Founder/Editor in Chief @ Tech Up Your Life and Cup of Moe. Bylines @ WhistleOut, MakeUseOf, TechBeacon, DZone, SmartHomeBeginner, DVD Netflix, Electromaker, and Electropages.
Location
Carrboro, NC
Education
English BA, Creative Writing Minor from UNC Chapel Hill
1) Don't worry about how it sounds. As an English major that concentrated on English lit/Creative Writing in uni, when I started blogging I felt compelled to make my writing flowery. There's definitely a time and a place for that, but with blogging, often simple is better.
2) Start your own website! In addition to my day job, I've got a modestly successful consumer tech website, Tech Up Your Life that I wish I'd started sooner. Writing for other sites, whether freelance or full-time is great. But investing in your own site (and then syndicating on sites like DEV) is an awesome idea.
3) Learn SEO. If you want your blog posts to be seen, they'll need to rank well in Google. Search engine optimization is a complete game-changer that helped me grow my site from scratch to over 100K pageviews (#ShamelessPlug but I teach those strategies in an online course that I created). Of course, you need to make sure your blog posts are high-quality and informative, not mere keyword spaghetti, but an SEO-first approach helps you figure out what information you need to include in an article in order to get your articles to rank.
I'm a friendly, non-dev, cisgender guy from NC who enjoys playing music/making noise, hiking, eating veggies, and hanging out with my best friend/wife + our 3 kitties + 1 greyhound.
Big fan of "Don't worry about how it sounds..." I found that my style got more and more casual the minute I left school. The reality of it is, I like to read stuff that is more casual — it feels more real to me.
Founder/Editor in Chief @ Tech Up Your Life and Cup of Moe. Bylines @ WhistleOut, MakeUseOf, TechBeacon, DZone, SmartHomeBeginner, DVD Netflix, Electromaker, and Electropages.
Location
Carrboro, NC
Education
English BA, Creative Writing Minor from UNC Chapel Hill
I totally agree - casual writing does sound more real, and therefore more trustworthy. And I'd guess that's true for most folks. To quote one of my poetry professors from university, "we learn the rules so that we can break them properly." Formal writing guidelines are suggestions rather than laws.
Founder/Editor in Chief @ Tech Up Your Life and Cup of Moe. Bylines @ WhistleOut, MakeUseOf, TechBeacon, DZone, SmartHomeBeginner, DVD Netflix, Electromaker, and Electropages.
Location
Carrboro, NC
Education
English BA, Creative Writing Minor from UNC Chapel Hill
Absolutely, @petermortensen
! Basically, before I sit down to write an article, I do research to figure out what topics and sub-topics I need to cover in an article in order to fully convey a topic or answer a query. A good place to start can be looking at the People Also Ask and Related Searches sections in Google.
After that, I'll use a keyword research tool and look at monthly search volume as well as keyword competition. While volume is great, keyword competition lets you know how hard or easy it is to rank for a particular keyword. Ultimately, I'd rather rank really well (top 1-3 spots in a Google search) for a lower volume keyword than lower in the SERP (page 2, for instance) for a high volume search. There's that old SEO joke, "where's the best place to hide a dead body? Google, page 2." Click through rate (CTR) drops substantially even with the page one 4, 5, 6, etc. slots versus 1-3.
Then, I outline my article, integrating different keywords I'm targeting. And I optimize my content extremely well on-page, i.e. using a keyword-friendly URL, having my focus keyword as the headline/H1, using appropriate keywords as image alt text, incorporating keywords into my meta description. Of course, it's important to do all of this organically rather than forcing it. A lot of my SEO approach is just creating really high-quality, long-form, evergreen content that's keyword-rich and provides a lot of value to readers.
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Great question @michaeltharrington! In no particular order:
1) Don't worry about how it sounds. As an English major that concentrated on English lit/Creative Writing in uni, when I started blogging I felt compelled to make my writing flowery. There's definitely a time and a place for that, but with blogging, often simple is better.
2) Start your own website! In addition to my day job, I've got a modestly successful consumer tech website, Tech Up Your Life that I wish I'd started sooner. Writing for other sites, whether freelance or full-time is great. But investing in your own site (and then syndicating on sites like DEV) is an awesome idea.
3) Learn SEO. If you want your blog posts to be seen, they'll need to rank well in Google. Search engine optimization is a complete game-changer that helped me grow my site from scratch to over 100K pageviews (#ShamelessPlug but I teach those strategies in an online course that I created). Of course, you need to make sure your blog posts are high-quality and informative, not mere keyword spaghetti, but an SEO-first approach helps you figure out what information you need to include in an article in order to get your articles to rank.
Moe!! Hey real-life bud 👋
Thanks for pitching in these tips!
Big fan of "Don't worry about how it sounds..." I found that my style got more and more casual the minute I left school. The reality of it is, I like to read stuff that is more casual — it feels more real to me.
I totally agree - casual writing does sound more real, and therefore more trustworthy. And I'd guess that's true for most folks. To quote one of my poetry professors from university, "we learn the rules so that we can break them properly." Formal writing guidelines are suggestions rather than laws.
Can you summarise the SEO part here? What is the gist of it?
Absolutely, @petermortensen ! Basically, before I sit down to write an article, I do research to figure out what topics and sub-topics I need to cover in an article in order to fully convey a topic or answer a query. A good place to start can be looking at the People Also Ask and Related Searches sections in Google.
After that, I'll use a keyword research tool and look at monthly search volume as well as keyword competition. While volume is great, keyword competition lets you know how hard or easy it is to rank for a particular keyword. Ultimately, I'd rather rank really well (top 1-3 spots in a Google search) for a lower volume keyword than lower in the SERP (page 2, for instance) for a high volume search. There's that old SEO joke, "where's the best place to hide a dead body? Google, page 2." Click through rate (CTR) drops substantially even with the page one 4, 5, 6, etc. slots versus 1-3.
Then, I outline my article, integrating different keywords I'm targeting. And I optimize my content extremely well on-page, i.e. using a keyword-friendly URL, having my focus keyword as the headline/H1, using appropriate keywords as image alt text, incorporating keywords into my meta description. Of course, it's important to do all of this organically rather than forcing it. A lot of my SEO approach is just creating really high-quality, long-form, evergreen content that's keyword-rich and provides a lot of value to readers.