Archive for the ‘Blogging Basics’ Category

5 Tips to Blogging While On Vacation July 4, 2016

5 tips to blogging while on vacation

This is a repost from last year when we were on vacation in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Although I haven’t even thought about taking a trip this early in the season, I did want to resurrect this post in case you were headed out for a family vacation.

We all need a break from blogging and most of us wouldn’t dare do so on vacation…or would we?

Anywho…if you are a dedicated blogger who wants to continue blogging when you should be relaxing, here are a few tips to help you do so…grab a drink first and then we’ll begin…

1. Make sure your accommodations have a free, reliable WiFi connection

This is absolutely essential if you want to blog during your vacation. Make sure that you ask about the Internet service before you book your hotel or resort otherwise, you might be thoroughly disappointed or well relaxed without a good WiFi connection.

2. Do your work when everyone else is sleeping

Ssssh…balancing a family vacation or ones with friends can make it hard to keep your online schedule, posting, tweeting and such. So in order to stay connected with your readers, work during times when everyone is sleeping or taking a nap. You can wake up a few hours earlier, watch the sunrise, get some breakfast, and start blogging!

3. Take a mobile or lightweight computing device with you

I love working on my laptop at home but it’s heavy. When you are traveling you’ll be moving around a lot, so it’s important that you take something that is light and can easily fit into a large tote/purse, a small backpack or something similar. I have my iPad and HP Tablet, which is easy to take out of my bag when going through airport security, and carrying around while relaxing on the beach.

4. Capture those great moments and use the change of scenery to your advantage

The best thing about blogging while traveling is that you are in a completely new environment. This can enhance your blog writing because you have new sights, sensations and inspirations.

Even if you don’t blog about the personal stuff you can write blog posts featuring your niche from a different perspective. For example, if you are traveling to Mexico and you write about fashion, why not feature some of the local styles and fashions there?

5. Last but certainly not least – DON’T

Just like the other plans you made for vacation, lay out your written posts, scheduled them using a WP plugin, Hootsuite or Bufferapp, then pack up and go!

Do you have any tips to add?

This post also appeared @ www.bloggingwithblake.com

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Spring Clean Your Blog March 21, 2016

Yesterday was the first day of Spring and if you have been drawing the blinds and pushing back the curtains to tackle dust bunnies or clearing out the closets for donations then now is also the perfect time to do a little spring cleaning on your blog.

I haven’t begun yet, however, while checking a few of my feeds I came across this post by Sean Nicholson over at SocMedSean which gives some great tips for cleaning up your blog.

Spring Clean your blog

7 Tips For Cleaning Up Your Blog And Improving Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Clean up those plugins – If you have been trying out new plugins or widgets for your blog, be sure to delete them if you’re not using them. By removing the files, you can speed up your page load times and reduce any potential security risks that may come from having out-of-date plugins.
WP-CleanFix is a great plugin that can help you do some Spring cleaning on your blog.

Get rid of unused categories and tags – Unused categories or tags are potential 404 errors waiting to happen. Additionally, the more categories and tags you use, the more it can bog down your database and decrease the performance of your blog. Tools like WP-CleanFix can help you identify any opportunities to clean up categories and tags (among other things) and make sure your database is optimized.
Use Google’s Webmaster tools to ensure that there aren’t any 404s occurring – If you aren’t familiar with Google’s Webmaster tools, now is the time to get familiar. The data provided to you by Google can be a goldmine in finding and fixing 404 errors. Technically, Google says they don’t penalize you for 404s, but why risk a bad visitor experience if they can’t find the page they are looking for. If you have changed your permalink structure or your domain name, you might even have some old links out there that need fixing because they point to the old URLs.If you need a good tool to redirect user from an out-of-date URL to a new one, check out the Redirection plugin for WordPress.
Make sure every image on your site has an Alt tag – This one is a MUST. Google will actually penalize your page if your images don’t have Alt tags. Since I’m a huge proponent of having images on every page, be sure that they are helping your SEO and not hurting it.
Re-read your posts and make sure they are still relevant – Let’s face it, some articles are just timely and are out-of-date quickly. But…maybe there is an update on the topic, maybe it’s a good opportunity for a new post that links back to the old post. Don’t just give up on those time-sensitive posts, find a way to update and re-energize the content
Cross-link between posts for better internal linking – It’s likely that your old posts talk about content that is similar to your new posts. So why not go back and create links between similar articles. You don’t want to go overboard and over-link your articles, but by creating internal links between articles, you’ll be helping readers and the search engines re-discover some of those older articles.
Re-evaluate your sidebar(s) – Page load time is a factor in your search engine ranking, so find ways to minimize that load time. One way to do is to take a good, hard look at the items that are located in your sidebar. Do you have too many widgets? Are those widgets slowing down your blog? If so, consider dropping some of them. Anything you can do to increase the speed of your blog and decrease page load times will pay off in SEO.

There you go! 7 quick tips that you can use to clean up your blog this Spring and, hopefully, drive more traffic.

Personally, I need to update and declutter my header tabs as well as update my Media Kit.

Have you made any changes to your blog, if so, please share.

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How to Make Your Blog’s Design More Enticing December 21, 2015

How to Make Your Blog’s Design More Enticing

By: Maurine Anderson

The overall look of your blog has a significant impact on whether visitors read your content, on whether they navigate to other pages, and ultimately on how long they spend on your website. In short, your blog’s design truly can make or break the popularity of your blog. So how do you make sure that your blog’s design is truly enticing? Here are some tips to keep in mind as you create a blog design that is sure to draw visitors into your site.

Use high quality photos.

This can’t be stressed enough. Instead of taking slapdash photos on your phone’s camera and uploading them to your blog without making any adjustments, you’re going to need to pay some attention to detail. This means using well exposed, well balanced photos—and resizing those photos to fit the width of your blog post area exactly. Making it a habit to use correctly sized, high quality photos will give your blog a much more professional feel, which is sure to draw in more visitors.

Feature easy navigation.

As this article details, your site’s navigation should make your site as user friendly as possible. Easy navigation has the power to carry users through your website very quickly, and can can really influence how much time a user spends on your site. Keep your navigation prominent, such as just below the header of your website. More sophisticated websites will even include a feature that adds a horizontal navigation to the top of the window when the user scrolls down below the main navigation at the top of the page.

Navigation should also give visitors an instant, broad overview of what’s on your site. When visitors can get a quick overview of your site, they are less likely to become confused and more likely to stick around on your site. A good way to approach your navigation is to first ask yourself: “which major categories would I use to organize all of my content?”

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If you run a lifestyle blog, for example, and you tend to share cake recipes, playlists, and photography, then “recipes,” “music,” and “photography” might become three different options that you’ll be able to select from your navigation menu (along with the usual “about me,” “contact,” and “FAQ” pages). Each navigation option would then lead you to either a static page or to an archive page that organizes older posts.

Make it cohesive.

Instead of filling your site with standard social media buttons, plain links to other pages on your site, etc., customize these elements to suit the overall design of your site. Your design needs to be cohesive. If your site has a primarily geometric design and feel to it, for example, you might use triangle-shaped social media buttons in various colors that match your palette.

If your blog is rich in pastels, then maybe you’ll make the “about me,” “contact,” “sponsor,” and “FAQ” buttons in your sidebar various pastel colors. If you’re going for a clean, minimalist look that favors lots of white, then maybe you’ll make several of the “featured post” images in your sidebar circular in order to incorporate more white. Defining a color palette and list of one or two fonts are great ways to really tie things together in your site’s design.

Make elements continuous throughout your site.

Remember: when looking to improve your blog’s design, you need to take into account the fact that not everyone is going to see your home page first. In fact, if you have blog post links scattered all around the Internet (and chances are you do if you’re a blogger), then visitors to your site likely aren’t going to see your home page first. So it isn’t just about your home page here. Your blog design needs to feature stunning elements that are continuous throughout your entire site. This includes things like a bold header, a footer, navigation elements, social media buttons, and a sidebar if there is one.

Put your all into every post.

With this in mind, you really need to consider the overall look of every blog post that you publish, because every post has the potential to serve as a landing page for visitors to your site. Some elements of an eye-catching blog post: a clear and attention-grabbing headline; an image at the top of every post; a healthy balance between text and images; and text that is organized with line breaks, subheadings, and bullet points as needed (and therefore easy to skim).

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