Posts Tagged ‘
blogging best practices ’
Monday, December 7th, 2009
I cannot stress the importance of checking each and every comment and their links before accepting them on your website. Spammers are tricky and will often post comments that look, and sound genuine. You may think they really took the time to read and analyze your post. But beware, sometimes these posts will be paired with a link that can hurt your ranking. If just one of your blog comments carries a link to a reported spam website, your ranks can be significantly hurt, specially in a highly competitive market. Worst case scenario is that you too may be flagged as a spam site too for your involvement. Even though your intentions are not to be a spammer, by acknowledging them, and accepting their links on your site, you too will suffer the consequences. Remember that removing yourself from a spam list is a lot harder than getting on it in the first place. So please, practice your due diligence and make sure to check each and every link first before accepting them.
A good way to check a site for spam content is to open the link in a new window, read a few sentences to see if the web page looks genuine. If you are suspicious or if you have a single doubt, don’t accept the comment or edit it to delete the link. Sometimes you will have to wait a few minutes until you begin to see the true nature of a site. It often happens that a site will look genuine, but after a while, you begin seeing the pop-ups begin to appear. A site with pop-up ads should raise a red flag that the site may be a spam site. I also check the internal structure of a website. It has happened in the past that I will check the link that redirects me to a genuine looking site, but when clicking on the links in the navigation menu, each link goes to the same page. This raised a red flag, so after further inspecting the site, and doing a background check on the url, the site was listed as a severe spam site.
Spammers are finding ways to get around the protections that we have deployed against them. Just like advances in guns have led to advances in bullet proofing, we too must remain on guard and protect our websites. I suggest to routinely check the links on your site using the backlink check tool found here.
I hear a lot of people say that they are unsure of how to deal with reporting spam. Some fear of spammer backlash, fearing that a spammer may personally identify a website and attack it in retaliation for their report. Although I believe it may be possible, and I do believe there may have been a few victims of this type of attack, the alternative is a loss of valuable time for you–if in case you have to check a large amount of links manually each day–as may be the case with more established blogs. In this case I would suggest trying out a spam filter. If your blog is hosted by a services such as word press, installing a spam filter will be easy to do. Otherwise, you may have your work cut out for you, but it should be worth your time. Using a spam filter will allow you to avoid reporting any spam, while still taking advantage of avoiding spam links on your site. You will still need to stay weary as new spammers are born each day, and they may get past your filters. If repeat offenders continue attacking your site, feel free to report them. They will likely be attacking several other sites too and will likely be expecting to be cited sooner or later anyways.
We hope this information is useful to you in your search for an optimized, high ranking website. Any other questions can be addressed here, or email us for more info. San Diego business owners, please visit our San Diego Web Design page and our San Diego SEO Homepage for more information.
Tags: avoiding spam, blog how to, blogging best practices, business website design, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, search engine optimization san diego, seo website design, stop spam, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego
Posted in
Blogging, online marketing |
4 Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
The internet has allowed us to share ideas and to build communities with little to no direct interaction with other people. This anonymity can encourage people to conduct themselves in ways they may not normally behave in any other public place. By minding a simple code of online manners, one can take advantage of the web while avoiding sounding rude, or being mis-interpreted. It can also help to protect you from being labeled as an online threat or spammer. By being careful today, you can also avoid embarrassing situations in the future. The following list is a set of guidelines of things to avoid when posting content on blogs, or on social media sites.
1. Avoid the use of exclamation marks (!).
Although exclamation marks can help to translate excitement, they can also make a simple comment sound rude or appear as an order. When used too much, you can dilute the significance of the exclamation mark. I would suggest to use the exclamation mark no more than once per message, or better yet, not at all, specially if your comment is critical of the person’s work.
2. Avoid overly-lengthy blog comments.
People have a tough time getting through an entire lengthy blog post, if you include a lengthy comment, it may never get read. Be clear and to the point. If your comment is longer than the blog post itself, then you should probably just write your own blog post, and link it through a comment. You obviously have a lot to say and it should get the spotlight it deserves.
3. Watch Your Language
Although the internet offers a certain amount of anonymity, you shouldn’t feel free to use language you wouldn’t use in any public place. Not only is it unprofessional to curse, but remember that a lot of the content you place online is eventually archived, and once it’s up, it has the potential of being there forever. Employers are also becoming very savvy when it comes to social media, and you may want to avoid them ever stumbling upon the rant you posted about your problems at work.
4. Don’t Spam!
Comment spamming is one of the most annoying things for a blogger to deal with. Search engines and blogging software companies know this, and in an attempt to help authors deal with it, they have made it very easy for an author to add spammers on their spam lists. Heaven forbid you end up on one of those lists because they can kill your website’s rankings and it can be very difficult to get yourself removed. If you want to take advantage of posting a link to your site on someone else’s blog, be sure you only post relevant links in appropriate blogs. If you are reading a blog about baseball, and post a link to a site about website optimization, you will likely be denied and your chances of being labeled as spam will greatly increase.
Online manners matter today more than ever despite the faceless nature of the internet. Let us not forget them or we may pay a price for inappropriate behavior. The internet afterall is a public place and we should conduct ourselves as we would in any other public arena. In order to avoid embarrassing situations coming back to haunt us, it is best to adhere to a professional code of conduct.
Tags: blogging best practices, Blogging manners, blogs, online code of conduct, san diego internet
Posted in
Blogging, online marketing |
No Comments »
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Although it is common to come across a blog posting that may resemble in the spirit of a good Term Paper, it is best to avoid lengthy blog posts that may not keep the reader’s attention. The following is a short blog with some common best practices for creating successful blog postings of your own, without giving the reader incentive to leave.
Leave the big words out. Unless your blog is directly focused towards service providers such as doctors and lawyers who have languages of their own, avoid long and difficult words. People who are online will have a short attention span and if your site is too difficult to read, your blog will never be read. If you are online, you must expect that anyone will be able to access your blog and a large portion of the time, it will by found by an average Joe. Search engines will also suggest using elementary level language to increase searchability as it will help you get a larger part of the online traffic.
Leave the lengthiness behind. A blog post, no matter how interesting or informative will cause the eyes to tire if the post is too long. Give your audience a break by tackling the subject early in the post and provide reinforcing details to finish it off. If your have a lot of information, try to give your reader’s eyes a break by providing relevant images in between paragraphs to allow the eye time to rest before proceeding.
 give your visitors an eye break Giving your visitors an occasional break will help your readers find the energy to finish lengthy blog posts. Making the images relative to the subject matter and adding alt tags to the image help keep your blog postings search engine friendly.
Consider typographical hierarchy. Just like reading in a magazine, our eyes are attracted to certain parts of the page in the designer’s predetermined order, all in an effort to make the page easy to read with a good flow. The designer controls this with fonts, size, weights, color, etc. the only difference is that blogs use a vertical reading order rather than a horizontal one. In a blog’s vertical scroll arrangement, our flow is already predetermined, we are only assigned the task of making the words easy to read. This includes the use of a serif font for lengthy posts as they help lead the eye from word to word. If you are using a san serif consider a font designed specifically for online view such as Verdana. Avoid using more than 3 different fonts per post to promote a unified style. Use bold words sparingly. This is often a challenge as <strong> tags help search engines find keywords. We suggest only bolding 3 keywords per post, or leaving the keywords for titles or paragraph headings that would be bolded anyways.
Don’t be afraid. Posting blogs may be intimidating. This is specially true for controversial subjects, but your reader’s reaction may surprise you. Negative reaction is not always a bad thing, and may bring more attention to your site than positive feedback. If you fail, just post another blog tomorrow, no harm done. Putting the fear aside will keep your blog posts personable and will appear more as dialog to your readers. The only rule to always consider is that you represent the company, so keep it professional.
Be Transparent. If you post with a hidden agenda, or if you wait until the very last paragraph of a lengthy post get to your point, the reader will catch on an have a mistrust about you and your company. Be clear about your goals, your success and failures; and be concise. If your company is facing an embarrassing moment and a potentially bad PR crisis, it is best for the company to begin the dialog about it first because chances are that someone else will begin talking about it if you don’t. Beat critics to the punch by acknowledging your mistakes and how you plan to grow from it.
Creating a good post should not be hard. If it is, it’s probably because you are trying too hard. When you finish you may have a very well written term paper, but a bad blog. Our best advice is to put the fear aside, don’t think about it too much, and avoid sounding like a machine. If possible, talk from the heart. This will encourage comments and interaction from your readers.
If you have found this helpful, please leave a comment. If you need further assistance putting together an online marketing strategy, call Saba SEO, a San Diego SEO Company today toll free at 866-937-1717.
Tags: better blogging, blog best practice, blogging 101, blogging best practices, good blogging
Posted in
Search Engine Marketing |
2 Comments »
|
