07-18

2010

4 More Ways to Improve Your Blog

Awhile back I wrote a post called 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog, and because I want YOU to have the most awesome blog EVER, I will share four MORE ways that will help!

1. Improve SEO

You want search engines to find you, love on you, and lavish tons of traffic your way.

Use “pretty” Permalinks
A lot of times you will come across a URL that looks like this: yourdomain.com/?p=146. That gives us no information, doesn’t even LOOK appealing, and rarely will I click on a link that doesn’t have a descriptive title.

In WordPress it’s very simple to change how our permalinks look! I personally go with just the postname.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> permalinks and change them as such:

permalink settings

Now we have a URL as such: yourdomain.com/awesome-post-of-awesomeness.

Create an Archives Page
This is so easy! You can see how I have my archives page set up.

I use two plugins to achieve it:

I think the best features to have on an archives page are:

search bar
categories
tags
organized by month/year

I’m offering up my archives page up for download so you can see how I created mine!

2. Stop with the Sponsored Posts

This may not go over well with some individuals.

It’s one thing to give a specific review that you’ve been paid to do, to wax poetic about the latest and greatest service or product but it’s another to weave it randomly into your post! Here’s an example!

I was baking some cookies today, thinking of their warm, soft baked goodness made me think of diamond wedding rings. They had nuts and chocolate in them. I almost ran out of baking powder *laughs*. Oh well, at least I won’t run out of car transmission parts!

How did that make ANY sense? Weaving the phrase, baby shower invitations, into every other post may give you an extra $3 but at what cost to your readers?

If I come to a blog I want to read about a specific topic or about your personal life. When it’s obvious that you blog only do get those sponsored links in, it’s a big turn off.

Oh and, stop with the sponsored tweets. Seriously.

3. Enhance the Rss Experience

Ah the joys of RSS! Without it I don’t think any of us would be able to keep up with our daily reads!

Get Rid of Partial Feeds
Granted, there will always be the debate between full vs partial RSS feeds. Overall most READERS prefer full feeds. Those who offer up only partial feeds tend to believe that it will encourage click throughs… I feel it only encourages people to unsubscribe.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> reading and change them as such:

Create a RSS Footer
For this I use the RSS Footer Plugin. This is how I have mine set up:

<div style="border-top: 1px dotted #4f1029; font-size: 11px">
<br />
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/3130420002_60d2d338e7_t.jpg"
style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" />
Thank you for subscribing to my RSS feed at %%BLOGLINK%%! I would appreciate
your comments and feedback on the entry you just read, %%POSTLINK%%. If you
write about similar topics, I would also like the opportunity to
<a href="http://onestarrynight.com/elsewhere">link to your blog
</a> or have you <a href="http://www.onestarrynight.com/guest-post-
guidelines/">write a guest blog entry</a>!</div>
<br style="clear:both" />

Don’t go overboard in trying to cram too much information in your RSS footer, on the flip side don’t have it be bland and boring. When I posted about this before in my post, Answers to Your Questions, I saw a few people had added it to their feed however it actually irritated me! Slapping in one line, thanks for subscribing to domain.com’s feed is a waste of space for me. I personally like to see a link to the original post, a call to action (such as asking people to comment on the post), and a recognizable image such as an avatar or logo.

4. Have a Fantastic Comments Page

We love comments don’t we! People have dedicated entire threads on forums to get comments on their post, heck, people have even quit blogging because they don’t feel they get enough comments!

So here are the plugins I use on my comments page:

I know, seems like a lot but they each have their purpose, so I highly recommend playing around with them!

I highly suggest including Gravatars in your comments. These days we tend to be recognized by our photo, our “avatar”. It’s very simple to include in your theme, just add this snippet to where you want the gravatar to be displayed.

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, $size = '50' ); ?>

Now, I personally do threaded comments because I prefer to respond to each comment individually. This is how I have mine set up.

In my theme’s functions.php file, I created a custom function called osn_comment.

You can download my custom comment function, comments CSS file and the entire comments.php file to see how I have everything set up. Granted I don’t have the cleanest code since well, I code for myself, but still, it might help!

Be Social
I have it set up so that at the end of the post on the comments page, you awesome folks can tweet, share/like on facebook, and even stumble the post. I’ve found this helps reach individuals that normally wouldn’t come across your blog and perhaps even bring in new followers, subscribers, and friends!

Here are the snippets that can work on any WordPress blog, even without the use of plugins!

TweetMeme

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = '<?php the_permalink(); ?>';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js">
</script>

Share on Facebook

<script>var fbShare = {
size: 'small',
}</script>
<script src="http://widgets.fbshare.me/files/fbshare.js">
</script>

StumbleUpon

<script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=1">
</script>

Like on Facebook

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=
<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>
&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450
&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no"
frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none;
overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px"></iframe>

Hopefully those four suggestions will help!

Based on the recommendation of BabyBabyLemon, I created a “Tip Jar”! Feel free to use or not use as you wish

Lastly, a bonus tip, claim your blog on Technorati! For example, my claim code is: J438MBK99B7Z this says that I am the owner of OSN. I think in general it’s just the smart thing to do and can aide in more traffic!

Share in the comments some ways that you’ve improved your blog!

archived under: Blogging

{42 comments}

07-13

2010

Pink and Green in Nature

archived under: Photography

{60 comments}

07-12

2010

How I Made a Facebook Landing Page

blog-wp

Go check out the awesomeness of my Facebook Fan Page. Seriously. I dare you.

I bet you totally want to learn to do it right? Right!

Now there are plenty of other tutorials out there but generally, I’m not fond of them. Overall they suggest creating a single boring graphic, it doesn’t help you link to your other outlets like twitter for example. A graphic is PRETTY but I’m all about connecting with links.

Now, I am going to assume you already have a facebook fan page (and you really should go and make a vanity URL just make sure 25 people are “liking” you!).

How to add the Static FBML application to your page

Make sure you are logged into facebook
Go to the Static FBML page
Click “Add to my Page”
A lovely window should pop up with all the pages you are an Admin of. Click “Add to Page” next to the page you want to make awesome.
Go to your FB fan page and click “Edit Page”
Go down to the Applications section until you see the FBML area
Change the box title to something short and sweet.Put all of your glorious HTML into the box.
Go to your FB fan page and click “Edit Page”
Go down to the Applications section until you see the FBML area and click “Application Settings”
A box will pop up asking if you want this new “page” to be a box or tab. We want it to be a tab.
Look, you have a new tab! Click it and make sure your HTML is correct, everything looks and works the way you want it, etc.
Now, we want to make this new tab the FIRST thing a new visitor will see, and hopefully they will be so amazed by your awesome creativity that they will “like” you!
Go to your FB fan page and click “Edit Page”
Go down to under and click “Edit” under the wall settings
There’s a ton of settings but the only one we care about right now is “Default Landing Tab”

I know it looks like a lot of steps but really, it’s quite easy! The hard part is figuring out what you WANT on your landing page!

To help, here’s mine up for grabs! Download my FB Landing Page!

Now, in the comments, share YOUR Facebook Fan Page! Landing page or not, I want to become YOUR fan as well!

If you have any questions, need help, whatever it may be, feel free to ask!

archived under: Web

{49 comments}

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I'm Sarah, mom of two sweet boys, Daniel & Tristan. I'm passionate about Attachment Parenting & photography. Why don't you learn more about me! Follow me on Twitter, stay up to date using the RSS feed, even subscribe via email, or connect with me on FaceBook and the OSN forum!

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Personal

Fought for a VBAC and lost
"She proceeded to make the comment “I know the situation, and because of that I’m not feeling sympathetic” in reference to Sarah leaving the hospital AMA and not accepting a repeat c-section previously, and to the massive amounts of pain she was in."
Vent - VBAC Scare Tactics
"He then recanted and said, “well maybe it’s not a law, but I’ll tell you NO hospital will ALLOW you to VBAC without it”. Right ok, so first fear tactic and lie."
I had TWO c-sections
"It’s hard because sometimes I almost feel shame or guilt that BOTH of my c-sections were medically needed."
Who Am I?
"I went from a victim, a weak worthless nothing to a MOTHER. I went from being a punching bag to a protector and then lost myself yet again."

Tweets

@PoorParenting basically homeschooling follows a curriculum and unschooling allows the child to self-learn #

@PoorParenting following her and sent her a ton of DM's lol #

@hearmeoutx public schools place huge emphasis on reading at a specific age. #

@hearmeoutx I really don't hold stock in add or ADHD. He seems to be more of a visual learner, like myself. I'm not worried however #

@hearmeoutx what is IEP and reading wise? He doesn't like to sit still and do it. He would rather be WATCHING a star wars movie than read it #

I would appreciate your feedback on my post about my #unschooling child that wants to try to go back to #publicschool http://bit.ly/d8xdnK #

{follow me on twitter!}

Angel: I am playing devil’s advocate here, because you mentioned, “Then it’s time...
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