Comments on: 5 Tips to Writing Regular Blog Posts http://www.stevegasser.com/5-tips-to-writing-regular-blog-posts/ exploring possibilities in social media Sat, 21 May 2011 04:10:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: How to Use Time Wisely for Writing Blogs | Tips and Techniques http://www.stevegasser.com/5-tips-to-writing-regular-blog-posts/comment-page-1/#comment-238 How to Use Time Wisely for Writing Blogs | Tips and Techniques Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:21:10 +0000 http://www.stevegasser.com/?p=1529#comment-238 [...] consultant and friend Steve Gasser and wife Beth recently had a good post on their blog about 5 tips to writing regular blog posts .  It provided some good tips to generate ideas on blog topics.  Some I plan to implement.  What [...] [...] consultant and friend Steve Gasser and wife Beth recently had a good post on their blog about 5 tips to writing regular blog posts .  It provided some good tips to generate ideas on blog topics.  Some I plan to implement.  What [...]

]]> By: ConfessionsMom http://www.stevegasser.com/5-tips-to-writing-regular-blog-posts/comment-page-1/#comment-228 ConfessionsMom Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:58:46 +0000 http://www.stevegasser.com/?p=1529#comment-228 Hi Wendy, Great comment and questions. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. Your comments gave me several ideas to write future articles. With my background in search engine optimization, I am fascinated with the explosion of blog articles in the traditional ranking mix. I have it on my "to do" list to study social network focused search engines like Bing, yet I need to carve out time to do this. So much of it is still so new, that I am convinced most SEO people and blog gurus are still finding out "what happens if you do this". From what I know about SEO and my personal view on blog content, I do not think it hurts you to allow the same article to be published on another website with or without a link back to your site. Obviously from an SEO stand point it is best if your article "guest appears" on a website that is complimentary in subject matter. For example, an article about the fantastic invention of Wordpress won't do much SEO help to appear on a website about Alternative Medicine. Unless the two subjects are merged into one article to discuss the benefits of using wordpress to further the cause of alternative medicine. Another technique is to partial post. Meaning you write the whole article, but use a portion of it, 10 "steps" or other ways to publish part of the article in other newsletter or guest post committments. You can link back to your blog for the full article or reduce writing responsibility by publishing your article in a series of posts stretched out over time. From an SEO stand point, this would be beneficial. You would not want to repost the exact same article on your own website multiple times. If there is a need to update an article or add addendums, I would either modify the original post or link a newer post to the older one. Doing this should not hurt your SEO, unless you modify the original URL/page name of a blog post that has done well in search engine rankings. Tread lightly on altering any URL's after a post has been published. As far as modifying or repurposing articles, it is important to understnd what a crawler sees when scanning your site. All search engines are different and no one knows exactly how Google decides to list something really high or decide it's spam. We do know that crawlers skip over non-essential words, focusing in on keywords and phrases. If an article is keyword "stuffed" a crawler can tell because it will have too high%ratio to the non-essential words. Therefore, most blog posts written for the purpose of discussing a topic and communicating with people don't run the risk of being considered spam by search engines. If you are repurposing an article, consider the number of keywords phrases and where they are placed in your article. You'll want to change things up a bit, however, I don't see how this would be very beneficial to your subscribers who would have probably read the "original" version. Do you use Google Analytics? It would be good to take a look at where your traffic is coming from, what kind of referrals you get from search engines. and the phrases people are using to find your site. Make sure to add tags to all your posts. I certainly hope you are able to get some sleep too! Beth Hi Wendy,
Great comment and questions. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. Your comments gave me several ideas to write future articles. With my background in search engine optimization, I am fascinated with the explosion of blog articles in the traditional ranking mix. I have it on my “to do” list to study social network focused search engines like Bing, yet I need to carve out time to do this. So much of it is still so new, that I am convinced most SEO people and blog gurus are still finding out “what happens if you do this”. From what I know about SEO and my personal view on blog content, I do not think it hurts you to allow the same article to be published on another website with or without a link back to your site. Obviously from an SEO stand point it is best if your article “guest appears” on a website that is complimentary in subject matter. For example, an article about the fantastic invention of WordPress won’t do much SEO help to appear on a website about Alternative Medicine. Unless the two subjects are merged into one article to discuss the benefits of using wordpress to further the cause of alternative medicine.

Another technique is to partial post. Meaning you write the whole article, but use a portion of it, 10 “steps” or other ways to publish part of the article in other newsletter or guest post committments. You can link back to your blog for the full article or reduce writing responsibility by publishing your article in a series of posts stretched out over time. From an SEO stand point, this would be beneficial.

You would not want to repost the exact same article on your own website multiple times. If there is a need to update an article or add addendums, I would either modify the original post or link a newer post to the older one. Doing this should not hurt your SEO, unless you modify the original URL/page name of a blog post that has done well in search engine rankings. Tread lightly on altering any URL’s after a post has been published.

As far as modifying or repurposing articles, it is important to understnd what a crawler sees when scanning your site. All search engines are different and no one knows exactly how Google decides to list something really high or decide it’s spam. We do know that crawlers skip over non-essential words, focusing in on keywords and phrases. If an article is keyword “stuffed” a crawler can tell because it will have too high%ratio to the non-essential words. Therefore, most blog posts written for the purpose of discussing a topic and communicating with people don’t run the risk of being considered spam by search engines. If you are repurposing an article, consider the number of keywords phrases and where they are placed in your article. You’ll want to change things up a bit, however, I don’t see how this would be very beneficial to your subscribers who would have probably read the “original” version.

Do you use Google Analytics? It would be good to take a look at where your traffic is coming from, what kind of referrals you get from search engines. and the phrases people are using to find your site. Make sure to add tags to all your posts.

I certainly hope you are able to get some sleep too!
Beth

]]> By: wendy soucie http://www.stevegasser.com/5-tips-to-writing-regular-blog-posts/comment-page-1/#comment-227 wendy soucie Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:03:02 +0000 http://www.stevegasser.com/?p=1529#comment-227 Boy, this post really hit a sore spot for me. In fact it likely generated a blog post for me on whether I can succeed at my current commitment level. Here is my problem. I am an engineer. I never really like to write much or thought I was very good at it. Now I write to make sure people can find me in the clutter of consultants and people on the Internet. I write a blog , a column for an online magazine(bi-monthly), a book review (monthly), a column for an online newsletter (monthly), and two other blogs are asking me to be a contributing author(occasional). They are all important for me to be recognized as an expert resource in my area of expertise. How do you make it all work for the right exposure? Another question is how best to leverage one or two volumes of work to feed the others? What is the correct % difference that one article has to be from another one posted for the search engines not to see it as a duplicate? If its the exact same info, does it help or hurt you and how? Can anyone help? I hope to make some progress and actually sleep some nights instead of writing. Boy, this post really hit a sore spot for me. In fact it likely generated a blog post for me on whether I can succeed at my current commitment level.

Here is my problem. I am an engineer. I never really like to write much or thought I was very good at it. Now I write to make sure people can find me in the clutter of consultants and people on the Internet. I write a blog , a column for an online magazine(bi-monthly), a book review (monthly), a column for an online newsletter (monthly), and two other blogs are asking me to be a contributing author(occasional). They are all important for me to be recognized as an expert resource in my area of expertise.

How do you make it all work for the right exposure?

Another question is how best to leverage one or two volumes of work to feed the others?

What is the correct % difference that one article has to be from another one posted for the search engines not to see it as a duplicate?

If its the exact same info, does it help or hurt you and how?

Can anyone help? I hope to make some progress and actually sleep some nights instead of writing.

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