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Website Review: Mommy Meryl

I have decided that I will now do blog reviews on a weekly basis, to help bloggers understand what I think is good and what I think is bad in terms of blog design. I will be reviewing the blogs of people who subscribe to ProTycoon.com via email, so to be in with a shout, Subscribe to ProTycoon.com via Email and then drop me a message via the Contact page letting me know your email address and Blog address.

This weeks blog review is about Mommy Meryl:

Before we look at the blog let me in introduce you to Meryl, this is an extract from her ‘About’ page:

I’m Meryl and I’m a thirty-something stay-at-home (SAHM) but sometimes part-time working mom to a 5 1/2 year old daughter. I have been married 13 years to a wonderfully supportive husband and 2 dogs complete our family for the moment. . . I began this blog as a supplement to my website – Chit Chat for Mommies.

If you don’t have an about page on your blog then I suggest you read: Writing an About page.

Here is a quick screenshot of the blog for reference:

The first thing that I noticed about the blog is that it took a long time to load, I think there are two main reasons for this:

The blogs header image is very large.
There are 15 Full posts on the homepage

I am a firm believer that every blog should have a unique header image/logo, but I think that they should be no taller than around 80-90px. My thinking behind this is that larger images take a longer time to load, also by having a larger banner your content is being pushed further down the page and below the fold. When I look at the blog, all I can see is the first posts title and the first few lines of content. If you compare that to my homepage, you can usually see the title and the whole excerpt for my blogs first post. I would suggest a new slightly smaller blog header image.

The homepage also has 15 full posts on it, which means that it is a very long page. There are two options to improve this, the first is to simply reduce the number of posts being shown, my suggestion would be 8 full posts on the blogs homepage. The other option is to only show excerpts on the blogs homepage, this will reduce the size of each post, making the page size smaller, I usually recommend a maximum of 10 posts on the homepage when using excerpts, I use 5 on the ProTycoon.com homepage.

Now we will look at the colour scheme being used, it is very much based around Pink, Purple and Blue. The post titles are orange and the posts content is pink. I find the bright pink very difficult to read, so is not the best choice of color for the blogs content. My suggestion would be to use black text with a slightly darker pink post title. The links on the site are blue, which is the color most people associate with links. On the whole the blogs colours reflect the content of the blog.

The final point I am going to make about Meryl’s blog is the sidebars, the blog currently has two sidebars. The left sidebar is based on the blog, it has the RSS subscribe box, current RSS count and a link to the ‘About’ page which should be on all blogs. My advice about the left sidebar would be to remove the ‘Live Traffic Feed’ as it is not really suited to a blog in this niche.

The right sidebar contains the blogroll, the archives as well as many links to other blogs and directories, many of which are in the form of images, which will slow the page loading times. There is also a ‘Top Spots’ widget which is becoming more common on blogs in recent months. My advice for the right sidebar would be to remove a lot of the image links, they can either be deleted permanently, or replaced with text links in the blogroll. I would then move the archives to the top of the right sidebar, followed by the ‘Top Spots’ widget then the blogroll.

Above I stated what I would do if I was keeping the two sidebars, I always prefer blogs with 2 columns, this could be achieved by moving the RSS subscribe box and current subscriber count to the top of the right sidebar, then create some pages and link to them just underneath the RSS details, these pages can consist of an ‘About’ page, and ‘Link To Us’ page and a ‘Contact’ page. This would take some strain off of the homepage and make the blog look a lot cleaner.

I would like to point out at this point that I am not critising Meryls blog, I think Meryl has a great blog and some interesting content for her niche. I am using the blog reviews to show people how they can improve their blogs, by sharing my viewpoints and the things I have learned through blogging. You may have a blog similar to Meryl’s and may find some of these points relevant.

I would like to know what you think of Meryl’s blog? What would you improve? What are your thoughts on my opinions?

Don’t forget to Subscribe to ProTycoon.com via email to be in with a chance of getting reviewed next week.

Sunday Link Love

Jul6 in Links by admin

7 Comments

What Defines a Famous Blog? – Stand Out Blogger
Build a List, Network and Make More Money – The University Kid
Getting Focused on Social Media – I’m Blogging That
Your Face In Your Blog – The Melvin Blog
Win 1000 Entrecard Credits and Free Adspot – TeenBlogger
Pepperjam Network – The ‘Infant’ Internet Marketing Agency with a Big Personality – The Net Fool

Enjoy the links!

Don’t forget about my feed!!

Writing An 'About' Page

Jul5 in Blogging by admin

12 Comments

Yesterday I asked the question ‘Is Your Blog Ready?’, one of the benchmarks I used to judge whether or not a blog was ready was by whether it had an ‘About‘ page.

The ‘About’ page of your blog should give people an insight into:

Who you are
What you do
What you aim to teach
How people can contact you

You do not need to write an essay or your life story as most visitors will use your about page to have a quick glance at who you are and what you do. If you have a look at my ‘About‘ page, you will notice that it is very short and addresses the points I highlighted above.

By not having an ‘About’ page on your blog you are not allowing people to get a quick insight into who you are and what your blog has to offer, this can put a few readers off your blog as they want to know what the blog is all about at a quick glance.

You can also use your ‘About’ page to highlight some of your ‘Top Posts’ or any other blogs that you are currently working on. I have split the ‘About‘ page and ‘Top Posts‘ page on ProTycoon.com but will be merging them into one in the coming weeks. I have included a picture of myself in my ‘About’ page as it allows people to get a picture of the person who is writing the blog.

I want to know what you use the ‘About’ page for on your blog? And what you look for in an ‘About’ page on a blog that you are reading?

Is Your Blog Ready?

Jul4 in Blogging by admin

15 Comments

One of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers make is rushing to promoting their new blogs. Blogs by their very nature grow and develop over time. If you start to promote your site strongly from day one, then the chance is that you don’t have sufficient content in which to retain any visitors that you do attract to your site, you could also be damaging your blogs reputation early on.

In order to make the most of your blog promotion efforts you have to make sure that your blog is ready for the traffic you intend to send at it. When I say ready, what I mean is the ability to retain and hold visitors on your site and give them useful and insightful information.

In order to understand when your blog is ready you need to understand what makes a blog, a blog. Blogs generally differ from standard websites because they allow their visitors to comment on the information presented to them. They also usually provide an RSS feed which allows people to subscribe to the blog. This means that blogs have the ability to be ‘stickier’ than standard websites.

When Is A Blog Ready?

When I started ProTycoon.com I set up some benchmarks that I wanted to reach before I promoted my blog:

5 Pillar Articles – A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something.
A Completed Blog Design – Nobody likes a design that is still under construction.
An About Page Published – People want to know what the blog is about.
RSS feed – Needs to be available and easy to find.
Content – At least 30 Well Written Posts.
Comments – Need to be enabled on Blog Posts, this is what makes blogs better than standard sites.

By having the pillar articles as well as a collection of well written posts I was offering valuable content to my blogs visitors giving them the ability to comment on what they were reading. Your blog needs to be offering something of quality that will make your visitors stick to your blog and subscribe.

Imagine if your local computer store tried selling you a laptop, they gave it a massive promotion, promised you a great laptop, but when you go to the store, it is just the same standard, boring old laptop you already have. It would leave you feeling a little disappointed, that is how your visitors will feel if you start promoting your webite without offering anything of quality.

You will find that you are able to hold visitors on your blog a lot easier if you are patient and make sure that your blog is ready before you start promoting it.

How do you judge when your blog is ready for promotion? What benchmarks would you use?

Advertising Giveaway

Jul3 in ProTycoon News by admin

47 Comments

As loyal readers will know ProTycoon.com got a makeover a few days ago. As part of the redesign the blog now has 125*125 advertsing spots available in the sidebar. As many of you will know I am a generous blogger, freely linking to other blogs and also giving out great little secrets that I use to build my blog.

I am now offering 6 bloggers the chance to get their blogs featured in the ProTycoon.com sidebar.

How To Enter

The best thing is that it is so easy to grab your spot, all you need to do is dedicate a post on your blog reviewing ProTycoon.com. Some examples of posts you could use:

Review the new Design
Review the blog itself
Promote the blog’s RSS feed

The possibilities are endless, all we are asking for is at least one link back to ProTycoon.com this can be to the homepage or to a post.

Some posts you may consider linking to:

The spots will be assigned on a first come first serve basis. Once you have written your post, comment here with details of where the post can be found, I will then contact you for your 125*125 banner to be placed in the sidebar.

This is a great chance to get yourself some free exposure on an ever growing blogging tips website. Hurry before all the spots are taken!

P.s – Animated banners are allowed but I will not accept flash banners.

25 Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscriber Count

Jul3 in Blogging by admin

29 Comments

All bloggers are trying to increase their RSS Subscriber count, that is why I have decided to write a post with 25 ways that you can increase your RSS Subscriber Count.

RSS Subscribers

Let’s begin with the 25 ways to boost your blogs RSS subscriber count.

Publish Good Content - People are more likely to subscribe to a blog that offers valuable content. Make sure you are publishing content that people will want to read. This should be a priority.
Post Frequently – Once you are publishing good content, you then need to do it frequently. This will lead people to subscribe so that they do not miss any of your future posts.
Stay Focused – Stick to your niche and post content that relates to it. People subscribed to your blog because they want to read about news in your niche.
Visible RSS Button – Make sure you have a visible RSS button on your site, make sure it is above the fold. The top of your sidebar would be a good place for your RSS Button. Check out BloggingTips.com for a good example of this.
RSS by E-Mail – Make sure you allow your readers to subscribe by e-mail. Many people may not be comfortable with Feed Readers and may prefer to have your feed in the form of an email. Courtney Tuttle uses this method.
Full Posts on Feed – Make sure you show full post in your RSS feed, there is nothing more frustrating than a site that uses excerpts in their RSS feeds.
What is RSS? - Devote a post or page of your blog explaining to your readers what RSS is. Thy may not subscribe because they do not know what it is, or what the benefits are.
Ask Your Readers To Subscribe – This can be done most effectively at the end of posts. Have a short message at the end of your posts which says something along the lines of “If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, to keep up with all future updates”. If they have just enjoyed the post they have just read, they may subscribe.
Auto-Discovery – Auto-Discovery is used by the Web Browsers to find your feed. If found it will display the small RSS icon in the address bar. Many people subscribe using this method, so make sure the browsers are finding your feed.
Give Something Away – Offer something free to people that subscribe to your feed, such as an E-book. Everyone loves a freebie.
Guest Post – Guest Posting is a great way of promoting yourself, your blog and your feed. Most guest posts allow you to link back to your site at the bottom, or top. Use this as a chance to ask people to subscribe to your feed. Make sure your guest post is on a blog in your niche. Check out one of my guest posts here.
Allow Guest Posts – By allowing people to guest post on your site , you are opening up the opportunity for that writer to bring their readers with them. You can then convert them to subscribe to your blog.
Use Forums – You can answer questions on forums and include a link back to your feed in the signature. If people think you are informative and an authority in your niche, they may subscribe to your blog. Also check out: Blog Premiere.
Link Love – Link to other blogs in your niche. You never know they may link back. They will most likely head over to your blog to see who is linking to them, they may also subscribe to your blog to keep up to date. I do Link Roundup posts on ProTycoon.com, feel free to link to me!
Submit Feed - Add your feed to RSS Directories. A List of Directories can be found here.
Show Your Count – Displaying your feed count on your blog may persuade others to join. Be weary, many bloggers believe you should not display your feed until you have at least 50 subscribers, some say 100. I would say, if you are proud of your subscriber count, show it off.
Network – By making friends with other bloggers, you are opening up the opportunity for them to subscribe to your feed, so that they can check out what you are up to.
Cross-Promotion – Once you have networked and made friends with other bloggers, you can then promote each others feeds. This can be done at the end of each others feeds, or by directly posting about each other.
What Would Seth Godin Do – This is a great little plugin that displays a small message to new visitors to your blog asking them to sign up to your feed.
Subscribe Me - This plugin displays small chicklets on your blog, asking people to subscribe using their favourite reader.
Subscribe Remind – As I mentioned above, it is good to ask people to subscribe to your feed at the end of each post. This plugin does just that.
FeedBurner – FeedBurner reduces the steps need to sign up to your feed, making it easier for your readers to subscribe.
Post Series – By writing a series of posts people will subscribe so that they do not miss the next post in the series. Darren Rowse has just finished another successful series.
Contests – Run a contest that requires people to sign up for your RSS feed to join.
ProTycoon.com – Subscribe to my feed for future updates and tips on increasing your RSS feed count, as well as other great blogging tips. This is by far the most important step in increasing your RSS count.

This post is a good guide for anyone currently competing in blogging idol. Blogs I would recommend subscribing to in the competition are:

All of the above blogs are in a similar niche to ProTycoon.com so I believe you will find them all useful, don’t forget to subscribe to their RSS feeds as well as mine!

All diggs and stumbles are appreciated.

RSS Group Writing Project

Search Meter: What Your Readers Want

Jul2 in Blogging by admin

4 Comments

If you are like me then you are always looking to give your readers the content they are looking for on your blog, the problem is that it is not always easy to know what your visitors want to read.

Search Meter is a WordPress plugin that enables you to keep track of what your readers are searching for on your blog. This allows you to stay focused on the content that your readers are after.

If you have a search box on your blog (which most blogs SHOULD have), then Search Meter will record the stats of what is searched and present them back to you in your admin panel. The stats include searched terms from the last 2 days, last 7 days and the last 30 days, thus allowing you to see what your visitors are looking for on your blog.

It shows the amount of times a phrase is searched and how many posts the search returns. This will enable you to focus content towards your readers and should help to increase your RSS count, as people will be more interested in the content that you are providing.

As well as showing the summary of searches for the last 2, 7 and 30 days, you can also choose to view the stats by the last 100 and last 500 searches. This will allow you to see what the hot topics are at any given time.

I have been using this plugin on one of my other blogs for around a month and it has enabled me to provide content that is more focused on what my readers want and has led to a big rise in the sites RSS subscriber count.

The plugin can be download here: Search Meter

I would highly recommend this plugin to any blogger who is looking to build a blog full of relevant content that people want to read.

Have you used this plugin or a similar one on your blog? How do you judge what content your visitors will want to read?

Blogging Idol Has Officially Begun.

Jul2 in Contests by admin

4 Comments

Blogging Idol, the competition that challenges bloggers to see how much they can raise their subscriber count in the space of one month officially began yesterday.

ProTycoon.com is in the running, although Daniel did forget to add me to the competition page, hopefully by the time you are reading this I have been added.

There are over 100 bloggers battling it out to become the blogging idol and only one chance to win the $3000 prize.

The level of bloggers in the competition varies, there are a lot of blogs at a similar level to this one, but there are also some brand new blogs, as well as some very established ones with over 900 subscribers already.

There is an RSS Limit of 1000 subscribers so that the competition can focus on the smaller blogs and stop the blogs who already have a big influence stealing the prize.

Here are the rules for the competition:

All participants must activate the Feedburner feed count at the beginning of the competition.
Participants will need to send a short email weekly (100-200 words), describing their strategies to gain RSS subscribes, and what they are doing on their blogs.
I will group all those emails and publish them on a single post every week, so that readers can follow and understand how participants are competing.
Black hat methods will not be allowed, so you can’t fake stats, try to damage the blog of competitors and so on.
Paid promotion will not be allowed, else it would become a “who can spend more” contest.
All other strategies and techniques are allowed (guest articles, contests, give-aways, controversial articles, free eBooks), so you are free to get creative
The winner will be the blogger that manages to increase his RSS subscriber base by the largest number (final count minus initial count).

As you have no doubt guessed I am now going to ask you to subscribe to my blog and become an official supporter of ProTycoon.com throughout July. What are the benefits of supporting ProTycoon? Well if I do win I will give the $700 complete SEO consulting from Joost the Valk, to the blogger who does the most to promote ProTycoon.com during July.

You can promote my RSS Feed or the blog itself. Please make sure you notify me of any promotion work that you do, so that I know to consider you at the end of the month.

Your first step however is to SUBSCRIBE TO MY RSS FEED!

Feel free to Stumble and Digg my posts as a way of promoting the site, you can use the icons below each post.

ProTycoon.com Gets a Redesign

Jul1 in ProTycoon News by admin

14 Comments

I am pleased to announce that work on the new ProTycoon.com theme has been completed and we are now live.

My previous design was a hacked at version of the StudioPress Theme from DailyBlogTips.com. It was a good theme but I was looking to get something a bit more original and professional looking.

I would like to say a big thank you to Rajat Bhadani from DesignSaurus.com who has done a great job designing and implementing the blog. If anyone is looking to get their blog redesigned in the future then I would highly recommend them.

The new theme incorporates our logo from the previous design as well as a professional sidebar.

The theme has been checked for bugs in several browsers, but if you notice anything that is not working please contact me with details of the problem and the browser that you are using.

I am very happy with the new design, what are your thoughts?

Once again a big thank you to Rajat, please check out their website for details of how you can get a great blog design.

June Links Roundup

Jun30 in Links by admin

10 Comments

The month is nearly over, just one day until Blogging Idol begins. I thought that I would share with you some posts that I have enjoyed reading over the last month.

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