I couldn’t think of a blogging-relevant topic that began with “H” so I thought I would revisit my favorite letter in the alphabet, “E.”

Courtesy of writeanovelfast.com

Do you write in your blog, hit publish and forget about it? If so, you are missing a valuable opportunity. Write your post- go back over it and find ways to make it better. It’s true: the better editor you are, the better writer you will become.

When I think of an editor, a few things come to mind.

• Creating content/assignments
• Enforcing Deadlines
• Consistency
• Spelling/Grammar
• Word Count

Let’s start with the first…

Creating content/assignments

As a blogger, you are responsible for creating good content. This means, giving yourself stellar assignments. As an editor, if I get an idea, or know I need to write about a particular topic, the first question I ask myself is, “Why would anyone want to read this?”

If you don’t know the answer, you might need to reevaluate your editorial vision. Think about what you want to write, and how you can write it in a way that is appealing to your readers and potential new ones.

Enforcing deadlines

Deadlines are a way of life for writers, but so rarely do bloggers think of deadlines. I am guilty of not adhering to my own deadlines, and I am not sure why. I’ve found if I post a new post every day by 6 am, my site stats grow and grow. When I post at different times of the day, or not at all, my readership dies off.

Give yourself a goal of posting by a certain time every day. Try to stick with it, and your readers will expect your posts. I promise you’ll see results.

Consistency

If you look at any major newspaper, magazine, or communications department of an organization, you’ll find some sort of style guidelines. Maybe they adhere to AP style guidelines, or perhaps they have drafted their own set of guidelines, but whatever they use one thing is very important: consistency.

Are you consistent? If you need help developing your own style guidelines, check out these resources:

• AP Style Guide Online
• Web Style Guide

Spelling and Grammar

If you have spell check, use it. But word of warning:  don’t always trust it.

Word Count

I’ve heard it before:

I can’t limit my expression of creativity!

My readers love long posts!

I have so much to say!

And I am here to tell you this. No one – not even your Mother – wants to read a thousand words about your family’s vacation.

Put on your big-girl editing panties and get over it.

I try to keep my posts under 500 words. I appreciate when blog posts are short and sweet and to the point. If you need more than 500 words to get across your point, think about breaking up the post into two and creating a mini-series.

This is eighth in a series of blogging tips. A was for Audience, B was for Building your brand, C was for Creativity, D was for Design, E was for Evolution and F was for Fans and Followers, and G was for Google.

1 . Your recent career move has forced you (rightfully) to shift focus from blogging to, oh, I don’t know… major life-changing events. Did I mention I got a fabulous new position working from home full time? It’s been more of a lifestyle shift that just a career move… and it feels fabulous. Forgive me if I haven’t firmed up my agenda plans for BlogHer.

2. You just got your ticket 2 weeks ago. I know, a lot of you have been preparing for BlogHer ’10 since BlogHer ’09, but I didn’t get my ticket until just a few weeks ago when I decided not to purchase the BlogHer Business pass my former employer bought for me. Yes, I still wanted to go. And yes, I have Devon over at Mama Cheaps to thank for helping me out in such a pinch.

3. You just decided you might need a hotel… 1 week ago. Or something like that. The original plan was to take a bus or train or whatever up to the city each day of the conference, but the more I thought about it, and the more I saw information about parties and BlogHer events, I wanted to be near the action… which is where I will be. Near the action, not in it because…

4. You’ve waited too long for everything and now you are on several wait lists – not guest lists. Here is a conversation I recently had in my head.

Me: You don’t need to RSVP for parties… meh, no one will notice if you slip in.

Head: Um, people will notice.

Me: Yeah, but I’m cute. I if people will notice, surely, no one will care!

Head: Um, you’re not that cute.

Me: Well, how do I go about RSVPing anyway? It’s too late.

Head: Um, everything is wait listed. You are late to the party- literally.

Me: Well, there’s always Crumbs Bakery. I’d rather eat cupcakes than go to parties anyway.

Truth? I do want to go to parties. I do want to share martinis with some of my favorite bloggers. Am I sweating it? Nope. After all, we’ll be in NYC. It’s NYC for crying out loud! There’s ALWAYS something to do.

5. You haven’t looked at the agenda… at all. I know Each day of the conference starts…. at 9ish? Well before typical New Yorkers start working… and I know there are… um, things that go on all day… but I have barely looked at the agenda. I know I’ll go to plenty of interesting and useful sessions… but I’ll probably pick and choose the night before.

6. You still have no business cards. For some reason, up until last week, I thought BlogHer ’10 was months away. It felt like August was months away. But it’s July. Time flies…right out the door, which where my money is going to go to pay for overnight shipping charges, I’m sure. I need to get on this.

7. You haven’t tweeted once about what to wear at BlogHer ’10. So, unless you’ve been tweeting under a rock, you’ve seen numerous tweets that looked something like this.

Is it too dressy to wear {insert item of clothing} to BlogHer?

Is anyone else wearing heels to BlogHer?

What is everyone wearing to parties at BlogHer?

I haven’t given an out of thought as to what I am going to wear tomorrow let alone 2 weeks from now.

And, by the way, have you ever been to New York in the summer? In 98 degree heat and humidity? Let me let you in on a little secret: It sucks. And even I have a hard time looking fabulous in the heat and humidity. So while I may not have a clue as to what I am going to wear, I am pretty sure these will describe my overall look: Black, Comfortable, Light and Black. After all, it is New York.

8. You know a total of 5 people that are going to BlogHer. I am looking so forward to meeting in person a few of my favorite blogging people – as well as reconnecting with some other ladies I’ve seen at other events… but aside from that? Not sure who else will be there.

I see a lot of people tweeting each other as though they’re best buds connecting at a long lost family reunion… which is awesome. But where are my people? Is there a master list somewhere? Because that would be super helpful right now.

9. When you think of BlogHer ’10, you think of shopping the shoe department at Macy’s. … or Century 21, or Sephora, or anywhere south of Houston… Yes, NYC is the city for shopping. And Macy’s has a great shoe department. A full floor of shoes that may or may not be on sale. Sure, it’s Macy’s. And yes, I have a few Macy’s near me at home, but the Macy’s in Herald Square is just so much… more. Trust me on this one.

10. You’re still trying to figure out how you’ll lose 30 pounds before August 5th. Because in real life, we’re all a lot skinnier, right? Exactly….

Each Friday I recap the week. Tell me, what was Good/Bad and Fab about your week???

Good

Lots of good stuff this week… A great friend got engaged, the Bumblebee checked out A-OK at her 15-month well visit, and I got to speak to a great blogger-friend about meeting up in NYC for BlogHer.

But this made me laugh. My daughter’s “organizational” skills totally trump my husband’s once alphabetized extensive CD collection.

Owned.

Bad

As a way to sort of say “Screw You” my final day commuting from work got me a not so fabulous ticket. An expensive one.

And I wasnt the only driver. See, the police in Cherry Hill set up this little operation where a plain clothed cop stood at a pedestrian walkway. Every so often, he would get down off the curb to officially enter the pedestrian walkway. If you didn’t stop, you got pulled over by a cop standing in the road about 100 yards further down. You were shuttled into a parking lot and issued a very expensive ticket.

Here's everyone lined up after me.

Any advice about traffic court is greatly appreciated.

Fab!

My fab new home office where I will be working full time…. Excited beyond words!

What was Good/Bad/Fab about your week???

I’ve been in a mood for weddings. Maybe it’s because my friend Celeste just got engaged, and I am so happy for her and her hubby to be… Maybe it’s because I see my awesome wedding photographer posting wedding photos on his blog… Maybe it’s because I was missing my man while on vacation... but I had to pick this Writing Prompt from Mama Kat this week:

Write about your wedding song. What was it and why did you choose it?

Choosing wedding music in general is pretty tough, but this song… that first dance with your new spouse holds a lot of pressure.

When we were trying to pick a song, we had requirements: It had to be some sort of alt/indie/rock band or artist. It couldn’t be about death, it couldn’t be about breaking up. But that was tough, because all the pretty songs are about death and breaking up.

After pouring over music libraries for hours and running songs and artists through our minds for days, we chose a quiet, lovely song by Ben Folds called “The Luckiest.”

Photo by Douglas Benedict

As the title implies, it’s about feeling like you are the luckiest person alive because you found the one person who makes you wholly happy. It’s about standing by someone and imagining what life would be like without that person only to realize it would not be life at all.

It’s a beautiful song. And though it was a quiet song (I am pretty sure no one heard or knew the lyrics but us) it made us feel good. It made us realize how lucky we are.

And you know what? Listening to these lyrics still brings tears to my eyes.

Gone are the days when you could just whip up a snappy post, throw it up to Blogger or WordPress and let your traffic come. These days, bloggers need to be savvy about things like analytics, SEO and managing traffic sources like Twitter.

But there is one, giant traffic source each of us know well…

If the Blogosphere had a Bible, Google would be the index… and the index to the index. Google is the way people search for things online. Things like your content on your blog.

I’m not going to talk SEO here, because that is a topic for another day, but I think it is important for all of us to see how Google – or any search engine for that matter- “sees” your blog. Because if more people are using Google than any other search engine to search and discover content, don’t you want to know how Google is looking through your site?

I am in no way a Google know it all. In fact, I know very little…{and if you want to add to this post, please leave a comment} but there are 5 things I think as a blogger, you need to be aware of and at least have a tiny bit of understanding about.

3 ways Google searches your blog

1. Web robots, crawlers spiders- Oh my!

Google calls them robots, I like to think of them as crawly spiders…but not creepy. These “fingers” or “legs” crawl over your blog, identifying searchable terms. It’s the way Google determines if there is new and/or updated pages and content on your site.  Unlike a spider, the robot systematically looks through your blog. It’s programmed to look at text, links, and content like title posts.

2. Indexing your content

Once pages are crawled, Google processes the information it finds on your site and compiles a massive index of the content. What does it look for? Content tags, title tags and ALT tags.

Does those tags look familiar? They should. Each time you post, you have the option of not only categorizing your posts, but tagging your posts as well – or, providing relevant key words to describe what you are blogging about.

The ALT tags? Your photos. You know when you mouse over a photo, a small tag pops up with the title of that photo? That is an ALT tag and is searchable by Google.

So, for example, rather than call this photo what it is to me: A lot of work, if I want it to be searchable, I need to tag it as I would want others to search for it: Cupcake topper flag.

Everything you put on your site- be it video, photos or text content, should be tagged appropriately. What do I do? I think “How would I search for this on Google?” and that is my tag. Here is a great link for more information about tagging photos.

Perhaps the quickest way to optimize SEO {though we’re not talking SEO here today} is through meta tags. A meta tag is a hidden tag that lives in the <HEAD> of an HTML document. It is used to supply additional information about the HTML document. While we all use different themes in our blogs {I use Thesis and it is pretty explicitly labeled}, you should be aware of how to use meta tags in your blog.

3. Page Rank – more than a popularity contest

Or is it? Page rank, in Google’s terms, is:

the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank.

-from Google

What does this mean to me and you? The more tag, the more you use Google’s guidelines to help you along the way, the better your page will rank and the higher it will show up in its search results.

But another thing to consider is, getting back to content, how Google views the overall content of your blog- not just your tags and meta tags. It also looks at fonts {using the headline font rather than just bolding important points in your post}, and placement of text to rank your page.

That’s pretty cool stuff, no? And pretty damn intimidating.

Personally, I can’t say I think about every single post like I should when it comes to tagging, but if I have a great post that I think can get a lot of traction, I’ll research keywords for tagging, I will choose photos that are appropriate and search-friendly,and I’ll take the time to really think about headers, font styles and titles.

For more information about Google, and for tools you can use as a site owner, visit their Webmaster essentials page. I found the links and information to be really useful and while I am still no expert on SEO and optimizing my blog for Google, I think I am on my way.

This is seventh in a series of blogging tips. A was for Audience, B was for Building your brand, C was for Creativity, D was for Design, E was for Evolution and F was for Fans and Followers.