While searching for ways to optimize my WordPress blogs, I came across a video of a presentation given by John Pozadzides at Dallas WordCamp on 29 March 2008. John has posted the text from his talk on this blog – 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog.

These are the tips I picked up from that 1-hour session. You can also watch the video at Viddler.

Good blogging etiquette

• Write your blog post as if that post is the only one your visitors will ever read on your site.

• Review everything! Places you visit, things you buy, services, etc. Then monetize your blog by adding Amazon links and Adsense.

• Always include at least one image per post.

• Host the image on your site rather than hot-linking to Flickr or any other site. Not only does this ensure reliability of the image, but it also drives image search results to your own site.

• An audience member asked about what the optimal size for a blog post was. John replied that you should mix-up big and small posts. Sometimes write a big post, other times write small posts. This prevents reader fatigue.

Make your blog personal

• Try to make your blog as personal as possible.

• Have an author biography on your site. Something where readers can find out about the author. This is builds a rapport and gives you credibility.

• Have photos of yourself – facial recognition is important, and enhances credibility by showing who you are. It is better to be “transparant” rather than hidden.

• John mentionned a pyramid of familiarity. Your written blog is at the bottom/base of the pyramid. The next level up is audio where visitors can hear you, followed by video where they can both see and hear you. At the highest level is face-to-face personal contact with the blog author.

SEO & Usability

• Showing “Related posts” at the bottom of each posting is good for both visitors and search engine spiders. There are plugins that do this.

• Showcase your most important articles on your footer. John’s site is a good example where he has linked to his most important posts at the bottom of the page.

• Incorporate a print stylesheet into your theme so that visitors can print it out. There is a plugin called wp-print for this.

• When you make a link, don’t use “Click here” as the anchor text. When you link with keywords that describe the link, you will not only be adding value for your reader, but you will also be adding keywords to your page for free!

• Allow readers to setup email and RSS subscriptions to your site. Feedburner will let you set this up easily. Put the subscription links at the top of the page! (My only reservation is this – how many people in your target audience (i.e. non-tech people) actually use RSS or email subscriptions?)

• Use full RSS feeds rather than partial, because at the bottom of the post it will display “Related posts” and people might click on that.

• Allow readers to comment immediately – add the Akismet & Bad Behaviour plugins, then turn off comment moderation and relax!.

• Show recent and top commentors (“meet the commenters”). There is plugin for this. It helps encourage discussion, and spreads link love.

• Add a recent comments plugin.

• Submit your site to Digg – but only for the best articles though.

• Don’t show the entire posting on the home page – use the “home page excerpts” plugin and this will both avoid duplicate content penalties and give you more page views.

• “Friends don’t show ads to friends.” Regular visitors are unlikely to click on your ads, so you are diluting your click-thru-ratios by showing them ads. There is a plugin that stops your site from showing ads to registered users.

• Use the “wp super cache” plugin to speed up your site and make it resilient towards being Digged or SlashDotted.

Blog stats

• John introduced a new site called Woopra which is still in Beta. Interestingly, it seems Woopra is suitable for any website (not just blogs) and is poised to challenge Google Analytics. (I have opened an account but am still waiting for it to be activated.)

Thanks John, you certainly gave me lots to think about!