[Gaystoryman]

In the never ending quest to appease the Great Gods of search engines, and thus garner some paying customers, how you style your blog posts?

By that I mean, do you load it up with pictures at the head, then do the written content at the end?

Perhaps you do a teaser, with one pic at top, some text, a group of pics, with more text at the end?

Hell, do you even bother to worry about such stuff, and just wing it?

Are you a purist, where the text comes first, followed by the odd picture or video clip?

And what about video clips, do you leave them to the end, near the end, middle, or by gosh, use them right at the beginning?

And how many lovely pics of all those naked models do you use per post, or again, are you just a winging it, grabbing what strikes your fancy?

[Tigger]

bottom line Ian when punters search for adult related content more often than not they are looking for images so you have to offer them something straight away to kick the old brain into life by stimulating it with an image

What you do afterwards is a mix between text and images to both please the odd few surfers that will read what you've typed and needless to say the search engines, although is it really worth saying SE anymore when we mite just as well say Google

So images at the top followed by text (approx 200-300) words followed by more images and a link into the buy section - I then add more text detailing buying features

Offering a mix between images and the top then text hopefully ticks all the boxes ..............hopefully

[Gaystoryman]

Being a writer of fiction, I still dream, so I'll stick with Search Engines

I wonder at times, just how much they do read, the SE bots that is. Also if positioning matters to them or not. Yet it does for the surfer, and the Catch 22 circle goes on and on.

While 200 to 300 seems to be the amount of text, even that, I wonder about. Especially if one is using images, and all the tags that go with them. And does it really matter if the text is split up, or not.

For blog posts, it can be interesting to experiment with. At the same time, large amounts of text in one spot, with large amounts of photos, doesn't seem to make good selling sense to the customer.

In other words, round and round we go, where it'll stop no one knows.

[Tigger]

In other words, round and round we go, where it'll stop no one knows

frustrating isn't it

I try to work with postings / pages that have enough words within them to cover the keyword terms I want to get into the page without it reading spammy or looking that way to G, hence I can normally do that within 300-500 words

But i think we need to be aware of not boring the surfer with loads of text, after all we add these pages to make the punters click the links

[Gaystoryman]

Frustrating is an understatement

True can't bore the poor darlings, not if we want their money
Then too, there are the images. Some people seem to feel one needs several or one huge collage. I wonder if More is really not becoming Less, when it comes to conversions. Though mulitple images do well, one large collage seems to do better, so go figure.

[Tigger]

its a tricky thing working out how many images to post up - you want to give enough to leave them wanting more, but not too many that they no longer need to go further

but i think also you have the problem that how many surfers come to a page expecting to see loads of porn images and have really no interest in seeing or reading our spider food

When working on contacts sites this is a massive problem in that you have to produce pages with unique content but themed around a couple of main money terms combined with local county terms, mix that with not wanting to get a penalty for duplicate / similar pages & piss the surfer off with too much text and its bloody hard going

[Gaystoryman]

It is, one reason though why I do like blogs. Easy to set up and experiment with different layouts, posting formats that is. I mean start one with an image at the top, then text, or one with nothing but images, etc... helps give a guy a feel for what his traffic likes.

Longer I am in this game, more I think G owns Tylenol and the Hair For Men Club

[Tigger]

I've got a petty god idea what G wants the problem is so much is dependent on what links to what and how long those links have been in place

but the red helps at night

[conran]

After seeing Blogger blogs shut for spam, I truly believe a part of their new algo is comparing text to links ratio.

If you have four links coming out from a post with 150 words, Google will see that as spam IMO. But 300 words with one link would be viewed as an informative post providing supporting evidence.

This is why I create sponsor site reviews for my blogs. Adding a page of text, with bullet lists and stats where possible, and with very few links, is a great method of making your site appear more valuable and informative.
Note that Matt Cutts stated they are looking specifically for sites that offer data, critical analysis and reports... the only possible way they could do that is by seeing code indicating bullet lists, numbered stats, graphs, surveys and so on.

For evidence that you're interacting with your audience it might also be worthwhile to change theme terms that make demands into requests. So you'd change "Leave a Reply" to "Have an Opinion?"

Also, you could add some survey elements. For example, there is a plug-in which allows you to ask for voting on specific pages or posts. You could add this to review pages with text like "Was this review helpful?"

And, I know it's sometimes controversial, but I rewrite spammers comments and remove the links/change the name and approve. On the blogs on which I do this I see more traffic. So the idea that comments are ignored by Google is, IMO, a myth. It indicates audience feedback, so it makes sense that they would value those with more comments than those without.

[housekeeper]

I do a combination of things, as most of us have different blogs, I try to mix it up accordingly. And believe it or not I put some consideration towards the aesthetic (appearance) aspect of a post.

Generally I wrap the text around the pic, I determine which side (right/left) the pic should sit based on the pic itself. Generally don't use a size larger than say 320 (width or height) and nothing smaller than 200-240, and always open that pic to a larger image of the same model/scene. This works for me in three column themes.

I also have what I call a picture post blog, it's a 1 column diddy that I use a 640px height pic with a very limited text description underneath. The front page pic is a carefully chosen glam pic and the opened image is va-va-va-voom. I have 5 posts displayed, the side bar has banners and I also included 5 thumbs that I rotate and open into a gallery. The aesthetic of the site is good and I've become quite fond of it as well. I recently jump started it as well, where I buckle down and make certain I auto update Mon-Fri with a new post. I also poured in a list of ping-back sites, my traffic tripled overnight and has stayed steady.

Honestly, I never know what is generating the most juice. The SEO plug-in has always been a curious one for me, does it really work or are you benefiting more simply by virtue of using custom permalinks? I always use alt="".....

[conran]

Have to agree on the SEO plug-in question. I, personally, haven't seen any benefits of using All in one SEO on some blogs. While another recommended SEO plug-in completely blocked Google!

On some other blogs where I don't bother with any SEO plug-in's, the Google traffic is far higher.

Any plug in should be monitored and checked over a few days to see if there's any change in organic traffic. With the open source nature of them, there are often problems.

[Tigger]

seo a blog is about one thing alone controlling page/ posting names and by using SEOplug ins it can help if your not that SEO savvy. I don't see a reason to not use it

I've got blogs running with and without it and don't have issues with getting them ranking - For someone that doesn't fully understand SEO a plug in does lay it out in little boxes so you can follow

bottom line if its not broken why try to fix it

[sunfunbill]

I make a full width picture at the top, maybe one in the middle of the post and one at the bottom. I have sales text at the bottom of each one and they all link to the tour, NOT a gallery.

I use around 150 words of text. I rank well with my keywords and it gets them to go to the damn tour, which is what you want. I'm happy with it.

[gonzogone]

I have one pic at the top mixed in with the text, then it depends on what theme I'm working with to decide how many more pics to use. Some are conducive to 3 pics total, some look better with two - but that's just my opinion of my own blogs. 300ish words and often a banner ad below the post that is specific to the post.

[SaschaIllyvich]

My videos go at the top but I need to probably move them down a bit. PIcs go in the middle of posts and throughout, but the first one near the top. Not sure if it makes a huge difference but my traffic has steadily increased since I started using pics in my blog posts and labeling my cover art for not just the title of the book but the genre and extra keywords.