Creating Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles

In part one of this two part series on “everything you could possibly want to know about titles and headlines on your blog”, I wrote about how to write effective, attention-getting headlines and titles, and in this part, I’m going to give you more than you might ever want to know about how to maximize […]

Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog

If it bleeds, it leads. Punchy. Catchy. Attention-getting. Insightful. Instructive. Incentive. Luring. Fishing. Bait. Hook. These are all terms used to describe an effectively written title or headline for an article. The words chosen must provide a powerful incentive to make the reader want to read. To make them want to buy the magazine, newspaper, […]

Creating Attention Getting Linkable Content

Internet Vibes offers “How to Create Content That Will Get You Loads of Links” by David Callan is an easy-to-read article with tips on how to get people to link to your blog and your blog’s content. When one is looking for links, the focus changes from your prospective clients out there to fellow bloggers […]

What Blog Statistic Gets Most of Your Attention?

As part of my daily routine, I check in on this blog to the blog statistics found on the WordPress.com Dashboard. There, I can check only vague information like how many visitors, what search engine keywords brought them here, the most popular posts, and the most popular referals. Back on the Dashboard, I check for […]

New Comment Spammer on the Loose – Pay Attention

Comment spammers are on the loose again, coming up with more inventive ways to distract us from their spamming comments, while they think they are increasing their page rank in search engines by forcing you to link to their websites with their comment spam links. I need to make this really clear, to you and […]

Attention WordPress Theme Designers: Designing Themes for WordPressMU

One of the best features of WordPress is the ability to choose from over 300 different WordPress Themes for your site’s layout. You can choose from among a wide range of looks, layouts, and styles, from minimalistic to bombastic. You can have no sidebar or four sidebars. You can have huge header art or no […]

Blog Exercises: May Random Editing Day

May. It’s starting to warm up outside in the north, and growing a bit chilly down under, but it’s that time again. It’s the May Random Editing Day. In this Blog Exercise you will need to edit five random posts from among your thousands – okay, maybe dozens of published articles. What should you look […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to […]

Blog Exercises: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]

Blog Exercises: The Royal We

People who refer to themselves as “yours truly.” What kind of grandiose crap is this? Some even speak of themselves in the third person. Athletes and entertainers are big on this demented shit: “I’m going to do what’s right for Leon Spinks!” I think people like this are mentally ill. And you can include those […]

Blog Exercises: April Current Events

It’s time to blog the news and current events for April in our Blog Exercises. Has it been easy or hard to find news and current events to publish once a month on your site? Sometimes the muse hits us when we learn of a newsworthy event that directly relates to us. Other times we […]

Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles

What are the articles that drive people to your site? What are the posts that help people understand and benefit most from what you publish on your site? What articles represent you as an authority on the subject? These are your reference articles. We all have them, the articles that explain who we are, what […]

Blog Exercises: Does Your Site Look Spammy?

Does your site look spammy? How would you know whether or not your site looks spammy? It’s time for a spam check. Web design is hard, especially if you aren’t an expert. Yet, in many ways you are an expert if you are a fan of the web. You’ve seen enough sites to know the […]