Why are Post Titles important?

Well, they’re important in the same way that a newspaper headline is – they attract our attention, offer an insight or a “teaser” as to what the post contains and hopefully encourage us to read the full article. With the huge amount of information that we have nowadays, it is so important to grab people’s attention in the short space of time that we are given before they move on to something else … and generally we only have the post title at our disposal to achieve this.

However, there is an added complication. We need to remember that we are in fact trying to attract the attention of two groups: readers (or should I clarify by saying ‘human readers’) and Search Engines.

If they both reacted in the same way to words then things would be easy, if a little boring. However, they don’t and nor are they attracted by the same things. While human readers are attracted by humour, nuance, plays on words as well as information, Search Engines are attracted purely by the words which we provide.

Where do we see the titles?

However, we also have to bear in mind what people actually see in different situations and places – bear with me here, it’s important! The first obvious place is on your blog itself – at the top of your post is the title which will hopefully inspire you to read the post below it. Nevertheless, you are already on the blog, so in some ways the battle is already half won!

The title of your post also appears in the main Blog Search Engines such as Technorati or Google Blog Search and in the RSS Feeds that people receive in their readers. As people browse here, then the title is critical in attracting their attention as they skim through the articles on offer. The more information that we all try to process in as short a space of time as possible then the less time we’ll have to attract attention and the more critical it will become.

Post Titles and Title Tags

However, when it come to the main Search Engines, things are slightly different. What appears on the results pages of Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo is not actually the title of your post but the “Title Tag”. This is distinct from your post title and something which you can control separately. The “Title Tag” is doubly important because it is an important element that the main Search Engines look at when ranking pages – they do take note of the title of your post, but they take much more interest in the “Title Tag”.

So which way to go? My own preference is to keep the title interesting without making it too cryptic, and I always try to include the main keyword for the article. In addition, I make sure that, where necessary, I modify the “Title Tag” to ensure that that is keyword rich. (More details in my SEO series on Better Business Blogging and a great Wordpress plug-in from Stephen Spencer to help you).

In other words, I try to appeal to both audiences. You are best placed to know what will appeal to your readers and you can guess that, for Search Engines, the principal keyword phrases for the post are going to be key. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to combine both as well as you can.

This you have to read

So where to find more information about titles, headlines and how to write them? Well, if you only go to one place, then head on over to Copyblogger’s posts on Magnetic Headlines. Highly recommended!

Related posts:

1. Keyword phrase selection: some helpful tools
2. Linking to other blogs: business benefits
3. Finding a Domain name for your Blog

Likewise, blogs are open to abuse from individuals looking to exploit them at the expense of others, the preferred ways being Spam Blogs and Comment Spam. So let’s see why Comment Spam exists and how we can go about stopping it on our blogs.

What is Comment Spam?

Comment Spam is where a spammer leaves comments on blog posts that have nothing to do with the post itself but merely contain multiple links back to the spammer’s commercial website. Most Comment Spam is now carried out automatically rather than by individuals and its goal is generally just to create links back to a target site (and so improve its Search Engine ranking), though it may also attract a small amount of traffic as well.

If my Comment Spam filter is at all representative, then the subject matter will be familiar to all of us using email, since the same types of subjects and messages tend to crop up in both.

How do we stop Comment Spam on our own blog?

So what are our options when it comes to avoiding having comment spam swamping our blogs, other than turning off comments all together of course – and that’s something I’m certainly not advocating!

• Comment Moderation
  The most time consuming way is simply to moderate out all of the spam comments – that is to say, you look at each comment which has been left and allow genuine ones to appear on your blog while deleting the spam comments. This can become very time consuming (not to mention frustrating!) because once you are “found” by the spam commenters, you are going to be receiving a lot of these. Rule of thumb – the more successful you are, the easier you are to find and the more you will receive – I imagine with such a high profile blog, Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger suffers more than most, as he comments here.
• CAPTCHA methods
  CAPTCHA is actually an acronym (ok, since you asked – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – there, now wasn’t that interesting!) but you’ll know it as a distorted series of letters and numbers which appear on the page and that you have to type in. This is designed to prove that you are a human and not an automated visitor – or, in this case, spammer. Typed in correctly, it allows you to submit your comment, but will stop most forms of automated comment spam getting through.
• Specialist Software Intervention
  Just like with email, there are also providers of specialist software which can help us and here, in my opinion, the leader in this respect is called Akismet. Here, the software identifies the comments that it believes are spam and impounds them – it’s also provided free of charge, except for commercial use, which is an additional bonus. Although it was developed by the company involved with Wordpress, it has been modified to work with many other types of blog software so it’s worth checking out. Another plug-in for Wordpress is Spam Karma which also comes highly recommended.
• Getting commenters to log-in
  You can of course elect to only accept comments from people that have already logged in to a registration system which you run on your blog – this way you can be fairly sure that they will be leaving real comments because you have effectively “pre-vetted” them.

Which method is the best?

All of the methods above work well from a functional level and will help to avoid the vast majority of comment spam from arriving in your posts. Therefore, when deciding which method to use, I was personally swayed by the impact that it would have on readers wanting to leave genuine comments. Basically, I wanted to make sure that it was as easy as possible for them to do so.

Therefore, I elected to go down the specialist software route which has no impact on readers leaving comments and nothing additional for them to do – I therefore use Akismet on my blogs and those that I set-up for the businesses and individuals I work with. The results? Well, so far so good. It stops 95% of spam and also learns from all the blogs using it, so keeps up with (if not stays ahead of) the comment spammers and their methods. Overall, a big thumbs up from me.

BTW – to make sure that you have all the information at your finger tips to make your own decision, no matter which blog platform you use, I’ll be doing a second post on the subject of comment spam next week where I will try to lay out the different options available for each platform. In the meantime, any thoughts you’d like to share on what has worked for you, then please leave a comment – a real one preferably!

Related posts:

1. Comments: encourage, accept and reply
2. Professional Services Companies: blog well and prosper
3. The Blog Coach and the Irish Blog Awards

Anyway, here are some of the ones that I tend to use.

Write about current events

Something that you probably do on an ongoing basis is keeping an eye on what is being written about your industry, perhaps through various news media and ideally with the help of RSS feeds which of course saves you a load of time and gets you the news in double quick time. So just choose an event or piece of information which is of interest to you and your readers and give your comments on it and perhaps its implications. Don’t forget to reference the article and the site where appropriate though.

Read other blogs

Keep an eye on other blogs and what they are talking about – you will probably find subjects that you wish to develop further, ones that you wish to comment on in your own blog (don’t forget to use a trackback!) or ones that simply spark new ideas that you can write about. Other blogs are great sources of current thinking and new potential ideas.

Write a Series

Select a topic and write a set of posts around the theme you have selected. Try to plan the series out in advance (at least the titles) and then write them as you need them. Alternatively, once you get into the series, you may find that you write a number of them all at once. That’s great! But don’t get carried away and post them all together, instead postdate them (in Wordpress, just change the “Post Timestamp”) so that they publish automatically a few days apart.

Revisit old posts you have written

Check back over some of your old posts and see if there are ones that could be developed more fully. You may feel that there are now updates or new information that you would like to add to them, so do so in a new post which references back to the original one and develops the ideas further.

Answer Questions from Comments on Posts

Use contacts from people who have asked for information or have asked questions which have developed on your original post and opened up in turn new areas or topics. Take these questions or the points that they raise and develop the answers into new posts.

Get a guest blogger in

You do not need to write all of the posts yourself, many Business Blogs will in fact have two or even more people working on them. However, if you don’t have people who post regularly, you can still have a “guest blogger” who might come in to post on a particular subject where they have a specialist knowledge.

There is of course a final option – simply take a break from posting for a few days. There’s no issue with that – just let your readers know and they’ll be waiting for your return with bated breath.

Related posts:

1. Generating Ideas for your Business Blog posts
2. How to stop comment spam on your Blog
3. Green Cross Code of Business Blogging

Put simply, linking out is good – good for your blog and good for your business.

As you link to others, you strengthen your own position. Partly because you are validating and supporting the content of your posts but also because you are developing a repository of information which will benefit the readers who are attracted to your blog.

In fact, there are lots of positive reasons for linking to other blogs and sites which I tend to categorise as follows:

Informing your readers and Supporting your posts

Links are probably the sincerest way of recommending other blogs as valuable sources of information – you are effectively giving them a big thumbs up. Equally, they are an important way of providing reference sources to support and corroborate the arguments or assertions you are making in your own posts.

Business & Blog Promotion

By linking out, you will also be spreading the word about your own blog. If you use trackbacks to the sites you link to, then you’ll appear in the comments section of the post you’re referring to, giving more people the chance to find your blog. Owners of blogs are also generally interested in who’s referencing them, so you’ll often get a visit from them, and hopefully they’ll like what they find!

Developing Reputation and Creating Value

You will get more readers using your blog as the start point for their research, primarily because they trust the information and the links that you provide – effectively, in your area of specialism, you act as their online directory and general resource. For them, you become THE person to go to.

Creating Community & Networking

By linking to other sources, you are creating a mini resource in your area of expertise – this in turn can start to generate a community or network of readers using it with you and your blog at its centre. The links you provide help your readers to learn more about the subject and direct them to discussions going on elsewhere. Essentially your blog becomes the place where your readers know they can get up to date information on issues that they consider to be important.

Two good posts on the subject and, just to prove that it works, I found one through a link posted in the other:

Kevin Keefe writing on Lexblog gives a clear example and some no nonsense commentary of why linking to competitors is smart from his perspective in the Legal blogging arena. However, the lessons he outlines are equally relevant in any business sector.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger picks up on this in Why Linking to other blogs is essential and extends the argument slightly further. I tend to prefer Brian’s use of the word “essential” rather than just “smart” to describe linking (though both are valid) but either way the message is the same. Linking out is good for your blog and good for your business.

Related posts:

1. Business Blog Design: Navigation & using your Content
2. Use Graphics: make people want to read your Blog
3. Generating yet more ideas for your Business Blog

For me, there are two main sources of ideas: you and everyone else.

Blog Post Ideas – You

You want to make sure that you capture all the ideas that come to you and personally I use a nice and easy solution for this: I keep a notebook with me at all times. Why? So that I can note down ideas that occur to me during the course of the day – and, believe me, they can come at the weirdest moments. They could be triggered by any event, by something that I see which sparks a connection or by a comment that somebody makes to me. I note down the idea and any associated thoughts that crop up at the time and then I go back, review and use these ideas as and when I need to.

Blog Post Ideas – Everyone Else

When it comes to “everyone else”, the best people to take ideas from are your customers, your prospects and your partners – these are all the sorts of people who are likely to ask those questions which others would benefit from as well, so can be a great source of inspiration.

So, make a note of the main ones and make a point of talking about them on your blog. Treat it in the same way as you would when you take questions from the audience during a presentation – that’s to say, repeat the question that has been asked so that the rest of the audience can hear and then go ahead and answer it.

Do the same in your blog – you will be providing information which will answer relevant and real questions that should help your customers use your product better and help your prospects to understand its potential better.

So that you have this resource developing on an ongoing basis, I suggest that:

• you keep a folder in your email system and make a copy of both the question you receive and the response you send back – this will in itself form the basis of your business blog post;
• after meetings with clients, prospects or suppliers, note down some of the key questions that they asked and which were clearly on interest to them;
• at Conferences and Exhibitions, keep a record of the questions or the areas that visitors to your stand keep asking about and are showing most interest in.

You’ll soon find that you have topics for your posts planned out well in advance and as you write the posts, you will hopefully also start to receive comments which will start to take the discussions and questions in other directions as well.

Related posts:

1. Generating yet more ideas for your Business Blog
2. Great post titles give great reader figures
3. The Blog Coach returns

When you are starting a blog for your business, it can be all too easy to get carried away, rush into setting up a half baked blog and start writing immediately. If you are in this situation then try employing the Green Cross Code of Business Blogging. I first wrote about this idea at Better Business Blogging but I think that the message is so important that it warrants a reposting here with some additional commentary.

Stop! Wait, don’t rush into writing your blog immediately, you need to plan first and decide the focus of your blog.

Look at some established blogs and see how others go about it. Make sure you read some of these to get a better feel for blogging from those already doing it.

“Listen” to the conversations going on in the blogosphere and to what people are saying in their posts, as well as to as much good advice as you can get.

Think about what you have read and take the time to plan your blog in terms of what you want to say and to whom, as well as in terms of your overall goals for it.

Finally, start to blog with all of these elements in mind but make sure you keep reading other blogs, listening to new ideas and thinking how to develop your blog.

To make a success of a blog, you need to spend time planning a variety of elements on your Blog as you start to develop it, and crucially you should also spend time looking at what is being written about and listening what is being said, before you put “pen to paper” on your first post.

I recognise that there are advocates of a more immediate approach – that of simply starting to blog and gaining experience by actually writing one. I can see the advantages of that and of not falling into the trap of “paralysis by analysis” (ie thinking about it for so long that you don’t actually ever do anything).

But I also know that whatever you write while “gaining experience” will still reflect on you and your business and that once it is out on the internet, then there is no easy way to withdraw it. By taking the time to plan and to read what others are writing about, you will gain confidence when you start to post as well as having a framework to work with – remember that when you start blogging, it is the equivalent of entering an enormous noisy stadium full of people talking rather than sitting down to a quiet one-to-one dinner. It can be intimidating so it’s good to be as comfortable as possible when you start.

So, taking it back to basics, to make sure that you start blogging with confidence, I recommend that when you start your business blog, you follow the Green Cross Code of Business Blogging:

Related posts:

1. Using Technorati to research your future Blog or your Market
2. Generating yet more ideas for your Business Blog
3. Starting to write your Business Blog

You’ll get no argument from me on the “Sales pitch” front. There are lots of excellent direct marketing and sales tools available to businesses but a business blog is not one of them. You’re quite simply not playing to its strengths if you try to use it in that way.

However, a conversation (meaningful or otherwise) is only useful, from a business perspective, if it leads somewhere. The conversation shouldn’t try to lead straight to an attempted sale – in fact it mustn’t, you’re back to direct selling again there. Nevertheless, to be properly effective, it should have a direction and be taking you towards your desired outcome, whether that is developing the relationship, encouraging a news feed sign up, setting up a face to face meeting etc.

Ben also makes the point that:

“It’s not about telling people why you’re great and why they should do business with you.”

Agreed. But if you shift the emphasis slightly then you get a concept which is much more valid for blogs. For me:

“It’s about demonstrating to people why you’re great (or helping people find out why you’re great) and why they should do business with you.”

Don’t tell them, but do make it easy for them to find out through what you write and the way that you write it. For me this comes down to the distinction between selling to someone (an individual or a business) and helping them to decide that they want to buy from you.

If you do this well, then hopefully you’ll find that you don’t need to go and tell people why you are great because you’ll have others doing that on your behalf, either in their own blogs, on their sites or face to face. And that’s probably the clearest sign that you are running a valuable and well focused business blog.

Related posts:

1. Plan your Blog: what to consider
2. Green Cross Code of Business Blogging
3. Starting to write your Business Blog

We know that identifying the best keyword phrases is going to be key to our efforts to get better rankings through Search Engine Optimisation. This will allow us to focus our articles at areas which we know will appeal bot to our readers and to the Search Engines at the same time. It can also help to achieve a more comprehensive coverage in our chosen area by identifying keyword phrases in adjacent areas that are relevant to what we offer.

To help in this task and find the best keyword phrases, there are a number of tools available to help us achieve this and a lot of them are free!

Here are ones that I have looked at and consider worthwhile.

WordTracker
Probably the best known tool in the field and self styled “Leading Keyword Research Tool”. It is charged for, although there is a limited free trial, but it is also very complete in what it offers across a number of Search Engines.

Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
Gives ideas for new keywords associated with your target phrase but does not indicate relevance or give details of number or frequency of searches

Overture Keyword Selector Tool
Returns details of how many searches have been carried out in the Overture engine over the period of a month and allows a drill down into associated keywords containing your keyword phrase as well.

NicheBot
NicheBot has a mix of Wordtracker and Overture based tools as well as a nice keyword analysis tool which focuses on Google’s results

Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool
One of a set of tools available at the Digital Point website – this engine gives search numbers on keywords from Wordtracker and Overture sources

In addition to these, although some of the keyword tools mentioned above already include it, I would also recommend taking a look through a Thesaurus (online or paperback) to open up other avenues. Sometimes you just can’t beat going back to basics!

Related posts:

1. Great post titles give great reader figures

However, there are certain things that you can do in this initial period which will make it easier to get your first posts in place and will give you a solid foundation from which you can then develop.

Set yourself realistic goals for posting

You should try to set yourself some goals as to how often you want to post to your blog. Don’t commit to once a day if you know that you won’t have the time – instead, make your goals realistic and then stick to them. Once you get going, you can be certain that it will not be a lack of subjects to write about that will hold you back, but rather how much time you can dedicate to it. You should also bear in mind that you will need to split that time between researching your posts AND writing them.

Hint: set up your RSS reader NOW and start to record your information sources in it. It will save you hours in research later on!

Plan ahead

You don’t want to feel under pressure to think of what to write about, particularly at the start. You want to be able to concentrate on the post itself. So, map out the topics that you want to cover during the first few days and weeks and try to make them ones that you feel particularly comfortable about. This will provide you with a framework to work with.

You don’t need to plan every post, in fact you shouldn’t. If you are intending to create a blog which will get people coming back on a regular basis then you will also be commenting on breaking news or on articles that are posted elsewhere. However, by getting clear in your own mind the initial topics that you want to cover, you will allow yourself to really focus on them which in turn will help your initial writing.

Set out your stall with your “Foundation” posts

Within this first set of posts, try to include at least 2 or 3 articles on key topics – these are ones that I call “Foundation” posts. They are posts which focus in on some of the principal areas and concepts that you are going to be dealing with in your blog as a whole. They can be simply instructive or could introduce a number of the ideas that you will build on (hence “Foundation”) and develop over the course of writing your blog.

Suggestion: if you are unsure about what to include, then have a look at the presentations that you have made to clients or partners and pick out the important themes that you highlight there.

Write a series of posts on a specific topic

Another good way of getting going is to write a series of posts on a topic which is important to your overall subject area. A series can help in a number of different ways, but in particular will allow you to go into detail on a single topic that you feel is particularly important and that you are comfortable writing about. Not only will this help to get you started and gain some momentum in your writing, it will also establish a strong focus area in your blog.

Comment on news in your industry

By commenting on events and announcements in your industry, you are showing yourself to be up to date with what is happening and that you are informed enough to have an opinion on them. It will also help you to position yourself as a key source of information for your readers who no longer have to trawl the web for the information (and view your competitors’ sites) because they know they will find it on yours! Essentially, this is a great way of adding content to your site which also helps build the level of trust and confidence in you and your knowledge.

Sitting there with a blank screen in front of you is always a difficult time, so use some of these methods to get you started. You can be certain that you’ll be up and running much more quickly than you expected.

Related posts:

1. Thinking of starting a business blog? Consider this …
2. Generating yet more ideas for your Business Blog
3. Green Cross Code of Business Blogging