SlyVisions dot Com

Ask The Toughest Question: Am I Any Good?

Paul — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:50:52 +0000

Folks, there comes a time in every blogger’s life where he looks at his traffic and his flagging adsense revenue and has to ask, is it ME? You go out, and promote, and promote some more, and you’re posting at a pretty good clip and at regular times of the day, and by all accounts, you’re doing the right things. Your posts have plenty of keywords but they’re not link bait. You’re drawing attention with your headlines but not ignoring the SEO possibilities. You read Problogger and SlyVisions EVERY DAY to try and catch new ideas (okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit grandiose there, but still).

And your blog just still isn’t going anywhere.

So like I said…you have to ask the toughest question of all. Am I any good at blogging?

This isn’t a question people want to ask. No one wants to hear they have no talent. That’s why most people would rather WATCH American Idol than go ON American Idol. They want to hear how badly OTHER people suck, not how bad THEY suck! But you can find out. Talk to your friends, any of your blogging contemporaries. Send out links to your blog. Specifically request they not spare your feelings as you want to improve, and MEAN it.

Then, see what’s wrong, and try to fix it.

There’s only one way to be a better writer, folks, and that is TO WRITE. It’s the very definition of “writer”.

Writer. Noun. One who writes.

But if you’re willing to practice, to turn in the work even if no one’s watching, keep up the promotion and everything else, chances are you can become a good writer…even if you aren’t right now.

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How Google Might Be Killing Your Google Rank

Paul — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:31:59 +0000

Now this was something that got me. I was reading over at Problogger about this, and the thought of it literally chilled me to the bone.

We all know that Google has a whole lot of reasons to kill your page rank, and most of them are things you’d deserve a penalty for. If you’ve been selling text links, for example, or anything else that might be in violation of Google’s guidelines. But what you may not know is that, at some point, for little or no reason, Google might kill your page rank and you wouldn’t even be responsible.

As it turns out, most search engines–and this includes Google–occasionally undergo changes to their algorithms, and when this happens, you might suffer an unaccountable, and unexplainable, loss in rank.

Now, this is for the most part generally temporary. But if you should ever find your post ranking suddenly crashing, don’t panic. It may well come back entirely on its own after just a couple days. So take a deep breath, grab a drink, write your posts like normal and wait a couple days. You might be surprised by what comes back.

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When All Else Fails, Beg For Links

Paul — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:20:44 +0000

I probably got someone to spit their drink all over their monitor with that one. Apologies if you personally happened to be the person who did the spit take.

Anyway, the title’s a little misleading, but it’s pretty close to what I’m suggesting. If you’ve been having a hard time getting attention for your blog, try introducing yourself around. Take just a couple minutes a day and send a few emails out to the writers of big blogs in your industry or niche. Tell them who you are and offer up a link to your blog. Don’t specifically ask for a link, either–not this time, anyway.

It’s a long shot that may pay off pretty big dividends. I emphasize the may, of course–chances are your letter will be ignored and at the very worst you may well alienate the writers of some big blogs, but even this worst case can be worked against if you mention how fond you are of the site they right.

I’ll tell you this much–blogging, nine times out of ten, feels like screaming at an empty room. But getting an email from a regular is very encouraging. You may be able to use that encouragement to your own advantage.

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Want a Quick Shot of Credibility? Try Yahoo Answers

Paul — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:17:28 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but Yahoo Answers represents the strangest concept I’ve seen lately–try the human powered search engine. How it works is, essentially, you pose a question to the Yahoo Answers community and wait a few days. Come back and check it, and it’s entirely possible that people have answered your questions. Some answers are excellent, well-reasoned and clearly well thought out, while others are utter garbage.

But where this comes in for you is that, if you become one of those people, and one of those excellent, well-reasoned, and well thought out responses, you get to establish yourself, if only for a short while, as someone who knows what they’re talking about. And if you include a link back to your blog, you can continue to show the Yahoo Answers folks that you really know your stuff.

And convincing a community the size of Yahoo Answers that you are indeed an expert in your field of choice can’t help but light a fire under your readership counts.

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Today on some of our blogs:

Paul — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:22:08 +0000

New Cellphone for Sprint, the Sanyo SCP-3810

250 GB PS3 spotted at Best Buy

Free Giveaway — Aliens in the Attic DVD

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Tell Your Readers Who You Are: The Importance of an Author Bio

Paul — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:10:04 +0000

I’ve been bludgeoning you with messages about credibility for weeks now, and maybe one of the best moves you can make to establish credibility is to include an author bio with your blog.

It’s true what they say, that something signed is always more trusted than something anonymous. When you put your name on something, you’re putting everything that goes along with your name on the line as well. You’re putting your skill, your expertise, your reputation…everything that goes along with your name on the line when you post with your name.

If you’re not willing to put that kind of gravity and import on your posts that the use of your name implies, then there’s something wrong with your posts, plain and simple. If you want people to trust you, then you have to be so clear and so strong in your belief that you’re willing to tell everybody who reads it: this is MY POST, and I stand behind it so deeply that I’m willing to put my name on it.

So when you post, you’d best make it as honest as possible. Everyone’s got their eye on you.

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Sudden Fall In Readership? Maybe You’ve Got A Seasonal Disorder.

Paul — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:57:17 +0000

If you’ve been a blogger for any length of time, chances are you’ve seen your traffic ebb and flow at certain times of the year. But if you notice that your traffic falls through the floor at certain times of the year, then it may well represent a significant movement, one you want to stop as much as possible.

It’s entirely possible–and it’s something you want to check–that your traffic may have some seasonal motivations.

For instance, if you run a gadget blog, maybe your traffic spikes around the Christmas shopping season but falls off after the “momdadgrad gift corridor”. You might think there’s not a lot you can do about that, but now’s the perfect time to give your readers a new reason to come back.

Consider doing different types of pieces in this time, something that your readers wouldn’t ordinarily see and thusly not expect. If you can give them a whole new reason to come back, then maybe it’s a smart idea.

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Newcomers, Don’t Forget To Submit Your Blog To Search Engines

Paul — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:15:59 +0000

Bear with me, experienced folk in the audience. This one’s specifically for the new guys (and gals, if you want to be precise in the language) today.

I know you veterans out there understand the idea of submitting your blog to search engines and giving yourselves that extra push in building traffic. I know you’re well aware of how important it is to do that, and how it can not only give you traffic spikes but also improve your rankings, help you get links and trackbacks, and help you push your bottom line up as well as give you a source of steady reliable readership. I know that.

That’s why I’m apologizing to you up front. See, it’s not just the veterans that come here. We’ve also got the next generation of bloggers looking for tips and advice, so this one is just for them today. You know I give you plenty of good advice too…so today, let’s just spare a thought for the folks just getting started.

And in case you need it, here are some links to where to submit your blog to search engines.

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Two Headlines On Your Post: Why Colons and Hyphens Are Your Friend

Paul — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:45:23 +0000

There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to making a headline for each of your blog posts. One, you can make your headline catch attention and draw interest to the post itself. Two, you can make a search-engine friendly headline that contains key words.

Or, you can tell both of these schools you’re not enrolling and instead do BOTH at once.

See, with keywords in your posts, you’ll draw the search engines in but your readers won’t be as engaged. A post titled “The Oreck XL 350″ really doesn’t get the interest the way “This Vacuum Cleaner Really Sucks” does. The other way around switches the terms–no search engine is going to return a lot of hits for “So, Guess Who Got Engaged?” even though your readers will likely be scrolling down just to see what the answer is.

One good way to split this difference is to do both at once. For instance, in the above examples, you can split the difference by trying:

“The Oreck XL 350: A Vacuum Cleaner That Really Sucks”.

“So, Guess Who’s Getting Engaged? Hint: It’s Not Gerard Butler.”

Now what you’ve done is added both a keyword to bait the search engines and an interesting aside for your readers.

Your readers are valuable, but you always need more of them. So don’t forget to work both sides of the fence, whether by expanding your headlines or by varying the style.

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Short And Steady Wins The Blog Race

Paul — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:28:10 +0000

Here’s an awesome little hint for you that I’m going to have to try a bit more often myself.

Next time you go to do a blog post, count the number of sentences in your paragraph. If you often have more than three sentences in a paragraph, consider breaking your paragraphs down into smaller chunks of text.

What this does, is it increases the amount of white space in your blog, and thus increases the reader’s perception that it’s harder to read, even if you say the same thing. See, the human eye is essentially lazy, and is drawn to empty space. The more empty space you have, the “simpler” the blog post appears to read.

It’s always a great idea to take advantage of the natural human element in your blog posts. If you can work with normal human psychology or physiology to your advantage then you’ve done something you know can’t fail to help your blog. All human beings react the same way to empty space; it’s a universal trait. Gaining that edge will give you plenty of help.

You’ll see from above, however, that it isn’t always possible to get that ideal three-sentence paragraph. Don’t worry too much about that–as long as the majority of your work is in that simple block format you should get more readers, and more engaged readers.

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