How to write for our blogs

Writing online has to accomplish 3 things, write so they will see it, if they see it, write so they will read it; if they read it, write so they will be glad they read it

 We try to maintain a consistent look on the front page of the blog.

Usually, we try for a related picture in the top of the post, roughly 150 px, a subtitle, and use the more tag so that 4 or 5 posts will show on the front page (this also emphasizes the importance of your first paragraph and the development of a teaser sentence or lead-in to the continuing section).

Remember SAVE your post after each step.

 Write so the will see it = SEO

Write so they will read it = Post formating and structure

Write so they will be glad they read it = style and content

Basic Post Structure

Just so you know my target for the posts on the home page is

1.      Main Title – 4 to 7 words
2.      A picture, 150px by 150 px
3.      Sub title – use format Heading 2
4.      Intro paragraph
5.      Teaser Sentence into the more tag
6.      More tag (creates the continue reading link )

That is flexible depending on the nature of the information being presented, experience of the writer, and is a goal rather than requirement.

The Perfect post

Voice 1 : personal emotive - entertaining – off beat – humorous – why you did it, what you did, how it effected you and those around you

Voice 2 :  professional – should not be a common often written about issue, unless very well done, lots of detail, cite your sources or research, come up with a new or interesting slant on the research / recommendations. Either news or reference post.

Of course there is an infinite variety of potential voices, find ones that fit you and the information you are trying to convey.

Post length 300 to 500 words – more is fine might consider making the post a series if a lot longer.

Title  - 4 to 9 words – key phase leading – catchy – linkbait - in longer titles be sure to edit the permalink at the top of the editing page.

Picture - 120 x 120 px to 200 x 200 px left aligned 10 px padding – relevant alt text – relevant picture name.  If the picture is the point of the post – 400px by 400px, light box for full size version, (same for embed video) centered below introduction paragraph or sub title

Subtitle - use format heading 2 should be coded in source view <h2> it helps to define the post and introduce a secondary key phase.

First paragraph – repeat main key phase, summarize post end with  a hook

Second paragraph – develop first idea, end with a tease into more tag – goal to get them to click the read more button and finish the post

More tag: should be 4 to 10 lines below picture

Body of post: repeat main and secondary key phases to improve the search results and likelihood of people finding your writing.

Bullet the main points -

Capitalize the first word in the list item

Do not use periods unless you are bulleting complete sentences.

Introduce the bullet points with a colon (formal)

More importantly, be sure that the items in the list exhibit parallel structure:

• Modifying the building and office equipment - e.g ‘placing a ramp outside’
• Positioning certain staff on the ground floor, if no lifts are in place
• Being flexible with office hours and time off for e.g medical treatment

Connect with Others - Link to an authoritative outside source or cite another blog with trackback enabled. (let other blog know you cited them in your post in a comment in there blog)

End with summary and call to action or pose question – goal – entice comments

In the end the proof is in the results, lots of search engine referrals, lots of comments, lots of thumbs up if promoted through stumbleupon.

Use of Categories

Please assign only one Category to each post. This will help keep things organized  for our readers and to keep the traffic flowing. This is both for our readers sake and a basic requirement for good SEO, in the structure we have set up. When you assign the post to a category it creates a new page in the eyes of search engines. With more then one category assigned your post will have significant duplicate content issues and will not position well in the search engines.  If you can not find a category that you feel is suitable and plan on writing more than one related post; let us know and we will set up a new category for you. The Daily Activities category should be saved for diary journaling type of entries.

Tags can be used to cover and associate the post with more topics.

The More Tag <!–more–>

I would like you to start using the "more tag" on your posts.  It is represented by an icon in the editor menu and generates the Read More button at the bottom of posts. This provides several benefits.

First, it helps prevent the pages being tagged as duplicate content by the search engines and will increase the likelihood of people being able to find your posts in them.  Second, the vast majority of people visit a blog for less than one minute. Using the more tag allows them to get the gist of 4 or 5 posts in a hurry.  Third, by displaying posts of a similar length, with a Title, maybe a sub-title, a couple of punchy sentence and something of a subtle or not so subtle teaser to read on, the front page of the blog has a consistent look and feel regardless  of the range of topics.  Last, once a reader makes the commitment to go to a second page they are likely to stay awhile.

Tagging

Tagging is organizational in nature, Click on a tag and you will pull up posts tagged with that term, if we install a tag cloud after we have more posts and traffic it will be driven by the tags, you can use as many as are appropriate. But you do not want a bunch of tags you only use once.

Slugs

Slugs create  the page name for the post, 2 to 4 maybe …. Once in a blue moon 6 words. This is different than the title. There is a link to edit the page name (slug) right under the tilte box. These should be the main keywords (words that people would type into Google) for the article. These words should be in the title and the 1st paragraph at least once.

Driving Traffic

People need to find your post before they can read it. While your post is on the first page of the blog, The general traffic the blog gets will give people a chance to read your post. But after a couple of days, what you wrote will need to bring most of the people to your post.

Search engines

When you are planning to write a post, Think about who might want to read it and why. Most people will type a phase into a search engine when they are looking for something to read. This is a keyword phase.

We can do a lot to help your pages to get ranked, in fact we have already been able to achieve quite Google rankings that pulled and pushed  some Google traffic. The submissions that we have been able to do this with were written with keywords in mind. For our writers we have indentified some Keyword phases to use.    (This link will not work unless you are logged in as an author )

 

Keyword selection and use

Find a Keyword Phases – If that phase is not in your post, they will not find your post. One way to get a rough idea about what people are using to find information related to your posts is WordTracker. Use it, take a general term or two related to your post’s topic, enter it and see what related phases people are using to look for posts like yours.   Find one or two phases that relate to the point of your post. The more searches shown for the phase the better. Now use that phase verbatim in your post.

Where to use your keyword phase

Titles – it really should be here

Content – in the body of the post it is good to repeat it in the first paragraph  and to have it in a sub header, and in a longer post once or twice in the rest of the post.

• Title
• Sub title
• 1st paragraph
• Alt tag on picture
• As anchor text in a link to a related site

Editing software  - Specific to our editing software - add it to the excerpt, tags, and post slug

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that is underlined/highlighted when you create a link to another one of our pages or to an outside source.  The text used is one of the key ways search engines evaulate what the subject of the page being linked to is about.  Select those words carefully. A good article on the why and how of selecting anchor text can be found here http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/how-to-select-and-use-anchor-text-effectively/

Links to outside sites

Identifying a phase to use as a keyword focus

Every link should be to material that expands on your topic, was an inspiration, source for your topic or that for some reason would be of interest to a majority of your readers. Never mislead them.

The higher the PR (google page rank ) of the page you are linking to the better

Getting Links from other sites and blogs

How do you get them? Write Valuable Content, Comment, Ask.

Valuable Content = at least one of the following, entertaining, educational, immediately useful.

Comment = Getting involved, commenting on blogs, forums, social communities – Linking to good related content in your posts, let them know your referenced them. Regardless of your area of interest there is a blog or many blogs, forums and online communities with a similar focus. Find them, create a profile with links to your writings, get involved and when appropriate link to them in your posts and drop a link to your posts in your comments, best to do this when it expands on your point. If allowed have a link in your signature line.

Ask = In a lot of social communities and on a lot of blogs, if you occasionally ask for comments, a review of a post, a link to your posts, members will help you out. This is most likely to be true if you have first gotten involved in a meaningful way.

A note on a slightly more advanced topic – Competition:

There may be a couple of hundred or thousands of searches on the keyword phase you are thinking about using. That does not mean as much as you might think, unless it is taken in context.

The context that is important is: How many other sites will your potential readers have to choose from that are also using the phase. There are a number of ways to get a handle on this issue. Most of them only provide a rough indication and require a good bit of interpretation based on experience or correlation with other similar tools. One new tool developed for a specific purpose but also useful in this case is Gtrends a melding of tools from wordtracker and Google. Use it like wordtracker and then click on the chart icon to the right to get an idea of the relative level of competition for your term.

In our case, the recommended levels of searches and competition is not critical. But when you find millions and hundreds of millions of pages competing for attention, you should try and find a more specific keyword phase to focus on. The more often you intend to write on the specific topic, the longer period you are willing to wait to develop traffic, the more competition you can handle. But for most of us starting on a rather narrow topic and over time broadening out to more general and terms with more competition is the best approach.

 

Also remember we will set up a page for you to use as a bio if you want, once we do just login and use menu manage > pages > edit