A few months ago I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress. With Blogger it was never obvious to me how to tell which pages people were interested in, but with WordPress it is.
WordPress shows you which pages people are looking at, how they found them and where they went from there. Priceless.
What I have learned from this so far:
- A good picture is worth a thousand hits. A lot of people search for pictures and if you have a good one, they will come.
- People will click almost blindly on pictures. Since many come looking for pictures, at the very least clicking your picture should give them a larger view of it.
- Put a list of “See Also” links at the end of each page. Keep the list to well under ten links. No more than two links (if that) should go to other websites. People do not like long lists nor, once they have made it to your blog, do they want to be sent off somewhere else. “See Also” links really work (I was a bit surprised). It is the only way anyone will know much about your blog.
- Most come to your blog from search engines and emails. That means each page must stand on its own. It should make clear where related content is.
- No one uses the search box on your blog.
- Blogs are a good way to get noticed by search engines. Other websites are endlessly looking through blogs for new links. These links help to get you into the search engines.
- Give your blog a name people can remember. It should be something they can stick in a search engine and find your blog again.
- Stick to very simple HTML. In my Blogger days, I used the <cite> tag. It has caused me untold grief on WordPress since it interprets it differently.
- Get ideas from the search words people use to reach your blog. For example, I had a posting about Naomi Campbell, but then found that people were not so much interested in Miss Campbell herself as in “beautiful black women”. That gave me an idea… Does this make you a hit whore? Does it go against the advice writers have that you should write what interests you? In practice, no. It is unlikely that anyone will reach your blog looking for, say, “Florence football” unless your blog already had quite a bit to say about Florence and football. So, as it turns out, many of the things people come to your blog looking for are going to be things that interest you anyway.
And what is number ten? - More people are interested in cars and women than in Greek philosophy and world affairs. People would rather read about Carnival queens than prime ministers. I was shocked too.
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