Tag Archives: linking

Blogging

Linking 101

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Here’s a topic I’ve covered many times over the years, but haven’t touched upon in the longest time. The catalyst for writing this article came from a brief discussion with a long time friend of mine about the gripe I have with Google and my blog articles.

donut links

Truthfully, Google sometimes feels like they hate me. Many times my article don’t show up within the first 300 links on there and it irks me to no end. In those times, I’ve learned that the only time I’ll find an article of mine is when I type the entire title of the article surrounded by quotation marks (that’s how you search for anything that has specific terms in the way you want to see them).
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Blogging

Better Blogging, Part Deux

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I hope you checked out the first part of this mega-pillar post. If not, you can see the first half of Better Blogging here. It was a monster, but this one is even larger as I drive my points home.


It’s time to talk about actually writing blog posts. Every blog post is going to need a title, but there’s nothing saying you have to have a title first. Some blogging experts will tell you that you should create a title for maximum SEO benefits. Whereas I’m sure that can help, sometimes creating a title that will entice readers to come by works just as well.
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Blogging

Thoughts About Trackbacks

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Trackbacks are those links that show up on your blog as comments whenever someone has linked to you in some fashion from their blog. WordPress gives you the option of whether you want to accept trackbacks or not, as well as the option of whether you want to send a trackback to someone else if you link to one of their articles.


by Eero Mäensivu via Flickr

There’s this theory about trackbacks that they add a lot of value to your blog. You’ve probably seen the talk about “one-way” links, which is when someone uses a link to your content without expecting one back from you. If we’re being genuine, most of us will link to source material to help explain or enhance something that’s in our articles from time to time. I often link to another blog when it offers me inspiration, but I will also link to something like CNN if they post an article that makes me think of something to write as well. To a website it’s not quite a trackback, just a link.

The thing about trackbacks is that they’ll show up on the post on your blog that someone has used for their article. It’s flattering in a way because it means that in some way, good or bad, you’ve touched someone, got them thinking, and made them just have to write something.

However, the problem these days is that most trackbacks seem to be spam. I wrote about trackback spam back in March and even shared what I was seeing. For awhile I turned it off through the GASP/Antispybot plugin and felt pretty good about it.

Recently I decided to turn trackbacks on again to see what I might be getting. I did that because I haven’t been seeing any new connections to or about me through the Dashboard – Incoming Links area. What I’m seeing are blogs that I’ve commented on at some point, but no one actually using one of my links in their post. I thought it might be because I’d turned off the trackbacks feature and wanted to see what came up.

Unfortunately it’s all garbage that’s coming. Only one legitimate trackback came through in two weeks, and it was from a blog post from me on one of my other blogs. Frankly that’s not really worth it in my opinion; I could get that same effect just in linking to myself on my own.

I bring this up because I remember some time last year talking to someone who felt that you honored other people by allowing them to have a trackback in your comments back to your blog. I said I wasn’t sure it was worth this new spam that comes, even if most of it goes to the spam filter. I think I’m going the route of totally eliminating it once more, and then hoping the incoming links module will show me if someone ends up talking about me. After all, I think when people do include links to your content that it’s an honor most of the time.
 

Blogging

Web Courtesy; Don’t We Deserve That Much?

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Once again yesterday I discovered that someone had pilfered one of my business blog’s posts from November and presented it as pretty much his own ideas. Well, maybe that’s not quite fair. After all, he did say he was reading a column that he had agreements with, then proceeded to write his post, using at least half of my words for his article. Kind of a rewrite, kind of a plagiarism that I still wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not.

I wrote a comment on the post saying I wasn’t sure whether to be mad because some of my content had been stolen, or happy that he had at least read the article. What I was thinking, however, is that I was upset that I hadn’t gotten any attribution for writing the article in the first place.

We all love having someone notice what we write. It’s pretty neat when people comment on our blog posts. It’s even neater when we find out that someone has written something based on an article of ours, and has linked to it in some fashion. Sometimes, even if they disagree with what we wrote, we love the fact that they’ve taken the time to talk about our stuff.

I like to think that I’m pretty good at linking to people whenever they write something that sparks a blog post to occur. I hope that whenever I do it that some of you follow the link back to the original article to read what that person had to say. I actually hope that sometimes you leave a comment there showing your appreciation for what they wrote, and mentioning where you might have seen the link to their post.

In retrospect, I might have been a bit harsh with the guy who wrote the post based on what I wrote back in November. After all, I found that same exact post on another site as well, and that site copied the entire post. That site has copied other total posts of mine as well; someone wrote me once saying it’s a foreign site that’s supposed to be similar to Digg, but I’ve never heard of Digg posting someone’s entire article. I could be wrong on that one.

I’m not giving these people a link, but if you want to see the site I’m talking about it’s here: luacheia.soup.io. And this is the direction to the latest post I know they took from me: luacheia.soup.io/post/33702719/Three-Syndromes-Consultants-Face. Part of me is wondering how many of my blog posts are on that site; I wonder if any of the posts from this blog are on that site. And in case you’re thinking about asking, I did write these people multiple times; no response. The hosting company is who told me they’re like Digg and that they can’t do anything about it; that just seems so wrong.

Blogging really is about community, in my opinion. When we can, we should open up our community to others whose stuff we read. Some folks do that once a week, like Kristi and her Fetching Fridays posts. But everyone doesn’t have to go quite this far. Think about how good you feel when you know someone has been inspired by you; do the same for others.

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Blogging

Tips For Guest Posting

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One of my goals for this year was to write more guest posts for other blogs. To that end, I’ve written some for my friend DeAnna Troupe, two of which have been posted, and one other that we’re still waiting for.

Otacool Worldwide Cosplayers
Danny Choo via Compfight

It occurs to me that there are both people who’ve never written guest posts for anyone else, as well as a lot of posts I’ve seen talking about the benefits of writing guest posts. There are few articles that give tips to writing guest posts, though I’ve seen a few. Here are my tips, some which I’ve seen mentioned before, others that I’ve never seen.

1. Try to write your guest post based on the topic of the person’s blog you’re writing for. If you write about digging clams and someone asks you to write on their blog about dog grooming, it’s probably best to turn that down unless you know something about grooming dogs. Someone else might like your writing style, but neither of you are going to get any benefit out of it. Take some time looking at the blog you might be guest writing for to see the topics they write on, then write something on that topic. I did that when I wrote a post for Connie Baum in January on internet marketing scams on her Healthy and Wealthy You blog.

2. Make sure you revisit your post at least the first couple of days to respond to any comments your article might have received. This one varies only slightly depending on how active a particular blog you write for might be. For instance, if you get to guest post on a blog that usually has lots of comments, it’s best to get back early to see what might be there and then address those comments. The reason why addresses tip number three.

3. Whether a blog gets lots of visits or not, leave some kind of comment at least within a couple of days. If a blog doesn’t get a lot of comments, you might miss if someone eventually does comment on a blog, and thus waste an opportunity to engage with someone new. Leaving and subscribing to comments gives you that opportunity. I always make sure to leave a comment whether there’s been anything or not.

4. Make sure you link back to your guest posts on another blog in some fashion on your blog. A great way to do it is what I’m about to do now, which I did last time, by writing something about it on your blog. For DeAnna’s blog, called Learn Small Business, the two posts that are there so far are Is There A Good Way To Market Your Business and Why A Business Blog. Go check them out; I’m sure she’d love the love, and I’d love the commentary.

One of these days I’m going to be asked to write a guest post on one of those blogs that gets tons of visitors. I’m not going to know what to do with myself on that day, but at least I know I’ll be writing on the proper topic.