Anyone, anytime should be able to dial into your blog and enjoy any given post, without reading your entire collected works in reverse order, via the archives. New meeja types rely on the "man from Mars test" to gauge this: would an alien have enough context to follow the gist?
That doesn't mean you have to endlessly repeat yourself, however. Nicknames – or epithets – can provide a framework for characters rather painlessly. Examples from Road Remedies include The Inappropriate Beau and Rainbow, dog of a lifetime. I employed another powerful tool in both those cases: internal links back to revelatory posts, for folks who want to understand more.
Not only does this richen the reader's experience, it's good for pagerank and search engine optimization. And it's tasty, low-fat and will make your $3,000 dollars a week from home. Swear.
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5 comments:
I'm curious about internal links. I find them highly distracting. I don't really want to go clicking back and forth amongst full blown articles, trying to make sense of something. I really like to have everything I need to know in one spot. Perhaps I'm archaic. I know the strength of captions and use them to tell important facts to readers. But I'm not yet convinced that sending readers off on an "enrichment" journey improves the content of an article.
Many approaches co-exist happily. Here's my take, fairly standard among the industry. Each story should be able to stand alone (the Man from Mars test). But dedicated readers enjoy the nuances, the depth, that cross-references can provide.
When you read a novel, you can flip back and refresh your memory. "Oh, yeah, Hobbes was the Abused 4-H Llama!" Internal links simply provide a quicker way of connecting your tales, of weaving a larger tapestry. Sure, folks can search a blog, but I've yet to meet the search results page as accurate and immediate as a link. You can take a devoted reader right back to the very chapter and verse applicable for your tale. And as for the rest, the link-haters? Well, they should be able to smoothly read and fully enjoy your story without flibbertigibbeting around.
Internal links also help search engines decide what pages are most important. After next week's lecture, which breaks down how search engines and PageRank work, you may want to read more here and here.
But for some bloggers, the visual irritation of links outweighs the interconnectivity and (small) SEO boost. And that's perfectly OK. Unlike hierarchical journalism, you're in the driver's seat now. Do what feels right for your project!
Internal links also help search engines associate keywords with content. In Amanda's example, above, keywords such as abused, llama and Hobbes will be given increased weight for that page on Amanda's blog. (That's in addition to the keywords that appear on the content of that page).
So, unless you have to twist your words into knots, you should avoid internal links where the linked word is "here" or "this post". (External links using those words are fine -- since it's not your Googlejuice we're talking about.) Using descriptive text in the link helps point the search engines in the right direction.
Finally, the reader doesn't have to follow any links in your posts. But they are there if they want more information. I think of it as removing all the parenthetical phrases (but still letting the reader access them if they wish). In case you can't tell, I tend to over use parenthesis...
- Mike
In my current phase as non-pro blog reader, every time I see a blue link word(s) they make me want to click the link because if I don't I may miss something important but if it is important why is it not in the main body of the article? Is it a matter of blog readers having a short attention span? Do they skip away through cyberspace if a post is TOO long? How does that jibe with being willing to click all the links and get the whole story by going back and forth and forth and back until you've hopefully absorbed everything the writer thinks is important (I mean, no one would put a link in just because they are familiar with HTML and CAN insert the link, which will sent the reader flying through cyberspace to another spot full of information and links that can send the reader even farther from the original until he's (she's) in a cybermaze. But I rant.
:-)
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