Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

Just testing out the Lightbox capability on my blog…

It used to be that if you wanted to run Wordpress, you wanted a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Server. You could get it working on Internet Information Server but it wasn’t the best and there were definitely issues to be dealt with.

Trouble yourself no more! Zend Technologies, and the “Zend Platform” have taken the PHP core and added performance and stability. The Zend Core commercially supported flavor of PHP has now been certified to run on Windows Server 2008.

This should be of specific interest to many I have seen recently asking about running Wordpress on Windows.

From itnews.com:

For example, Zend worked with Microsoft’s FastCGI component for its Web server, IIS, to make FastCGI set up and run PHP applications efficiently. The IIS Web server is now built into Windows 2008, and the two companies made certain the PHP interface to FastCGI worked smoothly, Gutmans said in an interview.
Zend’s PHP now supports CardSpace, Microsoft’s identity management system, so users of PHP applications may gain online services after being authenticated and awarded the proper privilege level. The Windows 2008 certification also means Windows as well as Linux servers can be expected to host such PHP applications as the Mambo Web site content management system or the WordPress blog publishing system, Gutmans said.
Previously, PHP “didn’t run as well as it should on Windows,” said Gutmans, despite the fact that 75% to 80% of PHP users were developing on Windows workstations. When they deployed their Windows-based applications to production, their performance was disappointing and they tended to develop on Windows and deploy under Unix or Linux. Now the three platforms should be available on a more equal footing, he said.
The two companies have started work on a SQL Server driver for Zend Core that will make interfacing PHP Web applications to SQL Server a more straightforward task, Gutmans said.

hopefully you have already read about what trends you should be following and how to write to capitalize on those trends. This last piece could possibly be the most important. It’s time we look at how to make your readers "Read Deep."

What is Reading Deep?
When your users are coming to you by way of a search engine you have one major battle to fight. The reader is usually a bit short on attention span. When your reader comes to your page, you hope they find the article compelling, but wether they do or not, you want to have a serious impact on where they go next.

My users hang around for an average of 45 seconds and view 1.27 pages and leave. Those are the averages. The scary stat is that over 8 out of 10 readers do NOT view another page before they go. 83.87% leave before they view a second page.

Beyond writing good content covered previously, one often overlooked technique is making sure your readers have somewhere to go.

The image to the left shows in green the spots on my page that would lead a reader to more content on my site.

This particular page is the initial landing page or also the top of a single page article.

That’s a pretty good list of single word links that don’t really compel a user to click them unless he or she is really hot on a particular keyword.

Let’s look at the bottom of the article. (Of course we are hoping the reader makes it that far!!)

Now we are getting some useful links. The links you see now are relevant and detailed. They are interesting to the current reader and have serious value.

If your content has caught your reader’s attention enough for them to make it this far, there is a high likelyhood that you have built some credibility with the reader and they will glance at other related topics to find more information.

Having a related topics plugin like the one I use for Wordpress is invaluable for this purpose. This might be an interesting place to use some zoning in Google Analytics to see how often your related articles sections are being used as well.

Tracking Progress
As with any other metric, averages are very hard to discern over long periods. The more numbers, the less visible the impact. One very valuable way to track these metrics is to change your default layout in Google Analytics or whatever tracking tool you use to track smaller periods of time and compare them to history.

The view above is the one that I follow daily. I have this report set up and have it emailed to me every day. It’s the best way I have found to get a glance at how my site is performing. Unfortunately this screenshot shows I am under performing to last week, but that’s the breaks of blogging. I guess it’s do as I say, not as I do!

I hope this has given a good insight into what you need to grow. Being a blogger is a task you have to be dedicated to and diligent about. Being a significant blogger is even more demanding. The principles I have laid out for you are going to help you grow. You will find that not implementing these regularly and consistently will lead to a traffic plateau. I am currently at that Plateau, while my traffic is growing, it’s relatively stable.

I will be implementing some of my ideas here as I have more time to spend with my site again (starting a new job in a demanding field is tough!) and I will document my progress so please subscribe and watch these tips take effect.

Now that you know what to write by following the trends, let’s talk about how to write. I don’t mean where to sit, what software to use, etc.. This is about how to research, how to pick your topic and how to make sure the search engines see it.

Making Your Topic Unique
Once you have your topic in mind, ask yourself if it’s a unique and valuable topic. The best things to write about are not your opinions (unless you are John C. Dvorak, lol) but How things work, productivity helpers, tutorials and reviews.

Your best readers are going to be someone who needs to know how to do something or someone who is interested in something that you can provide valuable insight about.

Problogger.net says "For a blog to be successful, your content needs to be useful and unique to your readers."

Running a blog is in many ways just like a business. If your writing is your product, and your product sucks, nobody is going to buy it and you will go out of business.  The old mantra in business is "Start with the customer - find out what they want and give it to them." It’s simple, but it’s totally accurate.

We have already used the previous article to decide what content is popular, so let’s move on to making sure it’s unique and valuable.

Stand Out
The first place to start is by doing some research. We have already looked at where we are showing up in the search results. Look at some of those same keywords, check out the other blogs and websites that are popular, and unless you think you can make a significant improvement or addition to the topic, go ahead and write it down on a notepad and cross it out.

Philoking’s Tip: Even if you write with a computer, keep a notepad in front of you to jot down ideas and thoughts. You might want to come back to them later.

Organizing Your Article
When I write, I begin by getting my thoughts out, taking little notice of it’s organization. Once I have my main bits sorted, I start to settle how it’s going to be most useful to read. I like to keep two sets of readers in mind and make sure the article is going to benefit both:

• Skimmers: These readers are rushed to find information on a topic and they don’t want to have to dig for it.
• Researchers: These readers want depth. They don’t want your long winded version of some PR company’s press blurb.

Skimmers are looking for a specific piece of information. I would bet that the majority of my readers on the World of Warcraft topics are skimmers. They just upgraded to Windows Vista, they installed World of Warcraft and it’s running like crap. All they want to know is what they can do to make it run better. Odds are they are not going to read a long winded article in it’s entirety, they just want the facts.

Researchers want depth. I would guess that the majority of my readers on the iPod Touch topics are Researchers. They are people who have either just got an iPod Touch and want to know what they can do with it, or someone who is considering purchasing an iPod Touch and want to find out all they can before they take the plunge.

Philoking’s Tip: Segment your article with Titles and make sure they allow easy, organized navigation of your topics.

Research, Research, Research!
With both sets of readers we are looking at, they want the truth. They want lots of detail and they want it to be accurate.

Taking your topic and separating it into organized chunks will help your readers but it will also help you break your research down into bite sized pieces.

Be sure to help your readers by citing any sources you use with hyperlinks so they can easily drill into more detail by following your research steps yourself. This will also build credibility with the community by showing respect to other writers.

Philoking’s Tip: Create a folder in your bookmarks and mark anything interesting you find on the web related to the article you are trying to write.

Never Forget SEO
Search engines are how they got here, let’s keep that train rolling by making sure this awesome article gets fair treatment in the search engine world.

• Place your keyword in your post’s title.
• Make sure your post slug has the keyword in it.
• Make sure your blog is using friendly URLs.
• Use your keyword in your very first sentence.
• Bold or Italicize the keyword for the benefit of search engines and your readers.
• Don’t overuse your keywords, bots consider this a factor in rating what is spam.
• Use your keyword a few times in the first paragraph.
• End strong by making sure your keyword is in the end of your last paragraph as well.
• Use Tags, always and use them properly.
• Use your keyword when hyperlinking to other sources.
• keyword tag your images.

These are just a few tips to help write great articles. There are many more. Check the following great websites for more information on writing great articles:

• Problogger.net
• Copyblogger.com
• bloggingtips.com

Continue to part 3, making your readers "read deep."