Linking

Oh . . . you linked to this other great site for us? Thank you so much. Now I will read things on their page and since this one opened up in the place of your page I will completely forget about returning to read the rest of your article. Have a nice day! Love, your faithfulest follower ever. xox smiley smiley winky winky

There are two thoughts on the idea of how to do links. To have them open up in the current window or in a new one. This will show you how to do it in a new window. This also shows you how to create what is called a Ping Back.

But WHY is it sooooo IMPORTANT to some to have links open in other tabs or windows?!

I think you can agree that your blog is the most important blog to you. Sure you LOVE other blogs but you put a lot of time into yours and you want people to at least finish you article before they totally lose interest in you and go off wandering the world of other blogs.

Linking to other blogs in your articles is a GREAT thing to do, especially if they are legit, honest, relevant links. I’ve begun to do it more often lately as I’ve found articles out there that inspire me to write on certain subjects or that just fit what I am writing. I have even went back in and edited an article to link back to another article I found.

But some bloggers want to make sure that when the reader clicks on the link that it opens in a new window.

They want their article to remain there present for them to see and remember. Not something they have to remember to click the back arrow to get to.

What if you have important information later in your article, or a link to something YOU have?

If you don’t know how to link back to a page here are the ‘How To’ instructions. If you do know how, here are the instructions anyway and a reminder of where the box to check for opening in a new window is.

You are in your Posts section of the Dashboard on WordPress (Other Blogging Platforms will be different, but it should all be similar in nature.) and you are wanting to link an article.

Step One

You need to highlight the words you want the reader to click on in order to open the link. The words can be anything. Notice in a lot of articles you read it says click here to do something. Well the URL does not say ‘here’. They are doing what you are doing now by going through these steps.

Once you’ve highlighted the words you then go to . . .

Step Two

Click the icon that to me sort of looks like a weird paperclip. It’s circled in red above.

Step Three

Here you paste the URL in from the article or Blog you want to link to in the ‘URL’ field.

Then you click the box next to ‘Open link in a new window tab’.

Finally click ‘Add Link’ in the bottom right corner of the box.

Now when anyone clicks the link in your article a new window will show up to read that article in while leaving your article available to them to read.

You do the same thing when adding a link. an URL to an image. Click the image and then the paper clip link thing. Exact same process.

WARNING!

If you Reblog and the person is just reading in the Reader window the links don’t go to a new window it seems. But if they click on View Original then they work fine.

It’s not your Content

by: Ronovan

You’re new to the Blog world or even been around the Blog a few times and you wonder “Where are all the people that should be lining up to read my work”. (See what I did there, “Around the Blog….Around the Block. No…I tried. And I have no idea why L. L. Cook J’s ‘Around the way Girl’ is going through my head now.)

Blogging is like a lot of things in life:

It takes time
It takes practice
You have to work it
And it takes great patience

When I started blogging I just wanted people to read my creative pieces. I didn’t really think about how many I wanted to read it or how I would get them to read it, I just wanted to create and click publish.

We like to say we don’t care how many people show up to the party. As long as we put out the nachos in case someone decides to join in we think we’re okay. But we all know we really like to see those faces show up, even those we don’t know. This article is mostly for people who want to increase their readership.

I want to say one quick thing. If your home page is where your most recent posts go then here is what might happen. A person goes to the page, reads the top article, then reads all the ones below it. You get one view for all of those read articles. Some people put in a ‘read more’ break that you place in during your posting process to shorten what’s on that page to create more space or they do it to actually force a click to the next page. I personally no longer do the ‘read more’ just because. I’m happy people showed up and try to make it easy as possible.

The truth is, most of us have content in our articles that is good. We’re going to connect with someone and we’ll find our niche or group we seem to speak to. But it doesn’t happen overnight.

Time

Like I said you can’t bring in hundreds of views of your articles overnight unless you just write some hot button issue and get it out on social networks properly at the right moment. Perhaps hot button is your theme. If so then make sure you do something unique with it to stand out from the crowd.

Practice

Getting your format set up just right takes time. I’ve been through several themes for my blog and tested the waters on what I write. I know what will bomb and what will receive some generally decent response for my site. I still don’t mind bombing as long as I have fun and don’t do it too often. I want my readers to know they can always show up and have something good/useful to read. That is one reason I put out as much material as possible. The other reason…I’m insane.

Work it

It’s tough to say this but just putting your content out there doesn’t mean people will show up. You need to do some work and help people find you, in other words, get the ball rolling:

Visit other blogs and comment: You are thinking you barely have time to do your own blog but you would be surprised at the ideas you come up with by taking a few minutes to visit elsewhere. Blogging isn’t just about blogs, it’s a community of supporters.

Link back to other blogs but only if relevant: Don’t just put a link to another person’s blog in your article for no reason. Make it be because it pertains to your article. Honest blogs get honest followers who stay with you.

Share in Social Networks: Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn, whatever your options are use them and share your articles there and spend a few minutes just being at least remotely involved.

Tag your articles properly: This one is a work in progress for everyone. You have to look at your work and see what it is and what words best describe it. Visit other blogs similar to yours that are successful and see what kind of tags they use.

Patience

You have to be patient. Once things start rolling…they roll. But it will take some time. Just keep working and putting out a lot of content, but quality content.

That’s all for this time and I hope there was something useful for you. Just remember that it’s not always about the content or the writing.

The only way you will fail is by giving up.

ronovanwrites

Author, Poet, Blogger, Father, Reader And More

Blog Tip: Links to Blogs and Articles-How to and WHY

Blogging Tips: It’s NOT your content.

Spread this stuff everywhere!

Spread this stuff everywhere!