Pet Bloggers Blog Hop – Blogging Best Practices

Ok here’s the deal. I really have fun going around to all of your blogs to figure out which of your posts really stands out but something happened today when I was going from Blog to Blog. I got a message from one saying only invited readers can access the Blog. Now I understand that if your content is X rated or if you created a Blog just for family but if you are linking up to a Blog Hop the idea is that people are going to want to visit. Or that was my thinking when starting the Blog Hop all those long years ago before Internet was invented. OK fine it was after the first BlogPaws but that was still way back when. So here are some tips for Blogging Best Practices.

1. If you want to have a readership, audience, or want people to be able to search for your Blog you have to make it open access. Don’t make people log in or jump through hoops to find you. If you post private updates that you only want friends and family to see using WordPress you can create a secret page that needs a password to get to. Email your friends that there is a new post and use the same password for each.

2. Turn off the capcha. Seriously. If you want comment turn the darn thing off. It takes time and patience to do those thing. My eyes aren’t perfect and it is sometimes difficult to see what they want you to type out. Other times you don’t realize there is a capcha because it doesn’t show up until you press enter on your comment and by that point you are probably getting ready to navigate away from the post. If you are worried you can still leave the comment moderation on but honestly if you want to grow your readership do away with it all together unless you are under attack by a spam bot. If you use WordPress search for the plug-in Akismet it will make your life easier I promise. Blogger Blogs have a pretty decent internal system set up to catch the spam.

3. Sorry I got sidetracked you know how several weeks ago I was telling you all how Dora who had barely been acknowledging my presence was sitting on my lap once in a while well she now sleeps in bed with me. Anyway she was just entertaining me by fishing out a few pieces of rice and broccoli out of a bowl and then decided I didn’t give her enough so walked across the computer. That actually brings me to point number three post about your experiences. I don’t mean post about your mundane every day occurrences its not all that interesting to hear how your pet giraffe growled at the neighbors pink elephant for the 1,987th day in a row. Ok that would be interesting but you get the idea if there is something in your life that happens that makes you want to sit at the computer and google it chances are your readers would also be interested in knowing more and once it happens to you and you have first hand knowledge and somethign to share it becomes all that more interesting. For instance about a year ago Indiana had an anal gland abscess I had seen them before when I worked at an Animal Hospital but had no idea what her’s was because abscess presented on her thigh.

3.1 For those of you who have followed our Blog for a while you might remember me mentioning our issue with frogs. Our issue is that they look like little stones and then just as Davinia and Indiana are over them they jump up and the girls snatch them up in their mouths. Frogs are toxic to dogs and this is a problem we have been dealing with for years. I finally said enough is enough I needed to figure out how to keep them away without poisoning other animals including the dogs and cat so I did some searching finally found some tips implemented them and then wrote a post about how to keep frogs away naturally! I wouldn’t say it is a popular post but there have to be other people out there with the same problem and want to try to deal with it.

So now that I have totally gone off topic I will do my best to go visiting again next week and find some fantastic post that I think deserve more attention. These are posts you all have created so make sure to link directly to the post you want me to check out for next week and possibly include in the round up!