
Running A Blog: 0 to 20,000 visitors/month - antjanus
http://antjanus.com/blog/seo/running-a-blog-what-i-did-wrong-and-right-in-2012/
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kafkaesque
From a marketing point of view, yes, all this branding stuff is pretty
accurate. I write for a living with varying success rates and we do all this
stuff on our business blog.

One constructive criticism I have is that, contrary to what the OP says,
people (especially business/admin/management people) love lists. And they love
when, in an enumerated list, there are pithy sentences in bold summarizing a
given point. People also love sub-headings. It allows readers to quickly scan
your article and find specific things they're looking for or look for things
that may interest them. Most of these types of people do not actually read
long articles either. That whole Keep It Simple Stupid and stuff.

Having said that, and to add a bit of balance, it depends what purpose your
blog serves. I have a personal blog which verges on the 'academic portfolio'
side of things, and it couldn't be more different. I have zero ads, no SEO,
few links, and as few images as possible. I do enough marketing at work that
drives me up the wall, however.

My personal blog focuses on content and writing organically. I use categories
to organise the content. I never use tags, though I might change this. I try
to write on esoteric topics and sometimes touch upon rare or hard-to-find
vinyl records. I rarely write on controversial topics, mostly because my
'controversial' opinions would require a longer explanation; I don't have time
to write them and people would most likely not read them in their entirety,
yet still either feel offended or it would cause them to write an inaccurate,
incomplete reply/rebuttal.

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antjanus
It's more of a personal preference. When I started writing the blog, the "top
10" was the craze and often offered no details on the topics. Such as "Top 10
ways to speed up your blog! #1 Cache, #2 Plugin administration" without
offering explanation as to what caching is (for the non-tech audience) and how
to get it working on your blog.

I have a couple of "top 10" articles, and while they do very well (like you
said, people love them), I'm not too fond of them.

:) Anyways, I keep up ads to pay for hosting and such. It's not a big expense
but it helps to have that covered!

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kafkaesque
That's true.

Another thing to note is that including numbers in titles also attracts more
clicks. On our business blog, we've had varying success with that, though.

Good luck with the blog! :)

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lostlogin
As s user, I avoid top 10 lists as the multiple pages are too annoying.

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antjanus
if I had a top 10, i'd put it on a single page cause I'm not an asshole.

How do you feel about those?

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lostlogin
Way better! I can't recall ever seeing such a beast though. The main culprits
that come to mind are news papers (all the ones I read - Independent, NYT,
Guardian. A junky tech sites.

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antjanus
I'd love to have a discussion here on the topics I listed. If you have any
questions for me, or concerns, or comments, I'm happy to answer :)

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bti
I've been thinking of starting a blog. It would be on my personal domain and
basically represent my online self. I am a web developer professionally and as
a major hobby, most of my posts would be about development topics. I have
other interests as well: technology, design, guitar, etc... Should these other
interests in my life be represented in my posts?

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mhurron
What is the focus of the blog? Unless you are only making a technical blog,
why limit its content to the technical aspects of your life?

If it is supposed to be a representation of your online self it would seem the
only limit you would place on its content would be content you don't want
other people seeing.

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andys627
What were some key things that got you from 5-10 visits to 50-100 visita /day?
Thx for awesome post

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antjanus
:) that's what the post is about:

* my site is well designed, easy to read

* responsive design ensures repeat visits from people (ie. people don't just say "well, fuck, can't see it on my phone")

* publishing schedule that ensured I had fresh content every week

* putting strong opinions into my articles. People like reading strong opinions

* listening to readers and adjusting design/content according to concerns

* analytics which allowed me to measure which topics are more successful and popular than others

* strong branding and community involvement that makes my name recognizable on several well-trafficked forums.

But let me simplify that a bit:

* write GOOD content. Something new, something fresh, something that answers questions that people have. Put yourself into it, make it passionate.

* share your content wherever you're active. Whether it's forrst, linkedin, or reddit, be active, be recognizable, have a history of commenting on other people's stuff, and post at good intervals. I get most of my traffic from there

* analytics: analyze your strong points and weak points. Figure out what's getting ranked on google from all the awesome stuff you write. Make that topic stronger, support it with a few more articles.

:) That's basically it! My articles were popular, they got shared, they got
linked, raised my PR, gave me traffic, and show up on the front page for
several great keywords!

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gnu8
I feel like you wrote this post to the same standard. e.g. "people love
lists".

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antjanus
hmmm, I guess you caught me there. I wish I had been more specific.

I find many list-based posts, short, and linkbait-like without any real sort
of information, often covering broad topics with general statements. Or, on
the other hand, provide 10 links to 10 places with 10 images and no
explanation whatsoever why those ten links were chosen. I don't see the trend
as prevalent today as it was last year where every post was a "Top 10 SEO
tricks" and each "trick" was just a synonym for the same thing, eg "1. Write
better - because writing is good. 2. Better content - because content is good.
3. Quality material - because quality is good".

I definitely do have a certain structure to my posts. My headings allow easy
scanning but I also offer detail on each topic.

For example, when I discuss "Unreliable Hosting", I try to explain WHAT I did
wrong and WHY.

I feel like it's hard to get away from such a structure.

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kordless
Database error.

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antjanus
I'm on cheap hosting, it sometimes happens. Everything seems to be working
fine now. I'll soon be moving my blog to a better system and hosting. Sorry
about that.

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robbiea
wpengine.com all the way. I use it for my blog and I can't recommend it
enough. I also did it after HN took down my site when my articles were on the
front page.

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antjanus
for those prices, I might as well buy a VPS :P I'd need the professional which
is $100/month. There is better pricing out there for that amount!

