How to Write Great Blog Content

Successful bloggers have to keep their heads around many different aspects of the medium – but at it’s core is being able to write compelling and engaging content on a consistent basis over time.

How you do this will vary from blogger to blogger to some extent as each blogger has their own style – however there are some basic principles of writing great blog content that might be worth keeping in mind



Is your Blog Scannable ?

Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues. Studies have shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25% slower than reading from paper – hence scanning becomes a technique that most employ.

Is your Blog Scannable? It’s a pretty simple thing to test. Ask a friend who is not familiar with your site to take a quick look at a few of your recent posts. Give them 15 to 30 seconds on each post, at the end of which you ask them what the post was about. You’ll quickly get a sense of how they’ve interacted with your blog.

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The Background of PageRank

Google's PageRank (PR) is one of the most sought after, and yet misunderstood, web page attributes. PageRank, named after one of the founders of the Google search engine, Larry Page, was the innovative foundation that the Google search engine was built on.

The theory was that a link from one web page to a web page of another site was in essence a vote for that page. The reasoning was that webmasters would only link to pages that they thought were interesting and of value to their viewers. Google used the number of inbound links (IBL) to a page to judge the importance and relevance of that page, and based on this calculation, and other factors, decided where to place that page on the search engine results page (SERP).

They devised a scale of measurement for PageRank from 1 to 10. Then for the information of webmasters and interested people they produced a toolbar that can be deployed in Internet Explorer that will indicate the PageRank value of any page being viewed in the browser. These values have become known as PR0 to PR10. Note: A reader has pointed out an apparent contradiction between a scale of 1 to 10 and a reporting of PR0 to PR10. In fact PR0 indicates no PageRank. One cannot be said to have PageRank until the site achieves a PR1 ranking.

Since PR values are a result of IBLs, Google decided to give them their own name and refers to inbound links as backlinks. As part of the toolbar there is a quick lookup of the number of backlinks that Google reports for the page that is currently being viewed in the browser. This search can also be done without the aid of the toolbar by simply typing "link:http://www.yourURL.com" into the Google search box.

The one trick to this link search is that Google does not display all backlinks. At one time it was thought that they only listed pages with a value of PR4 or greater. Today however, you will find backlinks reported from pages of lower PR values. So, at best, Google's backlink search seems to present some sample of  pages linking to the site. Suffice it to say that this search is not a reliable measure of all IBLs to a page.

Google corporate site sends users to China

Users searching with Google for "Google executives" were given an English link saying "Corporate Information – Google Management" that took them to a page with all information in Chinese – http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html. The site lists Google's executives, among them Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Moving for the first time to ease a high-stakes standoff, China agreed Friday to renew Google's license to do business in the world's largest Internet market despite the Mountain View company's open defiance of the government's censorship policies.

China's decision came a week after Google made some tweaks to how Chinese users access its search engine, giving authorities a face-saving reason not to shut down the Google.cn website. Observers said the Chinese government's decision to accept Google's concessions is a clear indication it doesn't want to scare away Silicon Valley Web 2.0 companies and other overseas firms.

In recent months, foreign businesses, long supportive of China's rise, have grown increasingly critical of government policies that they say favor local industries at the expense of Western companies. Google's faceoff with China had exacerbated the tension.

"It was not a retreat and it was not a chest-pounding victory," said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. "It was a decision not to take this in a more dramatic direction, either way."

After announcing it would no longer censor its search results in China, Google in March began automatically redirecting users of its mainland address, Google.cn, to its Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk, a shift that angered officials. Government