The Odds Are Ever in Your Favor: The Numbers Game of Earning Clicks

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With the average attention span of readers’ down to eight seconds (shorter than that of a goldfish), it’s no wonder the listicle’s easily digestible morsels of information have taken over as the preferred news format for many. You know the ilk: “7 Ways You’ll Know He’s The One,” or “21 Reasons to Try Poke Now.”

The argument on both sides of the listicle issue is fierce. The New York Times, for example, came to the listicle’s defense, after noticing the format achieved more organic traffic and clicks on one of its articles.

Here’s an excerpt: “Aaron Carroll’s ‘simple rules for healthy eating.’ It attracted a big audience, and it did so largely organically, through social media. It was smart and, yes, nuanced. People read it, found it useful and shared it with others. To put it bluntly, it was a better, more useful piece than it would have been as a 1,000-word essay or news article. Human beings often think in terms of lists, and there is nothing wrong with that.” [Read more…]

Movable Type Monday: Smileys, GPS, Title Length, and More

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Happy Monday, folks! This week we’ve got a handful of new plugins for you. I have not had a chance to try these personally, so if anybody has, please let us know what you think in the comments.

AutoSmileys — Sebastian Böthin has written a plugin that replaces text-based emoticons with images. The plugin comes with a default list of emoticons to replace, but you can customize that list as much as you want. And AutoSmileys can be used just about anywhere — entries, comments, pages, and more.

Garmin Connect Action Stream — Garmin Connect is a social training log that lets you track and share your training activities using Garmin GPS devices. This plugin from Scott Hill adds those activities to your Action Stream. [Read more…]

Sunday Morning SEO: How to Combine Catchy and Keyword Rich Titles

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In my last post, I talked about the importance of inserting keywords in the title tags of your blog posts. The title tag is by far the most powerful onpage SEO factor. But what about catchy titles that don’t have many keywords? Is there a place for them in SEO?

The answer is yes and here’s how you can combine catchy and keyword rich titles to improve your rankings. [Read more…]

Web Name Games

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Blogs began their life as online journals. Then weblogs became the word, which eventually was shortened to blogs. Do you still call them online journals? Weblogs? Or are you “with it” and call them blogs?

Every once in a while I run across an article by a new blogger or an article not updated from five years ago that refers to blogs as weblogs. I saw one reference that called them weBlogs – not referencing a company but in a sentence about blogs in general.

When I see someone calling blogs “weblogs” I think that they aren’t up with the times, don’t you? When I see people using old terminology or wrong terms, I try not to judge them, but it’s really hard, since their words are all I have to evaluate. The wrong name for something can put me totally off. It tells me that they don’t know what they are talking about, and they certainly aren’t going to give me new and valid information. Do you feel that way?

The language, especially the language of the web, is evolving quickly. I remember when we laughed at Yahoo being a silly name for anything, let alone an Internet directory, then giggling over Google. Not much giggling now. These words are part of our every day lingo and we google for information without a second thought at what we are saying. [Read more…]