Image by Audric Leperdi via Flickr
Sometimes it’s the little things that count. I recently blogged about some of the things I did to triple my blog traffic, but aside from those there are also some little things that you can do to gain little advantages from your blogging in terms of traffic and SEO. These are things that I have picked up along the way from reading other blogs or talking to other bloggers. I can’t remember the sources of these for me, or I’d give them credit. But here are a few secrets to help you get more out of your blogging, that you might not even be aware or have thought of:
1. Force hyperlinks to open in a new window – As you click through the links in my posts, you’ll notice that they usually open up a new browser window for you. Why? Because I don’t want you to leave my website. If you click on the link and it redirects you to another site, you’re gone. You might only have read a sentence or two, but if you leave my site there’s a good chance you might not come back. You know how it is, you go to a new article to read, and then you click on a link in that article, and pretty soon your chasing bunnies down holes and you can’t remember where you started just five minutes ago! By having the link open in a new window, your readers stay on your page and have a better chance of finishing what they started. If you are using WordPress, this is done with a simple click on a box:
2. Be careful with how often you use the no-follow command – There is a big debate on this one among the SEO crowd, because as you link to others, you are sending link-juice their way, possibly siphoning some off of your own site. But the other side, and the most important one, in my mind, is we need to be good neighbors. This is especially true when someone comments on your posts. Many bloggers will allow you to link back to your blog in your comment/log-in, but they do it as a no-follow. My feeling is that if someone is part of my community and they are taking the time to comment, why not give them some link-love? Yes, there are those who will take advantage of this, but they are pretty easy to spot, and you can deal with them on a case by case basis.
3. Use Images (and alt text) – I try to make sure that every post has at least one image. It makes the post a bit more appealing to the readers, especially when the post is shared on Facebook or another social site, and the image accompanies it. But you need to remember that search engines don’t see images, so you’ll also need to include some sort of “alt text” in the image that Google and the others can see. Don’t understand? Hover your cursor over any image in this post. A small window will pop up with some text that describes the image. THAT is what the search engines see. You can actually have fun with these if you want.
Oh, and remember not to just pick any old image from the web. Just because they are there, doesn’t mean they are in the public domain. This is why I use the Zemanta plug-in because it helps me find relevant images that are public domain, creative commons, or perhaps eligible to use under fair-use guidelines.
4. Lure readers in by using excerpts – Go to the home page of my website. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You’ll be back because by clicking on the link you’ll be opening a new window. Notice how my posts on the front page are excerpts? Actually, the top two are excerpts, and the bottom four are what are known as “teasers”. They are there to draw you in. Now I could put the entire text of my posts on the front page, but that’s not what I want. I want to look at my analytics and know exactly what people are reading on my site. If all I get are visits to my homepage, then I don’t know why they were there. But if they go there, then click through to a particular post, that post gets credit for the visit. Plus, if they start on the home page and click through to the post, you get credit for an extra page. And on your home page, they are exposed to multiple posts that might draw them in.
You can do the same thing with your RSS feeds and email subscriptions, but I don’t. When I subscribe to a blog, I just like to read it in its entirety in Google Reader or in my email, rather than having to click through. As a result, I provide the full text to my loyal subscribers. This is probably something I should experiment with, but for now I’m happy offering them the full text. Besides, my mom likes it that way and I don’t want to make her work harder to read my blog!
Do you have any other little tricks or secrets that you think make the blogging process easier or more fruitful? What do you do to draw people in and keep them on your site? Any SEO tricks and tips that you’d like to share with us?
Thanks for the pointers. The little things always count. Always include keywords in your title and content.
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