Blogging Sueblimely

What are the less interesting but necessary blogging tasks we need to complete? I will be taking you through them over the next few weeks. For those of you who are saying “but I only want to write” and not do any of this stuff” I promise to try and make it as painless to read as possible. Some of it you may already be familiar with this of course but others may be starters on the blogging path (anyway reminders do not go astray from time to time).

I spent quite a while yesterday writing a post which contained a list of things that I am going to do and then scrapped it. My idea was to create a list type post, I am sure you have seen the sort I am talking about – e.g. 30 Must Have Tips on Removing Dog stains from Carpets*. This type of post tends to score well in the rankings. The post ended up too detailed and I thought I would lose you after about point 15 so I ditched it. I did attempt to add some relevant keywords to the first paragraph of this post though so I did do a little sucking up to search engines. Instead I will just do a summary of the main areas I will be covering over the next weeks so that I can share with you the experience of moving from a hosted platform to my own domain.

Setting up the blog:

• domain names and domain registering
• hosting
• ftp (how to upload, download from your blog hosts server)
• learning to use WordPress

Introducing my blog to the WWW

- submitting it to:

• social networking services
• bookmarking sites,
• search engines,
• directories
• commenting on other blogs
• doing a little begging, requesting some help from blogging mates.
• link building

I will not be spammy or use what I consider unethical techniques under any circumstances – no leaving comments of no value, no blatant asking for links from strangers nor any ” I’ll pat your back but only if you pat mine” kind of thing.

Make the blog Search Engine Friendly

- help the busy little Google bot and other crawlers find all the things they need to find. (I think it will be me crawling to them though) This will involve among other things:

• Adding a sitemap
• Tweaking WordPress a little, mostly with the use of plugins.

Making the blog reader friendly

- by styling it so that:

• it is easy to navigate
• visitors can find content of interest
• it is clear, uncluttered and easy to read

The latter is not a chore, as I just love messing around with styling.

I am sure I have missed some things off this list and I will add to it as time goes on. Please let me know if there is something particular, not mentioned here, that you would like to learn concerning starting a blog on your own domain – if you wish to know then I am sure others do too.

*I really do have to do a bit of a clean up now my daughter’s puppy has left with her for their new life at the other side of Australia