3 Weeks

It has now been three weeks since I started trying to learn about blogging and about gaining traffic on the internet. I have a couple hours most nights to try to learn more. I started on March 6th. More study time has been available lately because my wife is involved in Singin' in the Rain with Lehi Arts. For the last three weeks she has been gone every night and also every Saturday. On the bright side, she has started the actual productions so she will be home most the day today. It is going to be a little interesting when she is done and I have my nightly schedule all set now.

The plan is to keep learning about blogging and the web in general. Part of my time needs to be split between studying and actually creating some blog posts. With so much to learn about the web, I can't stop studying each day, but I won't get better at blogging without doing it as much as I can.

One thing I learned more about last night was offsite optimization. Google will rank a site higher if it has links to its site from other important sites. I looked at a number of different web sites last night. Some sites ranked as a 2 only had one link on another site. Sites with a rank of 3 had around 2-4 links. It only took around 5-10 links for sites to be ranked a 4. To get to a 5 it seemed like that was the biggest jump. Sites with a 5 ranking seemed to have hundreds of links. It seemed to take thousands of links to get to a 6. Getting to a 4 doesn't seem too difficult, but getting to a 5 will take a bit of work.

The first step is to get Google to rank my site. I believe the best way is to get a link to my site on an important site. We'll see how it goes.

Getting Closer

After a couple weeks of research, I am getting closer to understanding how to do this bloging stuff. If I am going to take the time to write posts and keep up on my blog, I want to make sure I am doing it right. I have played with the software enough to know how to do a few things. It has also been interesting to learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

My next goals are to get my site searched by Google so it can be found by web searches. One way I am trying to do this is to put a link on my wife's blog. After I get my blog found by Google, I need to learn how to improve the Google ranking of my blog. My wife's blog is a number one ranking, and this seems to be the case for most blogs. I have found some 2 and 3 ranked blogs. A chalenging goal will be to get my blog ranked as a 4 or a 5. It probably won't be this blog that ranks that high. Ideas are starting to form in my head for my "real" blog. That will be the one that I will spend the most time on trying to improve.

It is amazing to me how much free information there is out on the web. People have started posting free stuff on the web to get more traffic onto their sites. Once they have more traffic, they try to sell things like subcriptions or ebooks. If I can ignore these advertisements, I can really learn a lot of stuff for free. These make is sound like the books or software will make everything much more simple. That may be true, but I need to learn how to do it first. That is the only way I will really understand it. Once I am sure it is stuck in my brain, I may be willing to buy something to save me some time.

I figure I need to start writing some posts so I can start getting used to it. Once I make it a habit, I can start to direct my posts more to a set topic. Until then, rambling is OK.

Blogging Basics

It is amazing to me that any person out there can create their own website in a matter of a few minutes. In the last 30 minutes I have created a blog, learned a few basics about how to format it, and now I have started to add some posts. My wife has had a family blog for a couple years now, but I have never tried to setup my own blog before. The goal of this first blog is to learn how to use it well, so I can go on and create new blogs on more specialized topics.

My first step is to learn some of the basics about blogging. What can I do with posts? How do I add pictures and videos? How can I make my posts more interesting. What formatting can I do with the site to make it more fun for people to visit?

My second goal is to find ways to attract people to my blog and find ways to get them to keep coming back. I need to learn how to add interesting content, and I need to find ways to start poles and discussions. Doing this will make the site more interesting to visit often.

For this first blog, I will use it to keep track of the things I have learned about blogging. I am just starting, so there should be plenty of things to write about. Since I have started looking into blogs, I have learned about RSS feeds, keywords, metatags, and some HTML. It has been interesting for me to go out and check out blogs to see what others are doing. I have started to jot down some ideas for possible blogs I may start in the future.

Day one of blogging is a success, and I have now posted my first post.