I’ve noted a tendency among blogs recently to imitate techniques which have been successful for others. Which is all very well, but never lose your own originality. I think if any blog does not reflect the life of the writer, then it’s a failure for me.

                                             Use of Images           

A case in point, images. They are very useful and important, because an image is nearly always the first thing people notice on any web page. Also, google and yahoo image search can bring you traffic.  But it’s now reached the point where every single post has to have an image. Bearing in mind people “speed reading” a web page, readers attention must be caught quickly. But I do feel at present, images in blog posts is at saturation point, particularly as many simply scour flickr for other peoples images, without even linking to the original.

When you do use images, always remember to include alt text, or name the image, so as to be index linked. And prefrably, use your own images, or link to the original.

                                                 Headlines

Has narrative become so thin that the only thing that counts is to capture attention quickly? Try to experiment, as I’m doing here. With blog posts, use headlines, as in newspapers, they are great for search engine optimisation. 

                                                     SEO Assists

Some general guidelines for search engine traffic.

  • Use image alt text
  • Add tags to posts, using relevant keywords
  • Make good use of headlines, again using keywords in the heading text
  • Utilise all in One  SEO pack
  • Keep on topic, per post

 

With reference to the last point, the more topics you use, the more keywords you can add, BUT they will be discarded from the search engines because they will not be considered relevant to your post. So don’t cover more than one topic, better to make another post to cover a different subject.

Those are some lessons I’ve learned so far for general blogging :)