This post is part of a blogging challenge. If you think it’s a mint post then go and vote on the poll. My blog has the suffix of “http://goo.gl/XsCdh” Cheers.
My big tip for getting more hits is to name your jpgs descriptively before uploading them. If you aren’t going to talk about your images in detail in the post then this is a must do for you. During my doodle a day challenge last year my images started having ridiculously long titles like “izak flash man girl pregnant comic kick.jpg“. You wouldn’t believe how many people google for comics of pregnant chicks getting kicked. And just imagine, I could have been missing out on all those quality viewers if I hadn’t have written that ridiculously descriptive jpg title.
This tip isn’t so much for getting new hits, but to retain your existing viewers or people that may have just stumbled over your blog and are thinking of coming back. Clean up your site! Get rid of unnecessary widgits jamming up your side bar. If people want to search your blog there’s already something for that in the top left. If people want to follow you they don’t need the followers widget for that. That’s in the top left as well.
Jeffrey Zeldman points out that “Some successful sites, such as Amazon and Google, don’t so much redesign as slowly evolve their existing design.” Always keep a lookout on how you can improve your blogs look. You don’t need to change it completely to make it look fantastic. Also make sure that the template junk that surrounds your post doesn’t outweigh the content itself. An average template for a twitter post won’t have more than the date and the twitterers @name. Twitter knows that the content (meat and potatoes) won’t weigh that much, so the template has been scaled back. If your a big poster then you won’t need to worry about this so much. A regular blogger post has the title, a host of resharing buttons and a comment tab. You can add more if you like, but I wouldn’t advise it. Some of the worst sites I have ever seen have been blogs, don’t be one of those people!
Final tip for having a cleaner, user friendly site. Don’t mix ads into your content! People go to your site for the soul purpose of reading your post, don’t dilute your one selling point with ads. Stick them between posts if you must. Put them in your sidebar instead. And definitely no ads in your header or title. Unless you want your site to be ugly. In which case, go ahead.
Thanks, Izak: time for some Spring cleaning, I think…
BTW, I found that snippet of comic disturbing, and not in a good way.
Ha ha, yes, it's not an image I would like to see recreated in real life that's for sure.
I've not thought about jpg naming before. Nice tip!
Gotta give the search engine spiders something to cling to. 😉
Now, all the images will be named as well!