The Magic and Fun of Incoming Links

On your WordPress blog in the Dashboard, or on your WordPress.com blog on your Blog Stats panel, you will find Incoming Links. If you aren’t using WordPress, you can find your incoming links through Technorati with: http://technorati.com/search/example.wordpress.com And through Google Blog Search with: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=link:http://example.wordpress.com/ So what is so magical and fun about incoming links? Incoming […]

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

Fight Against Trackback Death

I’ve heard the many threats of trackbacks and pingbacks dying over the years, going the way of the virtual dinosaur, but I’m terrified to hear from Andraz Tori that Typepad is killing pingback functionality and stating that WordPress might be considering it, removing the joy of getting a notification that someone online is talking about […]

Blog Exercises: Trackbacks

Trackbacks are like an invitation to a party. It is also like legitimate gossip. Trackbacks are notes telling you that someone is talking about you. Trackbacks are part of the important connections that form the true sense of the “web” on the Internet. WordPress and most modern publishing platforms generate trackbacks automatically. As common as […]

Blog Exercises: Backlinks

Known as incoming links or referrer links, backlinks are links pointing from an external site to your site, directing their readers to you as a resource. Timethief of “one cool site blogging tips” describes backlinks as: Backlinks to your content are like votes for your blog. The more backlinks your blog receives the higher it […]

What You Most Need to Know About WordPress

At the recent WordCamp Portland 2012, I was asked by several attendees to cover the basics of WordPress and we came up with What You Most Need to Know About WordPress. Here are the “notes” from that unconference presentation. The Difference Between Categories and Tags I hear this question at WordCamps, from readers, students, and […]

Managing Multiple Bloggers: Author Content Management on WordPress

In the last article I talked about what’s most important to the author and their readers, covering recognition when it comes to researching and developing a website design to accommodate multiple bloggers. In this article, I want to cover the research you need to consider when it comes to content management, which represents the “Aggregation” […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content Part II

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone So you’ve finding all kinds of content for your fandom based upon our previous discussions. You’ve found a trough of information to flow into your blog. Now what? How do you get all that information into your blog, and should you? Do you need to publish everything? […]

Blog Struggles: Trackbacks Count

At a blog conference recently, I overheard the following exchange over a laptop as part of a blog review exercise: “For your blog to be successful, you need more comments on your blog posts.” “I have plenty of comments on my blog. See, this one has 14 comments.” “That post has only one comment. The […]

When is the Best Time and Day to Publish a Blog Post

I’ve just updated my article, “When is the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog?” Originally published in June of 2006, once a year I update the post, continuing to evaluate when is the best time and day of the week to publish a post on your blog, helping you make your own […]

The Writer’s Pulse: How to Survive Writing and Publishing on the Web

In The Internet Writing Survival Guide by The Writer’s Pulse, we’re offered a new perspective on blog and Internet writing and publishing: You can’t get away from it — like an undead zombie, the Internet is always there, growing stronger with each passing day, claiming the social lives of users around the globe. As a […]

When a Comment Requires the Honest Truth

Maybe it was one of those days. Maybe it was something in the air. Today, I had six comments that required the honest truth as a response. Not the tempered, kinder and gentler response but the hard cold truth. The kind of truth you have to give knowing that some can’t take it. Not all […]

The Real Hidden Value of Old Post Traffic

Since creating my Weekly Digest, I’m forced to look through my blog stats on a regular basis, something I’ve been loath to do for many years. Most of it doesn’t interest me as I’ve been doing this too long to worry over the micro-statistics, but I’ve been watching an interesting trend that has now turned […]

Apologies: Future Posts Released Again

As I have/will/did write in the future post, Blog Struggles: Surviving Offline Downtime, which released a week ahead of schedule due to a repeat of a glitch on WordPress.com that hasn’t been seen for well over a year, I depend upon the future posts feature of WordPress for my blog to keep going while I’m […]

Can You Sell Your Blog?

In How to Buy or Sell a Blog, I gave you a list of articles I’ve found about buying and selling your blog, but I wanted to take this conversation even further. What would it take to make your blog be worth buying? In Selling Your Blog: What Are Buyers Looking For and Selling Your […]