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What I learned in ten years of blogging

ferrucc.io

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Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#21

Post by dazc »

andrenth wrote: post #18
cantthinkofone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a feature or a byproduct? It doesn't make sense to me on the surface that a larger text would be linked to more necessarily. The length of a text doesn't seem like it would factor into the outcome of the page ranking unless I'm missing something. How would you determine what is a "good" or "bad" article, given a reader's preferences rather than one that simply gets associated most regularly with a search quer…

As I understand it, Google (and others?) rank pages higher if the time spent on them is high. Long text takes longer to read, so it's a way to increase that metric. Another explanation I've seen is for ranking longer texts higher is that longer text is assumed to be of higher quality because it's more content/took more work to produce/whatever. Whatever the reason, this leads to the rambling articles I mentioned, whi…

Such is the logic but, in reality, a long-winded article is just as likely to have folks heading for the back button in no time at all?

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#22

Post by justpassingby- »

Eh, none of this really matters unless you actually care whether or not anyone is reading your content. I've been blogging random thoughts and assorted happenings in my life since 2002, and it's all out there on the public interwebz, but I write for an audience of one - me. If any poor soul happens to stumble across it, then that's their bad luck.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#23

Post by Cthulhu_ »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #20

This is good stuff. I blog for fun and I agree with almost everything here, especially the stuff about advertising. I am not against advertising in general but putting ads on your page is an acknowledgment that you care more about money than writing what you want. There is nothing morally wrong with this, but it turns a hobby into a job. Lastly, I encourage everyone to publish blogs or articles. Each blog post on an…

I like the current trend of being able to support e.g. bloggers (or youtubers, or whoever) via Patreon; I do believe there should be multiple providers of the same service because right now Patreon has too much influence / mindspace, but it's a good alternative for advertisement - not as scummy, and much more reliable. $1 / month / fan is nice. I follow one youtuber (and not the annoying screamy meme type) who seems to have 13.000 Patrons.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#24

Post by cf498 »

cantthinkofone wrote: post #14
nyc111 wrote: post #4

> The design of your site is irrelevant. But it helps if the font is legible in all media. Good, straightforward advice, better than many similar articles. Personally, in my blog, I only write what I like. I also do what he says about editing and linking old articles.

Any blog IMO should have a minimalist design. You want to draw attention to the content and present it as plainly and with as little visual clutter as possible. Some people want to use their blog as a kind of interactive CV but that should be treated as a separate project, as it will just introduce more clutter.

> Any blog IMO should have a minimalist design. You want to draw attention to the content and present it as plainly and with as little visual clutter as possible.

There is a German blog who hit "minimalist" rather well. http://blog.fefe.de/

Tbh, I prefer this kind of representation not just when it comes to blogs. Hackernews is another great example for "less is more".

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#25

Post by andrenth »

dazc wrote: post #21
andrenth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, Google (and others?) rank pages higher if the time spent on them is high. Long text takes longer to read, so it's a way to increase that metric. Another explanation I've seen is for ranking longer texts higher is that longer text is assumed to be of higher quality because it's more content/took more work to produce/whatever. Whatever the reason, this leads to the rambling articles I mentioned, whi…

Such is the logic but, in reality, a long-winded article is just as likely to have folks heading for the back button in no time at all?

Yes, in practice the user will either get angry for having to dig for the useful stuff or simply give up.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#26

Post by josefresco »

Mnlfrgr wrote: post #12
qwerty456127 wrote: post #2

> No one has time to read your article, write the first lines like they’re a TLDR. So true! > For SEO don’t write short articles (>2000 words) So sad!

That long articles are necessary to rank in Google is a myth. https://twitter.com/mnlfrgr/status/1074653395997388800

2000 words has never been the SEO optimal or standard length for articles. I've been involved in SEO for many, many years, 500 was always the standard.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#27

Post by andy_wrote »

> Spend 50% of the writing time actually writing, the rest tweaking, reading and illustrating. Details are important.

I find this true not just of blog posts, but any time I've done formal writing at all. There is an immense gulf in quality between writing that has gone through even just one heavy edit/revision process and writing that never has.

I've recently been encouraging my technical co-workers to expend more time on not-code, such as documentation, tutorials, plans, postmortems, internal RFCs, carefully worded PR/commit comments, etc. One challenge is that people sometimes think that when they "finish" a piece of writing, they're done. Unless you've been iteratively revising pieces of it in smaller chunks, I think you're really only halfway there.

Re: What I learned in ten years of blogging

#29

Post by paulpauper »

For SEO don’t write short articles (>2000 words)

Just more vague tips that maybe worked for him and won't for most. i have several articles on my own blog/website that are over 4000 words and all original content. Want to guess how much search engine traffic they get? Z-e-r-o

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