11 Ways to Get Inspiration to Write Blog Posts

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Posted on 6th June 2010 by Krishna Gupta in Blog

There will always be those days when you’ve just got nothing. You think but nothings coming to you, and you sit their scratching your head thinking, “what can I post?” First of all don’t get frustrated, that’s just a part of blogging life, those days will come. The off internet life often can upset us, or take our minds away from blogging, that’s not uncommon. But you can’t just leave your blog for a month while you recover from losing your girlfriend. The question is, how can you get inspiration to write again, even when you aren’t in the mood.
Remember, a poorly written post is worse then not posting at all.

1. Make a List Post
Find some topic that people in your niche want to hear about, and create a list on it. Bloggers love lists, and honestly they can be the easiest posts you do. If your readers like them and they don’t take to long, then it’s a win win.

2. Check your Feed Reader
This is when a Feed Reader comes in handy, as opposed to using email subscriptions, you can go through all the posts very quickly. If you are at all serious about blogging you should be subscribed to at least 30 similar blogs, and reading them as consistently as you can. This is essential for several reasons but right now I’ll only go into one. It’s a great way to stimulate ideas. See what the other bloggers in your niche have been writing about, this should give you some ideas.

3. Check the top pages of Digg and Google Trends
there are lots of sites that can tell you what’s popular now. check out a few of them, and see which ones you could write about. Now don’t just be a copy cat writer, but if it’s the big thing in your niche, you should probably cover it.

4. Check all the most Popular Blogs in your Niche
In case you aren’t subscribed to them, check the popular bloggers. Most of these guys post every day and so I’m sure they’ve been where you have been. If you read their homepage and nothing clicks, try reading through the archives a little. I’m sure you’ll find an idea eventually.

5. Try emailing your Blogger friends
Again I’m sure they’ve been in the same place, see what sparked an idea for them.

6. Think of something you or another blogger did that you really liked
Maybe a Poll, or review, or series of posts, whatever it was, try and remember one you really enjoyed. Now don’t copy it, but sit down and try and think of a way you could twist it to make it original. If it was successful then your idea can probably succeed as well.

7. Do a Picture or Video post
Pictures say a thousand words, and videos are okay to copy from youtube. So find a youtube video related to your niche and post it, then write a few words below it. This way you can still post and give information, and get another 24 hours to brainstorm.

8. If possible Deal with the issue bugging you
This will rarely be an option, but if it’s an issue you can deal with, stop blogging and fix the issue, and then come back and write. If it’s something you can do, then get that done first.

9. Look at your Past Posts
Especially your most recent ones. See if any of them can be made into a part two, or even into a series. If you analyzed something, maybe you can start that into a weekly tradition or something at your blog.

10. Come up with a potential Word or Phrase
Say you want to write about making money blogging. Type into Google lists about making money blogging. If that doesn’t come up with anything change the wording around a little. Check out other lists on the subject, and see if you get inspired with anything.

11. Have a list of Potential Ideas
Don’t wait until the day of to write your post, plan ahead! Start a list of post ideas now, so that when the time comes you can look through a list and pick your topic.

Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

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Posted on 3rd June 2010 by Krishna Gupta in SEO

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WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.

WordPress comes with several built in search optimization tools, including the ability to use .htaccess to create apparently static URLs called permalinks, blogrolling, and pinging. There are also a number of third party plugins and hacks which can be used for search engine optimization (SEO).

However, once you start using various WordPress Themes and customizing WordPress to meet your own needs, you may break some of those useful search engine friendly features. To maintain your WordPress site’s optimal friendliness towards search engine spiders and crawlers, here are a few tips:
Good, Clean Code
Make sure your site’s code validates. Errors in your code may prevent a search engine from moving through the site successfully.
Content Talks
Search engines can’t “see” a site. They can only “read” a site. Pretty does not talk to a search engine. What “talks” to a search engine are the words, the content, the material in your site that explains, shares, informs, educates, and babbles. Make sure you have quality word content for a search engine to examine and compare with all the parts and pieces to give you a good “score”.

Write Your Content with Searchers in Mind
How do you find information on the Internet? If you are writing something that you want to be “found” on the Internet, think about the words and phrases someone would use to find your information. Use them more than once as you write, but not in every sentence. Learn how search engines scan your content, evaluate it, and categorize it so you can help yourself get in good favor with search engines.
Content First
A search engine enters your site and, for the most part, ignores the styles and CSS. It just plows through the site gathering content and information. Most WordPress Themes are designed with the content as close to the top of the unstyled page as possible, keeping sidebars and footers towards the bottom. Few search engines scan more than the first third of the page before moving on. Make sure your Theme puts the content near the top.
Keywords, Links, and Titles Meet Content
Search engines do not evaluate your site on how pretty it is, but they do evaluate the words and put them through a sifter, giving credit to certain words and combinations of words. Words found within your document are compared to words found within your links and titles. The more that match, the better your “score.”
Content in Links and Images
Your site may not have much text, mostly photographs and links, but you have places in which to add textual content. Search engines look for alt and title in link and image tags. While these have a bigger purpose of making your site more accessible, having good descriptions and words in these attributes helps provide more content for search engines to digest.

Link Popularity
It is not how good your site is, it is how good the sites are that link to you. This still holds weight with search engine favoritism. It’s about who links to you. Blogrolls, pingbacks, and trackbacks are all built into WordPress. These help you link to other people, which gives them credit, but it also helps them link to you, connecting the “links.” The number of incoming links your site has that have been recognized by Google can be checked by typing link:www.yoursite.com into Google (other search engines have similar functions). Other ways to generate incomming links to your site include:
Add your site’s url to your signature on forum posts on other sites.
Submit your site to directories (see below).
Note: Leaving comments on blogs will not help with this, since all modern blogging tools use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Don’t be a comment spammer.

Good Navigation Links
A search engine crawls through your site, moving from page to page. Good navigational links to the categories, archives, and various pages on your site will invite a search engine to move gracefully from one page to another, following the connecting links and visiting most of your site.