Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

Been busy, changing hosts

Jul 17, 2007 No Comments »

I’ve been having severe problems with my previous hosts (I won’t mention their name; they are good guys otherwise) and if you visited this blog in the past few days you must have encountered repetitive problems. Small outages and email-related problems had been a norm, and recently they literally accused me of sending spam mails when it was some problem with their own email server. I have no reason to send spam and in fact spam will harm my business — 100% of the time my clients approach me through my content writing website, through this blog, or through referrers (most of my clients recommend my services).

Anyway, I’ve changed to Dreamhost (the link contains my referral code) and so far I love their interface. I had many websites and blogs hosted on the previous host (still have some) and I’ve been gradually transferring them to the new server — a time consuming and a treacherous task. The day before yesterday when I shifted amrithallan.com I forgot to create my official email address that I use to interact with my clients. As a result a few new clients who tried to contact me through my contact form couldn’t do so. Fortunately some of them noticed the Skype button on my website and contacted me.

I hope to resume normal blogging from tomorrow onwards. Thanks for visiting.

Technorati Tags: hosting

Do Technorati tags solve any purpose?

Jul 13, 2007 5 Comments »

Are Tags Working? asks Lorelle at The Blog Herald. I started using Technorati tags to increase traffic and I’ve been using them for many months now. Although I don’t have the right data to know how they have impacted my traffic (I hardly get any), I implemented them after reading numerous recommendations and I try to use the tags as appropriately as possible.

Tagging means assigning keywords to your posts so that when people search for those keywords on Technorati (if you ever use Technorati to search — I do) you blog gets found. The problem with these tags is, as Lorelle rightly points out, that anybody can use them with any sort of post, whether the tags are relevant for the post or not. This is a problem, but I don’t think it is a deterrent because now that I’m writing this, I do remember my stats often showing incoming traffic from Technorati. But then, if Technorati is pinged no matter whether you use the tags or not, what’s the use of using them and wasting precious space on your blog posts?

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: technorati tags

Automattic and Six Apart Compared

Jul 13, 2007 No Comments »

At Read/Write Web. Automattic is a company that developed and now promotes the popular blogging software WordPress. Six Apart developed MovableType. I used MovableType a few years ago but then started using WordPress because I found it a better, lighter alternative.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, movabletype, six apart, automattic

How To Optimize Your Blog For Both Readers And Search Engines

Jul 12, 2007 8 Comments »

Both readers and search engines are important for your blog (although personally I feel readers are more important). While optimizing your blog you should keep in mind that your blog doesn’t lose one to gain the other. Readers are significant, but a big chunk of them are sent by the search engines. Search engines are crucial, but your readers can help you rank better by linking to you. Optimize your blog for both of them.

To run a successful blog you have to optimize it both for your readers and the search engines. You understandably write great content that your readers love but you need search engines — unless you are a celebrity being hounded by your psychopathic fans — to get those readers to your blog. With millions of web pages and blog posts competing to be found as early as possible on the search engine result pages, it’s very crucial that your post appears on the first page, or at least on the second page of the search engine results, for the keywords and expressions of your choice.

Your readers are your main strength. No matter how much traffic you are able to derive from the search engines, people will leave your blog within the first few seconds if they don’t find something valuable on your blog. If they like your content, they will not only read it, they will also recommend it and endorse it by linking to it, or mailing it to others. The more they come and the more they link, the better your blog performs at the search engines, and vice-versa. Consequently, your blog should be both reader-friendly and search-engine-friendly. Here are a few things you can do to achieve both:

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People still don’t get blogging

Jul 10, 2007 4 Comments »

Blogging is a conversation. Also it helps you establish yourself as an expert — if you want to, that is — but otherwise, blogging mostly helps you articulate your thoughts without the corporate balderdash. Blogging in no way makes you less of an expert as claimed by Jacob Nielson. He says this on his web page (I won’t call it a blog post) that blogs are just for cheap products:

Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.

I think he gets this impression because he hasn’t visited some quality blogs. Even Google has an official blog and Google is in no way a cheap product. Anyway, that’s not the point.

He says you should write in-depth articles instead of writing blog posts because articles are well-researched hence are more credible. This is a silly assumption. Just because it is a blog post doesn’t mean it is not serious stuff. Many people spend hours researching for their blog posts. The basic point is, blogs are highly interactive, and people who fear interaction, fear blogging. Conventional journalists snigger at blogging because it allows readers to ask questions. Through a blog you can question the authority of the “expert” and you can also offer an alternative point of view. The old-school writers don’t like being questioned because they are not confident about their own facts and theories. The lack of communication tools used to shield them against direction questioning. Blogging demolishes that shield. Only a very confident person uses blogging to express his or her expertise.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blog publishing, blog writing