Blog Optimizing Using Chris Garrett’s Blog Critique Session
Blog Optimizing Using Chris Garrett's Blog Critique Session
I have been following Chris Garrett, a professional blogger from UK for a long time now. This summer he took over a project of reviewing or critiquing other blogs from his point of view. So far he has reviewed three blogs and after reading all those I was asking myself the following questions:
- What will be the interpretation from those critiquing sessions for anyone who reads those reviews? OR
- What should be the take away from those reading? OR
- What essential parts that a blog need to stand out from the crowd from Chris’s eyes?
So, I took some of the notes and compiled the following list what everyone blogger should look into if they want to stand out from the crowd. One thing that I wanted to add that, this is a broad and general blog optimization ideas that should be used as a guiding tool and instead of looking at as the only way, use this template to add your own thoughts and personality into your blog.
Topic Selection Optimization:
- Find an underserved topic. This way you should be able to target a niche audience rather everyone. Use google trends for your use.
- Target “specific” topic versus everything or everyone.
Blog structure optimization:
- Simplify you blog’s Layout. Cut down the mumbo jumbo and make it simple and easy to follow.
- Play with the brightness of color. Use bright colors to draw attention not for layouts.
- Use images with a link instead of using too many words. Use images for “subscribe me” and/or for “share this” etc.
- Blog visitors need to know where they are. Having a “meta tag” in you title or “site description” should get you there.
- Personalize your blog as much as you can. Add an about page with details about you and your thought behind your blogs. Add a picture into your profile is possible.
- Engage the reader in a conversation by ending your blog posts with questions rather comments or statements. Start making your reading think and also use action words to push a bit into commenting and thus interacting with you and others.
- Spark conversations by asking others to engage. Use open-ended questions (Questions that don’t have any right or wrong answer) ..
Reading Experience Optimization:
- Use subheads, bullets and quotes in you blog posts
- Highlight some of the portions is needed.
- Use your real name as the author the offer a more personalized feeling to your readers.
Engaging Optimization:
- Use subscribe, social media buttons at the end of the post
- Use them on your sidebars as well.
Moneymaking channels Optimization:
- Consider Affiliate ads.
- Look into selling your won product.
- Approach advertisers who want to target your audiences.
I really want you to understand the power Chris’s reviews. Just in case you didn’t know, that any problogger will charge you somewhere $500/hr for a blog consulting over the phone and here you are getting those advices for FREE. I have also emailed this post link to Chris and I will keep you guys updated if I hear back from him. So, stay tuned for more and feel free you add your 2 cents.
That is a great summary – nice work
The main advice I give to bloggers is to remember their audience. What do they want/need? Why are you the person to give it to them?
Because of the success of Problogger, Shoemoney and John Chow, thousands of people thought the road to success was to create a blog about making money, but they forgot that people read those famous blogs because they were *already* successful. Nobody wants to read about how to make money from someone who has yet to make a dollar
So you have to answer
1) what your blog is about
2) who it is for
3) the benefits of reading
4) why read your blog rather than anyone else’s
5) where to start
Get that right and the rest becomes much easier