Background and Definition:
Having quality “Pillar Articles” is one of the first and most important things you can do for your blog. I advocate writing many pillar articles for your blog, they take time and effort but they are really the bare bones of your blog, making “pillar” a great word to describe them. An often overlooked benefit is that they often help you think of other article ideas. Pillar articles can vary in structure but they should especially be timeless articles. In this, you ensure that they will generate traffic over a long period of time.
What Do They Do?
A pillar article generates new readers and backlinks for your blog from many different sources. Over time these articles continue to bring in traffic and praise for your blog such as organic traffic from search engines.
How to Reap the Benefits of Your Work
Pillar articles require plenty of effort in writing, editing, and researching. So you want to make sure you are properly promoting your article. First and foremost there are things you should be doing on your own blog.
Most Popular, Top Posts, Best etc.
List your most popular pillar articles in a list on the main page of your blog. You can install a plug-in to do this for you or you can set up your own page if your blog is still young. Either way, make sure you have a list of your best, most valuable articles in a place that is easy to find. Since your pillars are timeless articles you don’t have to worry about making changes to this list once it is established properly. For example, if you set up a popular posts widget it will edit the list for you. If you are making the list yourself because your blog is still young, make sure you are tracking your most popular posts and updating. You could sort them by page views, comments or just make your best judgment.
Submit to Social Media Sites
Submit about 1 out of every 10-15 of your pillar articles to social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Flickr, Reddit, Del.icio.us etc.
1. Write a “How-To” Article
You can write a how-to article about something you have mastered or a how-to about a topic you have researched and feel you can convey that information to others. It is important to make sure your how-to articles are related to your blog niche and your general expertise.
2. Write a Definition Article
Any time I come across a phrase or term I am unfamiliar with in the blogosphere I look it up online. This way I am constantly keeping up with the ever-evolving blog universe remaining up-to-date and informed. Sometimes you can use this as an opportunity to write a great pillar article on a definition. Perhaps you have an understanding of a complex subject in your niche and would like to explain it. Try not to compete with encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, demonstrate personality in your article and make it interesting. Developing a good relationship with your readers is obviously very important and can be achieved in this way. Definitions are great to keep on your own site rather than linking to other sites. They increase visit length, hits and keep readers coming back for more.
3. Write an Opinion or Argument Based Article
Discuss your argument, opinion, or theory. Keep in mind that the article should be timeless. It is especially important is that the article is unique and controversial.
4. Write a Course, Report or E-book
Combine a series of “how-to” articles into a course, report or e-book. You can write a series of articles and link them together on your blog or you can create an e-book available for download. Consider offering a free ebook at the end of the articles or having a free section on your website.
5. Write a “List” Article
As explained in my article 17 Tips For Better Blog Post Titles, making use of lists is a “tried and true” method for writing articles. Most of the visitors to your blog appreciate the list format because it makes the information available to them in an organized manner and can be read quickly. A good suggestion is to include pictures in your list format.
Lists are sharable, informative, and drive traffic to your blog. Include your own point of view or story to make your list unique to you.
6. Walk-Through
Use graphs, screenshots, charts, diagrams, spreadsheets, and other visuals to demonstrate how to do something. Walk your readers step by step through a process. This is so valuable because your readers are given precise and specific directions in achieving their goals. Visuals help to focus your readers attention, require less explanation, and give a lot of information. An example would be a programmer displaying how to install and use the WordPress plug-in they personally coded. The Walk-Through technique can be applied to various niches so start thinking creatively link of how you can apply this successfully. Keep in mind that your goal is always to help others.
Applying these Techniques:
I recommend writing a large volume of pillar articles. If you are just beginning your blog, a suggestion is to start off with about 1-3 pillar articles per week but this number can be adjusted according to your ability, time, and effort.
I wish you luck in writing a great pillar article and hope to see it out there on the Blogosphere!
Administration Panels – WordPress
The WordPress dashboard has a state-of-the-art appearance and provides users a feeling of confidence. Plug-ins integrate right into the dashboard. There are options for Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Comments, Appearance, Plug-ins, Users, Tools, Settings, and Email. Not to mention saving drafts, viewing previews and publishing posts is all very simple.
The BlogEngine.NET dashboard just simply does not stack up. It is less user-friendly, has less options, and has less style.
Cost- WordPress
Building a site around WordPress is less money.
If you’re using BlogEngine, someone is going to have to do all the custom work in asp if you are going to integrate the blog into a website.
WordPress makes this easy, you can simply add a cover page file to your theme allowing for a separate home page.
Customization – WordPress
WordPress plug-ins can be installed with a few simple clicks and with all the information right in front of you. I have yet to search for a plug-in and not find what I was looking for. Themes are just as easy to download and there are plenty to choose from. WordPress currently offers almost 10,000 plug-ins and over 1,000 themes.
Ease of use - WordPress
With WordPress I don’t have to worry about the appearance of my post because WP makes everything so easy for me. With WP, people with very little technical skills can contribute their time more effectively to their blogs and not have to struggle with FTP and programming. WP saves you time and money.
With BlogEngine.Net I sometimes had difficulty completing simple tasks such as inserting videos and images into my posts. I often would end up having to do this with raw html editing.
Features – WordPress
WordPress has a rich text editor, media upload capabilities, dynamic feeds, category management, tagging and content management. You can also auto-save drafts, choose a fixed time to publish your posts, and easily edit your permalink structure. The list goes on and on.
Installation – WordPress
How can you beat the famous 5 minute install?
Maintenance – WordPress
Let’s assume you pay to have a custom built site using BlogEngine.NET. What happens if the programmer decides not to work on your site anymore? Well, you’re going to have a tough time trying to find someone to help. If you succeed in finding a reasonably priced, reliable, and experienced programmer they will need to become familiar with all your custom programming.
With WordPress, it is easy to find a developer to help you work on your site. In addition, WordPress plug-ins notify you when you need to upgrade and with a click of a button you will have updated your site. Of course, all of these updates are free because WordPress is open-source as well as continually expanding.
Maturation – WordPress
Over 6 years old, WordPress has gone through many versions and so it is a more refined application for creating websites.
BlogEngine is relevatively young in comparison.
SEO – WordPress
Experienced web developers choose applications like WordPress and Drupral over BlogEngine.NET because of their superior SEO optimization.
It’s more work to customize BlogEngine.NET to make it reasonably friendly for traffic driving search engines.
Style - WordPress
WordPress blogs often look better, have sleeker designs and are more organized than their BlogEngine.NET counterparts.
Support – WordPress
Of course both have forums for support but, as previously noted, WordPress has a much larger community and has been around longer.
In Summary
Personally I’d take Wordpress over BlogEngine.net any day of the week. I have had experience with both and I have found that WordPress beats out Blogengine.NET by leaps and bounds. With my BlogEngine.NET blog I had many problems which I had to refer to Sethuraman. These problems could’ve been easily solved with WordPress plug-ins and other features saving time, effort, and money. Even simple tasks such as inserting images and videos into my posts was far more difficult than it needed to be. To be fair, BlogEngine.NET it is still in the development stage and I’m sure community support for problems such as these will expand over time. However, the only reason I could understand anyone running BlogEngine.NET over WordPress would be because they had some sort of ridiculous preference for Microsoft applications. This isn’t even a very good excuse because WordPress does not require a lot of PHP knowledge and there is plenty of support for beginners.
Learn More About Creating Your Own Blog
If you are new to WordPress and would like some help with blog installation and customization you can use the contact form to get in touch with me.
Additional Links:
5 Reasons Why WordPress Blogs Are Better
Now that we are clear on the importance of improving your blog post titles, here are some tips to help you.
1. Ask for an opinion – send it to one of your co-authors or blogger friends and ask for their comments, suggestions, and ideas.
2. Edit old titles – if a title is not properly suited for your content or not delivering appropriate traffic for your post you may want to consider editing it. However, to be safe you should keep in mind how the URL change will impact your traffic.
3. Write well – a post that is high in search engine ranks and keyword optimization but is poorly written is of little value to readers.
Be loyal to your passion and to your readers, provide them with excellent well-written content.
4. Strive for short and to the point – I have found that the best titles are short and concise.
5. Find your strategy and stick with it– once you have found your chosen style it’s o.k. to stick with it. The more experience you have the better you will become. Be aware of repeating the exact same title more than once.
6. Don’t promise what you can’t provide – you don’t want to create a title that your post is not worthy of. If you promise something that you fail to deliver you will only disappoint your readership.
7. Make use of lists – I am always excited to read a post that uses the list method. Your readers will know the amount of points in your post and this is certainly a “tried and true” method.
8. Take your time – as with your blog posts you should take your time with writing your title. Personally I acknowledge my occasional desire to quickly name a post and not give it enough thought. Since you are putting a considerable amount of time and effort into your post content make sure you pick the best title you can.
9. Utilize “How-To” – sometimes a simple how-to beginning will be what you are looking for.
10. Take a side – perhaps you have an opinion on a controversial topic and would like to share it with your readers. A simple “vs.” will do the job.
11. Customize to your personality – give the reader a sense of your personality while making it sound interesting.
12. Use strong words and phrases – examples include best, easy, fast, free, hidden, hot, killer and secret.
13. Indicate worth – properly written titles indicate the benefit of reading your post.
14. Polls/Questions – these types of titles are great for generating comments and interest in your content.
15. Use keywords – properly used keywords in your title can create high volumes of traffic.
16. Make true claims and promises – it’s o.k to make a promise just be sure you can actually follow through on it as mentioned before.
17. Use humor (with caution) – occasionally you may want to throw in a pun or something of that nature but you want the majority to be clear and project the meaning of the post.
Ok so here’s the deal. After three days of my blogger challenge things are running smoothly. I’ve successfully been able to achieve my goals so far. However, as I was researching online about blogging I came across How To Create a Successful Blog in 90 Days and as I was reading number 10 “Learn the art of headlining” it hit me, I needed to begin to name my posts in a manner that is more reader friendly. I previously was just titling each post Blogger Challenge Day #. From now on, I decided that I will continue the Blogger Challenge but I will be naming my posts so that they will summarize the content while at the same time attracting readers.
Reasons to Improve Your Blog Post Titles
Better titles are..
1. More attractive to your readers
2. Make it easier to know what exactly the post is about
3. Great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Important because readers following your RSS feed may only see the title
5. Conducive of visitors who stay longer on your site
