How Tech Savvy Do You Have to Be To Achieve Blogging Success?
I was pondering this question the other day as I wrote an article explaining the ins and outs of Technorati, Alexa and PR ranking. It caused my head to spin a bit. I’m not the most technologically savvy person around. I tend to learn – begrudgingly – on an as-need basis. But, to achieve blogging success, I’m learning to get over myself.
Particularly as an SEO writer, I’m delving deeper and deeper into technology I really have no interest in – but is vital to my online success.
So my answer to the titular question is another question, “What kind of blogging success do you want to achieve?” Following are three tech things I think it would behoove every blogger to know in order to achieve even moderate blogging success.
Meta Tag Writing: I recently added this as a service to my SEO clients, most of whom are internet marketing firms.
I assume that most who read this blog know what meta tags are, but for the uninitiated, meta tags are defined by Wikipedia like this: “Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site.”
There are quite a few meta tags, but the three that most search engine experts tout that you should pay attention to are the Title, Description and Keyword tags.
Note: Most websites use meta tags. For blogs, the comparables are called “labels or tags,” ie, keywords you tag your article with that you think surfers are most likely to type in when searching for the information contained in your blog post.
Blog Search and Tracking Technology: I signed my blog up to Technorati just last year – late by any standard. Again, for the uninitiated, Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. It tracks well over 100 million blogs, ranking them by niche and popularity.
A good Technorati ranking can drive untold traffic to your blog, creating blogging success quicker than if you didn’t list it there. Via pinging technology – if you set it up right – it will automatically update every time you post to your blog.
Technorati acts as kind of a social media site, as explained below. The following is from the article, 2 Free, Very Effective Marketing Tips for Online Writers.
Technorati as a Marketing Tool
When Technorati indexes your blog posts, it looks at incoming and outgoing links, among other information, eg, name of your blog. It then returns that information to the Technorati database.
This information is then cross-referenced with information from Technorati’s entire database – some 112 million blogs to date. As bloggers and surfers submit more articles and blog posts, they can search this content-rich database to find popular blogs on a specific topic in their niche.
Keywords: This is part of search engine optimization (SEO). I used to write willy nilly, not paying attention to such important things as keywords. I still do, to a certain degree in that I don’t bend over backwards to fit in a certain keyword phrase.
But, I am aware when I sit down to compose a post of the overall keyword phrase I want to optimize for.
By some estimates, as many as 100,000 new sites/blogs come online every day. There are already billions of sites on the web. Getting found, more than ever before, means getting familiar with online marketing technology in general, and search engine technology in particular.
The more success you want as a blogger, the more tech savvy you should become. It doesn’t mean you have to learn how to write code or become a programmer, but you must know enough to be able to get your site/blog to rank well.
Here’s to your blogging success!
David Shaw | June 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am #
Nice post.
I have been learning a lot more of the technical aspects to blogging in recent weeks. You need to know them if you want to suceed.
Yasser | June 18th, 2008 at 10:35 pm #
Nice article. I would say that experience is the best key to “success”. After a few tries with websites and blogs you start understanding what works and what doesn’t work. And some times it is just luck.
Suzanne Franco | June 19th, 2008 at 10:13 am #
Yuwanda ~ Thanks for your great post. As someone who is not very tech savvy … your title definitely caught my attention
I think I do OK with my meta tag writing and key words … so I will definitely get more familiar with Technorati. Thanks again. *SmiLes* Suzanne
The Freelance Writer's Blog | June 19th, 2008 at 10:30 am #
@Suzanne: You’re welcome; we sound like kindred souls in this area. Boy I long for the good old days of the DOS system. Just type and go. Nothing to do after you finish. Now, I do more AFTER I write an article/post, than before or while writing — tagging, social bookmarking, article directory submission — it’s a FT job. But, c’est la vie, no?
alice | June 19th, 2008 at 3:53 pm #
A very nice article. I like to read here. It enjoy me everyday. Go on that way!
Missy from Groovy Vegetarian | June 20th, 2008 at 2:00 pm #
There are loads of techie things bloggers need to learn, from social media marketing to SEO, it can be overwhelming at first. But once this stuff is learned, you’re good to go.
There is always continous learning, im not saying your ever done with learning. The positive thing is there are many resources available for new bloggers to learn the craft. From books to ebooks, and blogs about blogging (such as this one and Problogger.net) there is no shortage of illumination.
The Freelance Writer's Blog | June 20th, 2008 at 2:20 pm #
@Missy you’re so right. And that’s why my head continually spins. Before I can get familiar and comfortable with using one type of technology, another one has exploded onthe scene.
I long for the days of rotary telephones and two channels to watch on TV. For all of my freedom-loving ways, when it comes to technology, I’d rather stay in the dark ages. But alas, I must surge forward and stay abreast, lest I lose my way to make a living.
Thanks for chiming in.
Yuwanda
Marco | June 28th, 2008 at 4:05 am #
A good information for me.thanks for giving good advices.
techie | August 16th, 2008 at 10:26 am #
well, I am new to this and i find the article very useful. It took me sometime to get used to wordpress and the SEO requires alot of knowledge.