On Blogging and Social Media

Getting really useful feedback on your site or blog can be difficult and expensive, but there are some free tools which can help you to find out what you are doing right or wrong and help you to make technical improvements that may well boost your search engine optimisation (SEO) and so the visibility of your site to new visitors.

One tool that I have just tried is Website Grader and I was quite impressed by the amount of detailed information I was able to get about my blog without even parting with my email address.

How to grade your website

• To get your website's grade and report just got to: Website Grader and enter the URL of your site or blog. If you want to benchmark your site against others that you consider to be similar or competitors you can also enter their URLs too and generate a single report.

• Then just click on 'Generate Report' and your report will be created along with a grade which you can display on your site if you wish.

How to get SEO advice

• The site doesn't just analyse the content of your site and how well the pages are constructed, it also searches through different search engines and social networking sites to see what kind of impact your site is making.
• After a couple of minutes you can read through the report and find out where you are doing well and where you could make improvements.
• Where improvements are needed you are supplied with an explanation and some details so you can easily start making changes that will benefit your site immediately.

• All the information given is explained and you can dig more deeply into any areas you are unsure of simply by clicking on some of the links provided.

How to learn more about SEO

Website Grader is a great way to learn a bit more about your site and about some of the tricky sides of SEO that can at times seem rather complex. I'm already working on a few things I learned about my sites and making some improvements. I think though at the end of the day it's important to remember that however much you work on your SEO, the best way to bring traffic to your site and keep people coming back is to write good content.

How about you?

• How do you evaluate your site?
• Have you used other SEO tools?
• Have you ever had any SEO help from marketing companies?
• Did Website Grader tell you anything new about your site?

Related links:

• Compare your site using benchmarking
• Google Webmaster Tools
• How to track your site

This tip is for more established bloggers and it's about a handy tool called Social Meter which can help you to measure how the kind of impact your blog or site is having around a number of various social platforms. It measures the number of links back to your site and allows you to click through to them to see who and how you are being referred to.

• It also you to check out other people's sites to see what kind of 'social noise' they are generating too. This can be really useful if you want to start looking at which community sites or blogs you would like to comment on and how popular they are.

• If you are writing about a site or web app, you can also use it to check out what other people are saying about it and find other references to link to.

• You can also use it as a KPI (key performance indicator) to measure the success of your site by checking back regularly to see how your score is improving.

So here is what you do:

• Go to the social meter site at: http://www.socialmeter.com
• Click where it say 'Get bookmarklet' and then from the page it takes you to, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks tool bar om your browser.

• Now go to a site that you want to measure and then click the bookmarklet. It will scan the services for links and mentions and display a score for the site and a breakdown of the links.

• Just click on the name of the service to check the sources of the various links.
• If you prefer not to use the bookmarklet, you can just paste in a URL and click on 'Check'
  

So, lots of really handy information and it's quick and free. I hope you find it useful.

How about you?

• Do you monitor your online reputation?
• What tools do you use to measure the impact your work is having?

Related articles:

• How to track your site

Having spent a lot of time creating and writing your blog, you will probably want people to read it. Getting people to your blog can be one of the biggest challenges, especially when you are getting started and don't have enough content to really get noticed by the big search engines.

One quite quick and easy way you can start getting people to your site is by getting your site listed on blog directories and especially ones which are ELT or education specific.

Some of the best source of referral traffic to my own sites are ELT specific blog directories and these are the ones.

Teaching Better

• This is a great site that allows you to create a profile and then submit sites, interesting articles etc that are relevant to language teaching and learning. To begin with you can only submit one site every 24 hours as there has been a problem with lots of irrelevant sites being posted.

• Teaching better is not only a great way to get traffic to your site it is also a great source of information and I've found quite a few really useful sites and web based tools there.
• Visitors to the site can also vote recommended links up or down if they think they are good or bad, so if you do visit and submit your link check out some of the other links there and help the site owners by voting down anything that shouldn't be there.
  

OneStopBlogs

• OneStopBlogs has been created by Macmillan, who also created the marvellous OneStopEnglish and is another ELT specific blog directory. Again this one sends a lot of traffic to my own blogs and I would highly recommend it. You have to submit blog information by email to the editor, which is great because it ensures quality.
  

• Blog articles also get higher ranking on the site if other blogs are linking to them, so again there is good quality control so this is a great place, not only to get listed , but also to find good links and information from other bloggers.

Englishcaster

• Englishcaster is a directory I've only recently discovered and is more heavily aimed at resources and blogs for students than teachers. You can submit links by creating a profile and adding quite detailed information. Again this is great because it reduces spam and insures greater quality. Sites that are submitted can also be voted on by users, so again there is more quality control.

• There is a section for teachers, but most of the categories are things like grammar, vocabulary and the skills etc. Really useful directory to both list and find materials for your students.

TeachingEnglish Links

• The British Council BBC site TeachingEnglish also has a really useful links section to their site and again this is a great place to get a link added.

• You will again need to contact the editor to submit your link and there is no guarantee that they will add it, but it as a great place to get listed as quality is assured there and the site already has a huge ELT audience so these are the people you want to bring to your blog or site.

ELearningLearning

• This is another great site directory site that concentrates manly on elearning and use of technology rather than ELT. The focus is also more on corporate elearning, though it might be a useful site to submit to if you have a mix of technology and Business English related materials.

• You'll have to apply to the editor to get a chance to get listed on the site, but again this is great because it ensures quality and makes it a great place to get listed and find information.

Blogcatalog

• Blogcatalog is for any blog and isn't ELT specific, but I have still found it to be a good source of traffic for my own blogs. You create a profile and register your blogs there and you also have to include a small gif on your site to be registered.

• Blogcatalog is also something of a social network and you can register things like you Twitter feed there to and start building up a network of friends, so it's a handy way of making blogger contacts too.

These are all great places to submit you blog and your postings to, but remember, be a good member of the community:

Only add links to what you feel has genuine value to the community

• Don't spam the directories with too many links or by trying to get every thing you write listed.
• Vote up other good stuff you find on these sites and so help to ensure quality
• Don't just focus on your own material also add links to other materials that you feel would be useful

It is in your own interests to ensure that the directories and sites you are listed on deliver a good quality service to the people who use them. That way they will keep sending people to your site or blog.

I hope these sites help to bring readers to your blog and in turn this encourages you to keep posting.

How about you?

• Know of other good directories, especially ELT ones to get listed?
• Where does most of your site traffic come from?

Happy blogging.