7 Tips to Get People to Read Your Blog

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Curtis J. Morley

Everyone wants Google rank their blog high in searches. Another important key is to get people to read your blog repeatedly. Here are 7 tips to writing effective blogs.

Provide Value
Don’t write just to write. Have a purpose and give people what they are looking for.
Be Consistent (Reliable)
Write regularly. Keep to a schedule so people know when to come back. Seth Godin is the master at this. I find that the more I am consistent, the more people read my blog. If I get to busy and break a schedule then my numbers in Google Analytics drop. Schedule a time to write your blog every day or week, let your users know about that time, and then consistently post to your blog at that time.
Keep It Short
Don’t write a diatribe. In today’s lightning fast world people want a quick peek at something of value.
Answer a Specific Question
Use Google to find what keywords are most popular. One very easy way is to just start typing in the Google search box the term you want to focus on. This field will auto-populate with the most popular terms. See the screen-shot below.

Search Engine Optimization Terms
Get Creative in Your Titles
One of the most attention getting headlines I saw recently was from an associate at work who wrote, “My Dog ate my Blog”. Make it catchy, relate-able, and you can even use things like lists in your title. Something like “7 Tips to Get Humans to Read Your Blog”
Stick To a Theme
Become the expert in an area and write about that. Do this for several months before changing topics. You may notice that my blog comes up for the search terms “Flash Errors”, “Flex Errors”, and “ActionScript Errors” as well as Marketing, photography, and technology.
Let People Find Your Blog
Follow the 7 Tips for Getting Google to Read Your Blog so that people actually can find the great stuff you have to write.

Thanks and Happy Blogging

Curtis J. Morley

7 Easy Steps to Get Google to Read Your Blog (Google Food)

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Curtis J. Morley

Many people often ask how I get so high in the search rankings for terms like “Flash Errors”, “Flex Errors”, and “Actionscript Errors”. I have been posting Flash and Flex errors for a while now and have steadily seen my traffic rise. To answer the question on search engine optimization – here are the seven things I do with every blog post.

Determine beforehand the one to three keywords I want Google to find.
Before you type a single line, determine which keywords you will target with your post. In other words, what do you want people to type into Google to find your blog post. Once the keywords are decided move on to step 2 for high SEO.
Put at least one of the three keywords in the title.
If you want great search engine optimization and Google to list you with a high ranking for the word “Leadership“, an appropriate title would be, “Leadership for the Next Century.“
Make sure that WordPress is setup to create each new link as the title.(or whichever blog platform you use)
In WordPress (the most common blogging tool which this site is using) Go to Settings >> Permalinks >> and choose either “Day and Name” or “Month and Name”. The URL is critical to search engines.
If the link says www.myblog.com/Google-Food vs. www.myblog.com/?p=123 it will be Google Food and Google will eat it up.

Wordpress Permalinks Make Google Food

Making your links into Google Food
Caption all images with the keywords chosen.
If your term is “Google Rankings” then insert an image that portrays how to get on the first page of Google and then give it a title and caption such as “Google Food” in it. Notice the caption of the image above. The title reads nearly identical.
Make sure that your Categories, Tags, Excerpt and Metadata are in line with your keyword terms.
Include several variations of the keyword terms in the tags, categories, and excerpts. For example – Leadership in Action, Corporate Leadership, Organizational Leadership, etc…
Keep to a theme
Give your blog a theme and keep things organized within that theme. Don’t write about your dog one day, your favorite recipe the next and U.N. Diplomacy another day. Make sure that you are consistent in what you post. It is OK to have a few related themes but no more.
Post a link from at least three other blogs
Do a Google search on the keywords that you are trying to target and start clicking. Find a way to comment on each of the top sites in a meaningful way and make sure to include a link back to your blog. Search engine optimization includes more than just your site. Google measures how many meaningful links there are to your blog.

Thanks and Happy blogging.

Curtis J. Morley

CurtisMorley.com

Flash/Flex, Interactive Marketing, Photography, and Social Media

Monthly Archives: November 2010