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Writing for Blogs
1. Include Short biography and photo.
- People like to know who they are reading. It gives the blog a personal aspect. People are more likely to trust a real name and photo. It gives them something to relate to
2. Make it attractive and easy to read.
Give people short pieces to read. If it’s a very long article you can link to the main text from your blog and just give a snippet. When you read a newspaper we all read headings and opening paragraph but how often do you read everything?
It is quite feasible to write over 100 articles per month. If you can write good quality articles with this kind of productivity it will have a tremendous benefit for your websites. Some people may feel 100 articles a month is unachievable but there are various ways to make such a goal a real practicality.
Tips for Increasing Article Volume
- Article Length. The most popular articles on the internet are those that are short and easy to read. A good article length is between 300-700 words. If you are writing much more than 600 words you are spending more time and people may be actually less likely to read them.
- Write in lists and bullet points. Writing in lists really helps writing. The reason is you are focused on one point at a time. It creates greater clarity and simplicity in your writing. To write about the “benefits of writing” may sound daunting; but if you have a title “top 7 tips for writing on the internet” you have a clear focus to find and write about 7 ideas. Another benefit is that readers enjoy reading top 7 tips. It makes the article easy to scan and skim read.
- Write sets of articles. Suppose you would like to have a section about Thomas Jefferson on your website. To write about Jefferson is quite daunting; he achieved so much that there is an endless amount of reading you could do before you even start writing. I would suggest start off with writing short articles about certain aspects of Jefferson’s life. For example you could write articles like “Religious beliefs of Jefferson”, “Jefferson’s contribution to US constitution” e.t.c. After you have written several short essays about Jefferson’s life now is the best time to write an overall biography. You have learnt about Jefferson and already have several articles. If you start off with writing a long biography you will spend hours researching and have only 1 article to show.
- Don't repeat titles Note on writing sets of articles don’t use the same title with part 1, part 2. It is better to have a unique article title for each article. E.g don’t have several articles “about Jefferson part 1” “about Jefferson part 2”
- Write on What you know Best. To write a good article and check for errors usually takes about 30 mins. However if you know all about the subject already you may find that you can write an article in 15-20 mins. It is research that takes time.
- A simple hack to remove the "advertise on this site" on google ads.
It is an option from Google so there is no problem.
I think it is a good idea for smaller sites. It is only on quite large or popular sites that publishers would want to start placing specific ads.
to change login to google adsense
click on My account. - account settings.
then goto Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up [edit]
unclick to remove the advertiser sign up
- Reduce size of page. My main blog used to be 37 entries. I checked and it was a massive 169K. This is too long so I reduced the size of the blog. I wonder how many visitors I lost because they didn’t want to wait the 10-15 seconds for the page to load. Also if the page is too long it tends to overwhelm people.
- For unique content I try to look for inspiration outside the internet; books, TV, movies, other people. If your always looking on internet its harder to create unique content. You may find yourself rehashing old material. The other thing I like to do is write in a coffee shop with no access to internet. When you have internet acces, its too easy to get distracted checking email e.t.c. If you have no internet, all you can do is write.
- Use RSS feeds to get the latest feeds from bloggers writing on your specialised subject.
- Write on what you know about already
see also Writing content
- Articles should be informative. Offering a review of a film / book / product is a good idea. Articles that explain how to do something are also valued. If you give meditation classes, why not write about different types of meditation exercises. If you organise races you could write an article on “Things to remember for organising a running race.”
See full Post at: Net Writing: How to Write a good article for the Web
Ezine articles are a very useful way for writing about your topic of expertise and exposing your website to a greater audience. The main reason people write ezine articles is that it enables you to add a link of your choice at the end of your article. Getting links is an important aspect of improving your ranking. However you shouldn’t just view ezines as a way to get links. The quality of your writing is important as to whether people are interested in using your article and visiting your website. Here are some tips for writing effective ezines.
I consider links from ezines to be not particularly helpful. Anybody who can write could get an article published in an ezine. However what is helpful is if other sites read your ezine and like to duplicate the article (and therefore links) on your site. Here it is important to say you will not be penalised for duplication of content, because the links will be pointing to your site. Articles on wikipedia get copied numerous times, but it doesn’t stop them being high in the rankings, this is because sites who copy have to link to Wikipedia. To get the most from an ezine you should try to make the article as attractive to other sites so they will copy it and you get the highest diversity of links.
- Write an informative article rather than opinion or personal experiences. Ezines should not be viewed like writing a blog. You may enjoy writing about what you had for breakfast and your current state of mind. But unless you do something pretty extraordinary at breakfast time, most people will not actually be interested. Ezines that work well are articles that explain how to do something or explain an area of your expertise.
- Good Content. Create a good quality website, with useful content and simple design. A basic idea but sometimes companies think about SEO before having anything good to link about. Writing articles will help. Generally these will benefit from being clear and easy to read rather than dense and complex.
- Be patient. In the first 6-12 months you shouldn’t expect too much traffic. Your site will be sandboxed. This means it takes at least 6 months to start getting good results from Google.
- Never underestimate the importance of the tag line which appears in search engine results. It is not enough to get in the top 10 SERP. You have to also make sure people click and choose your site rather than your competitors who could be actually at a lower position.
- Page Load speeds need to be made a priority. If your website takes 20 seconds to load, your other work becomes wasted.
- Work hard on becoming an authority for your niche market. You can do this by offering good content. Linking to relevant websites (which are already considered to be authorities) This may even encourage them to link back.
- Give reasons for People to stay. Simple clean design. Remember the motto of the average web user “Don’t make me Think” Make sure they are led to click on where you want them to go.
- Give reasons for people to comeback. Make the experience interactive. Offer new content in a variety of media.
- Work hard on getting links. Offer something interesting to link to. See Link baiting
- The title of pages are very important.
- Firstly for getting rankings. If you choose a title “London pictures” don’t expect to get any traffic from google. If you choose. “interesting pictures of London Tower” you may.
- Make title interesting. People rarely read the whole blog entry. Look for interesting titles.
- Try to incorporate a community aspect into the website if possible.
- Get to know people. Personal contact makes a big difference. If they actually know the webmaster people will have more loyalty to a website and take interest in its progress.
- Be patient, but enjoy what you do. If you have an interest and believe in what you are doing. It will be much easier to motivate yourself to write articles and add content.
In the traditional Google search engine model there were several factors considered to be important for determining search engine rankings. Factors included:
- Number and Quality of external links to your website.
- Quantity and Quality of text content.
- Relevant external links to related themes on other established websites.
However just because you create a website with lots of unique content and work hard to get links from other related sites. It is not necessarily enough to guarantee good rankings.
New ways Search Engines are using to detemine rankings.
Do people choose your site from the Search Engine Results?
- Do people click on your site when displayed in search results. For example suppose you work really hard on links and content and get your site in the top 10. However once you are there people seem reluctant to actually click on your result. This suggest to the search engine that your site doesn’t appear interesting therefore it may get moved down the rankings to reflect this. Similarly a site at number 10 may get a disproportionate large number of clicks for a site placed no. 10. Therefore the search engines move it up accordingly.
Is your Site a good experience for the user?
- One can never underestimate the importance of page load times. A survey by the BBC suggests a page load of over 4 seconds may be enough to make viewers leave before they have even entered. [1]. If viewers don’t want to wait it is very likely search engines will also punish you. This does not mean you should necessarily be worried about temporary periods of downtime. But if your site is permanently slow this could be very detrimental to your long term rankings.
Is your site useful?
- Often on getting good rankings there may be a temptation to take away useful external links and fill it with advertising. But if you empty the page of useful links and replace them with unrelated links, you shouldn’t be surprised if your rankings start to fall.
SEO tricks always fail
- SEO tricks never work longterm. Some people still think they can fool search engines by using tricks. But look at the top sites for major keywords, are they using black hat tricks? However clever the trick is. Search engines are likely to find you out. This can also damage your “reputation” to engines as well.
Is your website real?
- Do you have a contact. It is said that DMOZ check to see whether there is a prominent contact page with a real person behind the site. There is no reason why search engines can’t look for this as well. If you look at spammy sites you are unlikely to find a photo, real name and a real address behind the site. If you have nothing to hide why not put a contact, photo and address. To show there is a real person behind the site.
Do People Comeback?
- Do people want to comeback? Search engines can examine how many people bookmark your site and revisit. If nobody bookmarks your site it suggests you have nothing to offer. Fresh content is important in the sense you need to offer people a genuine reason for coming back.
Is the Website Natural?
- Are links self generated? Do they come just from a small network of sites on same IP address. Do you add content regularly or all at one go?
Are People Voting for You?
- Do you get featured by other blogs? Do you get featured on sites like Digg, Shoutwire e.t.c?
