Your blog doesn’t get a ton of traffic.
Your blog doesn’t display great contextual ads. Or maybe you don’t want to use contextual ads because you feel it devalues the overall quality of your blog.
Now what?
Blogrolls are everywhere. Almost every blog has one…that endless list of links along the sidebar on the left or right of the content. Sometimes they’re categorized, sometimes they’re displayed alphabetically. Sometimes they’re tossed in there seemingly at random. Who can tell anymore?
Blogrolls are useful. But, they’ve gotten a bit out of hand.
When I first started blogging I was interested in finding humorous and satirical blogs to start generating some buzz for IGotNewsForYou. One of the fastest ways of finding those blogs was through people’s blogrolls. I’d find a good satirical blog, poke around a bit and then launch a whackload of other sites into new browser windows looking for similarly good content.
When it came time to look for marketing and PR blogs, I took the same tactic. Find a couple of good blogs, scour their blogrolls and you’re all set. More than enough great content to feed me for quite some time!
For people just getting into blogging (both reading and publishing), a good blogroll is essential.
Mark Evans questions the value of the blogroll, and rightfully so:
…I would argue many blogrolls are either collecting dust or have become outdated. For people still keen on growing their blogrolls, the problem is the larger they become, the harder they are to navigate.
My own research shows that this is definitely the case. People forget about their blogrolls. They’re rarely updated. And, as a person gets more familiar with consuming blog content, they start to ignore blogrolls altogether. I don’t remember the last time I’ve used someone’s blogroll to find new content.
Still, I went ahead and put up a blogroll anyway in the form of a Resources page. Call it a test…
I didn’t want to clutter my sidebar so I chose to put the links on a separate page, categorized by areas of interest for me (and hopefully others.) I ignored the page almost immediately after putting it up, but I’ve recently started adding links to it again.
In the last 2 months my Resources page has received 130 unique visitors. That’s not a ton, but it’s not bad. Hopefully people found something useful there.
Even if the blogroll is becoming less effective as a way of finding new blogs for more experienced blog consumers, it’s still a nice way of linking to others that are important to you. And it can help in generating links back as well. Lynn Terry at ClickNewz linked back to me after I added a link to her site.
So…with a bit of research, testing and validation, here’s what I’ve gathered:
The best thing to do with your blogroll is keep it active, updated and organized into logical categories of importance to your audience.
This is the fourth and final part of a multi-part series on fine tuning your blog through research, testing and validation. The first part was Increasing RSS Feed Subscribers. The second part was Making Money From Your Blog. The third part was Why an ABOUT Page Is So Important.
Who are you?
What do you do for a living?
Why should I care what you write?
That’s why you need an ABOUT page. And a well-written one…with some details and thought.
Too many people ignore their ABOUT page. Awhile ago (can’t remember where I heard about this), there was a meme going around about doing searches on Technorati (I think) for all the default About pages that people never change from the WordPress theme setup. Funny, but sad…so sad…
Over the month of October, my About page received 302 unique visitors, with an Exit % of 33.7% (which means 66.3% of the people that visited the page went on to other pages of the blog.
Recently, I updated my About page using Laura Allen’s 15 Second Pitch. The goal was to get more people to contact me.
Specifically, I wrote:
Give me a call for a free 30 minute consultation to find out how I can help you build your business.
Since that’s gone up, 3 people have gotten in touch with me. They emailed (no calls yet!) and the dialogues have continued. One person asked me some advice on a business idea he had. That was a great honor for me, and it’s been uber-fun chatting with that person. The other two were looking for help/advice on their blogs…
I can’t be sure any of these people checked out my About page (I didn’t ask) but it makes me think that putting a call to action there has helped. It certainly doesn’t hurt!
The two biggest mistakes people make (short of not writing a proper About page at all) are that they don’t including contact information and they don’t update it. Even re-reading mine for the purpose of writing this blog post, I notice some tweaking that’s needed (although I’ve got plenty of contact information.)
Here’s what I know (from my research, testing and validation):
Go read your About page now. Please. Fix it up. Tell me who you are, what you’re about, why I should care, and how I can get in touch. Cause I will…and so will a ton of other people too.
This is the third part of a multi-part series on fine tuning your blog through research, testing and validation. The first part was Increasing RSS Feed Subscribers. The second part was Making Money From Your Blog.
Very few of us will ever earn enough off our blogs to quit our day jobs. OK, but if we could earn a few extra bucks per month … why not, right? A little extra disposable income never hurt anyone.
I’ve used a few services for advertising on Instigator Blog, including:
I’ve also gotten a sponsor, and talked to others about a few sponsorship-related ideas.
I haven’t done any affiliate marketing yet.
No blog is perfect.
There’s always room for improvement, and you can continually improve your blog through research, testing and validation. Research doesn’t involve years of study with control groups, lab animals and six thousand page thesis papers. It can be anecdotal and trend-watching.
Recently, I’ve made some changes to Instigator Blog. Most are quite subtle, but I’m trying some things out to try and improve what I’ve got to offer. A few things I’m on-the-fence about; hopefully you’ll kick my arse to either side with your feedback!
I’m going to tackle one or two of these things per post to avoid overwhelming all of us, and hopefully to generate some focused dialogue…(hint, hint - please comment!)
This is done via the fairly prominent orange icon in the top right-hand corner (feel free to click it and subscribe!)
THE RESEARCH
The top right-hand corner just isn’t prime real estate on a web page (neither is the right sidebar.) Take a look at some heatmap studies, where they track people’s attention on a web page to determine what people look at the most. Here’s another example of a heatmap showing less-than-optimal placements for Google ads.
But, with the design I’ve got, the orange icon does stand out, so that’s where I’ve left it.
And the top right-hand corner is quite a common spot for subscription icons. Just take a look at some popular and well-designed blogs like copyblogger and Techcrunch.
So I’m fairly comfortable with the location of the subscribe icon, but what I’m not sure about is whether the pulldown that appears when you mouseover the icon is useful or effective. Try it and tell me.
Why did I put all those options? Again, I’m leaning on some anecdotal evidence and trend-watching. Quite a few popular blogs (see: Seth’s Blog and Steve Pavlina’s blog) are displaying multiple subscription icons/options. Plenty of less popular blogs are doing it as well, most probably experimenting like I am.
I also didn’t want a laundry list sucking up sidebar space. “Above the fold” is an important concept for all bloggers to understand. Simply put - your most important content needs to be visible without forcing a user to scroll. Plenty of people talk about this online, even spa operators (yes, there’s a blog about online marketing for spas, salons and massage therapists!)
THE TESTING
So to avoid using up my entire sidebar with subscription options I found a script that created the pulldown. I like it because it gives people lots of options, but I don’t like it because it gives people lots of options. Make sense?
I’ve never liked it because it requires 3 steps to subscribe - mouseover the icon, look at the pulldown, and click on the one of your choice. If I only had one option, it’d take 2 actions - mouseover and click. So am I making it harder for people to subscribe?
It’s hard to test. There are simply too many variables on the blog that dictate whether people subscribe or not (quality of content, whether a post gets voted up on a social media site, etc.)
I can look at some subscription data and see if that helps:
Going with this, I might consider showing Bloglines, Rojo and NewsGator Online options (Firefox Live Bookmarks is a Firefox extension in the browser.) Some will be surprised by the % for Rojo which has never been as popular as other services.
The most recent change I’ve made is to add a “help” page related to subscribing. I’ve read a few times (I wish I remembered where!) that adding a bit of helpful information on what subscribing is all about and how someone might do it does encourage people to subscribe. So you’ll see a link directly underneath the orange button up top titled, Learn How To Subscribe.
THE VALIDATION
At this point it’s up to you. I can’t run ultra-controlled, scientifically sound experiments to validate my blog fine tuning, but I can go to you and ask for help:
If you have any other suggestions, ideas or questions about RSS subscriptions, please comment!
Ultimately, I hope to get some discussion going and start to formulate some ideas on best practices when it comes to providing subscription options on your blog. By participating you can help the greater community of bloggers learn something and improve their own blogs!
I'm Benjamin Yoskovitz, CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs. I've been an entrepreneur in the Web for 10+ years, with a particular focus on blogging and social media for the last two. This blog covers my topics of interest, including startups, entrepreneurship, business, blogging and social media. You'll also find content on personal development, productivity and marketing.
