Once a mistake, always a mistake


Blogging mistakesI just found out via Inspiration Bit that there is a new group writing project going on at Daily Blog Tips: Blogging Mistakes. As group projects were always good experiences, with lots of links, new blogs to add on the daily list, new friends and interesting stories, I decided to participate. This post is my contribution to the Blogging Mistakes project.

This blog is now almost 8 months old. I made lots of mistakes, some of them corrected meanwhile, some others still present. One of the biggest ones, spotted very late in the blogging process, was that I ignored some basic rules of SEO optimization in this blog. These are the main points that should have been considered, and the possible resolution:

1. Permalinks: although I took care to have them displayed as static links, I did not realize that having the word “blog” in each of them would mislead Google AdWords, so I got many ads related to blogs and blogging, while I tackled completely different topics. I managed to gather a few links I don’t want to lose, so the permalinks will stay like this for good. Another option to change the permalinks and still to keep the links functioning was to use 301 redirects for each post (about 300 of them, so this is not a viable option either).

2. Landing page of signature links: I was not consistent, some times I used the main domain as a landing page, some other times I used www.alltipsandtricks.com/blog. Consequence: the main domain page is PR4, while the blog page is PR5 (I’m trying to fix this now, by using mostly the main domain page when linking).

3. Title tags: all my pages had the same title, until a few days ago, when I realized how easy it is to make each title page-relevant. If you don’t want to alter the code, there is a Wordpress plugin available, SEO Title Tag 2.0, which does exactly the same trick.

The first two mistakes could have easily been avoided if I used the main domain URL as the blog front page. I did not do so because at that time it seemed illogical for me to have a website which starts with the end (I found out that blogs exist, less than one year ago).

Conclusion: when you start a blog, try to document more on the topic. You’ll avoid many mistakes and you’ll make your life as a blogger much easier (you don’t want to hear that I used to add by hand the Related Posts for about 6 months, because I did not know what a plugin was ;)).

Photo by: xmoix

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This entry was written by Simonne posted on March 30, 2007 at 11:53 am, filed under Tech & Internet, Wordpress and tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

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18 Comments

  1. inspirationbit
    Posted March 30, 2007 at 12:16 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for mentioning me.

    Those are good tips, Simonne. And hey, I didn’t know about the SEO title plugin :-)
    Did you eventually find a solution on how to optimize the topics chosen by Google AdWords, so that they’re not always ‘blog’ related but content related?

  2. admin
    Posted March 30, 2007 at 12:24 pm | Permalink

    I think that Google adjusted something, because I did not get so many of those lately. If you want to keep AdSense very focused you can use Google section targeting, by inserting < !– google_ad_section_start –> at the beginning of the relevant page content and < !– google_ad_section_end –> at the end of the relevant content. I never used it, but I hear it works great.

  3. inspirationbit
    Posted March 30, 2007 at 12:33 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the answer. I’m not sure yet whether it’s worth monetizing my blog or not, but I’m trying to learn about various blog advertising options.

  4. admin
    Posted March 30, 2007 at 1:00 pm | Permalink

    You are welcome. Earnings are not so big, at least in my case (less than $200 a month), but I have learned a lot by playing with the ads modules, by checking stats and tracking progress. It was quite interesting. So was playing with well-paid keywords, yet I did not get any of those big clicks people talk about. The funniest thing was gaming Netscape. It worked. Unfortunately, I got caught in the game and I did it three days in a row. Then they banned me for ever :)

  5. inspirationbit
    Posted March 31, 2007 at 11:18 am | Permalink

    Thanks for disclosing the earnings, I was wondering about that. Actually, it’s not bad at all. I agree it’s an interesting but big learning curve.
    I’ll give it a try one day and perhaps will ask you for some tips and tricks, if it’s okay with you :-)

  6. admin
    Posted March 31, 2007 at 11:41 am | Permalink

    I agree, it’s not bad. The best part is that I’m making now about four times more than in the first month (last August), without spending anything on advertising (actually I have some AdWords campaigns ongoing, but nobody ever clicked on my ads - I still have to figure out what may be so wrong with them).

    Of course I’ll be happy to help if you decide to do it. I’m currently preparing a comparative chart for this blog’s evolution, in terms of traffic, earnings and subscribers, from day one. What I can tell you now, is that the best monetized posts were the ones I wrote for researched keywords, such as chiropractic software, laser hair removal or itchy eyes.

  7. Ronald Huereca
    Posted April 2, 2007 at 5:58 pm | Permalink

    I had the same problem with my titles until I used the title plugin for WordPress. Thank you for sharing your mistakes.

  8. Andrea
    Posted April 3, 2007 at 6:58 am | Permalink

    Great commonsense tips. It helps to do your research before you start blogging, that for sure.

  9. Jason
    Posted May 8, 2007 at 11:49 pm | Permalink

    Another tip is to study the design and setup of blogs you read and enjoy regulary. Discover what plugins and widgets others use on their site and how you can use them to fit with your site and design

  10. Hobo SEO
    Posted May 12, 2007 at 9:52 pm | Permalink

    In my experience having a page within your site higher than the home page is the sign of a strong site, but which is typically “fixed” in the next Google update.

  11. Simonne
    Posted May 13, 2007 at 3:53 am | Permalink

    I agree with you, Jason, this is why I like those people who blog about the plugins they use.

    @Hobo SEO: that’s exactly what happened in this case, Google fixed it for me, so I have PR4 on both pages now :(

  12. Hobo SEO
    Posted May 13, 2007 at 10:06 am | Permalink

    Sorry to hear that Simone… but I think it could mean you’re close to a PR 5 (just need to wait for the next update!

    I’ve faved you in Technorati to give you a boost :)

  13. Simonne
    Posted May 13, 2007 at 10:41 am | Permalink

    Thanks a lot, Hobo SEO! After I saw the downgrade, I redirected the main domain to the /blog/ page, to see what happens. Now, all the credits will go to one place.

  14. WordPress Blog Advice
    Posted August 4, 2007 at 11:54 am | Permalink

    Some how I fail to understand why professional recommend to have your blog in a directory called ‘blog’ like Matt Cuts. The clear problem with that as i saw is the same as you mentioned. I believe I dont want to have the word ‘blog’ in my url UNLESS m blog is about blogs.

    However I would say that redirects are not as difficult as you think. You can and you SHOULD chaneg your urls just the way you like and configure your htaccess accordingly. It will probably require three or four lines to achive a permanent redirect for whatever number of urls you have.

    If you have difficulty in doing that .. let me know. Also make sure that you do all stuff on your test blog first.

  15. Simonne
    Posted August 4, 2007 at 1:07 pm | Permalink

    Thank you for your comment, Wordpress Blog Advice :) I will try to change them, but I’ll have to set up a test blog, because I don’t have any. If I need help, I’ll let you know.

  16. BseNsedaily
    Posted November 14, 2007 at 2:45 am | Permalink

    Nice Article, For the titles iam using the ALl in one SEO Pack which seems to work well. I would like to see how the Title tag plugin would work for my new blog

  17. Simonne
    Posted November 14, 2007 at 2:57 am | Permalink

    BseNsedaily, thanks for your stop here. I heard a lot of good things about All in one SEO, but I was already using other plugins, so I did not do the switch.

  18. SEO update`
    Posted May 18, 2008 at 7:28 pm | Permalink

    How do I get some useful SEO wordpress plugins to help improve online measeurement and great usuability?

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