(Reading time: 7 – 12 minutes)
Drama. Mystery. Excitement. It’s time again for the Week in Review.
By the time you read this, I may or may not be on the road to Tahoe with a group of people that I don’t know very well. So I may or may not be commenting much. Either way, I never kiss and tell.
Romance. Misery. The Perfect Couple
So I’m sitting around checking my email and generally minding my own business (generally) and I get this short note from one Claudia:
Hello! I see you’re using the Estimated Reading Time plugin and I also see you’ve been able to customize it with CSS. I was hoping you’d be able to share with me how you were able to do it. I’m a complete novice with PHP but am fairly comfortable with CSS. Any help you could give me would be sincerely appreciated. Thank you!
Hokay. A bit direct, which is good, but I’ve been “sincerely appreciated” a few too many times.
No matter. It’s a reasonable request. I sent a Claudia a link to the category, asking her to let me know how it worked out. (I do this too often and never hear back.)
Claudia, though, got right to work, implemented the CSS, and left a nice comment in sincere appreciation!
Awesome!
So who is Claudia?
She’s Claudia D. Christian and she writes miserable love stories.
Awesome awesome!
If you’ve been reading along for more than a couple of weeks, you might strongly suspect you’ll see a bit more of Claudia mentioned right here. I think you’re probably right.
Bob’s your uncle
So I was hanging around Twitterstan a couple of weeks ago. An IRL acquaintance, Catherine Grison, tweeted me over to Film Ladd, whence I found that CT Kingston Wants To Know if That’s a Hot Blog in Your Pants.
Immediately, I am hooked.
I blame Ladd, which is easy because I don’t know him: it’s all his fault. But he’s cool. He likes Benny Hill.
Anyway…
Are you having trouble visualizing happiness? Think sausage. You wanna learn to cook corn like a chick? Miss Christina has you covered. There’s more. But not enough. Not nearly enough!
Hey Christina,
We want more, dammit!
Here’s what’s cool: Christina Kingston loves her audience. She’s funny, and she engages with almost everyone that comments.
Are you engaging with your commentors? Don’t know how? Go read and be enlightened.
Another cool thing: Kingston really gets graphics; she pays attention to the details. I learned some interesting techniques… while falling out of my chair laughing.
By the way, if you want to get really high Google page rank, and completely dominate your niche, do as I say, not as I do. ’cause I link promiscuously and that’s bad juju for SEO Domination. Or so I hear.
Extreme John’s limo business competitors
Website In A Weekend gets a fair bit of spam – some real black hat SEO stuff – directed at siphoning off traffic from every article where pink limousines are mentioned. That’s part of the fun of linking to Extreme John: there’s always something interesting going on. If the spamming I get here from the Florida limousine business is any indication, John must be poking a pretty sharp stick in a lot of beady little eyes.
Now, recall last week I mentioned that if you wanted lots of really cool contextual links back from Website In A Weekend, you were going to have to pay attention. Here’s the deal:
Be interesting. Be visible.
And I’ll roll you up. I’ll pull little bits of your story into my story, and we’ll make it our story. That’s what you can do with hypertext. And what you can’t do using “MS Word On The Interwebs.”
But wait, there’s more! Interesting and visible are not enough for me to send my readers to your site. And make no mistake: every link bleeds me a little page rank link juice and send eyeballs away from my site to yours. I do this for my readers, not to kiss your butt (ok, maybe once in a while. For selected butts only). You need to demonstrate:
- Authority & Credibility. Not one or the other, both
- You need to be engaged with your readers. I’m sending you a potential member for your community.
- You need to make it easy for readers to engage. Provide incentives. Install CommentLuv. Don’t require comment pre-approval. Moderate comments for quality, choose quality over quantity. Require or heavily encourage gravatars.
- You need to be a real person. Have a picture. Or have such a stupendous amount of quality content that it renders the point moot.
I crave novelty. All serious readers crave novelty.
Maybe that’s why so much scannable content is the same old boring crap, because
More on this revelation soon.
In the meantime…
Bye bye scanners
According to the Echo Chamber, the recommend length of articles published in Blogistan is about 400 words.
This is because readers “are in a hurry,” and “can’t be bothered.” Supposedly, if a reader has to, uh, read an article, he or she won’t. Won’t read the article, that is. Does this make any sense at all? I didn’t think so.
At least 1200 words. If you’re scanning, there’s nothing here for you. It’s all meat and potatoes, no dessert. Bye bye.
If you find it worth reading, thank you.
If it’s not worth reading, and you read it anyway, I apologize for boring you. If you would be so kind, please take just 1 extra minute and let me know where you needed more than what you got. I’ll roll your suggestions into the next Week in Review.
Permalinkin
I’m green with envy over Valentina’s permalink for her January 2010 Month in Review. If you don’t quite understand contextual linking and anchor text, examine the anchor text I used here, then go take a look at her January 2010 review URL. If you still don’t get it, ask in the comments, someone will explain in more details. It’s good.
Valentina writes extensively on earning blog income. In fact, she’s starting to rank for the term “blog income.” I’m happy to give her hand.
Would you like to rank for a keyword or phrase? Are you interesting, visible and credible? Let me know.
How to write a blog post in less than 1200 words
I don’t know. Ask Seth Godin.
Updated posts
Every article in the Website In A Weekend eCourse has been updated with a course blurb. That’s 24 articles. Too many to list individually. You’ll know the blurb when you see it, it’s in a gray box and looks like this:
Jump right in!
Upcoming
Stay tuned for Carlos Velez with a 2 articles series on pre-writing drafts.
New articles
- Saturday Morning Surfing: Passion is NOT Enough – Your Landlord Doesn’t Give a Rat’s Patootie. Passion is no guarantee of success. It’s not even necessary. Find out what having both market and angle are required; get those and let passion give that edge.
- How To Rapidly Create Pillar Content For Your Blog. Writing the pillar content, or flagship content for your blog is really easy once you break the process down into simple steps.
- How Moderating Comments On Your Blog Destroys Conversation. Are you making it difficult for people to comment on your blog? Inspiring discussion requires making it easy for people to participate; Gordie tells you how.
- What the Heck is Pillar Content and Why Do I Need It?. Pillar content shows what your blog is about, and can help give you better search engine results. Here’s 4 tips for helping you find your pillar content.
- Your First AWeber Autoresponder Followup Series. It’s easy to write a mailing list followup series, shown here using AWeber system. Use these simple guidelines to make your first email campaign successful.
- Refreshing Your Pillar Content By Recycling Blog Posts. When your pillar content needs to be updated, here’s a few guidelines for determining whether to republish your blog post. You can take action on this fast.
The Week In Review Series
- Last WIAW Week in Review
- Got Blogging Blues? Dr Johnson Cures What Ails You (& Week in Review). Another Week in Review. With Burning Man. And Dr Johnson. And beating the blogging blues. You gotta read it, it’s just for you.
- Stay tuned…
Next WIAW Week in Review
Would you like more? Send me a letter...
{ 21 comments }
If people start linking to quality, awesome stuff, the search engines will switch it around, and base your rank on how much cool stuff you link to, rather than how many people link to you.
Or maybe not. Probably not. Oh well, it was a nice idea.
Oh yeah, you were right about sleep. SO much better this morning.
Deacon´s last blog ..Sales Pitch for Men: Give Her Hand Made Art for Valentine’s
Actually, it’s a natural next step for search engines, tying content to actual IRL reputation. It’s what I would be doing if I were working on search engine technology.
We’ll see.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..How Moderating Comments On Your Blog Destroys Conversation
Then we’d be breaking down social interaction into a science, and that’s crazy talk
Deacon´s last blog ..Sales Pitch for Men: Give Her Hand Made Art for Valentine’s
Thanks for keeping my rss reader overflowing with new and interesting blogs to read. There are so many people out there who are doing quality work that I would never have found if it were not for links on sites like yours. Thanks for the detailed attention to others.
Justin
Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Why I stay home, part 2
Thanks Justin.
Turns out these Friday articles are often my most time consuming, and usually my least read.
But I’m ok with that. Let’s me push the envelope on my writing craft while reducing risk.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: Passion is NOT Enough – Your Landlord Doesn’t Give a Rat’s Patootie
Jeez ya make me feel bad around here, haha. Kidding thank you as always Dave, your way too kind. Sorry for the extra spam box junk.
Extreme John´s last blog ..Tan for Cash Giveaway from Extreme Tan and Smoothies
Just keep it interesting, John. That’s all.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..How Moderating Comments On Your Blog Destroys Conversation
I have a couple of things on my mind –
alright. so now we’re taking hours and hours to write and publish these things. When do you get to “enough”? We want better, more intricate, rewarding stuff, but is making that stuff good ROI?
Can you believe I’m asking that? I’m supposed to be an arteeeeeeste.
The link to Twitterstan possibly doesn’t work. And how do you do that? Publish a piece that doesn’t show up in the regular feed? I’ve been wanting to do that and don’t know how.
I don’t know why Valentina’s permalink is a thing of beauty but I know you have a post on it…direct me.
It get’s easier with practice. Much easier. You can plan ahead, use forward hooks in your narrative. Easy to go back later and link.
Twitterstan link is fixed. Lame page, placeholder, will add to it as I’m inspired. Staking my claim. I’m such a dude.
Look at the link text, the subject of the article, and what I used as an anchor text. Highly congruent.
Deep, or internal linking: two types, 1.website, 2. page. First is just linking to another page on your website. Second is linking to the innards of specific pages. You need named targets for this. It’s easy. Takes practice. Seriously extends your ability to hack text.
There may be something buried in the Practical WordPress Tips. Maybe #18. Not sure.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..MasterMind Power IV: Some MasterMind Examples
Aha! Got it!
Mucho, mucho ……………..
Valentina
Valentina´s last blog ..Meet My Friend: Author Wendy Atkinson
One more on ROI…
Some of what I do is like playing scales on the piano. I keep the technical skill sharp.
Then, the hard part becomes telling the story, which is how it should be. Like creating a new composition.
But that gets easier with practice as well.
For example, I might decide to bury offers in html title attributes. I already sling title atts like a pro, the difficulty now is learning how to structure links such that I can pitch the offers.
I do this stuff because if I didn’t I would go mad with boredom.
I also just wanted you to know that I looked at the source code for this page to try and figure out this anchor business. I know. I’m in shock, too. I’m not sure who I am, anymore.
Play around with the anchor element. It has attributes, such as “href”and “name.”
Example: <a name=”kellys-comment”></a>, which should thoroughly bend your mind.
CommentLuv is so cool, doncha think?
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..What the Heck is Pillar Content and Why Do I Need It?
Oh, btw, I totally did as you said and stole your little trick you pointed out last night in my own post today.
Deacon´s last blog ..Sales Pitch for Men: Give Her Hand Made Art for Valentine’s
You’re a bad man, Mr Deacon, you and your new direction.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Got Blogging Blues? Dr Johnson Cures What Ails You (& Week in Review)
Thanks oddles of bunches, thanks for the kind words Dr. Wordpress. What a pleasant surprise. I’ll also thank that feisty rogue FilmLadd. Feel free to stop back by anytime.
ctkingston.com Happy Hour begins daily at 12am-12pm.
Best wished to you.
Ct Kingston´s last blog ..The Death of Sex
CTK, looking forward to mashing up more of your stories.
Feisty rogues… Ladd will fit write in.
haahaha! “How to write a blog post in less than 1200 words
I don’t know. Ask Seth Godin.”
that cracks me up.
I just wrote a 600 or so word blog draft today…not quite a snackable chunk, but it was a real challenge not to extend it into a kiloword long blog. I was proud. I thought of you.
I have yet to get through one of your week in review posts without finding a new blog to follow. In fact, I follow more internal and external links on your site than anyone else’s. I think it’s Subliminal Hypertexting. There’s your next blog…or ebook. I’d buy it.
“Subliminal Hypertexting.”
I like it. I’ll dig out my Bandler, Cialdini, etc. and get right to work.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Practical WordPress Tip #19 Link to other comments
If I do write this, it’s going to be something like $25, and it’s going to be about 15-20 pages max, all sales final.
Doing this justice would take several days of work on my part, and the market isn’t that big.
Still thinking about it.
If it wasn’t for Google, I couldn’t keep up with your smarts. Now I have an idea who Bandler and Cialdini are.
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