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06 Dec 09 4 Easy Rules of Blogging

In this post, I will tell you about your readers, and what make them stay on your website, read, comment, and connect. I call it “easy rules”, and I have used this nomenclature to call these rules easy because if you go by the ground rule laid down here, you will make life of your visitors much easier.

Easy Rule 1: Make your blog easy for the readers to scan

Design is the first thing, a visitor to your website notices. The more intuitive, and clutter free your design will be the more visitors will come and stay on your page. The blog design should look inviting. Do not go for those clumsy too-many-columns magazine designs, and do not use too many flashy objects on your page.

Easy Rule 2: Make it easier for the readers to read (scan)

Do not make your articles too complex. Use easy-to-read language, short paragraphs, and break your blog-posts into several sub-heading. This will add white space to your text, making it more readable. When on the Internet, people tend to scan the page to see if it is worth their time, before they begin reading.

Easy Rule 3: Make it easier for the readers to comment

Do not make commenting a nightmare by adding too complex a captcha, “sign-up before you comment” system, or any other means of dissuading readers to write. I will go so far as to tell you that do away with the captcha thing. If you are worried about spam comments, then that is the issue you have to handle on the backend. Your genuine visitors should not be asked to handle spam problem for you.

Easy Rule 4: Make it easier for the reader to connect

Josh came to your blog, he read it, liked it, and got excited. He now wants to subscribe to your blog, but what the heck, where is the subscription link? Moreover, why the hell it is so complex? Well, I hope you got the message. Make subscribing easier for the readers. Put the “subscribe now” button above the fold, and make it 2-step process.

What else, do you think will make the life of your blog visitors easy? Use the comment box and let me know your view. By the way, the comment system in here is easy to use.

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24 Nov 09 SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – III

In this part of e-commerce website optimization tips, we will see how much content is valuable and what mistakes does many e-commerce website when it comes to creating content for their website. This is the third post of the series, and I will help you tackle the problem of duplicate content that is hindering your upward movement in search engine listing.

Content

Writing content for your e-commerce website is the trickiest of all. Many people err here, which jeopardize their effort to optimize their e-commerce website for major search engines. Let’s see what we need to do to avoid this mistake.

Product description

This is the most potent area where search engines bury the red flag of duplicate content deep in the ground.

Most e-commerce websites commit the crime (note I have used the word crime not mistake or blunder) of lifting the product description directly from the manufacturer’s website. They select the product description of the product they are promoting, and copy it from manufacturer’s website and paste it in their CMS thinking they have done hell of a labor.

This is a huge mistake. Do not just copy product description, write your own. Duplicate content is not good.

User generate product review

Encourage your customers to write review about the product they have purchased. Ask them to write honest reviews about their purchase. This is good way to get original content for your e-commerce website.

iFrame and duplicate content

There are times when we cannot do without copying and pasting content from manufacturer’s site into your website like copying the product specification.

This is a big problem. If you copy specification from manufacturer’s website then essentially you are creating duplicate content, but if you do not copy them then how would you write specifications? You cannot possibly reword it for all the products.

How to do it?

It is here that iframe comes into play. If you have to use duplicate content then use it inside an iframe. This way you will avoid penalty. And keep the iframe borderless. This way your visitors will not come to know that the content they are viewing is not there. You can use iframe to solve any duplicate content problem in your website when you have to use same content on many pages.

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