There are many reasons why people choose to blog. This blog was originally set up by me to introduce my students to blogging and other social media tools. I therefore chose to make the blog public, so that all of the students could access it. However there are two other options. One where you can make your blog private and the other where you can choose who may view it via invitation by entering their email address.

Image source: http://www.paintbits.com/

Private blogs

Having a private blog can provide a useful space for reflection and developing your writing. Many use a blog as a diary, a collection of ideas or as a means of organising information to refer back to. A semi-private blog where only those you invite to read can provide a space to share ideas and build upon them by inviting the readers to leave comments.

Public blogs

If you are writing a blog and wish to share your posts publically, then there are a number of simple things you can do to increase your readership.

• Add an email subscription box so that readers can click to subscribe to your blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
• Connect your blog to popular social networking sites and automatically share new posts with your friends.
• Add sharing buttons to your blog and allow your visitors to share posts with their friends.

Other things to consider are making it easy for others to find your blog and posts within it.

• Give your blog a meaningful name
• Craft the titles of your posts to include words people might use to search for that topic
• Complete an about page to give visitors an outline of what you are blogging about.
• When adding images make sure you give each one a useful descriptive name but also complete the Alt Text box to give it a description.

Alt Text

Complete the Alt Text box when uploading images to add to your blog

The alt attribute should describe the image. Once completed it will serve to help any search engine identify the image but also help those who are visually impaired and using a screen reader.

When you hover over an image on a website where the alt tag box has been completed, the description will be displayed.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The tips above include some of the simple things we can do to optimise the chances of our blog posts being found in a search. The video below is an introduction to understanding SEO.

Source: Lee Lefever, Commoncraft

You may also find the one page Google SEO tips sheet useful or the more in depth Google SEO starter guide.

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