I’ve been doing this already on this blog. Everytime I encountered an error on any software application that took me more time to fix, I always blog about it. Why? What’s the use?
Well, I’m hitting many birds in one shot by just blogging about it. First, it will be for my personal use. So that when I encounter the same error in the future, I already know what to do. I will just search my blog and immediately, I’ll get the instruction on how to fix it.
Second, it will help other people having the same error. Since this blog is search engine friendly, people searching for the fix for that error will easily find that blog post.
Third, it also acts as a link bait. Bloggers who found that blog post useful might blog about it and link to it blog as his source.
Fourth, I consider it as a reward for myself for a job well done for fixing the error. Hehehe. Imagine how much Google Adsense money can it bring if people start searching for it. The last time I blogged about an error, I earned additional $50 from it in one month, and I am still earning additional $5+ every month from that blog post.
Now, how do I blog about errors to make it search engine friendly? Here are some of my tips:
1. Make the error message as your blog post title. Many technical people will search for the exact error message when searching for a fix, putting the error message as your title will give your blog post a higher search engine ranking.
2. Repeat the error message on the body of the blog post. Put it somewhere in the middle of your post, preferably quoted or italic. This will further enhance the relevancy of your post, because this will increase the keyword density. It is preferable to put the error numbers in bold.
3. Make sure you installed this Add Meta Tag plugin. This plugin enables you to specify specific keywords for keyword meta tag on your blog post and allows you to create your own description meta tag for each blog post. On the keywords meta tag, specify all the error message combination you can imagine that the searcher will search, including the wrong spelling. On the description meta tag, create a custom description that will entice the searcher to visit your blog. What I usually put there is a sentence saying that “this blog post will fix this error”.
4. I usually put a sitewide link on my sidebar to that specific blog post so that search engines can index it faster. If it drives visitor to my blog, I put the link permanently, but if it doesn’t, I remove it later.
As an example, try googling Illegal System DLL Relocation (click here!) and see my blog post there as no.1 result as of this moment.
Before, errors pissed me off. Now, I’m happy when I encounter errors. Why not? It makes me richer. I am looking for more errors to blog about, because it could give more traffic and more moolah to my blog.
Technorati Tags: Software Errors, Blogging Techniques
