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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Keywords

We’ve reached an important milestone in the creation of our new blog. We’re ready to give it a name! It’s true that if you write a great blog, people will come… eventually. If you pick a great name, woven with carefully chosen keywords, people will come faster!

Google offers a great keyword tool which is absolutely free. If you’d like to learn more about it, please “click here.” Beware! It’s easy to sink into the morass of the keyword jungle and never return! You can become so  mired down researching and analyzing keywords you’ll never produce anything!

I know another great tool for helping you pick a name for your blog. It’s a free program called Domain Samurai and you can find it by, “clicking here.” This program has extensive keyword support as well.

I don’t make a dime from endorsing the Google Keyword Tool or Domain Samurai. I’ve used both of them with great results and that’s the only reason I recommend them to you!

So here’s your next assignment. Using the Google Keyword Toolbox and Domain Samurai, find a domain name for your blog (like http://www.yourname.com). Try your best to find a name that ends with dot com. We’ll talk more about this in our next session!

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Finding Your Subject

It’s time to zero in on a subject for your blog. It’s important to pick something you enjoy doing, but be careful with this. For instance, say you really love to shine the spokes on your bicycle. That’s all well and good, but if you blog about “Bicycle Spoke Shining” you’ll run out of material really fast! Opening up to “Bicycle Maintenance” might be a better choice. Blogging about things you are excited about is fun! People who read your blogs will feel your passion and become fans. Blogging about things you think other people are excited about is bad… People will feel you’re not one of them and won’t come back.

So how do you nail your subject down? Walk in to your nearest book store. What section draws you to it? Come on, you feel it pulling you… Is it Computers & Software? Science & Technology?  (Yeah, I’m a geek). Whatever it is, go there and look at the books in that section. Pull the ones that interest you. Look through them. Do they make a light go off in your brain? Bang! You found your passion!

You can do this by going to the Barnes & Noble website as well. Click “Books” in the upper left hand corner of their home screen… Then look through the “Books by Subject” column… Click on subjects that interest you and see where they lead. Many of the books are rated… See how many ratings they have (they indicate how many people are interested in the topic).

Spend some time on this. Go to Amazon.com as well. Search and research your topic. When you finally find a topic that makes you happy we’ll go on to the next step… how to select a name for your blog!

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Whatcha Gonna Do?

Okay, I believe it’s safe to assume you want to start a blog… Otherwise you wouldn’t be here! What do you want to write about? That’s an important question! If you want to have a successful blog, you need something that has sustainability… Something you can write about day after day and never run out of material. For example… A blog about how to clean a clam would be hard to sustain… A blog about “Great Seafood Recipes” might be better (just saying!).

Here’s a homework assignment… (Yuck! Did he say homework! I’m outta here!)… OK, I’m sorry… Here’s a personal exploration awakening… Make a list of things you would like to blog about… No pressure here… We’ll try to help you select the topic that will work best for you in my next post!

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Welcome to, “We Can Blog!”

Please excuse the smell… This blog is so new the paint hasn’t dried yet!

This is my eleventh blog. A few of my old ones still exist and I’ve deleted others. Here’s my problem… I pick a subject and start writing like crazy. I’ve so many ideas and things to write about! Then, around the fiftieth post, things start drying up. Panic sets in! I set up email alerts on Google for subject matter. I keep banging away, but it seems more like work than fun! Eventually I get flustered and just stop! Another blog bites the dust!

I felt guilty. I had followers, and people were making comments! We were having fun! What was I doing wrong? Why do I keep throwing everything to the wind and just run away? I did some research and found I’m not the only one… It’s estimated that somewhere between 75 to 99 percent of blogs become extinct in the first year! The exact number is hard to pin down because once someone decides to give up their blog it goes “poof!”. There’s not a trace of it left!

After some soul searching, and a little help from my guru’s, I figured it out! I was writing blogs about what I thought other people wanted to read. That’s wrong! You have to write blogs about what YOU like… and I like to teach! I’ve been a CPR instructor, a first aid instructor, a PADI/NAUI diving instructor, a safe driving instructor, a motorcycle safety instructor, a law enforcement field training officer, and a dad helping my kids with their homework. I’m a teacher and this blog is going to teach people how to write blogs!

And here’s the greatest secret about teaching… The teacher learns more from their students than the students learn from their teacher! So let’s jump into the blogging rabbit hole and embark on a writing adventure together!

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