Avoid the false prophets

A lot of businesses promise improved search engine ranking.  Not all of them are crooks, but precious few aren't.  In general, avoid:

• Slick-talkers that promise"#1 ranking in Google" or "priority submissions" or claim a "special relationship" with the search engines; those are complete fabrications.
• Pyramid-style link farm or link-popularity schemes. These are so diluted, they rarely boost your page rank. Worse, some schemes are already on Google's blacklist and joining them can get you penalized.
• Anyone that claims Google requires payment to get a higher ranking: Lies. All lies! The ONLY cash Google accepts in this realm is for the AdWords program, which clearly marks "Sponsored Links."
• Keyword spammers. Repeating terms ad nauseum doesn't help – Google can spot a faker, even if he or she changes the text color to match the background, making it invisible to the reader's eye.

Learning a little about SEO is the best route, even for those developing a monetized, professional platform. A few weeks of DIY will teach you the right questions to ask, when hiring an expert.

Roll up your sleeves and start experimenting. That's what the Internet's all about (aside from porn and pictures of cats, of course).

Attracting even more eyes: aggregators

Cyberspace is a boundless realm, teeming with content. But not every reader arrives at its shores with a precise goal or topic in mind. Some want to noodle around, following recommendations. Blogrolls help with this, obviously, but merry wanderers can also turn to aggregators. These are sites that stream syndicated web content into one location for easy viewing.

To use a house-hunting analogy, a URL is like driving to see a property for sale around the corner from your friend's office. You know exactly where you want to go. Searches are akin to asking a real estate agent. She'll present a lot of options, but will push certain ones based on a hidden agenda (her listings, white elephant properties that won't shift, the condo unit her brother-in-law built, etc.). Or you could search online at some site like Zillow: I want a 5BR Craftsman in Ballard, Seattle, under $500,000 (good luck! No, wait ... the recession's hitting even here. Buy now, while supplies last...).

Zillow's collecting data from many sources – different Realtors, house valuations, Google maps, mortgage-rate reports and calculators – and serving it up one-stop-shopping style. Which is unfortunate, because Amanda's real-estate-nut dad can't stay off the thing...

Anyway. Aggregators save a lot of time and hassle. Ones like Kayak.com can search 140 travel websites at the same time. GoogleNews trawls 25,000 outlets to create a personal newspaper – and even keeps tabs on topics of especial interest. And GoogleReader can check all your favorite blogs and assemble a digest of unread posts. So you could click once to catch up with 30 sites. Nifty? Oh yeah, baby!

The blogosphere has a host of aggregators, naturally. Some of the top dawgs – worth notifying about your blog – include Technorati, Digg and StumbleUpon. They show what's being searched, linked and commented upon most. Some track your tastes and suggest new sites. If any one of them highlighted your blog, traffic would spike through the roof. Seriously, bandwidths have tanked. So consider taking the time to submit your blog.

This can work for you – or not, entirely, as my friend Marie Javins points out. This wildlife observation post and another one earned her several hundred hits from a sex aggregator.

"Can you imagine?" she asks. "Who is out cruising for lion porn?"

Her site, No Hurry, has never been cited by the biggies like Technorati. But she explains that "when WarrenEllis.com mentions me, the traffic goes OFF THE CHARTS. He has a huge following. He says something like 'Marie Javins is back from Kuwait and blowing up Peeps in her microwave. Go and see.'

"And I get 800 hits in the next three hours."

Most search engines have "submit your site" links on the home page somewhere discrete. Look under "About Google" for details. Likewise Technorati and other aggregators have straight-forward sign-ups: some just ask for the URL, others require you to fill in some account details.

(Alerting these sites is much easier than adding Google WebMaster Tools, which we covered week four, by the way. It's a good, quick first step, if you have just a few minutes to devote to SEO.)

Followers – drink the Kool-Aid

Blogger's pushing its social-networking widget Followers: possibly because the behemoth won't be happy until it controls every facet of our online lives. This device slots into the sidebar of every new blog, in fact. Graphics-heavy, it displays teeny profile shots of your publicly declared blogfans. Empty, it's but a pitiful thing: may I suggest that y'all follow each other to experiment with both sides of this equation (you can opt out later easily enough)?

Should followers have a Blogger account, it'll show them a Reading List on the dashboard, reminding 'em to check out your latest efforts. It'll also funnel a subscription into Google Reader, if they have an account. More details here on following and also "friending".

Google insists: "The Followers widget is a great tool to help you grow your blog's audience. Readers often visit a blog and enjoy it but fail to return. Additionally you should put your followers widget at the top of your sidebar so more readers will notice it."

I disagree, at least about its placement in the prime top-right real estate. Context seems far more crucial than a visual shout-out to readers. Plus, overemphasizing followers has a whiff of desperation: "I'm good enough, smart enough and, gosh darn it, people like me!" But, increasingly, Internet users want to see and be seen. So I'd advocate a Followers widget for any ambitious blogger – it's a community building device, after all. Then experiment with its position.

To add this widget, go to Layouts>Page Elements. Click "add a gadget," then scroll down to Followers. Hit save. To kick this popularity contest to the curb, go to Layouts>Page Elements. Click "edit" under "Followers" and delete. On Page Elements, you can also drag and drop the gadget into a spot that suits your style.

Another helpful device is a subscription widget, which allows readers to sign up for emails or a digest of your posts (this can also be a handy back-up for you ... or a way to print the class lectures easily, albeit, sans images). Again, go to Layout>Page Elements, hit "add a gadget". Search for "email subscription box" and install. Drag and drop to the desired placement in the sidebar. You may also want to add the subscription device found on the front "gadget" page: this allows readers to tap into posts or comments via various aggregators.

So you want repeat business? Feed 'em!

When someone stumbles upon, or is directed to, your blog, you want them to read and then return later and devour more. Syndication – also known as a subscription; an RSS, Atom, or XML feed; or simply "a feed" – is an effective way to bring users back.

As the name implies, web syndication supplies content to multiple subscribers. Many readers want all their favorite sites' content in one place. They subscribe to aggregator services like Google Reader, FeedReader, Outlook and others). Others prefer to have information delivered to their email.

The streamed data can be just about anything these days: text, images, video, or podcasts: all are common. I've just added a Road Remedies widget that summarizes my Twitter updates, for example (Twitter supplies the code, just paste it into a java/html gadget on Layout>Page Elements. Items like this help share your original content between platforms, which keeps your pages fresh and thus more attractive to the search bots).

Subscriptions are called "feeds". By default, Blogger offers these for your posts and comments on your entries. It also publishes some lesser-known feeds based on entry labels, but don't worry about those now, perhaps. You can turn feeds on or off by setting the appropriate value Dashboard -> Settings -> Site Feed -> Allow Blog Feeds dropdown menu. Unless you write very long entries, you'll want to set this to "Full."

Expose these streams further by adding a “Subscription Links” widget to your blog. Because feeds are lightweight (just an entry's text without any of the blog's formatting) and published in a standard format, it is easy for services to digest and display your content in new and useful ways.  FeedBurner is a classic option: since its purchase by Google, it has been offering many "premium" features for free. By publishing your blogs through a single service, such as FeedBurner, you gain the ability to track how many people read your blog and what aspect of your writing they are most interested in. It also offers services not found on the Blogger platform, such as allowing readers to sign up for email notification of new posts, attaching a Creative Commons license to your work or comments or "chiclets" for quickly subscribing to your blog. To burn your blog's feed using FeedBurner, look here.

Keep it fresh

Give some thought to the rhythm of your blog: both the frequency of posts and their lengths. The people making money and landing book deals work at their sites. Marie Javins, for example, spends at least an hour each day, wedged around her travels, essay-writing and day job editing comics. Those earning five-figures and up usually blog full-time. But few have that luxury in the beginning, so aim for a regular posting pace, whether that's thrice daily or once a week.

Web Marketer Stephan Spencer weighs in: "frequency is not nearly as important as recency. A couple weeks of inactivity makes the reader feel like nobody's home. Conversely, having the latest post be only a day old makes the blog appear 'fresh'."

Business and marketing writer Seth Godin points out that some genres – including a writer's blog – don't require the same freshness as a newsy blog. So consider your topic, goals and meatspace schedule, when setting your editorial calendar.

For years, conventional wisdom has pushed for daily updates. Here Eric Kintz, Hewlett-Packard's VP for Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence, denounces that habit for 10 quite solid reasons. He concludes:

If you want to be a top 50 Technorati blogger, you will most probably still need to post several times a day. But for the rest of us, we should think seriously about the added value of frequent blogging. Actually, according to Technorati, only 11% of all blogs update weekly or more. What will matter more and more is what you write and how you engage, not how often you write.

Here BlogClout's Ankesh Kothari gives four tips for determining your blog frequency. His rule of thumb about product-endorsement stands out: "only publish a blatantly promotional post after 4 good quality posts." Also notable was this advice: "60-80% of your time should go on your blog promotion. Not writing. So if you can only put in 5 hours a week, and it takes 1 hour to write a decent post, than follow a weekly publishing schedule".

Frequent updates don't merely reward a loyal audience. They boost a site's street-credit among search engines like Google and Yahoo. This, in turns, means your blog appears higher on the results page when people search, potentially garnering more clicks. Google, in particular, has a deeply secret, ever-changing 200-point algorithm that governs PageRank (more on search engine optimization later in the course).

Much like Plato's cave, bloggers watch the shadows on the wall and patch together theories about the workings of this world. Most experts agree that "recency" – a horrible jargony word – plays a key role. But so do inbound links from other sites ... encouraged by being part of a community and original content, strongly crafted.

Without a doubt, quality will take you further that empty, babbling quantity. But blogging requires a delicate balance of time and technique: geek skills, writing chops and marketing savvy. As the course progresses, we'll explore ways to attract audiences, build and participate in communities and use social media networks to spread the word. For now, we recommend students post 2-3 times each week to workshop their skills.