Bloggiesta: Mini-Challenge Wrap-up
I participated in four mini-challenges. I learned about Pinterest, search engines and how to use Windows Live Writer. I also got a start on getting my tags and categories better organized.
1. Use Pinterest for Promotion
at Joy’s Book Blog.
I opened a Pinterest account a few weeks ago but wasn’t sure what I would use it for. So I pinned a few photos and forgot about it. Now I know I can use it to promote my book reviews and it is as simple as can be. I’ll be adding a Pinterest button to my sidebar but until then click here to see my book board. If you’d like to try Pinterest and need an invite, send me an email.
2. Get Noticed by Search Engines
Curious about SEO and Google Page Rank, I choose this as one of my challenges. There is a wealth of information at this challenge and I know I will be referring back to these helpful pages again. The key points I learned about SEO are:
• Always use alt-image tags
• Interlink to your old posts
• Link to other bloggers
I reviewed a few of my posts and added back links and outgoing links, checked my key words with google’s keyword tool, and added alt tags to my images.
3. Learn Windows Live Writer
Until I saw this challenge I had not even heard about Windows Live Writer. To be honest, I tend to avoid all software by Windows other than the operating system itself, so it was a surprise to find that they came up with something that works.
I use WinXP so I needed to download Live Writer. Now that I’ve tried it, I see that it’s something I would not use very often. The ability to write off-line would be helpful, but most of the other features are already a part of the WordPress interface, plus I do a lot of coding in HTML. I’m not familiar with Blogger, but from the comments I’m reading this would be an enhancement and probably more useful for those on that platform. Either way, I’m glad to have learned something new.
4. Organize Categories/Tags
I’m still working on this one. I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get through three years of posts and add tags. My goal is to streamline the categories into a few broad classifications and use tags for the detail. I started by reviewing the least used categories and eliminating them. Next I will combine subcategories and then review my tags. This will be an ongoing process.
Did you participate in any challenges?
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Under My Apple Tree 
I am still working on the challenges. I spent some time with April’s SEO post and learned that being on wordpress.com a lot of this is already done for me, however I learned more about tagging and search engines.
I also did the one about pages which I use, but had never thought about how I used them, I made some changes there.
Then I started working on sidebar which led to an unplanned layout change which I am still working on and has sucked up a lot of time 🙂
Guess I will still be busy today 🙂
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I was surprised to find out how much WordPress already does for us. We don’t have access to the meta tags but google search does find us quite easily. It’s another thing to consider when I decide whether to go it alone and self-host.
I noticed your blog morphing through some design changes. 🙂
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