Archive for March, 2011

How long is too long when you are writing a blog post? Can a blog post become too long and uninteresting? Do you need to write more to make sure that you get the message across?

Some times when you are writing, whether it be a blog post or an article, then to get through the full amount of detail that you need is going to take a lot of writing. You could be writing a very detailed post about a complicated subject, but does it really need to run to several thousand words?

Why write one post, when you can write two?
If a post is going to be long winded, then why not split it down? Two posts, three posts, maybe more? Start with a high level overview that describes everything in summary and then links to the all important detail posts that look at just one area and cover it in detail. Although, even some of these can link to further detailed posts.

This way instead of getting one post that describes your content in detail, you have a series of well organised posts that link together and guide readers to where they want to be. But at what point do you start this? When is enough ‘enough’ and when is too much too much?

When is “too much”?
Many article sites like to work on a guide line of around 400 – 500 words per article as a minimum. These guidelines that the different sites work to aren’t randomly issued – they are worked out from experience. They have worked out that readers and search engines like articles that are that size. Much smaller and they become worthless – the search engines might not cache them, they are not focussed on a topic and the reader does not get out of it what they want.

So let’s flip this around. If 400 – 500 words is a good minimum and it is better to split information into a high level overview and a more detailed series, then if your writing is getting in to the order of 800 – 1000 words then it is time to split it down. Split it down into 2 different articles and even write a third that overviews the whole and acts as an overview.

A step further
I would go even further than this and say that if a post hits the 600 – 800 words mark then it is possible to split this successfully as I have already described – by the time each part has an introduction and summary and maybe a lead into the other half, then you have the suggested post size of 400+ words.

When is too much “too much”?
To me, it is anything over around the 500 word mark. Odd posts will exceed this point, but not too often. Keep the posts short, keep them organised, keep your readers interested and use shorter posts to guide them around your blog.

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One of the easiest ways of increasing your blog readership is good navigation. But, what exactly is this and what can you do?

Picture the scene. A visitor lands on your blog’s home page from a search engine query or clicking a link in an article. Chances are that the post most relevant to them has moved. A quick glance down the home page doesn’t reveal the answer, so now what happens?

Answer – they leave your site. No RSS subscription, no further page views, no bookmarking to return at a later date. This is a disaster.

So take a look at your blog’s home page. If you were that visitor, what should be there to help you find the posts that you want.

Make it loud, make it proud
I have used most popular post and related post plugins on my blogs for years. They certainly do help – you can see that traffic is navigating around the site using these. However, these are small and sometimes difficult to see. So start off with something that new readers will not miss.

And that is a sticky post.Write a post and stick it to your home page so that it is always the first post that readers see. This way, if some posts are a little off topic it doesn’t matter. The sticky post is what they see first.

But what goes into that post? Well just review the posts that have been read the most over the last week or two. You don’t need this to be exact and you could tweak the list a little to push readers to key posts. Just write about the post and then link to it. I did this and my pages per visitor jumped up by over 20%.

Guide visitors around your site
So you have used a sticky to get a reader to a key post, now what? Well are any of the elements of that discussion dealt with in more detail in other posts? Maybe it is a high level list of tasks, each of which is described in detail elsewhere?

If so, link straight to those posts from the relevant paragraphs. If you have readers hungry for information, show them where to get it on your site. Search engines will also love this ability to delve deeper. Whilst you are at it, review your most popularly read posts and apply this trick to them all.

Automate the process
They might not work as well as manual links, but they can still help with traffic. So install a most popular posts plugin and replace the most recent posts list with this list. Show readers your best and most popular work.

Whilst you are at it, give them a list of related posts at the end of each post. Maybe you haven’t had time to update that post or they have the detail they need, but you are suggesting more reading to them.

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Looking For Local Posting

Sometimes when you are blogging for an income you do not want to be working with international companies, who insist that you use American English instead of English and so on.

Not much of a problem for American readers, but for UK bloggers, and companies wanting to employ UK bloggers, there is an option.

It has been around for a while, but Ebuzzing serves just the European bloggers. If you are looking for search engine improvements through link building, it isn’t the system for you. However, if you are after mentions in relevant blogs with traffic then it could be what you need. And it has been shown that sites that get more traffic do move up the search engine rankings.

So, what is this magic system? It is ebuzzing.com. If you are an advertiser or a blogger, then go to the website and sign up. And if you don’t mind, mention this blog when you sign up so they know where you came from. It won’t affect your account, but it could just get me a referral fee and that keeps this blog up and running!

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Simplifying A Security Upgrade

If you started blogging with WordPress before v3.0, or you installed 3.0 and didn’t take the advice of creating a different user name, then there is an essential security step that you need to take. But, it can be very difficult.

Hackers attacking your blog have to guess 2 attributes to gain access. First the user name and secondly the password. The thing is, get either wrong and you get the same error message, so you do not know which is wrong. Guessing both correctly at the same time is near impossible.

However, some people make the game very easy for hackers. Look at the screen print to the right (click to enlarge). We can see from that the site still has an Admin user, and a userid called Paul. And older versions of WordPress always set up the primary user as ‘Admin’, taking away the guessing game from hackers. Suddenly, getting into a WordPress admin area is only a fraction of the difficulty – you just need to guess the password.

There are 2 essential security steps that this blog needs to take. The first is to create a nickname for every userid, that will hide the “Admin”. Call it Fred or whatever you want, just so that it does not give away the real userid.

The second step is getting rid of that admin id. Now this can be a lengthy process. You have to create a new userid, move the posts from the Admin id to the new admin and then delete Admin. However, there is actually a much easier way about it.

Sign on as Admin and create a new userid. Give it a nickname that does not give away the userid and set it up as an administrator. This is going to be your main userid, so also allocate it your main email address (change the Admin email address to a dummy email address first, if needed).

Now sign on as that new administrator and look at the list of users. Edit Admin and look at it’s “Role”. It is Administrator now, so reduce it to as low as you can. Subscriber or Contributor – neither has the power to do anything without a senior user giving it the OK.

This means that all of the old posts are still active, but should someone hack into your blog as Admin they cannot actually do anything.

There is another tool to use as well that will stop hackers having too many attempts at guessing your password / userid (and yes, I tested the blog I am showing and it did not do this) and that is a plugin to limit the number of login attempts. Read more about it on that post!

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