“The Best of” is kind of an overstatement but shut up, it’s my blog. I feel like I’ve lost my blogging mojo — if I ever had such a thing — in the past couple of years but I think in 2011, I got some of it back. I’m actually proud of a number of my blog entries this year. Some of them may have only been read by no more than 20 people but I don’t care. This is the best of Baddieverse in 2011 and you’re going to like it.

10 Things Single People Can Do on the Internet on Valentine’s Day

I’ve spent years without feeling the warm touch of a girlfriend so I consider myself an expert in being single. That’s why I came up with this list that aims to help single people everywhere cope with the bitter cold that is Valentine’s Day.

Superhero Pick-Up Lines

Sleazy pick-up lines and superheroes are kind of my thing, so I guess nobody was surprised when I came up with this list of superhero pick-up lines.

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Back in 2007, I used to post bite-sized entries on this blog. Then Twitter came along, so that was that. I’m cleaning up this blog’s categories and tags today and I’ve decided to just collect all of those mini-posts into one useless mega post. For posterity, of course. And here they are with my apologies.

Cast Aside | 01.30.07

Because full articles just aren’t enough.

Stiff Nips | 01.31.07

So, so, soooo cold. It’s colder outside than it is inside the air-conditioned building! I’m expecting snow any minute now.

Friday I’m in Lurv | 02.09.07

I don’t care if Monday’s blue. Tuesday’s gray, and Wednesday too. Thursday, I don’t care ’bout you. It’s Friday, I’m in lurv.

It Pours | 02.15.07

When it rains, it pours. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna buy me a pint of mango ice cream I’ll devour while I cry in the shower before crying myself to sleep. Kthxbai.

Blue Fish | 02.19.07

After more than 2 weeks since applying, Baddieverse has finally been accepted into the Blue Fish Network! Hooray for acceptance!

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In the first part of A One Year Experiment in Blogging, I shared lessons I learned about producing content. In the second part, I shared lessons in making blogs readable and marketable. In the third part, I shared lessons in bringing in visitors from search engines. Today, I’ll tell you about social media. While bringing in visitors via search engines is important, an equally important task in building your reader base is attracting visitors via other people. Being social is the name of the game and the traffic you’ll be bringing in from social networking sites is more valuable than that from search engines.

Share if You Care

Purchase my dickery, won't you?

Although most of my traffic  comes from search engines, I find that readers coming in from Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and other social sites are much more compelling. The reason for this is communication and engagement are strong with this kind of traffic. When people like your shared posts, you know that they’re interested in what you’re selling. In terms of my personal blog, I’m selling my thoughts and the silly things I have to say about comics and all forms of dickery. They are interested in similar shenanigans that I offer, hence the possibility that they will come back for more.

If people share your content with their own networks, you’re practically getting free advertisement. It also means that your content is compelling enough that other people want to share it with their friends, relatives and random Internet stalkers. This is why posting your blog updates to social networking sites is pretty much a must especially if you’re still building a following. Don’t overdo it, though, because  sharing everything — even your less than stellar content — can be quite annoying. I know this because I get easily annoyed with people who overshare too.

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So far in A One Year Experiment in Blogging, I shared the lessons I learned about content and presentation. Today, it’s time to talk about SEO. In my first few years of blogging, I monitored my traffic — as one should — and determined that most of my visitors come from search engines. I never really seriously considered optimizing my content for search engines until last year when I started to write keyword-optimized articles for a client. KA-CHING.

SEwhatnow?

What is this SEO you speak of?

Whenever friends and relatives ask me what I’m doing in my home based job, I simply tell them I do SEO. And then they give me a blank WTF look. There are possibly hundreds of blogs and websites out there that can explain the concept better so I’ll just tell you in simple terms what it’s about: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the process of making your blog’s content more visible via search engines. Making your blog rank high on Google, Bing and other search engines guarantees more traffic. Bringing in readers from search engines does not always translate to a large and loyal reader base, though. Your content is in charge of that part.

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In the first part of A One Year Experiment in Blogging, I told you about the cliche “Content is King” and how I came to realize that it does indeed have merit. But no matter how awesome your content is, if you don’t make it readable and marketable, it might as well be worthless. For the second part of this series, let’s talk about the lessons I learned about blog presentation.

Conan approves.

Make It Look Good

I used to think that if people can read the text on a blog, that’s it. Readability achieved! It turns out readability is more than just making text easy to view. It involves color and formatting and images and the overall design, layout, look and feel of your blog. Using the default theme on Tumblr or Blogger or picking the WordPress theme with your favorite color is not good enough. It has to stand out, show your personality and reflect the attitude and theme of your content. Using a minimalist theme on a blog about explosions or zombie movies may not be the best way to go about it.

You may need to do some coding if you want existing themes to work with your content and your blog to stand out from the rest of the blogs using the same theme. You may even find it necessary to create your own unique theme or ask/pay someone to do it for you.

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