I started blogging, with a cat blog, in August 2007. When I first started my personal blog I had no idea what a big role blogging would come to play in my life, nor even to what extent it would influence my career choice!
I started blogging at Almost Frugal in December 2007, and I have learned an enormous amount from the experience. Blogging is now a job for me, and of course I have professional goals for 2009.
The first is to increase my readership: increase Pretty Your Blog’s RSS readership to 200 subscribers, increase Almost Frugal’s RSS readership to 2500 subscribers and increase Almost Frugal Food’s RSS readership to 500 subscribers by the end of 2009.
I want to remember to make sure that the permalink is keyword strong and relevant. For example, on this post, the automatic permalink is the same as the title of the blog post. Shortening it increases the keyword density, which in turn makes it easier for search engines to read it and improves rankings.
And finally, I would like to learn to use blogging related tools, like Twitter, more efficiently, in order to better build audience and brand. To that end, I will be posting about what those blogging tools are, and how you too can learn to use them well.
What are your blogging resolutions for 2009?
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Noob says: “What’s a permalink”?
Damiens last blog post..A few assumptions
** Leaving lurkdom… **
Using Twitter more is also one of my big blogging resolutions. I need to do a lot more “prettying,” as well, so I should start making a list for that.
Thanks for all the helpful advice so far! I will continue following you in 2009!
Staceys last blog post..My Spaghetti Sauce
Hi Damien,
Good question! A permalink is a permanent link to a page, site, post etc. For example, the link to the home page of PYB is just the http:// etc address. If you want to tell people about my blog, you use that.
But, if you want to tell them about a post in particular, you don’t want to use the home page address because, even if that post is at the top of the page when you read it, as I add new content, the post moves down the page. So a post’s permalink is what you would use to link to me, and that is what really counts for search engines in search engine optimization.
The permalink is usually automatically generated, although (at least in Wordpress) you can choose the format. However, you can also choose what it will be. So instead of having the permalink to a post have ‘extra’ words like ‘and’ or ‘the’ in it, you can choose the words that are your keywords.
This helps in two ways: it makes the link shorter and less likely to break or be broken when somebody links to it, and it also helps by making the link more keyword dense.
Hope this helps!
Good idea with the permalink shortening. Do you need a plugin for that?
I want to move over from Blogspot to a hosted WordPress domain. Go back and optimize key posts to have higher page rankings. Increase pageviews and subscribers 200%.
Nates last blog post..Pandan Chiffon Cake
I have so many blog resolutions this year I had to think it over a bit before I posted!
My main ones are to switch to thesis, to get my own domain hosted on Blue host, learn how to do some of my own graphic design stuff (or save up to have someone do it for me!), make a custom header, think of a brilliant logo, grow my hits (views?) to ten thousand a month, make even the tiniest bit of money from my main blog, launch my spinoff blog, and not drop out of school and neglect my children in the process.
Here’s hoping to a great year for everyone!
Lucies last blog post..Ringing in the New Year Part III – Setting Goals
@Nate, no, no plug-in needed. At least in WordPress, you can do this manually in the posting area.
@Lucie- what, you’re not supposed to neglect your children when blogging? I think I missed the memo on that one…
I’d like to increase my subscribers and followers. Makes me feel like my posts mean something to someone and could help them in some way enough for them to want to keep up.
Thank you for all the tips so far.
Shanakas last blog post..Make money for Upromise account and get cheap toddler food