Daily Prompt: Progress

Daily Prompt: Progress.

The question for today was “What would I like to see when I look back on my blog on 01JAN15?”.

I have a small list of things that I would like to see. Will I get them? Who knows. We’ll see what I can come up with. BUT, regardless of me getting what I want or not… here is my list.

 

1. 1,500 Subscribers / Followers

Seems like the biggest drug of the bloggers choice would be the number of views one can get on their blog. I’ve had a few spikes over the last few months thanks to Reddit, but nothing with any enduring value. I want to get my blog to the point where I can have a legitimate daily readership. Hell, I’d settle for weekly.

 

2. An actual focal point for what my blog is supposed to be about.

I’ve covered all sorts of topics here. Politics, weight loss, video games, family, religion, and even the occasional rant. The big problem is that there is no real central focus for what I write about. I want to find that I have come up with an actual thing to write about consistently.

 

3. At least 200 real posts.

I like the idea of writing regularly, but I want to make sure that the posts that I write have actual substance. I had the idea of providing commentary on whatever was near the top of the reddit feed for that day, but I’m not sure if that would work very well. I mean, I know that I have an ability to include sarcasm and occasionally humor in my posts, but I don’t think that copying what is already written about would be the best bet.

 

So, there you go.  THREE things that I would like to see in the next year when I look back on my blog.

Drop me a comment if you have any feedback on my diatribe today. If your comment rocks enough, I’ll maybe even write a post on it.

 

Cheers

-RH

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Picture Tagging: You’re doing it wrong! (Google Juice)

If you are here trying to figure out how to get more hits on your blog, then you came to the right place. Keep reading.

GOOGLE JUICE: The stuff you pour on your blog to make it show up on google!

So, I write a blog.

I enjoy writing, it makes me smile.

Recently I did a post based on the cheapest drug an internet junkie can get. I talked about page hits and getting people to actually click on the links and read the site. I hadn’t figured out how to actually get people to this place.

Well, while I was on the phone with my amazing wife Andrea recently, and I was saying how I was SO excited that I got 21 hits in one day one time.

I know what you are thinking, “Garen, 21 hits is LAME!” and you are right, 21 hits IS lame. She told me that she was getting upwards of 60 hits off of a single post each day on something she hasn’t written about in months. I wondered how the hell she was pulling this off. After talking to her a bit, she explained that I had to put information in to my meta tags for the pictures themselves.

So, after a bit of playing around I figured out how to add my tags. I went back and filled in the tags on a half dozen posts and suddenly, within actual MINUTES, I was getting hits on the site. I was very impressed. Something so simple and it was generating interest in what I was writing. Well, actually, it wasn’t generating interest, it was actually just letting people find me a little easier.

So, how do you tag your pictures so that you can get more hits?

What You Don’t Know About Your WordPress Title Tag

When you upload a picture to your WordPress site the uploaded picture automatically is given the same title as the one you gave the file in your computer.

This of course means you optimized the picture file title from ’249384.jpg’ to ‘freds_fine_fish.jpg’ before you uploaded the photo to your website.

For a lot of you, the next step from there is to select the size and placement of the photo and move on.  No more optimizing work to be done here.  Picture title optimized.  Success.

Wrong.

What you may not have realized is that in WordPress, the option in the photo editor that is red starred as required, is not where you optimize your pictures.

Nope.  To optimize your pictures for maximum search engine goodness, you want to be sure you’ve entered your keywords into the second selection labeled ‘Alternate Text’.  That’s right, the spot that sports the red star, while required by WordPress, doesn’t actually do much for optimizing your website photos.  That second line, that’s where your google juice is.

So there you have it. That’s how it’s done.

Go back, fill in your tags, and you’ll be good. Instant fame, success, and a new car in the garage*

(*Fame, success, and new car not guaranteed)

Holler if you wanna see something posted here, maybe click the follow the blog button. Possibly share whats going on here on reddit. It could be a good thing.

-Garen