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Blogging Tips - June 2006

Post Display Times

June 30th 2006 06:25

What to do if you will not be able to access the internet on a given day but still want to give your readers their daily post?

You can delay the time that your post will be displayed by setting the Display Time into the future.



If you click on the display time field a calendar will pop up which will allow you set when a post will first appear on your blog. Remember that the display time is specified in GMT which may differ from your local time.
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Short Title and Keywords

June 29th 2006 06:49

Short Titles

The "Short Title" field, when used well, can really help drive traffic to your blog from the search engines so always try to give it a little thought.



If you were creating post entitled:

"Extra Yummy Chocolate Brownies"

then well done! I'll have some please and you have also created a very attractive title that people will click on.


However it is not the best title for the search engines. Someone looking for a chocolate brownie recipe through a search engine is not going to type in

"Extra Yummy Chocolate Brownies"

they will most likely type in

"Chocolate Brownies" or "Chocolate Brownie Recipe".

The "Short Title" field is used to set the URL directory and the HTML title of each post (if left blank the full title is used). As such it is one of the primary means a search engine has of determining what a post is about.

Insert Title Here
The traffic stats for the OnlineGames blog shows traffic coming from google and msn search


Choosing a good Short Title is a bit of an art form and many times there is no best solution. A couple more examples will probably help:

Long Title: "Michael Jackson - A short autobiography"
Short Title: "Michael Jackson" or "Michael Jackson autobiography"

Long Title: "Earthquake in London - millions quite shaken"
Short Title: "London Earthquake"

Long Title: "Pink's new album 'I hate bright colours" sucks"
Short TItle: "Pink i hate bright colours" or "Pink i hate bright colours review"

One last caveat: if the domain name of your blog has a particular keyword in it then don't use it in the short title. This will probably be viewed as "keyword stuffing" by the search engines. For example if your blog was called recipes.com then you should not have a Short Title called "Chocolate Brownie Recipe", just use "Chocolate Brownie".


Keywords

The keywords field will be used in the future to categorise each post and help with people searching your blog. Try to enter no more than 6 keywords for each post.


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Changing the look of your Blog (Including Title Banners)

June 26th 2006 07:30

You can change a large number of different aspects of your blog to suit the topic and your own aesthetic sensibilities.

A couple of different examples that illustrate what is possible can be found here, here and here.

First you need to login to my.orble.com and click on the "Theme" link under the appropriate blog. Here you can choose from any number of preconfigured themes.

You can tinker with any of these themes or make up your own from scratch by clicking on the "Advanced Settings" link. From here the best thing to do is have a play around with all the different settings and see what effect they have.


Title Banners

One of the most important things you can do is submit a high quality title image for your blog. This does require some skill with photoshop or some other photo editing software. You can upload your title image on your blog's "Settings" page.

Your title image should be no wider than 800px (pixels) and no taller than 200px. A good height is about 150px. You should save the image as either a JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg) or a GIF (.gif). GIF images are better for images which do not have photographic elements.

Once you have uploaded your title banner it may be off-center. To fix this go to your blog's "Theme" page, click on "Advanced Themes" and under the "Header Display Settings" section, set "Padding Left" to 0.
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The importance of posting regularly

June 25th 2006 00:17

Posting regularly is the most important aspect of succussful blogging.

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Special Posts

June 25th 2006 00:09
There are a number of special posts which can be used to insert text in various places:

For text to appear at the top of each post, create a post with the title "Post Start Text" and for the bottom create a Post with the title "Post End Text
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Embedding videos and other HTML code

June 24th 2006 23:07

Embedding videos and other HTML into a post is easy.

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One Subject per Post

June 24th 2006 05:36

One of the most common mistakes new bloggers (and even some older ones) make is to cram more than one subject into a single post. This is especially so when you get into the habit of doing one post per day -- you just put everything you have to say today into today's post right? -- wrong!

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Tell all your friends about your blog

June 24th 2006 00:29

Telling all your friends about your blog is probably the easiest and quickest way to get a small number of loyal readers who will also tell others about your blog and perhaps start reading other blogs within the network. If every blogger on the network recruits 10 regular readers that adds up to a very large audience.

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Leave Comments On Other Blogs

June 23rd 2006 00:33

Leaving comments on other blogs is the most time honoured way to recruit new readers. Most blogging systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your own blog when you leave a comment. If you are a prolific commenter and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

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Menu Sections

June 23rd 2006 00:32
You can insert text and links into your blog's menu by creating posts with the following titles:

Top Menu Section


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Pillar Articles

June 22nd 2006 00:56

Pillar Articles are lengthy posts which cover a particular subject in detail and which stay relevant over time. Examples include "How to write a good speech" or "What to look for when buying a second hand car" or "A brief history of the Middle East". You should aim to build up a collection of Pillar Articles over time posting perhaps one or two per month but the more you write the better.

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Providing Value

June 21st 2006 00:51

This one is a little abstract but very important. You should understand what kind of value you are providing your readers. What exactly are they getting out of reading your blog? Write it down in a short paragraph! Understanding this will help you write posts which better fulfill the wants of your readership, encouraging them to return to your blog, link to it, tell their friends about it, or participate in it over time by leaving comments.

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Keeping the Search Engines Happy

June 18th 2006 01:03

Search Engines generate 70% of the traffic of most successful blogs and readers who arrive at your blog from a Search Engine are 10 times more likely to click on an ad.

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Encouraging Comments

June 17th 2006 02:20

One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show that there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see other people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. Be sure to always respond to comments so you can keep the conversation going.

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The art of writing a post title

June 15th 2006 02:23

The title of a post is so important that is warrants a little section to itself. Your posts will be listed in a number of locations just by it's title (in search engines, on www.orble.com, rss feeds, sites like digg or reddit) so it is important that it is well written in order to encourage readers to click on it.

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Traffic Statistics

June 14th 2006 05:20
Every blog generates it's own set of traffic statistics which detail where all the readers are coming from and what they are reading.

Below are sections of a traffic report for OnlineGames.org.au (in bold) along with an explanation of each section


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Earning Money as an Orble Writer

June 1st 2006 00:45
Earning money by writing for Orble is as simple as publishing a post. However first you will need to register for a free Google AdSense account. You can quote Orble.com as the website on which you will be publishing your ads.

You then need to submit your AdSense client id through your control panel at my.Orble.com. Once you have submitted your client id adverts attributed to your AdSense account will be shown 50% of the time on any posts you publish on any Orble blog and on the homepage of any blogs you moderate


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June 2006
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