Advice for a new blogger
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So I’ve decided to take to blogging, mostly to improve my writing style as my first blog explains. I’m thinking along the practice makes perfect lines here. Is anyone willing, and able to spare time to look over my blog from time to time and advise me? It’s a big ask but I’m sure theres someone out there willing! One day I’ll look forward to returning the favour
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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One can’t pay their bills with promises so no I’m not willing to do my consultant work free of charge, and anyone who is doesn’t belong in the industry. See here for writing lessons and blogging lessons too http://dailypost.wordpress.com/blogging-university/
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Identifying who your target audience is, what they already know, what they need to know, where they are found, and the best way to deliver your message to them is critical to success.
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/09/01/how-to-identify-your-blogs-target-audience/The Tags search page is in the Reader area of the Dashboard is at this link. http://wordpress.com/tags/
The WordPress.com search engine indexes post, pages, and comments content (body text). Unless entered as text in those contents, blog name, post titles, and post/comment author names are not indexed. http://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpresscom-search/
For Topics (Tags page) searches see http://en.support.wordpress.com/topics/ This is the syntax http://en/wordpress.com/tags/canada
See here http://wordpress.com/#!/read/topics/For Google searches use this format and replace “keyword” with whatever word or keyword phrase you wish:
keyword site:wordpress.com/Example search string
Queen Victoria site:wordpress.com
results > http://tinyurl.com/csaobsx -
Two ways of attracting like-minded subscribers are
(1) commenting meaningfully and frequently on blogs with similar content and
(2) being active on social networking sites.On the bottom of your Admin page you will find a link to the Learn WordPress.com blogging Tutorial prepared by Staff. http://learn.wordpress.com/
The support documentation is all found at the Support link http://en.support.wordpress.com which is also on the bottom of your Admin page.
See these for Staff tips:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/how-to-get-more-traffic/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/traffic-dos-and-donts-a-checklist/
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/postaday/ebook-grow-traffic/If you want to increase traffic then don’t listen to anyone who professes there are passive ways of doing that. Increasing traffic to a blog is hard work. If you want your blog to rank well in search engine results then that begins with creating and publishing original content ie. unique content that cannot be found anywhere else on the internet.
These 5 videos introduce how Google discovers, crawls, indexes your site’s pages, and how Google displays them in search results. It also touches lightly upon challenges webmasters and search engines face, such as duplicate content http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/03/22/5google-webmasters-video-tutorials/
If you are using a WordPress.com theme good SEO is a given. However, going beyond the theme what the blogger has done within that structure is worth evaluating. Whether you write informative, persuasive or controversial content learning how search engines work, and how to apply basic SEO to you content will benefit your blog as it will increase traffic from targeted readers. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/10/21/two-seo-videos-for-bloggers/
6 Ways to Make Google Your Blog’s Best Friend > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/10/08/6-ways-to-make-google-your-blogs-best-friend/
Here’s another helpful post 7 Common Sense Social Networking Tips http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/12/07/7-common-sense-social-networking-tips/
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You can set up email subscriptions here > Appearance > Widgets > Follow Blog Widgets by using this guide > http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/follow-blog-widget/
If you would like a follow button to appear on the bottom right hand corner of your site for those who do not have WordPress.com accounts go to > Settings > Reading and scroll down to Follower Settings:
These settings change emails sent from your blog to followers.
Logged out users __ Show follow button to logged out users.Checking this will present a follow button to logged out users in the bottom corner of their screen.
Find Friends Who Use WordPress > http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/find-friends/
You can customize the contact form with multiple fields, change the email address where you’ll be notified, and mark feedbacks as spam from your dashboard. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/
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re: assigning categories and tags to your posts
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/tags/Do not assign a combined total that exceeds 15 Categories/Tags to your posts. All reasons for non-appearance of posts on Topics pages can be found here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/topics/#missing-posts
The rule of thumb is to assign to your posts the least, not the most, combined number of only relevant categories and tags that accurately describe the individual post content.
For tips on tagging see > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/03/15/quick-blog-post-tagging-tips/
re: social network sharing icons in your sidebar
See here http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/08/06/social-media-icons-for-wordpress-com-blogs/ -
There is no incentive for anyone to click into your blog and create a page view stat, and to look for other posts to click into, thereby creating more page view stats, if you provide full posts in your RSS Feed.
Our stats are not real time stats. For details see here http://en.support.wordpress.com/stats/ and note the views and viewers take hours to update. Provided you are logged in when visiting, your own views are not recorded on any public blog you registered.
Our stats are page view stats. Please do not assume that everyone who clicks a like button actually reads the post on your blog because odds are they may not.
Also note that those who follow your blog in the Reader or by email don’t have to click into the blog unless they wish to. And, they can even comment without clicking into the blog either.
Likes and shares and comments and reblogs and follows are not page views. In fact, likes, shares, comments and reblogs are completely misleading when you are talking about page view stats.
Your followers and anyone with a WordPress.com/Gravatar account who is logged into WordPress.com can “follow” your blog, “like”, “share” and “reblog” your posts in several locations such as the Reader, without ever clicking into your blog and creating a single page view stat.
Logged in visitors using a mobile can read the full post without creating a page view stat. https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/wordpresscom-reader-show-full-text?replies=31#post-1373606
You can control the length of the entry sent out on your RSS feed here Dashboard > Settings > Reading. Choose the “summary” setting for your RSS feed rather than to “full text”. That will compel followers who are not using mobiles to click into the blog to read the full post which will create a page view stat.
The setting here > Settings > Reading is only for the RSS Feed summary and does not affect the posts.
If you want to display only excerpts on the front page of the blog followed by read more links, you can insert “the more tag” into each post prior to publication.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/Alternatively, you can switch to using a theme that automatically displays front page excerpts. This is a list of active themes on WordPress.com that use the excerpt instead of full post content. Here are the themes that do provide that feature > https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/theme-with-automatic-excerpts?replies=13#post-1396410
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