Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

Steve Rubel’s Technorati Hacks

November 8, 2005 by Liz

THIS JUST IN:

You may have heard about this already from Darren at Problogger or directly from Steve Rubel himself. Still it’s the hot topic of our day, and it belongs in the Survival Kit.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is sharing Ten Technorati Hacks geared for the “digitally inclined” who want to get more mileage out of the Link King. This post is one in Steve’s series of hack postings. It’s complete with visuals and plenty of things that you can’t do in a Blogger template. However, even the newest blogger will find some useful information in a quick read.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Title Tags and a Poem to Technorati

November 8, 2005 by Liz

I promised you a Tuesday post on tags and this is it. One thing this successful blogger knows is that you don’t tell your readers that you’re going to do something and then not follow through with it. I’m following through with it.

When I started getting my notes together, I knew something about tags. I had put keywords deftly in my template just as Darren Rowse describes in his article, The Importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I had done things so much like he had, I’d done the same things wrong.

This post explains the importance of title tags in how search engines look at our blogs. Darren added a two-word term to his. Then he graphed what happened. In just three days, his position on that term at Google changed from 65th to 10th. On MSN, his listing went from 40th to 1st. The comments that follow the article also add some new information, including how to respond gracefully when you mess up your host’s template.

Now for something completely different–a poem to Technorati Tags.

Oh Technorati
you fickle one
you really had me going
thinking if I chased enough
I might find solid ground.
But your faint mystery
was finally unraveled
when I found Improbulus
who carefully explained how the
premise is structurally unsound.

In other words, I found a post by a writer named Improbulus, Technorati tags: an introduction that provides everything you’d ever want to know about tags with a capital T and probably more.

I’m a saturation learner, so I found it fascinating to see exactly how the Technorati system might be used. Improbulus provides subheads to guide us through this well-organized analysis of the possibilities. Be sure to read the end where Improbulus gives an opinion of the downside of the system.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Promotion Basics [for Everyone]

November 8, 2005 by Liz

If you look up–under the logo for Successful Blog–you’ll see the words content that is organized, thorough, and relevant. That means I plan to capture and present the basics for everything. I also plan to make sure that those posts–like this one–offer information for everyone, not just new bloggers. Oh and, my other plan is that these posts won’t be boring. 🙂

Well, it used to say that. Now, we just live it.

I’ve hidden a posting Easter egg of sorts in this one. Hope most of you don’t have it already.

This post is based on Duncan Riley’s Building blog traffic for newbies. If you already know the basics, read the 31 comments that follow the post.

Duncan lays out six main points he pulled together when he realized that people seemed to know little about promoting blogs. I’ll list them here [with my notes], and you can get the detail from the post.

Don’t use blogrolling for your site links. It stuffs up search engines.
Pinging is good, but trackbacks and comments are better.
Offer to exchange links in your links section [in the sidebar].
Link to small sites without exchange through sidebar or a post.
Submit your blog to all search engines [and directories].

And what we both agree is the most important one:

Post regularly, [consistently], and often.

I’d also like to add two if I might.

Join a forum in your niche. It offers natural opportunities to talk about your blog.
Find websites in your niche that would like to list your link.

Of course, the best promotion is quality content when the traffic gets there.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS. Do we have to use the word “newbies”? Has anyone got a better one?

What Is Content that Keeps Readers?

November 7, 2005 by Liz

Everybody talks about content, but nobody actually defines it.

What is content and how can content keep readers?

Content is more than ideas, more than words and pictures on the screen, more than links to articles and data. Content is everything we communicate to our readers. Content is . . .

Information Quality content is both fact and analysis. It offers meat and potatoes that anyone can find together with something original–analysis, predictions, interpretation–that comes only from the writer. Everything is relevant. There’s no time waster anywhere. The writer’s decisions are the “value-added”–the secret recipe. If we have the best recipe, readers will keep coming back to us.
Presentation Quality content is top-notch presentation. Simple is elegant. The best information is lost, if nobody reads it. Too many long sentences; too many bullets; too many links interrupting the text–these get between the reader and the ideas. If it looks hard to read, it is. Like a great wine in a crystal glass, great presentation makes great content inviting.
YOU We saw from our interviews last week, how readers respond to the intangibles Indie brings to his blog. Our presence, our voice, our respect for our readers, they are the nuance, the one-of-a-kind sauce on the expensive meal. Too peppery, too sweet, too salty, too bland, and readers will think this dish isn’t worth having again. On the other hand, get the right balance and they’ll be back every night.

When a blogger provides top-notch content with something extra, readers can see it. They appreciate the writer, and they enjoy the experience. Readers notice that “value-added” difference. They’ll be back to see whether we can do it again.

And that’s when consistency is the operative word. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Titles that Grab Readers

November 7, 2005 by Liz

The best marketer I ever worked for swore by this rule:

Call it what it is. They can’t read your mind.

The following three titles all describe the same posting.
Which title would draw the most readers?
Which title would rise higher in search engine results?

Golden Snapshots
Short Posts that Draw Readers
Posts Made of Steel Not Wood

Easy to see. Hard to remember. If only I had a billboard in front of my desk instead of dead air. I need to go back to rename some postings so readers can easily tell what’s in them.

Creative writing is two blogs down and then to the left. Sometimes I’m too clever by half.

Do you have the same problem that I do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss