Category Archives: Blogging

Blog Tip: Solve a Common Problem

Here’s an easy way to write a blog post that will rank well in search engines and net you some quality traffic: solve a common problem. Find the answer to an issue that plagues many people interested in your niche. Supply a solution in a to-the-point post. Providing you picked a title that contains the sort of keywords frustrated searchers would be entering, it shouldn’t take too long for you to start ranking.

You may get lucky and have a major increase in traffic, or you could just make a smaller group of people very happy. (Which might lead to repeat visits…) If you do this a few times, the traffic will add up. Having ten posts that bring in 200 visitors every month is better than one post that brings in 1,000.

As an example, observe this recent post. As soon as Apple released iTunes 10, Twitter was abuzz with complaints about a minor design “improvement” that was made. Luckily, there were a couple of Terminal commands that would revert the change, for Mac users at least. I ended up writing a quick blog post with the solution and a small rant about how Apple was blatantly disregarding their own design guidelines. In a few hours I was on the Google result page for “itunes 10 vertical buttons,” and at the top of it within a day or two. I’ve done this plenty of times, and it has incrementally boosted my numbers.

Ego: iPhone Statistics Dashboard

Want an easy, at-a-glance dashboard for monitoring basic website statistics from your iPhone? Ego fits the description, if you don’t mind the $1.99 price tag. The app will aggregate statistics from Google Analytics, Feedburner, Mint, Ember, Twitter, Vimeo, Tumblr and Squarespace. You can even…

How Much Mobile Traffic Does Your Site Get Monthly?

Mobile web usage is on the rise. With the browsing trend kicked-off by the iPhone, more and more people are starting to view web pages on the go. I certainly do with my iPod Touch. (Whenever there’s WiFi available, I’ll usually check email and…

How to Display a FeedBurner Average

Tired of ever-fluctuating FeedBurner counts being displayed on your blog? Why don’t you just display a weekly average? Cats Who Blog has a tutorial that shows you how you can retrieve the numbers via the FeedBurner API, average them, and display a rounded figure.…

Gizmodo and the iPhone 4G: An Example of Unethical Journalism

On April 19th, 2010, the popular tech blog Gizmodo (owned by Gawker Media) published an article, complete with a photo gallery, detailing the specs of the iPhone 4G. The phone Apple is said to release this summer. The one that’s supposed to be a…

Get a Larger Version of a Mac Application’s Icon

Have you ever wanted a large version of an icon, maybe for a software review on your blog? (Or maybe you just want a closer look at the details of the image…) In Mac OS X Leopard or greater, it’s actually fairly easy to…

Blogsolid is Back!

Blogsolid.com is back from the dead. It was acquired recently by someone who hopes to resurrect the long-silent blog. With 658 RSS subscribers (including myself) still on the clock, I think it shouldn’t be too hard. One of my favorite parts of Blogsolid has…

Capitalize Your Headlines Properly, Please

In the English language, titles follow a certain convention of capitalization. Titles of books and magazine articles, news headlines, names of publications, etc., they all follow this basic rule: You capitalize every word in the title, except for unimportant words (e.g. and, or, is,…

Is Excessive Bold Text a Bad Idea?

A common practice among bloggers is to mark out sections of text with boldface type in order to call attention to that portion of a paragraph. It’s said to be a reading aid, to make the article more skimmable. Is it really necessary? Should…

10 Ways to Launch a New Blog with a “Bang”

Starting a new blog? It sure can be frustrating to be writing to an empty audience. Web Designer Depot has the solution: Launch a New Blog with a “Bang.” Ten things. If you do one or more of them, you’ll have readers in no…