Giving Back to Your Blog’s Loyal Readers
I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I’ve been blogging with WordPress now for approximately three months and am just beginning to see the possibilities. WordPress has so many plugins that can enhance my blog and give back to my loyal readers that my head is spinning.
Commentluv
The latest plugin I came across is one called Commentluv . With Commentluv installed, folks who leave approved comments on this blog receive a link back to the latest comment on their blog. Commentluv accesses the commenter’s RSS feed and displays, beneath the post, the latest comment from the blog.
Link Love
In conjunction with Commentluv, I’ve also installed Lucia’s Linky Love . What Lucia’s Linky Love does is it makes the comment author’s link ‘do follow.’ For you newbies out there, ‘do follow’ links means that No Job For Mom will share it’s link juice to qualified and approved commenter’s.
In the internet world, page rank, popularity, and good SERP placement is important. (SERP means search engine results placement). The higher your page rank and popularity, the better the SERP and the better the traffic. Getting backlinks from decent sites, especially those with a good page ranking helps to boost your blog’s popularity and ranking.
Sharing the Love
Although as of this writing No Job for Mom’s home page has a ranking of 3 (which may change because Google gives and takes away), I’m willing to share my tiny pitcher of link juice with my supportive commenter’s. It’s my way of giving back to those who help my blog to become successful.
Lucia’s Linky-Love has a feature that sets a minimum number of blog comments a visitor must comment on before the commenter’s author can partake of the link juice. This helps to prevent a flurry of comment spam.
No Spam Love
In a perfect world, these two plugins are a great way to thank my readers. In this imperfect world, however, I’ll see how it works. If No Job For Mom is suddenly bombarded with spammy comments, I’ll have to reconsider this move. In the meanwhile, Commentluv and Lucia’s Linky Love is fully activated. Linky Love becomes enabled after 5 approved posts.
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Comment by Internet Marketing (1 comments.) on 18 July 2008:
I’ve been testing out CommentLuv on a few of my blogs it seems to be a great internet traffic generator. Visitors aren’t just going to start commenting without something in return.
Internet Marketings last blog post..Meeting Notes - July 16th 2008
Comment by Susan (1 comments.) on 18 July 2008:
aww…the love!
This plugin is very popular!
Comment by Jen Brister (14 comments.) on 7 September 2008:
I just installed linkly love. I’ve been looking for a good dofollow to install on my blog. Thanks!
Jen Bristers last blog post..The Writers Block
Comment by Julie on 21 October 2008:
Just a question about blogging - I am relatively new to this and have been using Google’s Blogspot for a couple years now. I mostly just have rambling thoughts on there. But, I have noticed you use word press. Is it worth switching over or can I do similar things on blogspot? I have very little HTML or programmin experience.
Thanks!
Comment by Felicia on 21 October 2008:
I actually have a few blogs. One of my blogs I transferred from Blogspot to WordPress only because I had visions of taking the blog to the next level. Unfortunately, time didn’t allow me to do so.
The problem I now face with the blog I transferred from Blogspot to WordPress is that I have duplicate content. I tried several approaches to avoid the duplicate content. First I removed all of the old posts and placed them on my new blog, but my Google traffic kept going to the old blog.
Next I put all of the posts back (an arduous task) and tried to redirect the traffic to the new blog. That didn’t work too well either.
Now, I have a little scroll box on the side of the old blog that displays the titles and a snippet of the posts from the new blog to entice readers to go to the “new and improved” blog. I think it sort of works, but the largest problem I face is Google AdSense.
Google AdSense does not credit clicks from the new blog. I noticed with over several hundred ad clicks my revenue remained at $0. My old blog, however, that still has a few Google AdSense ads are credited (of course there are fewer clicks at the old blog). I’ve since removed all Google ads from the new blog and am in the process of seeking workable alternatives.
So, the long and the short of it is, if your blog is just about your rambling thoughts, there is no need to switch platforms. As far as finding new templates to change your blog’s appearance, use a search engine and search for “free blogger templates.” You’ll find a host of templates that you can download. The instructions for installation are usually not too difficult.
Comment by Julie on 22 October 2008:
Thank you for that advice! I do not have very many loyal readers or readers period. I beg and plead, but to no avail, “You should check out my blog” and I am lucky if I get 2 hits a day! lol I also have no Google ads. For the future, I’d like to get the traffic you get here(wishful thinking), and also have my blogs become more informative instead of ramblings (which I still tend to do), so would WordPress be a good choice? What I like about your blog is all the tabs at the top. The layout seems more user friendly. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I know you MUST be busy!
Comment by Felicia on 22 October 2008:
I happen to like WordPress because it is very flexible and you can add widgets and things.
If you set up a free blog using WordPress.com, you won’t be able to place ads on it. If you decide to download and install WordPress on your own domain, you’ll incur the cost of hosting your own domain.
Six of one, half dozen of the other. It all depends on how far you intend to take your blog.
This particular template that I’m using isn’t a free template. I came across it and liked the way it worked so I purchased it. I’m not so pleased with the tabs above because they seem to take on their own personality. The tabs are a function of how I label each post.
I’m a bit scattered all over the place so my post labeling isn’t uniform. As a result the tab subjects seem to be all over the place. It works for now until I find the time to really figure out what I’m doing.
You didn’t share the link to your blog. When you’re ready to share the link, let us know so we can take a look (I speak in plural because I’m sure other readers are interested too).