Musings on Bicclescombe Grange’s Blog, so far

28th November 2018

Now it may surprise some of you to learn that I am not, in fact, a blogging god; that I have actually simply slapped it all together just to see what would happen!

Actually, let me first address the ‘some’ in that sentence. By an extraordinary coincidence, at time of writing, all of the followers I have (all 9 of them!) just happen to share my surname. I really can’t explain it… However, what that does mean is, although I know practically nothing about blogging, I do happen to know that all of my Faithful currently know even less! I think ‘The Blog God’ has a good ring to it, though I imagine it’s already taken. Bloggod? Anyway, what else has The Blog God got to say?

If I had just slapped it all together, because lots of people online said blogging would be good for the Bicclescombe Grange brand, then it would probably be a good idea about now to sit back and have a look at what has actually happened.

Well I have certainly learnt a great deal:

• My blog pages and posts are getting indexed by Google. Really quickly! Which is great, I think. So we might get some more organic hits from that. And it also means we will appear as a bigger, perhaps more noteworthy site. One to boost up the rankings possibly…
• But that has drawn my attention to how these posts appear. Some rethinking of the layout is probably  in order. Will have to move the date (and I know how disappointed a lot of you are going to be about that!) as it’s taking up important real estate. Better titles, that might get clicked on in a search result. And some pictures. So much to do…
• My feeling is that I need to aim higher though. Presumably all my Faithful spread the good word. Their friends spread it further and then, quite naturally and quite soon I imagine, my posts are seen by Katy Perry and Barack Obama. They tell their approximately 210 million followers how wonderful our house is, we’re fully booked and everyone lives happily ever after.
• And the best way to do all this spreading is probably via conversations. Getting comments which will show a richer dialogue which will have more chance of interesting a third party. Making comments on other sites – maybe they will then like, share or follow you back. Is Barack a big blogger?
• Regarding the commenting. I have recently received some emails – and I’m not going to mention any names (but you know who you are, Mum) – with various questions, suggestions and in fact comments. These could go on the actual blog posts comments section! Make it look like someone might actually be paying some mild attention. Just an idea!
• Keywords. Having seen that my posts can appear in search results I am mindful that it would be ideal if they were to appear in relevant and potentially useful searches. I’d noticed the categories and keywords sections so I filled them in to see what would happen. I’d imagined they would be similar to meta tags and just lurk in the background waiting for search engines to track them down, but no, looks like they appear front of stage, albeit it the bottom of the page. Not pretty, so might need to revisit this, but otherwise functionally satisfactory. I then of course went off looking for my keywords in WordPress and of course my posts did not appear. Did lead me to comment on another site though, which led back to my first real follow*. Barack will be calling any day now!

Where did all the time go?

(Hey, just found a ‘Heading’ option. Might have to use that more often.) Did any of you notice the date on this post? No? Well that’s probably mainly down to me being the only one here, reading this. Anyway, the date is today’s date! Does that mean we are up-to-date? No.

I have often (once) been asked, ‘The last post is dated over a month ago. Did you stop? Are you done?’ The truth is that I am just catching up, gradually. I had already done a little of the work described in these glittering pages when I had the idea to write a blog. I didn’t want to be posting in real time in case I gave up on all my plans or decided to do something else; so I waited until I had enough material to be sure I could produce something worthwhile (okay, matter of opinion). I have thus been drip feeding what I have done so far into the blog and dating each post with the date it occurred and not the date of the post. Which is why you get today’s date on this one! Which also means, and I’m sure you’ll be reassured to hear, that there is definitely a lot more to come! My understanding is that it would be better to add a post regularly than to dump the whole lot online in one go, so that’s what I’m doing.

Okay. You’re all thinking it. Why did he pick Katy Perry and Barack Obama? Well, I just Googled who has the most Twitter followers and they came up as numbers one and three. Couldn’t mention number two or my daughter would have words (sorry Justin).

And I’ll have less of the moans and groans: ‘Enough rattling on, What about the Backlinks!!??’ is a phrase I am of course not hearing. You lot* don’t even know what one is! Actually one of you does (though I had to pay her to learn about them!). More on that later…

* I’ve just edited this post as (drum roll please) I have just received my first follower who is not actually related to me. Thank you Jessica! Not sure if that’s the best link for her or if there’s a more appropriate ‘bloggy’ link but at least I’ve tried. I’ve no doubt Jessica knows what a Backlink is and a lot more besides so if you come back please exclude yourself from the above comment (though coincidentally the only other person is also called Jessica, which will make this all a little more confusing for her). Anyway, I searched for ‘SEO for holiday homes’ in WordPress, wondering if any of my posts would show and they didn’t, but hers did, with a very inviting picture title, which I clicked, read, commented on, she commented back, then joined the Faithful. I have a feeling that this sort of process is what it is all about and what I need to be working more on. Time will tell.