headlines Archives - Fairy Blog Mother

Magic Moment: How to quickly edit the headline’s permalink

Posted on Tuesday 2 October 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

This is a small time-saving device I picked up that I use all the time. Really in the scheme of things it’s miniscule, but I love it when I come across a wacky bit of doing something new!

Writing headlines is quite an art. This is the part of the post you really should spend time concentrating on (and it’s obvious that I don’t), but during your brainstorming sessions you may try out a number of headlines to see how they scan, where you can place that all important keyword, whether it would grab the attention of your readers, does it reflect adequately the subject matter of the post.

Often I put a headline in and then start writing, and I realise half way through my post I’ve gone off on a totally different track. Rather than edit what I’ve written to fit the headline, and upset my creative juices, I put my first concept aside and adapt my headline to suit the post.

But then that means I have to change the permalink. Each post is allocated its own page, which therefore needs to have a URL, called a permalink. These are automatically created as soon as you’ve finished writing your headline in its editing field, or if you are dallying for too long will create it half finished anyway.

Therefore if you edit your headline (or are too slow in writing it), and you want your permalink to match your post’s title, it needs to be edited. It is a very simple process (especially since I’ve found out this quicker way) and can be done in a trice.

Take my first attempt at this post’s headline:

But I realised that adding in the word ‘headline’ might be a good idea. And after editing it, so does the permalink needs to be edited.

In the past I would have copied my new headline and the opened up the permalink editing field (in yellow) via the ‘Edit’ button, pasted it in, added in all the hyphens and then pressed ‘OK’. But you don’t need to copy the headline any more. Just access the editing field via the ‘Edit’ button:

and clear it by highlighting and deleting:

And then just press the ‘OK’ button:

And if it’s not immediately obvious the new headline has been incorporated into the permalink, click on the ‘Edit’ button again to make sure:

And this can take about a second to do. Trivial, yes, but a nice little touch I enjoy doing every time!

But you know what? I think I’ll change the headline to something else now… Oh, how I enjoy changing that permalink!

Filed Under: Blogging education, Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

How many visitors do you get to your blog?

Posted on Tuesday 10 July 2012 by Alice • 1 Comment

Click my logo to ask me a question!

These are permanent questions on every blogger’s mind: how many visitors do I get to my blog? And what kind of visitors are they? Are they really interested in what I have to say, or have they got there by accident?

And how about these questions: how much traffic did my last tweet bring in? Was it worth doing that concerted effort on Facebook? Did posting on that LinkedIn group make any difference?

And then there are these: which keywords stimulate more traffic? Which subject matter gets more attention, and why? Did changing that headline really increase my ratings?

If you have a WordPress.org blog, then ideally you should have installed a Google Analytics plugin. There are many to choose from, and they all should make the process of adding your blog as simple as possible.

Gone are the days when you needed to add the special code in exactly the right place in your website’s header code, and on every page you wanted tracked and recorded. Now all you need is a Google Account, and once you’ve registered your blog or website, just copy the UA-code allocated to it.

Paste this into the plugin’s setting pages, save and wait for your stats to start rolling in. It usually takes about a day to get any results, and longer if they are to become meaningful.

The next set of Magic Moments will show you how to set up Google Analytics on your blog (note this is only for the WordPress.org ones) and what you should be looking out for in the stats. I shall be using my own, which will be very embarrassing, as they aren’t as good as they should be, so I shall be exploring what I need to do to improve my situation at the same time.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, marketing methods, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Why you need to write two headlines for your posts

Posted on Thursday 17 March 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

Just as you thought it was difficult enough to write just one satisfactory headline for your post, now I’m telling you to think of two! (Don’t worry if you’re a WordPress.com blogger, this requisite is for those on WordPress.org blogs.)

But even so, I can’t stress enough the importance of the headline. It has many roles, all which are vital for both humans and internet robots alike. It needs to capture the attention of both, and satisfy the needs of each.

For humans it needs to connect with the reason why they want to read this information. You need to present the subject matter in such a way it relates to their search criteria, provides a solution to their problem, stimulates a desire, maybe tickles their sense of humour, and sticks out like a sore thumb so they can’t fail to notice it.

This is the same for the search engine spiders, but in a different way. You’re not dealing with psychology here, but with logarithms that are programmed to search for particular words. The answer is to give those words to them – find out what people are searching for, and if they are suitable, high quality and much sought after, stick them in your headlines (and the rest of the post too).

The clever bit comes with how you combine these fabulous words the spiders desire within a headline that grabs the attention of your readers. And nobody says this is easy – headline writers in newspapers are paid well for their ability to compose such things.

So why two headlines? Well, if you have installed the plugin ‘All-in-one-SEO-pack’ in your WordPress.org post, you will see at the bottom of your Post Editor page some more fields to fill in, and one of them is marked ‘Title’.

What I suggest is that you create your human-biased headline for the title of the post, and your spider-influenced headline for the ‘Title’ field at the bottom of the Post Editor page.

The human-headline will appear in RSS feeds in Twitter and Google Readers, whereas the spider-headline appears in the title at the top of your browser window and also in search engine indexes and RSS feeds into social media such as LinkedIn Groups (usually accompanied with what goes into the ‘Description’ field that follows after).

And as each have a good chance of being seen by humans and spiders alike, they need to be understandable by both, which makes their composition all that much harder!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, marketing methods, Writing tips

Ogirlsays blog suggestions taken on board

Posted on Monday 6 September 2010 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

My previous post provided recommendations for improving a blog through one of my reviews. I only published this a couple of days ago and already the owner of the blog has taken my suggestions on board. The result is so much better, and is so gratifying when you can see the changes – now we have to see if they make a difference!

What’s been done? A change of theme – I wasn’t expecting this, but I’m glad she did. The white background is so much clearer to read the text, and the space is wider to accommodate her pictures better. Her headlines (could be slightly bigger) are much more noticeable, which is what headlines should be.

She has brought her subscription button closer to the top, added on a recent posts widget, highlighted her Twitter app more through better positioning, shows her comments to encourage more, recommended a series of other websites for outward links, and tidied her categories into a pull down menu.

And she has changed her blog’s title to say ‘Commentary on life and reading’ – now they know what the blog is about, I’m sure people will be more inclined to stop and have a look, not to mention the search engine spiders.

A big improvement, as I’m sure you will agree – you can see the result below:

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs

Blog review 3: dark, left and cloudy

Posted on Saturday 4 September 2010 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

One of the comments on another blog I write for requested a review of the blog pictured below, so here it is.

refers to .com blog

My first impression: it’s a bit dark. This is my personal opinion, as I have never liked dark backgrounds; I think they make reading text difficult (books have white backgrounds, so why not websites and blogs?). Also the white headlines are difficult to read against the grey background, which makes them not prominent or noticeable enough.

http://ogirlsays.wordpress.com

There is a trend towards having lots of black in web material, as many people prefer it. WordPress have increased the amount of templates available for their free blogs recently, many of which are excellent, while others accommodate different tastes.

This particular template has a left sidebar. Psychologists have discussed recently how a website’s or blog’s visitor perceives the content on their first visit, and a left sidebar has proven to be beneficial to presenting important material immediately, as we naturally read left to right (in the Western world).

Therefore it is necessary to place the most important elements of your sidebar at the top, such as the sign up form or link to subscribe to the blog (and not have it languishing forgotten at the bottom where it never gets noticed). This is a sure-fire way of increasing your readership, as subscribers will be notified whenever you next publish a new post. This facility can be improved via Feedburner from Google, to provide a RSS URL (to feed your blog into social networking sites).

I’ve just noticed the blog’s title, which is ‘Thinking of…’. This is pretty meaningless, especially as the page’s title is extremely important for SEO reasons. I suggest this should be changed to a phrase that succinctly describes the blog’s content, preferably using keywords, and this can be done in the Settings section found in the Dashboard’s left sidebar.

The elements at the top of this sidebar are a ‘Snoopy’ icon which does nothing, and a very large calendar. I suggest these are removed, as they are not necessary, to be replaced by the subscription button. The next item should be a widget which shows the most recent posts, encouraging the reader to venture further into your blog. The tag cloud is good, but the category cloud doesn’t work in this template, it should be changed to a simple category list. The Twitter feed app is also good, but is placed too far down. There is no widget that shows recent comments (unless you are not encouraging them) or a blogroll of recommended blogs and websites (all help towards out-going links and therefore SEO).

The content includes many links, which is very good, for the same reasons just stated above. Big bright pictures help maintain the interest factor and help emphasise what you are saying. You could increase your chances of a higher search engine take-up by including relevant and up-to-date keywords, as these will correspond with what people are talking about, and the popularity will pay off.

And don’t forget to post consistently – which is more important than frequently – and keep the content quality high. An interesting, well maintained blog will soon get the readership it deserves.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs

What and how important are permalinks?

Posted on Friday 4 June 2010 by Alice • 3 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

There is a industrial and successful marketeer called Ed Rivis who has acquired some creditable acclaim through his online marketing prowess, mainly in the use of online campaigns and the art of the landing page, but what astounds me is that he doesn’t optimise his permalinks on his blog!

But more of that later… so what is a permalink?

WordPress allocates each post with its own URL, created from the headline you give it:

Both kinds of blog

As you can see, this post has been given a permalink of http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-and-how-important-are-permalinks/ which WordPress has automatically created for me underneath the headline field. I also have the option to edit my permalink should I decide to change my headline while writing my post, or if I want to create a shorter, more memorable one. (There is also the more advanced option of a ‘shortlink’ if you want to use this permalink in social networking, such as Twitter.)

Most blog permalinks include the date within them, and look like this: http://successnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ – so let me break it down for you.

• Note there isn’t www after the http:// because this is a blog, not a website;

• Next you’ll see the username of the original author of the blog: ‘successnetwork’;

• Followed by .wordpress.com because this is a WordPress.com or a ‘free’ blog (WordPress take control of your blog’s URL because they have provided all the software and programming for you, if you have a WordPress.org blog you can choose your own blog URL);

• Next is the date of the post: /2010/06/01/ (presented backwards) which is automatically calculated for you;

• And then you have the headline or title of the post: 5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ separated by hyphens so it’s easier for the spiders to read and for humans to quickly recognise.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you have the chance to change how your permalinks look in Settings > Permalinks:

And you will see a number of options for how your permalink could look:

• Default = URL/?p=123 (post number)
• Day and name = URL/year/month/day/post name
• Month and name = URL/month/day/post name
• Numeric = URL/archive/post number
• Custom = whatever you want.

I have chosen ‘URL/post name’ as it makes it much easier to remember my permalinks and to write them in posts and browsers. If your categories are important to your search engine optimisation then these can be put into your permalink: ‘URL/category/post name’ for example. In fact, SEO is an important factor when considering your permalinks, but if stuffing it full of keywords and other goodies as well as what’s in the headline of your post is important to you, then go ahead, but take into consideration the length of your permalink and its practicalities, and that shortening it into tinyurls isn’t always the answer.

Oh, and another tiny point, it’s the permalinks that are live in RSS feeds, and when you are posting your latest blog contribution into a LinkedIn Group news section, the programming automatically recognises your permalink and everything associated with it for you!

So what of Ed Rivis? His latest post was http://www.edrivis.com/?p=517 – which means absolutely nothing to me except that he has probably written 516 more posts before this one. I have no idea what the subject is about (it is, actually, 77 ideas for great email and blog content) but I wouldn’t bother reading it because I only managed to glean about 8 that were worth considering! You’d think that an online marketing chap that is so famous and rich would have optimised his blog better – but no matter, it probably isn’t important to him.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

What is the difference between an article and a blog post?

Posted on Monday 3 August 2009 by Alice • 1 Comment

An article is a lengthy piece of writing, written in an expert’s point of view, aimed at explaining a topic in great detail. A blog post is a shorter piece of writing, usually in a ‘conversational’ style, aimed at updating or educating your readers, or to spark ideas and interest in your business.

Articles are produced to promote the author’s expertise and prowess at writing and research, hence why they are long. A blog post should take one subject and explain it succinctly within a few short paragraphs, written from multiple view-points to gain the comprehension of the reader.

Articles can vary in length, and even though they are online, are designed to be printed out for leisurely reading. Blog posts are meant to be read immediately. The subject should be introduced within the headline and first sentence, and the concept within the first paragraph. As most blog readers only read the first 25% of a post, or spend an average of 96 seconds, getting the jist across at the very beginning is important to achieve your post being read in full.

Twitter has minimalised this even further (hence why it’s called micro-blogging). There are just 140 characters to get your point across and capture your reader’s interest, but you do have the advantage of interaction: a tinyurl link can be added to direct the reader to a blog post or article for further reading.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, marketing methods

10 Fantastic Books About Marketing Your Blog Online

Posted on Monday 27 April 2009 by Alice • 1 Comment

This is another excellent post by Randa Clay about 10 ‘must-have’ books if you want to succeed in blogging:

http://randaclay.com/blogging/10-fantastic-books-about-marketing-your-blog-online/

A well worth read!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging

How do I use my blog to promote my business?

Posted on Wednesday 22 April 2009 by Alice • 0 Comments

Hello Alice,

I do have a blog but I am not sure if I use it correctly. I created my blog to promote my business and to benefit from Google ranking. I am afraid I am not writing as much as I wanted … my excuse not enough time, but the real reason is I don’t really know how to use it correctly and benefit from it.

I am open to suggestions. Please visit www.penelopesweddings.com/blog.

Penelope

–oo00oo–

Hi Penelope

Yes, you’re on the way to producing a great blog! But we need to make it more interesting, for both your readers and the internet spiders.

As a wedding business I’m sure you have some great images you can share – beautiful brides, sumptuous cakes, fabulous dresses, elegant receptions, giggling bridesmaids – advertise and promote your business through pictures! If you have a great set of photos to share you needn’t write that much to go with it, they will speak for themselves.

You need to upload an image that resembles the header on your website so that your blog looks more like its extension. You can do this through the Appearance link on the Dashboard and go down to Custom Header and download a header image. WordPress give instructions on how to do this, alternatively you could use my blogging package ‘Creating a visual identity’ which is part of my ‘Beautifying your Blog’ series I’m creating on my new blogsite.

I’m glad to see you’ve created categories and blogs, but I think you should vary your tags to capture a wider audience for search engine optimisation. I imagine you got these keywords from Wordtracker or some similar provider – great – but other words that are relevant to your post will increase spider activity and therefore traffic to your blog, and ultimately your website. And don’t forget to put the tag cloud widget onto your sidebar along with one for your recent posts.

Post a nice picture of you on your About page, plus a bit more about you and some links to your website. People like a personal touch, especially for the service industry.

And if you want to accumulate a following, get a RSS feed URL from feedburner.com or feedblitz.com and put the code for the chicklit button or new post subscription link into a text widget and place it at the top of your sidebar.

There’s quite a lot to be getting on with here, so take it step by step. But the best way to promote your blog is to keep putting up new posts, preferably short, concise and relevant, regularly rather than frequently, with content gathered from your day-to-day activities that you think will interest your readers and potential customers.

Alice

—

Hi Penelope

On further inspection I’ve worked out that your blog is actually a self-hosted WordPress blog attached to your existing website!

To accomplish what I said in my last post, uploading your matching header will have to be done through your ftp provider into an images file, and then allocated to that particular area of the .css within the theme. This is quite techie, so if you are not inclined in that department you will have to get your webmaster to do this for you.

The widget stuff is the same, except that because it is a self-hosted blog you can upload forms into your text widgets and posts, something you cannot do in a ‘free’ WordPress blog. Take advantage of this with a new post subscription sign-up box which is included with your blog’s RSS feed – encourage your followers to keep in the loop with any new information you post.

Alice

Filed Under: blogs and blogging

Blogs aren't scary, they're fun!

Posted on Thursday 16 April 2009 by Alice • 0 Comments

Hi Alice,

I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for your very helpful advice on blogging, I have just started my blog and was really unsure the how to’s etc. I will definitely be making it a part of my daily routine.

I would love your thoughts on mine (please be honest) we can only learn from it! http://fijianbeauty.wordpress.com

Again thanks for your honesty and very practical advice.

Julz

–oo00oo–

Hi Julz

Well done for starting a blog! That ‘s probably the most frightening step taken, now comes the fun part.

You’re already got three posts up, and the headlines are good, because I immediately knew what you were about. These headlines are also permalinks (URLs) for each post, which have a separate page and identity, especially when it comes to search engine optimisation. They need to contain your keywords not only for your readers but for the internet spiders as well.

Where are the pictures? Your product is very visual, do don’t shy away from posting up images. You need to put a picture of yourself plus some more pictures into your About page too. Include some testimonials too if you have any good ones.

You’ve entered some tags in your posts, good, but you haven’t chosen your categories yet. Categories are like chapters and help readers search for specific posts under subjects. You can list both your tags and widgets with their respective widgets in your side bar.

Your header still has the words ‘Just another WordPress.com blog’. In your Dashboard go into Appearance and choose Custom Header. There you can upload an image for your header, which can also include the correct text to publicise your business. Alternatively you can change the wording to suit, or delete it so it doesn’t show through your graphics.

You can go to town with your widgets: why not put up recent posts, top posts and comments along with your tag cloud and categories. Encourage feedback and interaction, it’s good for everybody.

If you’re feeling particularly techie, go to feedburner.com or feedblitz.com and sign up for your blog’s RSS URL, and put the code for the RSS button and new post subscription feed into a text widget right at the top of your side bar to encourage followers. This is always good for search engine optimisation purposes, and you’ll find lots of uses for it at a later date.

That’s enough to be getting on with. Keep posting regularly, that’s more important than frequently: spiders work better with regularity, and make sure all your posts are relevant and of value, and don’t make them too long. And keep me up to date with your developments too!

I’m writing a series of packages called ‘How to beautify your blog’ on my new blogsite which should be ready very soon; meanwhile you could join my blogging newsletter to keep in up-to-date with my latest blogging news, especially about my blogging teleseminar on 14 May.

Alice

Filed Under: blogs and blogging

Tag Archives: headlines