you use “Smart Update Pinger” or another plugin and/or have any best practices for configuring WordPress for pinging?
Dear Michael,
Long time reader, first time commenter. My questions are…
1-what is the best blog directory?
2-what is the best way to get readers?
Thanks,
Elaine
@William:
1) I brand companies. I have lots to say about branding and a blog seems like a great way to ‘get the word out’. BUT, there are millions of branding blogs out there, why one more?
Good question. You may be familiar with the idea of a USP (unique sales proposition) or UVP (unique value proposition). Positioning goes right along with branding. How would you position your blog to stand out among the crowd? There are many blogs about highly competitive subjects which are full of mediocre content. One simple way to stand out is to blog about what you have done and are currently doing, instead of spouting ideas and theory. This is especially valuable if you want your blog to land clients for you. Clients want to know what you will do for them, so when they see you doing it for others, it’s easy for them to want your services for themselves.
2) Should my blog be internal to my web site or through blogging software
Your blog will always be through blogging software–it must be. The real question is, do you want to simply add the blog to your existing site, or redesign the site so that the blog content management system makes your entire website easy to edit and manage. If you have not really blogged much before, I would suggest creating a “throwaway” blog at http://wordpress.com and try it out for a few weeks to get the hang of it. Think of it as a test, do not invest too much into it that you would be sad to lose it, because your real blog is yet to come.
@Rob -
Part of the art of blogging is to regularly draw your readers’ attention to your archives. This can be done through a review post, where you select previous posts that follow a theme and link to them in a new post. This is a great tip for when you’re stuck for something new to write or are pressed for time.
Another way to draw attention to archives is to use various WordPress plugins like Related Posts or Popular Posts plugins.
But by far the most common and easy way to to do it is to always link back to previous posts in the current post where it’s relevant and helpful to the reader to do so. Your own internal links to previous posts count as backlinks and help with search optimization (they don’t count as much as links from other authoritative sites on the web, but they do count).
@Dana -
I do not use any pinging plugins–not because I shouldn’t, but because I don’t know what their advantages are, and I simply haven’t bothered. But here is my list of ping servers (which anyone will find in Settings > Writing in their WordPress admin area). You’re welcome to use this list as your own, simply copy and paste into the box.
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
@Elaine -
You could have started with something easier, like, “what is the meaning of life?”
1-what is the best blog directory?
If you asked me this a few years ago I would have given you a different answer, but as you know things change pretty fast online. Keep in mind that my answer is subjective–it’s just my opinion, and others are welcome to disagree with it or offer their own suggestions. But here goes:
Blog Catalog: http://blogcatalog.com
MyBlogLog: http://mybloglog.com
These two are the best right now because there is a strong social component to each one. Other than these, I would look for directories that are run by individuals which are specific to a niche, such as animation blogs or real estate blogs.
2-what is the best way to get readers?
1) Write the best stuff you possibly can.
2) Participate heavily in social media (the two blog directory sitea above are a good place to begin, plus StumbleUpon and Twitter.
3) Form a blog pack.
Good luck! Keep working at these three. Improving your writing as much as you can will help your content overall, so you should regularly read Copyblogger and Men with Pens.
Remarkablogger,
Should I keep a list of recent posts or most popular posts in the sidebar column of my blog? Does it matter or make a difference?
I most blog for fun, but I appreciate your feedback. Thanks for taking questions.
@Justin -
Should I keep a list of recent posts or most popular posts in the sidebar column of my blog? Does it matter or make a difference?
Many blogs have a list of recent posts in the sidebar and there really is no reason to, since visitors see the same posts on the page, anyways. If you write long posts, it can be a convenience to save people from scrolling a lot, but otherwise, it just takes up space (and I say this knowing full well I have a list of recent posts in my sidebar
).
Popular posts are better, because it shows that something on your blog is popular, which is usually your best content.
Using widgets in your wordpress theme and a little HTML know-how, you could hand-code a list of “must-read” posts if you want something a little different than the usual “recent” or “popular” posts.
Great questions, so far, everyone! Keep ‘em coming! Don’t be shy!
Do you use an affiliate cloak plugin for your affiliate links? If so, which one? And is it free?
Jay
@Jay-
Yes, I use GoCodes, a free WordPress plugin. It works great. The word “cloaking” makes it seem like a deceptive practice, when in fact it is not, so I don’t like that word. Anyone can tell the links are affiliate links. In fact, they are even more obvious. But the difference is that with prettying them up (much like we use “pretty permalinks” in WordPress), they have a consistent structure.
I received a question via email I’d like to answer and share with you: do comments on the blog help to increase your ranking?
In other words, if you have comments on a blog post, is that going to increase the search ranking for that post?
I must be careful to say I don’t have a definitive answer to that, but I will say that it’s very unlikely. Others linking to your post will improve your rankings, yes. But people leaving comments creates no new links to you. Comments can increase traffic to a post temporarily, but I don’t see how that really affects search rankings for a single blog post in the long run.
Hi Michael,
Do you think there are two groups of readers - search traffic and subscribers?
If so what implications do you think this has?
@Evan -
I think every blog has these two categories of visitors. Most often (and by a wide margin) a blog will have more search traffic than readers.
The implications as I see them are that we need to keep both groups in mind when we create content. For example, even though it might be great for search traffic if I kept posting on the same few topics repeatedly, subscribers would quickly tire of it.
Hi Michael,
My figures (according to Google Analytics: 10% search engines, 20% direct, 70% referral sites - mostly stumbles which don’t seem to ever become subscribers anyway).
I’m not sure whether this is a major weakness or something that could be a strength.
It seems likely that search engines should be the main place to get new readers from.
My number of readers has been static for months now - though I have been a bit slack with trying out blog carnivals and guest posting and so forth. I also probably need to find some new blogs to comment on.
I wonder about longer posts and not just writing the same thing repeatedly (though many of the most popular blogs seem to do just this). But it is just so boring - they must be people who are more interested in the business side of things than their subject.
So any new ideas on growing subscribers very welcome.
And thanking you for your response.
@Evan -
We don’t want to over-rely on search traffic. But… if your search traffic is that small of a percentage, and your social media referrals have a high bounce rate, that indicates to me that you need to examine your content strategy: your content needs to grab more search traffic, and it needs to be more relevant and useful to social media referrals.
Empathy is one of the best SEO tools we have. Imagine a person somewhere has a specific problem–one that fits your expertise. When they sit down in front of the Google box… what words do they type in? Those words should be in your post title and your post content should be useful and actionable information someone who has a problem can benefit from.
You have no real search optimization happening with your blog, and that means your search traffic will never be as good as it could be.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of random question that puzzles me for years (ok weeks)
1) I notice a lot of blogspot type blog have Google Pagerank of 3 and 4. I just wonder whether that is really an accurate figure or the fact that it is on blogspot is influencing it.
2) I would like to know your opinion about bounce rate. I’ve read somewhere that high bounce rate for a blog is actually normal since regular readers always visit and read the most recent entry only. They will not go read other.
My question is.. if this is true. Then we shouldn’t be worried about reducing high bounce rate, right? Or should we?
Again, thank you for your time.
@Banji-
I don’t think that Blogspot blogs get any extra leverage in PageRank from Google. That would end up hurting Google in the long run. Many Blogspot blogs have been around for a long time because Blogger is older than WordPress. People create Blogger blogs specifically for the purpose of generating backlinks, so a pyramid of Blogger blogs meant to drive PageRank to some other site could end up with some of those blogs near the tip of the pyramid having a decent PageRank.
High bounce rates are not always normal. Relevant, useful, authoritative content will not have a high bounce rate. You want to reduce bounce rate by more closely matching your content to your visitors’ search keywords and demographics. Content must be highly useful and relevant to visitors or they will bounce out. Bounce rate is one of the best ways to gauge relevancy and usefulness of content for your blog.
Hmm. So hard to decide what to ask! What an opportunity!
Do you think the average Joe or Jane is can handle setting up their own blog, or should they always have a pro do it?
Or, what are the mistakes non-professionals usually make that we should watch out for.
Thanks, Elaine
@Elaine -
This answer is going to get its own post! Stay tuned for tomorrow!
Thanks Michael,
I’m not sure what you mean by ’search optimization’. Do you mean writing to key words? Linking to other posts of mine and other blogs? I do some links to my other posts, only when relevant. Other stuff I link to in separate posts usually.
My intention is to make all my content useful and immediately useful. I don’t know whether you (or others) think it is - although commenters seem to (these are only a tiny fraction of readers of course).
I’m not sure what to do about the bounce rate. I don’t want to write on just one topic. But if it is the topic that attracts interest I’m not sure what else to do to reduce. I’m interested in writing in the ’self-development’ (I can’t bring my self to use the term ’self-improvement - what is so bad that needs to be improved) area and don’t want to confine myself to just one topic (efficiency, positive thinking, goal setting, whatever). I really don’t want to write the same things over and over again. I might be ranting. So here’s a question:
For a successful blog do you think you need to stick to one narrow topic (keyword, niche, whatever it’s called) and just write roughly the same thing over and over again? Most of the popular blogs seem to do this. There are some exceptions (Steve Pavlina in the self-development niche is one I know). So I guess the question is: how did Steve do it and could others do the same?
I think my expertise is grabbing a topic and presenting the guts of it in an accessible and usable way. This means it is not on a narrow topic but tends to churn through topics in my niche (roughly psychotherapy or self-development). Not sure people go looking for this in the search engines. So I feel a bit stuck about how to present this.
I appreciate your response and am not disagreeing with it, just not sure what to do about it.
@Evan -
Search optimization (SEO) that you have the most control over consists of two things with blogs: the content you create and the meta information about the post. You see that ninja link at the top right of my page? You should buy that book and learn some search optimization for yourself. It would be one of the best things you ever do for the success of your blog, and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.
Go study the success of others and model it. I don’t mean become a cheap imitation, I mean study how they do what they do and take your own lessons from that. Study them in a professional capacity.
Damn, check out the comments and answers! Michael, well done.
@ William - There are hundreds of freelance writing blogs out there. Why should we blog? Because we’re the guys who tell it straight, shooting from the hip on whatever topic passes by. We offer high value for reader with casual personality that people love. We’re thought-provoking, we give strong, solid advice that works and we actually follow through on the advice that we offer - and we prove it works firsthand. Oh, and when we screw up? We admit that too. We’re human, after all.
What’s your USP?
@ Elaine - Those Men with Pens guys are hacks. I wouldn’t believe a word they said
@ Justin/Michael - I have to disagree (respectfully and politely). In chronological, one-post style blogs, offering as much easy content to readers is important to keep them sticking and clicking. Without recent posts, they have to find the link to get to the next post. Why make them hunt? Give them a buffet of choice and keep them reading.
Also, this helps keep older posts active and in view for more commenting and readership.
No?
@James -
Thanks for swinging by. Good points, all, and way to rock the USP! That’s how it’s done, people.
I agree with your reasons for keeping the recent posts on the page, but the way in which this element is incorporated into most blog designs, I really don’t think it fulfills those reasons as well as we’d all like to think it does. I’m with you on the idea, but the execution is lacking on most blogs (including mine, I admit). When “recent posts” is lost in the sidebar cruft, it’s not helping anything.
Hmm, so the trick would be to try and avoid sidebar clutter and put what’s important?
(I’m not pointing fingers about busy blogs… we have one of those lol)
James, that’s what I’m saying, yes. Clicking deeper into the blog is really an act of conversion, if you think about it. It may not be the primary or secondary conversion act, but it might be the next priority. I bet you that designing with that goal in mind will increase page views and decrease bounces. Mind you, I have no proof, but blog design experiments would create that proof.
Michael and James,
Thanks for the feedback. I do need to work on my sidebar clutter, and now I have a new focus in mind — learning how to design my own theme template. I’ll see what I can do to maintain useful information in the sidebar with my own site design.
Thanks a bunch.