Do your page titles properly reflect the content of the page?
Just to quickly make sense of what I am going to say, open an article in your site and see what it says in the top of the browser bar. If it doesn’t show the article title within the first 10 to 60 characters, you have got a duff title. (10 to 60 characters in a title equates to what is seen in Google search results.)
Titles that don’t add up
If you search Google for references to Zwinky, the results will include articles from The Pisstakers on page 5! Wow wee, not bad for a satire site, but the trouble is, the page title listed in Google isn’t “Zwinky drag and drop into the trash”, but The Pisstakers daily web search for computer hardware, software .. So what? Job done! The article may get seen by a few of the millions into Zwinky.
Well, yes and no. It would be easy to say that being ranked on page 5 for a popular search term is good enough, and maybe that is all it is worth, but if the title isn’t obvious, you run the risk that even the few readers persistent enough to look at page 5 will miss your fab article. Essentially, if your title in the search results doesn’t equate even remotely to what the searcher was searching for, the article is worth almost nothing to anyone – what a waste of an insightful Zwinky article that could change the world of MySpace.
Titles and SEO
And following on from there, ethical SEO helped me demystify the SEO title issue a little further, as well as outline a general SEO strategy. Search engines like logical flow. If your site is called The Alphabet, Google would like to see an article entitled “ABC”, with H1, H2 etc paragraph headings that include ABC, followed by a handful of keywords related to ABC included in the main content, plus anchor text linking in- and off-site to relevant articles that add to the story of ABC. Hopefully you can see that the whole SEO flow is sort of messed up if the page title, ie the highest level of this logical chain, is wrong!
SEO plug-ins
I cannot help thinking that with my current page titling approach (dictated to by the blogging software) I am working with one hand behind my back. WordPress had this issue too, maybe someone can clarify if it still does, and I know the person who inspired this post, It’s Phishie, was horrified to see all his articles with the same title. He found an SEO plug-in for Joomla blogs to rectify the issue, maybe you need to double check your blog software and maximise your titles too?
That Says It All, My New Blog
That Says It All, is my new blog. I am very opinionated person and I have a lot to say on a lot of different subjects, but really no outlet for it. I do write two other blogs, one about my art and the other about moneymaking opportunities, but these don’t give me an outlet for my more out spoken subjects. That’s where That Says It All comes in. On That Says It All I will comment on everything from sex to politics. I hope to be controversial, informative and thought provoking. I just started this blog and it only has three posts right now, but you will get a pretty good taste of the flavor of this blog. So come on by and check it out. “That Says It All
Comments Responses
Over at Quit Your Day Job I started a new poll regarding the way you respond to your comments (when you get them!!).
When you respond to the comments on your blog do you do a separate comment for each response or do you do one big group response?
I know people who do it both ways and frankly I can see benefits for either methods.
The first method is you post a different comment for each of the comments you get. Effectively you are doubling the comments on each of your posts. Even though half of them are yours it would give the impression that you have a lot more comments than you have actually gotten. Imagine if we responded individually on Comment Friday? Say we get 30 comments and then respond to each of them, on the front page it would appear as 60 comments. The other thing though is it’s like the retail rule, you are more likely to get more customers coming into a store with customers already in there than an empty shop.
The second way is by just doing the one big comment responding to everyone within it. This is the method I myself use and I think I do so more out of saving time than anything. Actually that’s not true I also have a recent comments plugin like the one found here and if I respond to several comments then it just looks like I’m commenting on my own stuff LOL. I like people’s names being displayed in that plugin because it gives them a little link-love too.
So what do you do? The single comment or the many? As a commenter do you like having a response aimed directly at you? If someone is responding directly do you notice it and think cynically that they are just trying to boost the appearance of their comments?
So after you’ve commented here about why not head over to QYDJ and vote in the poll too? You never know you may read something there that warrants a comment!
On A Personal Note…
I was planning on getting a few posts out on Mothers Day, after the meme I participated in. However, that wasn’t possible and I’m not sure how much I will be able to post this week. There was a terrible tragedy in our family, that will need most of my attention for a while. I’ve also recently taken on some guest blogging duties, and others were interested in “employing” me as well, but that will also have to postpone. Our family is in pain and I have to be there for them. Over the next month I will do my best to contribute, and should have a few posts up over the next few days hopefully, but there is no guarantee. I want to make a few posts regarding the Top 5 Blogging Contest problogger hosted, as well as a few goals BAYB broke. I also want to close our contests, I’ve got other ideas I want to get started, including prizes, cash, and links.
I appreciate the support I’ve already received by new authors publishing posts. I am positive we have some of the best bloggers here, and I’m lucky to surround myself with such great people.
If something is wrong or anything, please use our contact form, and it will be taken care of. Thanks to all of our readers and authors for making Blog about your Blog what it is today.
Notely: A Lesson In Organization For Students
High school and college students alike will find Notely a useful tool to help them keep on top of their classes and studies. It’s all too easy for them to be distracted so having an online solution that will reduce the amount of papers they have to keep up with will be quite an attraction for them.
Notely is a collection of online tools that allows for easy storage of courses, tasks, to-do lists (not sure why that’s different than tasks), calendar, contact information and more. It even has a place to upload documents.
The content you store can easily integrate with RSS feed readers and synchronize with iCal (a popular calendar application made by Apple, Inc.). Backing up is breeze. Just select the category of content you want to export to your desktop, and you get a CSV formatted file to download.
Let’s say your high school or college student is sitting in class taking notes (they should be doing that, right?). Well, assuming the teacher encourages laptop use during class, they could be taking notes with Notely. This way if their computer ever breaks down or if they’re left without it (maybe they’re in the library or visiting home from college), then their notes are a few clicks away.
Though the school year may be over for some, it’s never too late to learn important organizational skills. Giving your teen the tools to help them do that will help them later in life.
Courtesy of Family WebWatch Blog | Fave FWW | Subscribe to FWW
Blogging Competition/Link Exchange – Golden Goal
Hi everybody, after the recent success of Problogger’s Group Writing Project, I have decided to try and run my own competition. The first attempt was a total failure, but I feel that now every blogger can enter, including you!
The basic premise is I am playing a charity football game for Colwyn Bay FC on Saturday, and to win the prize (which is a copy of the Matchday programme, only 150 will be produced! A great gift for all sports fans and memorabilia collectors), all you have to do is predict the time of the first goal which will be scored on the day.
All you have to do to enter is link to The Gospel According To Rhys on your blog or mention the competition in your post, linking to the competition page somewhere within a blog post. Then when that is done, fill in the form on the site with your guess. If you’re lucky, you will win!
Of course, not all of us are lucky, so on May 19th (the morning of the match), I will link to all the entries, at the very least you’ll get a link from a Page Rank 4 blog, which is top 20,000 in Technorati. Can’t be bad.
Competition closes May 18th, good luck!
My Favorite Unpopular Posts
Matthewat EJabs, Recently blogged a rant about his best posts not being popular. I’ve recently felt the same way. Here I am, writing quality content, to a medium size platform and it’s not getting the response it deserves.
To try to pick up some of his old posts, he created the My Favorite Unpopular Posts meme. Basically all you have to do is read through your past posts, and select your top 10 favorite unpopular posts and list them. I think thats a great idea and I’m going to do the same.
1. Introduction to Feed Reading
2. Displaying your RSS Feed Count: What is the Big Deal?
4. To Tweak or Not to Tweak your Blog
5. Enfomercials Where Your Commercial Gets Air Time
7. Top 10 Sins of Blog Usability
8. 7 steps to getting traffic to your blog
9. This is NOT a Sponsored Post
10. Getting Traffic to your Website with Linkreferral
Honorable Mention….
How We Got 300 MyBlogLog Members
I couldn’t fit it all into 10, I had to add the MyBlogLog post. It’s the most popular post out of the bunch (most pageviews) but still isn’t that popular…. yet.
I hope to see other bloggers list of their top unpopular posts. To ensure that I’ve decided to tag 4 bloggers. I’m tagging:
Use Contactify To Talk With Your Visitors
If you’re looking for a way to keep your blog’s visitors communicating with you, but your contact form isn’t up to snuff, then look no further. Contactify may be just the thing for you.
Contactify is a free way to allow visitors to email you without you giving away your email address. All you have to do to get going is provide them with an email address and a password. Once you do that, you’re given a unique URL that belongs to you and you only. When you put that on your blog and someone clicks on it, they’ll be taken to a form where they write out their message.
Automated abuse is prevented by the sender having to enter a code on the form. This way, Contactify knows it’s a human doing the writing and saving you the hassle of getting spammed.
Courtesy of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD