The Marketing Technology Blog

My next blog to tip is The Guest-Blogger Blog, Where Bloggers Applaud. It’s a blog about… um… ah…

It’s written by um… ah…

Let’s go to the tips!

Here are your Blog Tips:

1. I’m picking on you, of course - but who are you? Why are you here? Why should I read your blog? These are all questions that someone has when they hit a blog up for the first time.

   I’m only guessing why you haven’t done this - perhaps putting up a ton of info and ‘about’ and other information could muddle what is a great simple theme - but I think you need it! I’d recommend a sub heading, About page and a Contact page.

   Sub Headings will allow you to concisely state why you are here. Example: The Guest-Blogger Blog, When Bloggers Applaud. Think of your blog’s purpose as well as keywords you’d like to be found on and apply those in an h2 heading tag under your blog’s title.

   An About Page would help you to further explain who you are, why you’re here, and why folks should listen to you.

   A Contact Page is in lieu of the email address you’ve provided on the page. Beware putting your email address on the blog, spammers love crawling websites for email addresses! I know Gmail is fighting the good fight on spam, but you’re dangling a carrot in front of these guys! Throw in a Contact Form and you’ll be good to go!

   I would position the About and Contact links under or to the left of your RSS graphic in the header.

2. You’re really missing out on some SEO with no means of a Search Engine identifying your Blog’s title! This is the primary piece of information you need to supply. You do not need to display the actual text with the name and subheading for your blog. Here’s how, replace your header like so:

   <div id="logo">
   <h1>The Guest Blogger Blog</h1>
   <h2>When Bloggers Applaud</h2>
   <a href="http://blog.guest-blogger.com">
   </a>
   </div>

   And then add this div to your style sheet:

   #logocontainer h1, h2 { display: none; }

   Some argue that this approach could get your blog penalized by the Search Engines… this is not true. Search Engines will only penalize you if you’re trying to somehow play the system and intentionally misguide them. In this case, you’re supplying the very information that they would like to have!

3. Don’t forget to put titles on your links. They allow users to mouseover and get information and they also do assist in indexing! Here’s your feed graphic with a title tag:

   <a href="http://blog.guest-blogger.com/feed/" title="Subscribe to the Guest Blogger Blog’s Feed!">

   You can also add titles to images as well! These are all treats for your visitors as well as more snippets for the Search Engines!

4. Be sure to sign up for Feedburner so that you can measure your readership. Replace all of your static links to Feedburner to your new Feedburner link. Feedburner also allows email subscriptions, multiple outputs, and a ton of other cool tools to help expand your readership.
5. You’ve got an advertisement for Google down out of view. If you’re serious about Advertising, you might try an advertisement right in your post or directly above or below it. If you go to my home page, I don’t have them - but on each individual display of a post, I do have ads. I have them there so that folks that land on my site incidentally may be looking for something else - while keeping my home page clean for my ‘regulars’.
6. Last tip, I would remove “Blog Archive” from your Single Page titles. If I found your site in a Search Engine and it stated “Blog Archive”, I’d immediately think the article is old and may be outdated. You also don’t want to be indexed in Search Engines for “Blog Archive”. Having your Post Title followed by your Blog’s Title is much better.
7. Some CSS tips: Add some white space around your Post Header for easier reading:

   .contentbox h1 { font-size:1.8em; padding:8px 0 5px 0; }

   Add some padding to the left of your links in your sidebar categories:

   .categorybox ul { padding-left: 20px; }

   Darken your post meta text to make it readable:

   small { color:#666; font-size:0.75em; line-height:18px; }

That’s it for the Guest Blogger Blog! I think there’s more work you can do to expand your footprint and gain readership - but this is a good start! Best of luck!

How to get your Blog Tipped

If you’d like your Blog Tipped, simply follow the directions on my Blog Tipping Post.