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I am a wife to a great husband of 13 years (here ya go, now I have to make changes to this sentence once a year), a mother to a beautiful and, no doubt, genius little girl, and a successful internet entrepreneur. I also devoted my life to Jesus Christ many years ago, and He remains my true priority, focus, and hope.
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Hey Ana,
As always there’s something useful to learn from your blog audits. The first thing I discovered was Susanna and her blog LOL. I got through her place and there is some great information and resources. So thanks for sharing! Unfortunately I have to agree with you on the header. When it comes to design, pretty much everything is fine except for that very same header. It just doesn’t look right.
By the way the ‘Images’ paragraph was a useful one. Not that I don’t know the importance of including an alt description, but I always forget adding it. Will have to go through my blog and add some changes on the images.
Dear Ana, this is brilliant - what a kind idea. I would love to do the same on my blog, but if I ever do, I will dedicate the idea and thank you with a linkback, for sure.
I created Prolific Living in 2008 for fun and hobby and in late 2009, I became consumed with making the site and all its offers useful, helpful, valuable and inspirational for those interested in smart habits for rich living. I hope you visit sometime, and if not, I will be visiting you right here!
Excellent information. Thanks for sharing.
You are welcome, Steven.
Dear Ana, thank you for sharing your real steps to generate traffic after publishing your post. It is very kind of you to be so transparent. I have learned a lot of new information here and glad to see I apply a lot of these steps too.
I came here, searching Problogger forums for “social bookmarking demon” - a friend of mine recommended it very strongly and I trust his judgment but feel very skeptical about an automated program, plus some of the reviews I read hinted at Google’s frowning upon it. Naturally, one has to use the tool very responsibly but I was hoping to pick your brain and ask your thoughts on the automated bookmarking software and if you happen to use them. Many many thanks in advance!
Hi, Farnoosh:
Glad you found your way to my blog.
I personally don’t use automated software.
I’ve tried it in the past - not social bookmarking demon, but they all work similarly - and there’s what I noticed: my ranking for the specific keyword I was targeting went down very soon after. I used the tool for a couple of months and stopped. As soon as I stopped my ranking went back up.
Surely, it could’ve been something different, but not likely.
I firmly believe in the quality of links, not their quality. I do very light automatic bookmarking as mentioned in this post simply to help my post get indexed quicker, but not for any kind of serious link building.
Hope this helps and welcome to my blog.
Ana
Always interesting to talk about Google PR.
Actually since my PR dropped from 2 to zero almost a year ago, i prefer not to have PR now, because now, my traffics is more than when i had PR.
Having Google PR is not my goal anymore, since it can be manipulated, and having PR does not mean you have traffics.
Traffics are much more important to me.
Kudos to Suzanna for taking the plunge. I think it’s always great to see our blog through another person’s eyes. We often times become “visually blinded” because we see our own sites so often. Way to go Suzanna for letting everyone take a peek.
Ana… I always appreciate your insight. This post made me realize how much goes on behind the scenes to make a blog successful. I love SEO and am thrilled to get additional tips and resources. I especially like the information about images. I’m definitely going to add that information to my “to do” list when I include an image on my blog.
Hi Ana,
Wow, once again, great job! I’ve learned so many things and seen a lot of similarities between Susanna’s blog and my own. I’ll enjoy working through her list after I’m done with mine to check it twice and make sure my blog is being nice, not naughty to my readers, search engines, and me!
Thanks a bunch!
Heather
Hi Ana!
I was away for Thanksgiving when this post went live and I missed it! Wow…so much great information here and I am thrilled for Mavis that she was able to benefit from your brilliance, as we all are because of you sharing it here!!! I love Mavis’ blog and I am impressed with the in the press tab idea…very clever!
Oops…you did it again! Another hit!
Heather
Excellent audit. I’ll be subscribing to her blog soon as I plan to do lots with video soon.
@Ingrid @CJ @Jym - This whole conversation intrigues me. Direct sales has been my life, and my new coaching/consulting model is exactly this….every static site, specifically e-commerce, must have a blog companion these days, especially for promotion.
Sorry CJ, I must respectfully disagree wholeheartedly with your first comment and the 2nd, where you try to clean it up a bit, just confuses me.
However, if you are that knowledgeable at marketing static sites, we can almost assuredly work together; I’d love to chat some off this blog.
You said the exact same things that I would have for design. I would change the banner all together, but that’s just me. Great content though..
Well, to be quite honest with you, I would too.
However, I do understand that a professional design is not in everyone’s budget, so I recommended the next best thing.
Ana
Yes, I’m going to get some professional pictures done first.
Wow what a great audit Ana, this is my first time check out an audit. You put some very valuable content and tips that we can use to improve our own blogs. I have to get brave enough soon and have an audit on my blog.
Thanks again
Pleasure to see you around, Quaneshia.
I think we all can all learn a few things for our blog through these audits, even I. Every once in a while, I discover something that I missed on my blog as well.
Have a blessed weekend.
Ana
WOW!
)
Now that is honestly one of the best all round how to guides on setting up and establishing a blog that I have seen!
Granted that was not the context, it was an audit after all - but through this you have shown not only how much you are in touch with what needs to be done blogging wise, you have also gained a lot of kudos (especially from me
Keep it up Ana, you will be a problogger very soon I think
Thanks so much, Alex; you have an ability to make you smile no matter what your comment is!
I do very much appreciate the compliment though.
Ana
Thanks Ana, I just found your blog via a guest post you wrote on Blog engage. I found that guest post because I was following Brian on twitter and he posted the link. So now you know how I got here:) Since I have been here I have been reading your content for about an hour.
Great Content, I think I will save this link and then try to implement as many of these ideas as I can.
So far I have 202 mastered which is the most important. Now on the rest…
So true, Casey - #202 is my favorite as well.
Glad you found your way onto my blog and, by the way, thanks for letting me know my post was published on BlogEngage - somehow I missed it!
Once again, welcome and hope to see you back soon.
Ana
Plugins won’t help you but it does help help with SEO (like taking care of trailing slashes, fixing permalinks etc.).
Essentially, I agree with your, Susan - there is nothing plugins can do for you that you can’t do yourself, IF you know what you are doing.
However, most of us still need a little help and I am all for using plugins that save me time or money.
Ana
Before they said that content is a king but now even if you have wonderful content but your site or blog sites have no traffic and not following the SEO rules then its nothing. Good quality content is one thing but you have to do something to drive traffic to your site and from that you will have a better possibility of earning.
Hi Kirsty,
!
That’s a very good point you bring up. Thank you
Yes, although quality content matters greatly, it has to be seen. It’s up to you to use the SEO and Social Media tools wisely in order to attract viewers to your site and in turn help it grow and maybe earn some profit along the way.
But the better or more interesting your posts are, the more frequently people will return to read what’s new and in turn share your blog with others.
Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts.
Cheers
Hi Susanna,
hi Ana,
first of all congratulations to you Susanna that you had your blog audited by Ana, we can learn so much from her.
It was a pleasure to blaze the trail for you
As a regular reader of your blog (and viewer of your awesome videos) I can tell you that I like coming to your blog and staying there despite the weaknesses Ana pointed out.
With that said, with her suggestions you can even improve the appearance of your blog, so I am probably able to remove the “despite” in the former sentence in a few weeks or so.
Ana, thanks again for a great audit. And don’t say that you’re not tactful
I would say it’s a like a good massage. It feels good but there are some points of ache. Hope this analogy is appropriate.
Take care
Oliver
I LOVE your analogy, Oliver.
Thanks for your encouraging words to Susanna - she really does do a fabulous job and it can only get better.
Have a blessed weekend and thanks for coming by!
Ana
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