Member Question: Blog URL Structure and SEO

Q: I my main goal is to make my blog search engine friendly, I guess like most everyone!
Thank you very much.
Joseph

Posted by karado58

A: Hi Joseph - I'm going to answer this question and your three previous ones with one post. Long story short, SEO is more art than science and I'm a novice in the discipline, not a grand master. My advice on how to get readers to your blog starts with publishing unique and relevant content within a relatively narrow and consistent topic area. If you're doing that, do it every day and keep doing it for a while, you'll start to see the traffic and readership you're looking for no matter how you set up your domain.

That said, as long as Google includes the URL of your page in their results, you might as well make your URL structure as specific and reader-friendly as you can. So if your URL is a compound three letter wor, both crawlers and humans are going to be able to understand the "three_letter_word" format more accurately than they are the "threeletterword" version.

On the topic of top-level domain vs. subdomain for your blog, I've always thought that the cleaner and shorter your URL, the more likely users are to trust your site and perceive it as a high-quality destination. By that logic, three_letter_word.com would be more "trustworthy at a glance" than three_letter_name.three_letter_word.com (or three_letter_word.com/three_letter_name.htm, for that matter.

Hope that helps, and thanks for using Askablogr!

Reader Question: How to Build Blog Readership

Q: How do I get readers/subscribers? Any tips will be helpful. I've joined several groups/communizes... but I'm still new to blogging.

Posted by Lunatic Lodge

A: Remember the joke about the tourist who asks how to get to Carnegie Hall? The answer: practice, practice, practice. For a blogger, the shortest and best path to a large and loyal reader base is equally simple: publish, publish, publish. Assume that Google is the front door to your blog for most readers, and write often and with a point of view about the topics that interest you most; the people who are looking for fresh content on those same themes will find you and your ideas via Google first, and word of mouth second, after you've built up an initial audience.

Blog entrepreneurs like Nick Denton (creator of the Gawker family of snarky opinion blogs) have mastered this art - they hire paid bloggers to post on time-sensitive subjects, and to get 10 or more posts up on each blog before noon eastern time. This is probably out of reach for the average amateur blogger, but it's a proven formula if you have the time and can deliver unique content.

The next step once you have a base of great content and a distinctive voice is to build links, first by seeing if other bloggers who write on similar themes will add you to their blogrolls. But until you have a voice, there's not much chance of winning links - most people want to know what kind of site they're sending their readers to before they'll add a link, and the only way to answer that question is to publish early, often and well.

Hope that helps and thanks for using Askablogr. 

Reader Question about Blog Platforms

Q: Hi, first of all.. I'm enjoying this site!

My question is: Besides Blogger, where is a good place to start a blog?

Posted by Lunatic Lodge

A: Hey Lunatic - thanks for the question. AFAIK, there are four major blogging tools / platforms out there, each catering to a slightly different audience. Blogger - now owned by Google - is the default choice for most people because it's free but works (and gets regular upgrades) as well as any paid platform. Live Journal is also free, but hasn't seen much development since it was acquired by Six Apart (and recently divested to a Russian holding company) - it tends to attract younger and "edgier" voices. TypePad (also owned by Six Apart) is the default paid platform, and corporate users like it because it offers more customization options than Blogger, while still being easy to use. WordPress is the developer and technophile's choice - open source software that's very well maintained by the community, offers the widest range of customization options, but also requires the greatest technical chops to use. Hope that helps, and thanks for using Askablogr!

Open Startup: Askablogr Lets Down a New Member

Q: Chris just asked me a question, but when I published my answer I got a "We're sorry," page. So I tried again with the same result, but the answer also appears to be published twice now.

Posted by Amanda Nicole

A: Hi Amanda - I'm very sorry that your first time trying Askablogr was such a disappointing one. All software has bugs, but user-impacting bugs are the worst. When the first experience a new user has with your application is a negative one, it can be very hard to rebuild the trust and enthusiasm they showed by signing up for your service.

Askablogr may still be an "alpha" (meaing pre-ship or prototype) service, but since we're out there asking for signups and feedback we need to be quick to respond when a user encounters an error, to try to win back their trust and turn their negative experience into a positive one.

We've seen this same bug once before, and Craig and I thought we'd identified the root cause and fixed it. Looks like that's not the case, so it's back to the hunt for us, with our most sincere and abject apologies to you.

Thanks for giving us your time and trust in trying Askablogr - we're now in scramble mode to win your heart back!

Askablogr: First 24 Hours

So we "officially" opened up the alpha version of Askablogr to the public on Friday, and as with any new product release there were some high points and some low points. The high point was our first "outside" signup by Katana (thanks, Katana), and the low was a series of bugs that Katana ran into trying to get the widget set up and answer her first question (special shout-out to Natalie, a.k.a. Nanook9828, for that first question).

We also marked our first "where did they come from?" signup and install by Roger (thanks, Roger). Katana found us through a comment on her blog, but I don't know how Roger heard about us (I asked him a question via his Askablogr widget but either we have a bug or he hasn't responded yet).

Finally, I'm not 100% sure but it also looks like we got our first spam signup (it's a little hard to tell b/c they didn't include a link to their site, but Unlimited Success World Wide Website sounds a little commercial to me).

My biggest worry right now is that our blogger experience isn't as slick or polished as it needs to be. Signups and installs seem to be going OK, but the post insert process seems a little fragile, and the formatting of the inserted posts needs some work. If bloggers - the main user group for Askablogr - are going to keep this widget and feature it on their sites, we're going to have to make the experience of answering questions easier, better, more fun and better looking (and we need to improve it before we move on to other features on the wish list, like answer feedback scores, the blogger leaderboard, even Wordpress integration).

All in all, though, it's been incredibly satisfying to get this app that was just an idea in my head out in to the world for people to play with, even in its current clunky and fugly form. Thanks to everyone who's helped out in ways large and small, and a huge shout-out to Craig, our architect, developer, tester and troubleshooter.

Friday, January 18th is Askablogr's Day Zero

Q: So when is Askablogr going to be ready for anyone to use?
Posted by Chris DeVore

A: We shipped our first working version of the product about a week ago, but once we (and some of our more indulgent friends and family) had a chance to play around with the service we decided to do a little more polishing before spreading the word. Don't get us wrong, we're still very much in the prototype phase, but some things (especially our first rev blog widget) were too clunky even for us.

Knowing that (a) we could tinker forever if left to our own devices, and (b) once a few real users get their hands on it we'll have more feedback than we know what to do with, we've promised ourselves that we'll stop messing around and start inviting users by this Friday (January 18) at the latest.

So give us just a few more days to fix up the jankiest bits and we'll be open to all comers, warts and all!

Who needs Askablogr?

Q : Who needs Askablogr?
Posted by Chris DeVore

A: Everyone! (just kidding). But we think anyone who has a blog and enjoys connecting with their blog readers will see value in pulling at least some of those conversations out of the comments field and into the posts themselves. For this audience, the biggest benefits we see are:

• Inline Q&A: Askablogr combines reader questions and blogger replies into a single post which (if you choose "full install" during signup) are published to your blog automagically, with clear Q&A formatting to make these posts stand out for your readers.
• More exposure for your blog and content: Every Askablogr Q&A exchange is posted first to your blog, and then to the Askablogr site with direct links back to your blog. Every participating blogger also gets an Askablogr profile page summarizing their Q&A history, and frequent and highly-rated posters are also featured on the Askablogr home page. The more you and your readers use Askablogr, the easier it will be for other Web users to find you.
• Readers are people too: Once they've asked their first question, blog readers also get a permanent profile on our site, including a picture, links to their blog or site, and all the Q&A they've participated in on any Askablogr-powered blog. We embed a link to this profile in every question they ask, so you can always get a sense for the person behind the question, even if they don't have a blog of their own.
• Spam-proof: with Askablogr you don't have to put your email address on your blog for spammers to grab. We handle message routing between bloggers and their readers anonymously, and require email authentication of anyone who wants to submit a question. Bloggers can also permanently block questions from specific members, so bad actors can be turned off as soon as they show their hand.
  
• Fun: Maybe it's just us, be we think it would be cool to be able to see what kinds of questions are being asked and answered across the blogosphere. We included tagging on the Askablogr question form to make it easy for people to browse Q&A by topic, making it easy to discover new and unrelated blogs that are discussing the same thing.

Q What is Askablogr?

Posted by Askablogr

A Every blogger is in coversation with his or her readers, but those "conversations" are typically buried in comments and hard to follow. Askablogr is a new, free service that invites blog readers into the conversation "up top" in the blog posts themselves. Bloggers can install the Askablogr widget and receive questions from readers without publishing their email address. When they answer a question, it's automatically formatted as a blog post and inserted in their blog. The Q&A exchange is also published on Askablogr, with links back to the blog post, making it easier for new readers to find.

We're Live! (Sort Of)

Askablogr went live on January 8. We're not really open for business quite yet, but give us a week or so and we'll be able to show a little more about what we're up to.