Your first 50 words are really important. These will show in post grids related to your post, so make them count. Use your keywords! If “tech practice post” is what people are likely to use to search for your information, include “tech practice” in your title and in your first paragraph.
The previous paragraph is exactly 50 words. It goes by fast! Please look at the posts you’ve written and notice what comes across in those 50 words. Do you grab attention? Is it clear to a potential reader that your post contains what they’re looking for? I use a lot of post grids on our site, so please be aware of what will show in the grids, like this one.
Headings are important
When you want to make a header, click on the + in the upper left of the screen, and select “heading”. On our site, the title of a post is automatically at the size “H2”. Our style is to use “H3” for the main level section headers, such as the one above. For sections within a section (subheadings), use the size “H4”, as in the next header below. There are three reasons to use headers.
1. Search Engine Optimization
We need to optimize our website so search engines like Google correctly identify our website as relevant to people interested in paganism, Wicca, Goddess spirituality, earth spirituality and nature spirituality (prime search terms!), and how these types of spirituality intersect with music. The headers in each blog post get way more weight than words within paragraphs, so they are excellent places to put search words our audience is likely to use.
2. Organization
It really is true that when reading blogs, especially reading them on a cell phone, it is easier for the reader to follow what you’re saying if you put in headers. It’s a gift to your readers. You really have to write them in as you’re composing. It takes a lot of rewriting for me to create headers for you. Please include them yourself. Here’s an example of a post by Alane that makes good use of headers.
3. Within-page jumps
Headers are also anchors within your post that you can let readers jump to. When you’re ready to add this function, check out this article. I use them on our Music and Magic How-to page.
Our new best friend, Yoast SEO
If you scroll to the bottom of your post, you’ll find an area labeled Yoast SEO. This is a plugin I’ve installed that helps us with Search Engine Optimization.
Focus keyphrase
The focus keyphrase is the set of words you think people looking for your information are most likely to type into the Google search bar. Decide what this is, and enter it in the box. This is the same search keyword phrase that you put in your title and into your first paragraph.
The snippet
Let’s look at the little description that comes up in Google when one of our blog posts appears in someone’s Google search. <Go to Google, bring up some examples.> If we do nothing, Google will use its mighty algorithm to select some sentences from your post and put them in the snippet. The thing is, people look at that snippet to decide whether to go to our website. Yoast lets us write our own snippets. Click on “edit snippet” and you’ll get a “meta description” box to write in. Create a snippet that makes the bar go green–not too short, not too long to fit in Google’s snippet space. You’ll be able to see what your Google snippet looks like, with boldface for your focus keyphrase.
Readability
Click on the readability header and you’ll see Yoast’s analysis of your writing. Now, don’t get mad if it criticizes you. You may be a wonderful writer, but is your writing ideal for the blog environment? I find that Yoast is usually right. Try to edit your work so that Yoast gives you a green smiley face. In particular, keep your paragraphs short. Cell phone readers won’t stay and read if they see huge blocks of words on their screens.
Monetizing our website: Amazon Affiliates
Yep, monetizing means getting the website to make enough money to pay for its own expenses, then to surge forward to feed cash into the next recording project.
We are currently trying to get three–just three–Amazon purchases through our website so that we can start collecting money. If you can, include at least one product in your blog post that the reader could buy. Don’t force the product in there, but do be open to helping the reader acquire useful resources. Putting in links to relevant CDs sold by other pagan bands is an easy way to do this. Tara does a great job with this in her Croning posts.
Take the first step
The simple way (for YOU) to do this is to go search on Amazon for the item you can promote. Get the item’s link from the bar at the top of the item’s page, and use the hyperlink function to paste it onto the relevant words in your writing. When I check over your post, I’ll see it there and I’ll insert the correct code so our store will get credit if someone buys that item. Get the bedspread, Too.
Step out on your own
The simple way (for ME) is for you to embed the code yourself. First, let me know you want to venture forth into product linking and I’ll add you as a user. Sign into https://affiliate-program.amazon.com. Click on “product linking”–>”product links”. Put the name of the product or its code into the box. Click GO. Find your item in the list, and click “get link”. I use “text only” but you’re welcome to experiment with other choices. Click “standard link” and copy the code in the box. Now go to your blog post and put that into the hyperlink on your words about the item. Once you get used to it, it’s easy.
We get credit for anything purchased, whether it was the initial product they clicked through on or not.
Selling our music is monetizing, too!
Please use opportunities to mention our albums, and provide a link to CDBaby where they can be purchased.
- Crow Goddess: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/crowwomen
- Crow Magic: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/crowwomen2
- Seasons: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/crowwomen3
You should also promote individual songs whenever it’s relevant. One easy way is to link to the song’s page, which always includes a link to buy the track/album. You can also embed a YouTube video for one of our songs (or another artist’s song) by using either an “embed” or a “YouTube” block.
Hang in there, just a few more things
Images are an SEO bonanza
Yes, images make a post much more appealing. My life is much happier if you learn to insert your own featured photo and within-post photos. Please, please find/take/download photos for your blogs.
Let’s click on the above photo and notice where we can insert text for SEO purposes. Use the caption. Use the alt text box. Before uploading the image, give it an SEO friendly name. If you forgot, go to the image itself in the Media Library, select “edit image”, and bless it with a searchable title.
A richly linked website is favored by Google
Any kind of link will boost us up through Google toward that coveted first page.
- Experiment with using links within a page (a.k.a. page jumps)
- It’s easy to link from one page or blog post on our website to another place on our website
- Find ways to incorporate links to other websites, especially big, frequently updated ones
- Reach out to other pagan bands and ask for links from their website to our website
Thanks for making it to the end!
There’s lots more I could say, but those are things that I think will streamline the process for me and boost readership for you. Let’s make our website a success!