By now, I’m sure you’ve gotten the idea that blogging is about Social Networking. You’re visiting other blogs, leaving comments and a link back to your blog. You’re making your own blog inviting, you’re interacting with your visitors. In your own profile, you’ve put your blog at the top of your list of blogs (if you contribute to more than one).
You can see that links are important. You want people to find you, so you add a link in your comments that you leave on other blogs. You make sure people can find your blog if they go to view your profile. And I’m sure you have your blog linked to your website (and vice versa), right?
Now, let’s do another kind of linking. In your posts, leave links to others. What? You don’t want people hitting the link you put in your post and leaving your site, do you? Yeah. You do. Except you don’t.
Let me make that a bit more clear.
You want to embed links in your posts. Look at the two I embedded in this post. The one on the words “view you profile” will take you to my Profile page. The one I embedded on the words “your website” takes you to the homepage of my site. But you don’t want to only embed links that take readers to your site. If you quote from an article, which I often do in my posts, embed the link to the entire article in case they want to read the full text. If you review a book, link to the author’s excerpt of that book. Find ways to embed links to others.
Why? Because will raise your chance of getting picked up by crawlers, those little bots crawling the Internet looking for active blogs. You’re more active if you don’t just live in your little world, but you link to others in the blog-o-sphere.
BUT (I capitalized that because it’s a big but), make sure your links open in a new window. Do not let embedded links take your readers away from your blog by opening in the same window, thus causing them to leave your blog.
What’s the theme of this series? Say it with me -- Social Networking.
Hey, hey, don’t link away yet. Have you left a comment? Did you guess where I am today? I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
And I am happy I finally figured out how to do that trick!
ReplyDeleteL. Diane Wolfe
www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
www.spunkonastick.net
www.thecircleoffriends.net
"Social networking," Marvin said in unison with Helen and the entire class. (smile)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you are keeping this week long series stored for future use - it will make a wonderful primer course for newbie bloggers. Good job!
And LOVE those bots and crawlers.
So am I, Diane. I didn't know how since Dreamweaver, the program I use to build my website has both a code side and a WYSIWYG side. On the WYSIWYG side, all I had to do was one click and Dreamweaver put in the correct code to open in a blank window. But since blogging, I've learned to add the code into the html window. If anyone doesn't know the bit of code, it's:
ReplyDeletetarget="_blank_"
You add it after the link.
Hello Marvin. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for posting a very thought-provoking post today on Free Spirit.
ReplyDeleteOk lemme guess - you're in Winter Garden, Florida - right?
ReplyDeleteMarvin D Wilson
http://tiedyedtirades.blogspot.com/
I often link to other bloggers in my blogroll if they have an interseting post up, or they inspired my current post. I think it's a good practice to spread the love around. :) I hope you're enjoying sunny Florida. I'm freezing here in PA this morning.
ReplyDeleteJenny Bean
http://theinnerbean.blogspot.com/
More good advice! Let me know if you make it down to Fort Myers.
ReplyDeleteJane Kennedy Sutton
http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/
Great advice! Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that bit of code on how to open in a new window. Great tip for us technologically challenged folks.
ReplyDeleteI also share interesting blog posts on my Facebook profile & they go out to all my FB friends. More social networking!
Kim
http://www.primary-sources.com/blog/
Helen I'm a technoidiot so I need a bit more explanation. In Blogger when you want to make a link elsewhere you highlight and then click that thing that looks like a film projector and then paste the link. Are you saying after all of the stuff in the link on that line you add _blank_ ? Is that it?
ReplyDeleteLauri
http://thoughtsfrombotswana.blogspot.com
Helen,
ReplyDeleteit took some experimenting, but I did get that target = "_blank_" to work. The solution is to place it between the last quote mark of the url and the >. Is there a way to do the same thing with the links in the blogrolls?
If you are in Ft. Lauderdale, I hope you stop by slip F-18 of Bahia Mar Marina where Travis McGee moored The Busted Flush. I'll be disappointed if you don't take a picture.
Hi Jenny. We are enjoying FL, but as you might guess, so far, we're spending most of the time in the car. We did go out to eat with friends last night, though. Right on the water looking across at a docked, lit up, cruise ship.
ReplyDeleteHi Jane. I'll have to get out the FL map and see where Ft. Meyers is. We are heading south.
ReplyDeleteI'm not on FaceBook. How much time do you spend maintaining your presence there, Kim?
ReplyDeleteOh! Are you going to the Keys then? I was there once. Got to Hemmingway's house just after they closed, so never did get to tour the place. Shucks.
ReplyDeleteThanks for answering my question on your last post. Yes, I did come back to check. ;)
Lynnette Labelle
http://lynnettelabelle.blogspot.com
More good stuff today, Helen. I love linking to friends' blogs, but never knew it caused bot crawlers or frog trawlers (or whatever) to sit up and pay attention!
ReplyDeleteI don't usually leave my blog link in comments b/c others can just hit my name or icon and find my blog that way.
Do you understand the "Links to this post" thingamabob? Nobody I've asked yet seems to. So much to learn, so little time.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Hi Lauri,
ReplyDeleteI wrote you this long comment trying to explain it, but Blogger won't let me use that kind of code in a comment, so... I'm going to check your profile. If there's a way to email you, I'll try to send it that way.
Hi Mark. I've made note of that and if we get to go there before we leave tomorrow, I will take my camera.
ReplyDeleteHi Lynnette. We will eventually be in Key West -- next week. We've been once before but only allowed time to visit the Hemingway house (have a great picture of his office) and have a drink, then headed back north. This time we're spending the night.
ReplyDeleteHi Angie. I enabled the Links to this Post and it showed up a couple of times, then stopped. Don't know why.
ReplyDeleteThe way I understand it is -- if that's enabled, it shows a list of where other blogs have linked back to you concerning that post.
Very sage advice and something I've been learning about this week. I'm decidedly not good about linking in my posts and need to improve on this. I also want to start linking to my own past blog posts as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this tip!
Helen, I am so NOT techie, but I'm learning. I need to play with this a bit to get it to work.
ReplyDeleteI'm a firm believer in giving helping hands and I want to mention blogs/websites I've read that address something in one of the articles in my blog or link to one of the 25 blogs I do read when there is a good article I think people would find interesting. So this series has been helpful.
Enjoy your travels. :-)
Good advice, Helen. I need to do more linking. As for Ft. Lauderdale, I was at Deerfield Beach two weekends ago. Wish I was back there; it's cold here. When we visited Key
ReplyDeleteWest a few years ago, I had my wife make a picture of me standing at the door to Hemingway's studio. Next time we're there, I want to stay at the southernmost house in the U.S. It was a neat place.
Enjoy the warmth. There's rumor the mini ice age of 2009 will lift sometime before June here in the northeast.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your advice about social networking. Can one ever do enough?
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