Author Archive for Guru

Guru is the SEO persona of mother, blogger and freelance writer, Hannah Grace Gamis. She spends her spare time shuffling back and forth to doctors' offices, managing the household, watching movies, and developing her latest project the "Special Child", which she just doesn't seem to have any time for.

Sep | 01 | 2010

Blog Usability: Navigation Elements

Posted by Guru as Design, Tips As I promised in my previous post I will be listing down ways you can make it easier for readers to look for the information they need in your blog. The truth is that this is all you need to do is give readers several options to navigate through your blog. This is very easy nowadays since most blog tools (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.) automatically generate the code for you. All you need to do is drag and drop and of course specify some fields. Some of the most common and useful ways to help your readers find the information they ...

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Aug | 24 | 2010

Blog Usability: Looking for Information

Posted by Guru as Design One of the great things about blogs is that they are updated really frequently, at least when compared to static websites. Because of the constant influx of new posts you can be sure that a blog generates lots of information. This is a good thing but just like papers that keep on piling up in your desk it can become almost impossible for people other than the writer to look for the specific information needed without specific instructions on where to look. With blogs the site structure is pretty simple since everything is organised chronologically. However this structure is virtually useless ...

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Aug | 17 | 2010

Blog Usability: Page Title

Posted by Guru as Design, Tips One of the most important aspects of blog usability is the choice of page titles. The blog name usually appears as the page title (Note that when I mention page title this means the text that appears on the tab). This is good practice since it will make it easy for your readers easier to find the tab that contains your blog in case they shift to another tab to browse other sites. However, in case your blog name is not that descriptive or somewhat cryptic what you should do is add a phrase to describe the contents of your ...

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Aug | 10 | 2010

Blog Usability: An Introduction

Posted by Guru as Design Blogs have a very basic design with the blog title/header, tagline, content, and sidebar(s). Despite the fact that most blogs basically make use of the same elements the difference between the feel of various blogs is very noticeable. Many blogs with just the most basic of elements use very straightforward navigation but end up really boring and offers no real choice when it comes to looking for more specific information. Some blogs are littered with too many ads and obviously exist mainly to generate profit. On the other hand, there are blogs that really do stand out in terms of ...

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Jun | 13 | 2008

Building your blog brand step by step

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, Promotion, SEO Features Building your blog's brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you'll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you're putting up is just a front and not really who the people behind the blog are. To make sure you build a solid image some of the things you should: 1. Sit down and decide the image you wish you wish to portray - More than just deciding ...

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Jun | 10 | 2008

Blogging and Branding

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization One way to keep your readers loyal is by creating/building a brand for your blog. Branding is not exclusive to company products being sold but can be used by anybody who wants to "sell" anything. According to Wikipedia a brand is actually "a customer experience represented by a collection of images and ideas." What this means is that if you want to create a brand for your blog what you need to is to create a unique/distinct customer/reader experience that regular readers can relate to. Brand building for you blog has will results in some benefits some of which include: greater loyalty ...

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Jun | 07 | 2008

Number of Links: How Much is Just Right?

Posted by Guru as Linking, Tips When it comes to inbound links the rule we all know that the more we get the merrier SEOs will be. Of course that's assuming that the inbound links are quality/relevant links. We don't want links from flagged sites (spammers). When it comes to the number of links you should insert per blog entry do you have a rule? For those who do not know how much they should link out to other sites here are a few tips that might be of help to you. 1. Link whenever needed - This means that there is no magic number. You should only ...

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May | 27 | 2008

Adding Interest to your Blog: Formatting

Posted by Guru as Tips Too keep your blog pleasing to the eye without adding images what you can do is to: fix the layout of the blog format the text In terms of layout Blog-tutorials is definitely a good example. Blog posts are categorized and features entries for each major category are showcased. Since the blog has a very pleasing and colorful layout with images accompanying each featured category then this frees the blogger from having to come up with an accompanying image for each blog entry. What happens is that we only need to add images when we really feel the need to. When it comes to ...

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May | 26 | 2008

Adding Interest to your Blog: Images and Multi-media Content

Posted by Guru as Images, Tips Though I rarely add images in my posts here and have lots of pure text entries, it is actually advisable to occasionally add other elements to your blog posts to keep it more interesting. Remember you do not want one time readers only but want to get people to keep on returning. Making sure that your blog is pleasing to the eye (and never ending long lines of text is definitely NOT pleasing to the eye) is one way to make the blog more interesting and worth checking out regularly. So what are the things you should insert in your post ...

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May | 19 | 2008

Linkbait: How Much and How Often?

Posted by Guru as Marketing and Search Optimization, Promotion, SEO Features We would all love to be such great bloggers that each and every post would be considered by other bloggers worhty enough to mention and link to. Realistically though it is impossible to come up with a post that hundreds or even just dozens will link back to each and every day. If you keep on trying to come up with a blog post worthy enough to be on the front page of Digg each and everyday you'll probably end up either burnt out in a really short time or really frustrated. More realistically you'll end up being both. So how ...

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