B.S.I Investigation - Be a Good Dad
When I first began this project, I had no idea I would end up actually ‘reviewing’ a blog I’ve subscribed to, read almost daily and have been a big fan of for several months. Hey,we parents of twins have to stick together.
What tip can you offer up to a man who has successful carved out a section of a popular niche - Blogging Dads?
As far as I’m concerned, Be a Good Dad is a BlogStar!
Mike has a great readership base going - he’s entertaining with his posts, but still, something is lacking - at least enough that he would recruit someone to give an honest and objective overview to his work.
Mike has asked me to he honest and to refrain from any bashful tendencies I may have with his critique - So, Mike, this one’s for you!
Tip One: I love the header you have and though I love the rest of the blog, everything blends together SO much that it makes it kind of difficult to find some things. Consider breaking it out a bit. As an example - Consider a different font, color or highlighted text in place of the various areas - Subscribe - My Blogs - Categories - Archives, etc. Make my eyes STOP now an again.
Tip Two: I don’t see recent posts. Consider integrating a Recent Posts section and also consider the Wordpress Plugin Popularity that shares your most popular posts. Let your readers see what others are enjoying. This would help make your blog more sticky and keep your visitors a bit longer.
Tip Three: Pictures! Lots of Pictures would be a plus. Even if they are cartoons, drawings your kids do or doodles off your desk pad - include pictures. Statistically, people will lurk longer if they have the visual temptation to do so.
Tip Four: Technorati - I see you are utilizing the del.icio.us tags, but I’m a big fan of Technorati tags and have seen first hand the traffic they can draw in.
Tip Five: Outgoing Links - There’s not a lot of link love being shared in the form of outgoing links. This is one of those topics that so many people have varying views, but I am a believer that outgoing links help in your search engine rankings and helps to establish a very loyal community. It takes a village to support a blog but it starts with you supporting your village.
Anyone have anything they’d like to add?
Thanks to Mike for allowing me the opportunity to critique his blog and to do so publicly.
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interesting insights we can all learn from!
Oooo, what fun! I love Mike’s blog and it’s great to see another’s opinion of it ;).
Delpine and MamaDuck — thanks for commenting. It wasn’t easy critiquing Mike’s blog — but I know how it is to have everyone say everything looks great even if they don’t mean it.
I do love brutal honesty
I’M NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN.
Just kidding. Thanks for the tips. They are all good reminders of things that I need to do more of. Except for the Technorati thing of course, but we already talked about that.