Jerry D. Russell dot Com

If you’ve been reading about writing content for the web for any length of time you have probably seen more than one A-List blogger expound on the value of a good post title. Blogs both big and small, from doshdosh and Andy Beard to blogs you may not have heard of, like Flooded Lizard Kingdom are all talking about the importance of post titles, and with good reason; having a great title on your post is far more likely to get that post read than having a mediocre one.

I’m not just saying this because the big boys have mentioned it, or because it’s a simple way to get your posts read more often. I’ve decided to cover the topic because I just ran a study on it and have proven (to myself at least) that it works beyond the shadow of a doubt. A simple change in tile tags has increased traffic to my food and cooking blog over the past two weeks. The numbers prove it, but they would be meaningless without some background, so let me run through the changes that I made to the blog, then detail the results.

Making some changes:

Like any case study, this one began with a set of base numbers and the realization that there was room for improvement. In looking over my visitor stats for Cooking, by the seat of my Pants!, I noticed a trend in which posts were visited most often. With only a few specific exceptions, posts in the “recipes” category that had the word “recipe” in the title got the most overall traffic. Other posts received far fewer visits in general.

The exceptions to the rule were for posts that I targeted specifically to people that would be looking for the keywords in the title and were quite specific. They can be easily negated from overall site traffic, but have proven over time to bring in a steady stream of visitors. Those post titles were left unchanged and are considered a baseline measure of success in good post titles.

For the rest of the recipes on the site, I went through and added the word “recipe” to the title in a manner that made sense in the context of the existing title. The post slugs were left exactly as they were, no permalinks were modified and the posts themselves were left exactly as they were originally written. No other settings were changed. Then I did something that would make most bloggers shudder or recoil in horror…

I stopped posting on my most read blog without notice.

Doing the unthinkable:

Yes, you read the above statement correctly. I stopped posting. I walked off to handle other projects and no matter how badly I wanted to add something, I wouldn’t let myself do it. For this to be a true test of the effectiveness of title tags, I needed to give it a bit of time without influencing the numbers. I figured two weeks should do it, so that’s how long I left it alone.

I’m not saying that I didn’t lose traffic. I did. According to Google Analytics, my overall traffic was down by 9.46% overall. Not having any new posts meant that readers that normally visit my site via RSS readers, twitter announcements and StumbleUpon simply weren’t visiting, as there was nothing new for them to see. This was an expected side effect of the study. It’s painful, but not something that can’t be recovered from.

The exciting part of the experiment is in daily visitor totals.

Change the titles, watch the visitors come in!

While the difference in visitors wasn’t earth shattering, it was more than noticeable. Over the course of two weeks with no effort on my part, I not only maintained constant numbers, but also managed to increase my baseline traffic. (Traffic generated organically through search engines.) The following snapshot of my Google Analytics dashboard illustrates this increase:

If you look at the beginning of the graph, traffic consistently dips below the 450 unique visitors per-day mark on those days when no post was added to the blog. This level of traffic was consistent from the end of the Holiday season until I modified my title tags. Those modifications were made on march 4th, and as is demonstrated in the graph above, the number of visitors to the site increased almost immediately and steadily held above the 450 visitor mark for all but one day in March. (The rise in visits in the middle of March was due to an increased interest in Irish recipes, also an organic response, but since I wasn’t adding new recipes, it caused only a light increase in visits.)

In the end, the data speaks for itself. With the investment of just a little time and effort in changing title tags, I managed an overall increase in organic traffic. While this increase was not enough to raise my overall visits above what I would have gotten if I had posted every day, it was enough to keep my numbers from faltering significantly over a two week period; something that definitely would have happened had I simply stopped posting without modifying the tags.

It must also be taken into consideration that in the world of food blogs, cooking, by the seat of my Pants! is a relatively new blog, with only two years worth of posts and only a bit over 240 recipes. On a site with more titles to gain results, the numbers would have been far more significant.

Wrapping it up:

I hope this article will inspire you to take another look at your post titles. Take the time to make sure that the title of the post is relevant to what your visitors are searching for. Check your analytics for specific posts and see if the search terms that got people to your post are actually relevant to the post itself. If you haven’t been thinking about the importance of your titles, you may be surprised what got people to your site in the first place.

Jerry Blogging Blogging, Blogging Tips

Getting comments on your blog is usually something that bloggers look forward to.  For the most part, people comment when they like what you’ve written or agree with what you’ve had to say.

As a first impression, a high comment count leads to instant credibility. A blog with a large number of comments may be perceived by casual visitors as holding more weight than a similar blog that has no comments or only sparse comments.  In this light, comments may be seen as the life’s blood of a new blog and as such, comments should be encouraged.

But what is the proper way to deal with a commenter that disagrees with your opinion or worse, simply gets rude or offensive?  If you blog about controversial topics (or simply blog for a long enough time), you are going to see some of these.  If you make a point of tackling the tough subjects, it’s a good bet that at least half of your comments are going to disagree with your opinion of the subject.  Another quarter of those comments are going to be rude replies.

Why you should never delete a comment that disagrees with your opinion:

A blog is designed as an interactive medium.  Any comment is a chance for you to continue a discussion with your readers, to further your position on a topic, or just allow you the chance to lend a more personal touch to what you’ve written.  A dissenting comment gives you the opportunity to address an issue more detail than you did in the original post or to explain something in a different way, should your readers find the original entry vague or unclear.

Someone will always disagree with your opinion.  Don’t take these posts a attacks, take them as conversation.  Answer them courteously and with care.  You are responding to another human being, not just a series of 0’s and 1’s.  The sign of a great blogger is his or her ability to answer criticism or negativity with a smile and a ton of respect, not to flame his or her opposition or simply toss that comment into the null file because it challenges what you have to say.

So when should you delete a comment?

While you should always answer comments that disagree with your ideas, there are most definitely times when a comment should be deleted immediately. These include, but are not limited to, the following reasons:

• Obvious Spam:
  The commenter dropped his URL 3 or 4 times in the comment, the comment is simply gibberish with a link, or the comment is something completely generic that’s obviously been added by a machine or spam bot.  These should be tossed to /dev/null or deleted immediately.
• Derogatory or Socially unacceptable comments:
  I have no idea why some people feel the need to post this type of comment, but they sometimes do.  If your commenter feels the need to use a slew of profanity or spread a hate-filled agenda using comments on your blog, they should most definitely be deleted as soon as they are identified.  This type of comment at best will generate more of the same.  At worst, they cost you readers.
• Comments that personally insult other commenters on your blog:
  This is an even worse case scenario than above.  One person took the time to leave his or her thoughts on something you have written and someone else personally attacks this commenter because either their opinion differs or they simply have not mastered the art of being anything other than a jack*$$.  These comments should be deleted and followed by a comment, post or general message of your own stating that it will not be tolerated for any reason.  Then block that person from commenting permanently.  It is your responsibility to ensure that your readers feel comfortable posting comments, don’t lose the trust that they give you.  Fight for them

There are several more reasons that you might choose to delete a comment, but think about it before you do.  It’s better to err on the side of a little spamminess than to put off someone who might simply not understand the etiquette of blog commenting.

I have a trackback from a blog that said horrible things about one of my posts.  Should I delete it?

No.  You should approve it and then check your page views for the day.  There’s a good chance that you will see an increase in traffic and perhaps comments on that particular post.  As the (in)famous quote by Brendan F. Behan so succinctly words it:

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

In more modern circles this is usually shortened to; “Any press is good press” or “All press is good press”. It’s as true a statement as can be made.  Any publicity will get you noticed.  Some of the readers that the negative comment prompted to come see what you really had to say might just be inclined to agree with your side of the issue, or simply like your style.   You get traffic, you gain readers, it’s all good.

I personally had one group of individuals go crazy calling me names and being completely derogatory towards me because of one post I wrote about a year ago.  In the end, they gained me over 1,000 visits for the day of the post and 3,000 overall.  Of those, I’m sure a few are still reading the blog in question.

My response?  I sent the blogger that started the insult-fest a very polite and professional thank you email for the traffic he or she sent over and thanked him/her for taking the time to read the post carefully enough to pick it apart.  I think that I unnerved the person.  They have never mentioned any of my sites again.  That’s too bad, really.  I made about $300.00 on that passion filled flurry.

I’ll wrap this up with a cautionary statement.  While this is a post about how you can avoid becoming a comment Nazi, you also need to realize that not everyone out there really cares if they offend their readers or not.  You will probably find that at least on comment that you leave is deleted or never allowed through moderation.  Don’t let this discourage you.  Continue leaving comments on other people’s blogs, but remember the rules above.

Post constructive comments that are actually relevant to the topic of the post.  Be courteous and if you disagree be even more diligent in making the point that you disagree with the position the person is writing about and not the person who wrote it.  Don’t do anything on someone else’s blog that you would not allow on your own.  It’s common courtesy, but it’s often ignored on the Internet.  It’s time for us to bring it back.

Jerry Blogging Blogging, Blogging Tips, tactics

If you’re running a WordPress powered blog and like the functionality of the flash image uploader, you might just want to wait to upgrade your Flash Player.  Flash Player 10, which is shipping now causes the flash uploader to break.  There are no fixes at this time.

On the other hand, if you’ve suddenly lost the use of your flash based uploader and the symptom is that when you click the button nothing happens at all… Then you’ve probably already got Flash 10 installed.  Don’t worry, you didn’t break anything, just sit back, use the browser based uploader for a bit and wait for WordPress 2.7, which should be shipping in a few weeks.  From what I hear, they’ve got a fix going in that will get your nice pretty multiple file upload capability back for you.

At least I hope so, because I’m tired of having to upload them manually.

Jerry WordPress Blogging, Blogging Tips, Productivity, WordPress

The last time you heard something similar to the title of this article may have been in high school, but if you think for a moment that it doesn’t apply to your blog as well, you had better think again. The language you use when publishing blog posts may very well be a factor in readers deciding to add your blog to their feed reader, or just moving on to another blog and leaving yours in the dust for good.

I have written in the past on this very topic on another of my blogs and I have tried to follow my own example.  Unfortunately, it seems that I have fallen into the same sort of writing malaise that plagues a large part of blogs that are “almost good”.

I forget that I must always.  ALWAYS. Proof-read my work before I publish it.

Why am I writing this now?  Because It was very recently brought to my attention that I had been breaking my own rules.  In my rush to get my ideas posted, I had neglected to read over my own work and check for simple errors in both spelling and grammar.  This omission did not go unnoticed nor will it ever, in my opinion.

The person that brought this to my attention may or may not have been aware that I have already stated the very same thing in regards to other people.  She may not have had the slightest idea that her comment would make me feel like a complete hack, unable to practice what I preach but rather adopting a “do as I say and not as I do” attitude, whether intentional or not.  No matter whether she was aware of it or not, I feel that I have let both myself and my readers down and this disturbs me greatly.

Why would I be disturbed by a typo or two?  The answer is simple really.  If I let one or two go through today, the same will happen tomorrow.  Eventually this piece of collective work we call a blog would be nothing but a collection of laughably incompetent chaff that no one in their right mind would take seriously.  This is of course not what I’m after, especially in this particular instance.

The thing is, I know what I’m talking about.  I research my subject matter.  I move with all due diligence to assure that what i am presenting is, to the best of my knowledge and ability, a complete overview of a given topic.  To allow a lapse in writing etiquette make something I may have worked for several weeks to finish look amateurish is simple foolishness.  It should not happen. But yet it has, even though I have spell checking running in my browser and grammar checking in my word processor.  And the errors do not lie with the tools, they lie with the user.

They almost always do.

So far this article has been pointed at my recent shortcomings.  This is not to say that I think that I am the only one guilty of failing to do some simple proofreading.  Most blogs have one or more typos.  To be honest, there aren’t too many books that have ever been published without a few errors in their pages.  This is not due to any lack of effort by production staffs or copy editors, it is simply human error.  It happens.

I’m also not trying to say that you can’t have an extremely popular blog if you don’t use perfect grammar and composition.  As a case in point, take a look at PerezHilton.com.  The writing is a combination of traditional and leet (L33t) speak, with more than a smattering of completely made up words tossed in for fun.  The result: Somewhere between 650,000 and 1,000,000 visits per day. But Perez is not writing a site that is supposed to make him sound like an expert on a given subject.  He simply reports snippets of news, most of which is aimed at an audience that spends much of its time texting other members about what they’ve just read. If he was attempting to write about “How to be a celebrity blogger”, his site would reek of inexperience by virtue of language alone.

You must know your audience and what they expect.  One of the best ways to gauge this is to look at the most popular blogs in your own niche and study them carefully.  If you find that the language, grammar and cadence of these blogs is informal, then by all means be informal.  If, in the case of blogs on this topic, you find that writing styles tend towards the formal and that spelling and grammar are attended to as a rule, then it best serves both you and your audience to follow along in that style.  It’s what your readers expect, and that should be what you, as an author, are striving to give them.

Another good rule of thumb is that you should never. Ever. Ignore criticism.

It may be that some critiques of your work do not require your attention but in most cases they do at least deserve your notice.  There is a rule in large corporations that for every complaint that is actually submitted, there are at least a hundred people who feel the same way that did not bother to take the time to tell you.  They simply move on to another provider.  It’s a good rule to keep in mind.

So to the person who let me know in no uncertain terms that my oversights in spelling and grammar had cost me her loyalty, I thank you.  Even though you will probably not be around to see the changes in my work ethic, I think that future readers will appreciate that I have taken your words to heart.  I will strive to do better.  It’s all I can do.

To the others out there who are doing their best to make a buck out of this internet thing.  make sure you pay attention to spell check.  Write your piece and walk away for a few hours.  Then read over it to make sure there is nothing you’ve missed.  It’s what I’ll be doing from now on.

I’m Jerry D. Russell, and I approve this message.

Jerry Blogging Blogging, Blogging Tips, Professionalism, Skills

One of the most common sights on Internet job boards these days is a call for bloggers to write for new blogs and community sites.  While this is a good thing for bloggers, the trend that I see goes something like this:

Need reliable self-editing, experienced writers ASAP.

We pay a highly competitive rate; you’ll write 7-40 posts each week.

If interested please send resume, clips, succinct cover letter, and link to any blogs you write/contribute to.

FakeCompanyEmail@fakecompany.com

This expectation for prolific amounts of weekly posts seems to be the norm for most blog networks and startup blogs looking to gain popularity quickly.  Massive amounts of posts attract search engine spiders and get RSS subscribers quickly and these companies are betting that ten to twelve posts per day from multiple blog authors is going to gain them a very quick entry into the B-List. The problem is they’ve got it all wrong!

The Issue with Information Overload

The inherent problem with this line of thinking is that even though posting huge amounts of information on a regular basis may very well get you a very large reader base in the beginning, most casual readers won’t be staying with you for very long. Readers will tire of the constant barrage of information, even if it’s in very small and digestible chunks.  I don’t know how many different blogs I’ve unsubscribed from simply because I couldn’t possibly keep up with the amount of information they were throwing out.

This model may work if what you’re after is getting your posts plastered all over Google with the intention of gaining random clicks on relevant advertising.  As a matter of fact, the more is better model is wonderful for that, simply because the ads begin to look more relevant than the content!

The downside to this model is that it tends to favor short posts that only vaguely cover a given topic.  The publisher wants more, more, more, which leaves the writers to popping off quick, sometimes incomplete or at least woefully under thought articles so that they can move on to the next one and make more money.  The emphasis on quality suffers and the bloggers themselves may begin to suffer from burnout, which makes their posts even less informative.

Why Quality is the Key

Let’s take a single niche and look at who the big boys are.  When you talk about blog-centric A-Listers, you come up with several names very quickly. Andy Beard, John Chow, Skelliewag and of course, the venerable Maki of DoshDosh are all driving forces in the world of blogs on blogging and marketing.  They’re all very good at what they do, and they have several things in common.

The thing that makes these bloggers a must read is that they don’t ever push quantity over quality. Andy Beard may or may not post for a week at a time, but when he does, his readers are given a very insightful piece of work that has been thought out carefully and is written extremely well. Maki posts once per week at DoshDosh, but nearly always rules the StumbleUpon and Digg listings when he does.  His writing is on topic, it makes sense and he’s speaking to an audience that really wants to hear what he has to say.

The articles at skelliewag are something that I look forward to, because Skellie knows what she’s talking about and she’s willing to share it with a community that gobbles up every word she writes. John Chow posts more frequently than these others, but he nearly always posts in great detail on a topic, and he writes with passion (You may not agree with him, or even like him, but he’s got passion.)

The thing these people have in common is that they write content that people want to read. They have never fallen into the trap of slamming out posts at an insane rate just to satisfy the great beast that is Google.  They allow their readers to carry their message and they simply do what they do best.  They Write, Inform and at times entertain.

There is another key to the success of all of these bloggers.  Their blogs are simple. Jump to skelliewag, DoshDosh or Andybeard.eu and you’re going to find great content, not a lot of glitz, glam and widgetry floating about. The focus is on the content.  It’s something to consider when you’re deciding on a theme for your own blog. (I’m paying attention, too.  I was just in the mood for some black)

So what’s it gonna be?

I’m not saying that blogs or networks that pump out tonnes of information all the time don’t have their place.  They do.  But if you’re going to be blogging for yourself and you’d like to become recognized for your work, it’s probably best to avoid the temptation of posting several short articles per day. unless you’re running a news-based blog. (At which point this article no longer applies).

The best in the business are not only icons, they’re teachers.  They have something to teach you.  learn from them.

Or you can fall to the poser of the dark side and simply pollute the bloggosphere with another “Hey, I just saw this great piece by…” Article.  The choice is yours.

Jerry Blogging Blogging, Blogging Tips, misconceptions, Productivity, Skills