Entries from March 2008 ↓

I spent about an hour writing a previous post Common Web mistakes made by companies 

On reviewing the post, I felt I’d made a big mistake with the first sentence.

“I am an amateur blogger. I blog for part time income in addition to having a part time teaching job. Although I’m not a full time professional, I am constantly surprised…”

It’s a very weak introduction because:

It’s repetitive, unnecessary and also doesn’t inspire confidence. True, I may not be a full time professional, but,  it is unhelpful to give the impression you’re an ‘amateur blogger’

I have cut the first sentence and this enables us to get into the argument much more quickly.

 Despite the internet offering the fastest growth sector of the economy, many multi million pound companies are still making basic mistakes with their own websites.

It just goes to show the importance of the first paragraph and first sentence. An article may be very good, but, if 50% of readers give up because the first sentence is boring, the article is wasted.

It also shows the importance of following your own advice…

• Tips on the importance of your first sentence

Despite the internet offering the fastest growth sector of the economy, many multi million pound companies are still making basic mistakes with their own websites. It feels like many companies still view the internet with suspicion and caution. They do the bare minimum, but, to be frank they see it all as a bit of hassle and they would rather do without it.

These are some of the Common Mistakes Big Companies are Making on the Internet.

Deleting Pages

Many Newspapers still publish articles and then delete them. I know because I often link to newspaper articles and then a few weeks later the link is broken. This is annoying and I can’t see any good reason for the newspaper to do this. If they think it is too expensive to host a large number of files they are missing the whole point of cheaper bandwidth costs; The revenue from any advertising will easily outweigh the costs of hosting files. By deleting and moving pages they are losing out on links, traffic and easy monetisation of their site.

Frames

Even SEO advice from 6 years ago was suggesting don’t use Frames. Pages won’t get picked up by search engines and it is harder to link to them. Yet, I know some firms with million dollars of turnover still using frames.

• Look at J.K.Rowlings site - doesn’t work with my pop up blocker. At least there is an option of text pages - but, they are remarkably ugly e.g of text page This page is screaming “I’m trying really hard to make this page as difficult to read as possible’
• Tip: Don’t let the dementors design your site.

Getting their Nephew to Make the Site

This mainly applies to various medium sized companies. For some reason many firms are still reluctant to make a professional website. There is a strong desire to rely on some family friend, who is slow or limited in his technical capacity. Often there is then no one in the company who can actually edit the site, but, they rely on the ‘family friend’ to have complete control. I know of a company who spent a fortune on google adwords directing people to their website, but couldn’t get the family friend to update the website from the year 2007 to 2008.

But, We Don’t Get Any Business from the Internet

Many companies are still dubious about the potential of the internet to generate sales. Their attitude tends to be that our existing customers do not come via the internet, therefore it is best to concentrate on our existing customer base. However, this is discounting the internet before you have given it a chance. If you concentrate on your existing sales channels, then of course, that is what will remain your main source of business. To generate internet led business requires an investment of time and money. If it is done well then you can generate a new source of business. But, if you never try then the internet will never work for you.

How Can I Make Money Out of Free?

For many businesses the idea of giving advice and content for free seems to go against basic business practice. A lot of the internet involves giving free advice, free e-books e.t.c. But, giving things for free is a powerful way to build customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and regular readers. In this regard big business have a lot to learn from bloggers who have learnt the power of giving things for free.

• It took several years, but the New York Times finally realised it was better to offer unrestricted access to its newspapers.

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Our recent article - Is it worth trying to get on Digg gained some interesting comments. The comments are as useful as the post. Since writing the article, I’ve become more aware of some other points.

Quite often people can get over 100, or even over 150 diggs and still not get on the home page.

Some people have said that being on Digg actually gives less traffic then you might hope. (some less than 10,000). The number of visitors Digg can send varies alot it depends on factors such as:

• how long you remain on home page. (e.g. do you sped along time on the highlighted section on right)
• how attractive your headline is  to diggers - Does the topic of the article appeal to the digg home page readers
• The time of the day and week.

Digg still has the capacity to make a blog, check out The Art of Manliness

You’ve got to digg Digg to get Dugg by Skellie (example of how 173 diggs is still not enough to get home page

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When writing articles most webmaster know the value of a good title. Choose the right keywords and you can help maximise traffic from search engines. There are various tools we can use to work out the best keywords such as wordtracker, but these are often expensive. Often looking at your own statistics can give a good idea of keywords that are working.

However, it is not just the article heading that can bring in traffic. Often I look at statistics and the popular keyword searches are not titles, but subheadings within articles. Therefore, when writing articles I often try to think of several subheadings with  related Keyword searches to maximise traffic from search engines Ironically, this can often be a helpful way to think of relevant things to add to the article.

Example of Increasing Traffic through Use of Subheadings

I was writing an entry on ‘Asymmetric Information‘ for my economics site (I know its not the exactly the most exotic example, but, it will do )

The first thing I do is to use the google search in Firefox; when typing in a search google offer suggestions of  popular and related keyword searches for asymmetric information. Google suggestions included:

• asymmetric information definition
• asymmetric information insurance
• asymmetric information in Financial Markets
• asymmetric information wiki

Therefore, in addition to the title asymmetric information, I have worked these other 4 longer keyword searches into the article. Therefore, the page has increased its capacity for attracting traffic. If I just focused on asymmetric information I would expect traffic to be low. But, by adding relevant subheadings I have increased the usefulness of the page with very little effort.

• Note: Many people search keyword terms and add wiki at the end. Here I have only added the word wiki by linking to wikipedia right at the end. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a subheading, sometimes just adding a keyword in the text is enough to bring in more traffic.

Using Subheadings that Work

In your statistics you may notice that some keyword searches are very popular, even though they are not titles. If this is the case, then it may be worth generating a page specifically for this keyword search. E.g. If I get a ranking of no.7 for asymmetric information insurance when it is a subheading, then making a page with title asymmetric information insurance is likely to give a much higher google ranking.

Other Benefits of Using Subheadings

• Adding subheadings is a good way of experimenting to see which keyword searches are good for bringing in traffic.
• Also, I feel that adding subheadings is good practice for readability. People like to scan articles and subheadings definitely make it easier to write.
• My initial entry for asymmetric information was quite short, but looking at related keywords gave me ideas to make it more informative

Related Articles

• How To Rank highly for a keyword
• Is it necessary to have keywords in title?
• 8 Blogging tips for a good article

Wordpress have offered a sneak preview of the new 2.5 edition

It looks to have some good features including:

• Multi file upload
• Built in Galleries
• Full text Feeds (I look forward to this especially because I like to use the ‘more’ tag to break up long posts, but I would like RSS subscribers to be able to get full feed.
• Built in Gravatars
• Faster Load Times - very good news, you can never underestimate benefits of faster load times.

I probably spend too much time using stumbleupon, but, because I use it quite a lot I want it to give the best results. Therefore I frequently vote both up or down. By voting both ways you can help stumbleupon send the pages that you like. Voting down doesn’t mean the site or article is necessarily bad; it just means you would rather stumble different kinds of pages. If you don’t vote down pages you will keep seeing similar pages. Note: I never write negative reviews because I don’t see the point. One thing I like about stumbleupon is that, in my experience, it has a lot less negativity than other social bookmarking sites.

Since I spend a lot of time voting up and voting down, I would like to share common reasons why I vote down.

1. Where’s the Content?

Quite often I stumble a page and I can’t see anything useful. Often there is just an introduction and perhaps a link to articles. But, if the article is elsewhere, why not stumble that page? I want to see the useful page, not an introduction or ‘welcome page’

2. Too Many Ads.

I am not opposed to ads (I have them on my own site). But, if there are too many banners and google ads, it is much more likely I will vote you down. Like most stumble users, I am lazy and give a high weighting to the content above the fold. If 70% of your content above the fold is ads, there is a much higher chance of getting thumbed down.

3. Weak design.

We are told ‘content is king’ but actually, this is only half the story. When stumbling I often decide in a few seconds. If the design is bad, weak or unprofessional, it is much more likely that I will vote an article a day. Perhaps this is unfair, perhaps I should ignore the content and read carefully. But, experience suggests there is often a correlation between design and quality of content. If the design is weak, I assume the content is more likely to be weak. However, I should also say, that some of the best stumble pages are completely basic and seem to have no CSS at all. However, these pages usually have the content right at the top; in other words the lack of design makes you focus on the content which is good. Bad design is often ugly, too many jarring colours and distracts from the content.

4. Blog Carnivals.

I often submit to blog carnivals and I can understand why people stumble them. This is an example of a good blog carnival because the blogger has taken the time to write intelligently about each entry. However, if a blog carnival is just a long list of 100 entries with no explanation, I often vote them down. I would rather have a stumble showing a selected article.

• BTW: I really don’t know why people bother trying to submit blog carnivals to digg. Digg is never going to have blog carnivals on the home page. It is just a waste of time.

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After writing a post, I often give myself a grade  depending on how good I think the article is. This is perhaps a legacy from being an Economics teacher and examiner. If you are honest, you can soon gain a feeling about whether an article is genuinely good or just average. This also gives an indication whether the article will do well on social bookmarking sites.

It is not always possible to write grade A articles; sometimes the inspiration comes easily, at other times it can be hard work.  But, a successful grade A article usually includes the following characteristics:

Writing from the Heart

Writing from personal experience is a very powerful way to engage the reader. It is very difficult to fake real knowledge and experience. If you are writing from your own experiences and observations, you are able to give a unique and personal angle to the article. If you write with a lack of interest, your articles will inevitably join the ranks of the numerous mediocre articles floating around the internet.

Be Useful.

The best advice is always simple. When you are writing an article, you need to be clear that it is serving some purpose and can be useful to readers. For example, if you just repeat something which has been written countless times before, how is that useful to other people? If you can, at least, add some personal perspective then that makes the article more useful because you are illustrating how the idea can be applied.

• Useful articles don’t have to be “How to” But, if you are looking for an easy template a couple of How to … articles are an excellent way to start.

Writing outside the Box.

To write outside the box means looking at things from a different perspective; it means not just writing by numbers. Think how your niche can be seen through a completely different perspective. This involves ideas such as “Drunk on Your Own Words” - Here we take two activities drinking and writing and somehow combine them together. Writing outside the box can also be using the inspiration of past masters like “what Orwell can teach us about writing” The double advantage here is that Orwell has an authority that few net writers could ever have.

Lack of Self Promotion.

To write from a personal perspective is good, but, it needs to combine a certain humility and avoid excessive self promotion. Allow your writings to speak for themselves. Good writers don’t need to tell their readers they are good. If the information is useful for readers then include it; if you are writing to boost your ego be very careful of your motives

Passion vs Emotion

We want to avoid writing by numbers, which creates an uninteresting piece. We need to convey a sense of energy and newness into our writing. At the same time, there is a big difference between passionate writing and emotional writing. Emotional writing involves adding our personal judgements in a moralistic tone. When writing is emotional, it can feel unbalanced and lacking in maturity. However, if we are careful then we can create useful articles which are both engaging and avoid an emotional imbalance.

Short and Punchy

A short sentence will grab attention. Although, if you use it too often, your writing will sound stilted and under developed. However, if you can create a mixture of sentence length it will offer greater variety to your writing; it is one of those factors which will subconsciously attract interest. The key is to eliminate unnecessary words which don’t add anything useful.

Related 

• Do You stand out from the crowd?
  
• How To Become a Better Writer
  
• Finding your true voice as a writer - by J.P.Gillespie

When writing blog posts, I like to find a couple of relevant links to add to the post. This has the following advantages

1. Provides a more useful and detailed article
2. Google like external links and can give the page a higher rank (if links are to relatively authorative sites)
3. Linking to other bloggers is an excellent way to contact other bloggers. If you link to someone they are likely to think kindly towards your blog. They may stumble your blogpost, leave a comment or even subscribe.

Therefore it is worth trying to find good links but I found Google search was not particularly good. Often the links in a google search are outdated or not blogs. I have also been experimenting with Google blog search but have been dissappointed. There seems to be a lot of spam blogs and unrelated content.

Stumbleupon Search

As an alternative to Google search, I highly recommend stumbleupon search. For my last article on Is it worth getting on Digg?, I used the stumble search facility and it quickly gave some excellent articles. These were both by bloggers and were also very recent.

To Use Stumble Search. Go to Tools, Addons and Stumbleupon Tool bar Options

On the configuration page , you can check a box Show search. (There are also options to see stumbles on regular google searches)

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Since I began blogging a few years ago, I have always been in two minds about whether it is worth trying to get my articles submitted to Digg. On the one hand, Digg can be a way to gain huge amounts of traffic and build up your blog, on the other hand the effort required to get a Digg homepage can leave you wondering whether it is really worth it?

How Much Effort is Needed to Get on Digg?

To get on Digg home page you need a way to attract at least 20-25 votes to give the article a chance. If an article is just submitted, it will in all probability disappear without trace.

One article, I wrote received over 50,000 referrals from Stumbleupon (over a 4 week period). From Digg it received 2. There are so many submissions to Digg, that most new submissions just get lost without anybody looking at the article.

To have any chance you need a submission to attract 20-25 votes pretty quick. This means it will then show up in the upcoming section of your chosen category and then at least you have a chance.

To get 25 votes means you will need to ask friends for favours to vote for you. This can be done through either digg shout system or emailing friends asking for votes. Alternatively, you could become a power digg user, who gets loads of friends and so people are more likely to vote for your submissions.

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1. Check Email Again.

It’s 10.30pm, Sunday evening and I’m going to check my email again, even though I did it 30 mins ago. As expected the message comes up
“You have no new messages on this mail server.” - A perfect waste of time and to make it worse you feel you have no mates either.

2. Do the same thing Twice.

Feedburner blog stats get updated once a day, so why do I sometimes check them twice? I can offer no logical explanation. There is no need to check them more than once a week because they are so volatile. There are numerous other examples of things that we do twice.

3. Using computer whilst watching TV / Eating.

If there’s a good film on TV, why do I try to multitask and do something on the computer at the same time. If the TV is rubbish, why don’t we just switch it off and do one thing at a time?

4. Write a comment and then don’t post.

Have you ever written a comment and then thought at the end - what’s the point? no one really cares for my opinion anyway.

5. Hoping to Solve the problems of the World.

The internet is full of misinformation. Yet, we still somehow feel that we could correct all these erroneous views by offering reasoned and thoughtful arguments.

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