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In the blogging world, being able to schedule posts is a god send. It allows you to have the freedom of writing whenever and wherever you want. Say you know that you’re going on a vacation in 2 weeks, you could schedule posts for that entire week. They would post while you were away on vacation and your readers will still be happily reading what you write. There won’t be a gap of no posting.
Or say that you have a fixed schedule for writing. You write on your schedule that you have 2-3 hours every couple of days dedicated to just blogging. You could write out all your posts in those couple of hours and still have free days. Genius, right?
Well, what if you have signed up with a company that need their review or giveaway URL? What do you do then? There is a way to figure out a link for a scheduled post, so no worries. You could write it AND give them the pre-determined URL so you are on track for EVERYTHING.
This is also handy if you post other bloggers giveaways. You can go ahead and schedule it even if the giveaway doesn’t start until a week from the time you posted. I tend to forget if I don’t send the link ASAP.
SO- now onto HOW to find out what your link will be.
Step 1.
Go to your blogs homepage URL. Scroll down a bit and click on a post that you recently posted.
AS you can see the last thing I posted was a review of the Sol Republic Deck Speaker. SO if I click on it, I get the URL of that review.
If you look closely you can see that the title of my blog post “Sol Republic Deck Bluetooth Speaker” matches the URL. http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/sol-republic-deck-bluetooth-speaker.html That tells you what you need to know.
You’ll need to look at the patterns. For instance, The Blog Post
becomes the URL>> http://sewraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/office-organization-with-post-it-review.html
the common denominator will always be your homepage (mine http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com) plus the /year/month that the post is made. The date is always separated by slashes /.
THEN you’ll start with the first word. See how my URL is highlighted in yellow? Followed by the year/date in red? THEN the blog post title separated by hyphens in blue?
If your post starts with “A” or “The” you will not add those in. It automatically adds the first REAL word, skips A and the every time. For instance, If I was to write a post called “The Sample Post” my URL would be http://sewcraftable.blogspot.com/2014/09/sample-post.html
Get my drift? It isn’t that hard if you’re willing to shoot a little guessing at times. It isn’t that hard once you get the hang of everything!
Did this help you? I’d love for you to share it.
Check all the other Blogging Tips and Tricks I’ve written!
Until next time,
Jessica
New to the blogging world and want to eventually write sponsored content or review products? You will have to understand what is required when writing sponsored content or sharing content to your social media. There are specific things that need to be covered in the disclosure depending on what type of content it is.
What is the FTC? What is a disclosure?
FTC is short for the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC helps to protect consumer rights and manages online advertising and marketing. Basically they are here to make sure that the reader KNOWS before they click (or read) anything they know that there was compensation or products given.
That is what a disclosure is. A disclosure is a note to your readers advising them of your relationship with a company or client. It’s also a promise to them that you are being honest with your opinion and are no way influenced by the compensation. A disclosure is an absolute must in any sponsored content; whether via a website or social media. It’s against the law to not disclose paid links or products sent for consideration and it could get you in a TON of trouble.
When to disclose?
A disclosure must be present in any post that contains compensation; whether they paid you to write a post or sent a product for your consideration.
*In any post that contains an affiliate link. An affiliate link differs from a normal link because you get a certain percentage of sales if a reader clicks from your link. It’s basically a referral link from you. You have to let them know you’ll benefit from them clicking on that link, that way they can make the choice to visit it or not.
example: Imagine I just wrote a post reviewing and recommending Microsoft Office to all of my readers.
I then search for a link for my readers to be able to purchase the software if they want.
Direct link:
The direct link would be grabbed in your URL box at the very top of the page and doesn’t contain your affiliate link. It is just the link to where they the product can be found.
Affiliate link:
No matter what companies you are an affiliate for, they give you a certain “code” that tracks what is bought through your code. Your code might be automatically inserted or you might have to add it in there yourself, make sure you check. Then the company will pay you a certain percentage any time a purchase is made through your recommendation of the product.
You can add your affiliate code by clicking what is circled in red above. It will prompt a pop up window that looks like this:
you can choose whether to show the product link as text/image, text only, or image only. It’s totally your choice which to insert.
Get the HTML insert code making sure to look for your affiliate link (circled in red).
Where and when the disclosure needs to be made.
The disclosure needs to be written immediately at the beginning of any link or post.
Example:
It has to be immediately before the content and links are viewable to them, so they outright know that there is a possibly of you making money off of their purchases through your link. This is because there were some websites that intentionally mislead their readers by not giving proper disclosures of their honesty about the products/money they received.
The FTC knew there had to be a compromise of trust made with the online shopper and website owners. Online shoppers want to know the truth and The FTC started penalizing sites who weren’t totally honest of their compensation before posting. This is intentionally misleading to readers and shouldn’t be warranted. Readers need to be able to believe the website owners reference or word is in no way tainted.
Website owners establish their readers trust through being honest and upfront with them ALL of the time. Most readers don’t care that they are going to make you a little money by clicking on your link, they just have to know that you will before doing so. Most readers would actually WANT to do it for referring them, but give them that choice. Just make sure that all affiliate and sponsored links are known and shown.
Does the blog/website size matter?
It doesn’t matter what size your blog is, big or small.. a disclosure is always needed. Even a blog with ONE follower has to have a disclosure for every paid or sponsored link. WHY? Blogs grow, both in content and readers. You might not have many readers now, but EVEN one reader has to know the truth behind the post/link.
You will eventually lose your readers trust if they find out. It’s just such a risk, why take it? It only takes a few minutes at the most and could save your butt in the future. The sponsor or client could decide to pull your contract or pay for not adding one. You even risk being investigated (along with your sponsor) and even fined for not properly disclosing to your readers. Why go through all that trouble in the future when you can disclose it now and not worry about it.
Did I help you understand why disclosures are needed? Is it easy to understand? How do you feel about disclosures?
If you have a second will you please share this via social media to help spread the word?
FYI>> Keep an eye out for the next post in the FTC Disclosure series- Making the Right Disclosure for Your Post.
-Jess
The new SEO has probably got you running around in circles, grabbing your hair. Chasing your tail and wondering what you’re doing. You’re probably thinking… what’s the difference? Why does it matter so much? How do I nofollow? Ugh.. frustrating, right?
Not any more! I’d been reading up on this ever since my PR flanked and dropped completely to a 0. I was completely astonished. I had been blogging for about 5 years and had over 1500 posts. I was stunned. I had went from a 3 to a 0! Holy Crap! I know.
SEO & All That
To be able to explain to you what the follow/nofollow links mean and how they work, I have to explain some SEO stuff to you.
When a site gets a link (link pointing to that web page) (from any website EVER) it gets a tiny PR boost. Each link that is sent to your website equals a higher PR rating. Think of it as a vote. Each site that links to you is a vote. Many votes=King (Well Queen, right?) of the web space (oh, and a higher ranking in Google Search Engines).
Google can see how many links you have and from what websites. Google thinks in the term of “if many people are linking to a site, it has to be a pretty popular website”. So more links= higher popularity basically. Google only wants to give the best to its “searchers” so higher ranked websites show up first on a google search.
Say for instance you write a blog post on “20 Healthy Hair Tips.” Someone searches “healthy hair tips” and their results show. If you have a higher ranked blog, you’ll show up before a lower ranked blog would.
Follow Links
NOW, onto the actual links and what they mean. A follow link is a link that counts as a “vote” in your Search Engine popularity. If someone writes a blog post and includes a follow link to your “20 Healthy Hair Tips”, you’ll get a “vote.” PR ranking is also upped.
NoFollow Links
A Nofollow link is still a link placed to a website, it doesn’t doesn’t count as a “vote.” This link does not in NO way boost PR ranking.
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*A no follow link is created with the nofollow link HTML tag, which looks like this:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>
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The Nofollow tag basically tells googles web crawlers that you don’t want to place a “vote” for this particular website.
You cannot have too many nofollow links because Google will think you’re being paid for links. Then they will mark your website or blog as spammy and pull your Page Rank. So make sure you watch which websites and links you give your “vote” to.
This nofollow tag keeps spammers from blackballing the smaller guys by buying links from everybody and artificially boosting their PR. Like those pesky people who bombard online community boards and blogs with links trying to sneak in some SEO pull. No more of that.
Now there isn’t any worry that there will be 100s of nonsense posts posted everywhere. It isn’t going to get them anywhere anyway, so why waste their time?
When to USE Nofollow
Don’t think that Nofollows are completely worthless though. Even if someone gives you a nofollow link in their blog or post, it will still send traffic to your blog.
Don’t think about SEO when you’re writing. Think about bonding with the people who are reading your blog and building your brand.
SO- just make sure if you write a sponsored post or receive a review item (even if it’s an ebook) you have to make sure to add the nofollow link. Google has crawlers searching websites looking for links out of place (randomly inserted with no content to back the link up) and paid content.
Better to be safe than sorry they say. I know- because I started blogging BEFORE the nofollow tag and have to scour my blog and add in nofollow links to almost all my old posts. I know. Great. lol
Just another thing on the to-list I guess.
Til next time,
Jess
