My 300-Posts Review

I thought I should recognize my 300th post (since I completely missed number 250) by talking about what has been successful and interesting about the blog, from my point of view. I'm going to do one of those self-congratulatory posts, in other words, so if you don't want to find out my most humorous or curious recent search term or the posts that bring the most people here, you might want to skip this one. If you're one of those curious and easily amused people, however, as I am, you might find this mildly entertaining.

My post about when and where to use commas in dates reigns as far and away the most-visited post I've made to date. In fact, using commas in general has been a huge area for exploration. Punctuation creates a lot of confusion, and I'm glad to see that people look for answers rather than just “winging it”.

It seems that Americans are searching for ways to describe their Thanksgiving holiday, as I had a few versions of “Thanksgiving adjectives” pop up in recent search engine activity. I don't know if schools assigned papers and One Step Forward offers more entertainment than a thesaurus, but apparently there was some sort of draw here. I can't imagine what help they found, but I hope that something useful matched their collective query. The reason was Thanksgiving, 2007's post about adjectives in general.

More strange than that were the two people who arrived here in search of “pump your brain” information or tips. I've written more than once that writing exercises help you do just that, and that post pops up at number five for the phrase on Google, but I still don't know for what those searchers were looking. I must admit that there were search terms on topics I've not yet addressed, but I'll certainly use them for future inspiration. Thank you all for your interest and feedback. I'll “see” you in December!

Fun Search Terms for This Blog

I reviewed my recent statistics this morning and discovered that this blog gets Google juice on some good topics. My posts on –tion words are my biggest draw, as people search every day, in a dozen different ways, for more information on them.

The terms on the list that I best liked seeing were “be sarcastic when defining sarcasm” and “how to make a sentence sarcastic”, plus three other mentions of sarcasm. I’m so proud. [sniff] Actually, I rank high for sarcasm because of my recent post on punctuation intended to indicate sarcasm and intentional ambiguity. Then again, I’m a bit of a…sarcastic individual.

I felt the need to run “example sentence using the word feckless” for myself. I came up second in the search results for this one, from actually using the word in my most-visited post on -tion words. Apparently feckless doesn’t get much use these days.

Folks have also found me through my posts on FANBOYS. I must admit to a certain amusement when using that term. It works beautifully as a memnotic device for remembering the basic conjunctions but also makes it sound like I’m writing about boy bands when I use it in headlines.

Using Google for Writing Prompts

Here’s a tip for finding somewhat obscure writing prompts: ask Google for ideas. I clicked over to Google’s hot trends for today. At first, I was struck by how out of touch I am with the world of celebrity. Next, I was surprised that so many people managed to spell Beowulf correctly. Then an odd search phrase caught my eye. I clicked on it to see what the results looked like and a pair of story ideas sprang to life.

I wrote one of them and sketched out the contents of the second. In theory, they are SEO-friendly and well-written enough on this apparently oft-searched topic that I’ll get a stellar offer from AC. In practice, well, let’s just say that I’m not holding my breath. I know have enough story ideas floating around that I’m going to have to take some time away from exploring new avenues just to get them written.

If you are anti-Google, or if you just want another avenue, wander of to the Yahoo! buzz log. Their list is less interesting and almost exclusively celebrities, but there are one or two interesting additions for those of us who don’t know or care who Chrissy Popadics may be. For instance, apparently grilled salmon has taken a 799% jump in searches over last week.

There are also the Lycos50, AOL Hot Searches, and plenty of sites that purport to offer topic-specific popular keyword lists. I see no reason why any of these could not serve as an equally useful source of writing prompts, even if the keywords may not be as successful on Google. If you’re looking for a topic, sometimes the inspiration for a great article is worth more than climbing the search list.

Google Sitemaps and Other Tools

As part of my attempts to make this a serious exploration of on-line marketing, I’d been adding Google products like AdSense and the search box above. Every once in a while, I run across a blog that really helps me to understand how to find the tools available and to use them. This post from Improbulus at consumingexperience.com opened my eyes to yet another opportunity – sitemaps. This is supposed to simplify the process by which you ping Google that you have a new post and thus gets your site indexed faster by the little Google spiders. Follow some of the links on the entry for more information – it’s very informative.

Of course, getting your blog or web site started involves not only adding a pile of quality content but of arranging its appearance and tools for your maximum benefit. If you’ve been to this blog before, you’ll probably notice that it has changed. Every day I seem to find one more toy (like the widgets for my feeds) or tool (like the AdSense referral and search boxes) to employ. I’ve fiddled with my html and will do more to change the look of the site. But you have to find a balance (once again – it seems that balance is my theme this month) between implementing changes and keeping a recognizable brand.

For a blog just starting out, it is probably expected that it will evolve from day to day. There are so many ways to monetize and advertise your site that you could add a new button a day for weeks. At some point, though, you need to have a site that people will recognize when they see it. Drastic changes should level off after a few weeks and full re-designs would need to be accompanied by a post notifying folks to expect something new. Otherwise, they may think that your site is not the one they were looking for and will go elsewhere.