While writing FIFA posts, most blogs (especially Indian) I have read, have used the keyword Football (including me).  However, I recently did a adwords keyword search using the keyword tool regarding this. I found that the keyword “soccer” had more Estimated Avg.CPC, than the keyword “football”.

Well, the reason why we (Indians) use “football” more often than “soccer” is that “football” is used all over the world, while “Soccer” is American. As, in most parts of world, “football” is in practice, we tend to use “football”.

If you take a look at the image below, the keyword “football” has an average CPC of around 0.99 USD, while “soccer” has an average CPC of 1.13 USD. The difference is pretty much noticeable.

Another thing is, while doing the keyword research, the location was set to United States. Since most bloggers, as far as I know, target American traffic, it’s better to use “soccer” keyword in your posts than “football” keyword.

But, till now we just looked at the average CPC. But, if you see the the search volume for the keyword “football” is more than the search volume for “soccer”. It’s almost less than half the “football” volume. So, it’s better to use both the keywords simultaneously. Like, “football” in the title and excerpt, while “soccer” in the middle of the posts. What do you think?

This post is not written by an expert. These are just my views and there may be many mistakes in my analysis. I expect you to hit me with questions or tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. We can strike a discussion together. Thanks for reading!

To enable, this feature in MS Word, you need to first setup your account in the MS Word. The following tutorial could help you doing so.

1. Click on the Office button on the top left corner of MS word. Go to “Publish” option and select “Blog”.
2. In the new window open, create new blog account. This image tutorial will guide you through the installation.

   

3. While setting up the account, click on “Picture Options”. Select my own server and enter the URL of where you upload the pictures. For example, http://www.techmonk.com/wp-admin/uploads.php. If you are using FTP server, then give the corresponding URL. In the “Source URL” enter your blog URL.
4. If you are setting up an Blogger account then you can simply select the blog provider option or set up any other server online like Flickr or Photobucket wherein you can upload your pictures.

Note: If you are using WordPress.org (Self-hosted) then you need to enable XML – RPC. (Remote Publishing Client). To do so, go to “Settings- Writing”. Check the Enable Remote Publishing option.

Advantages Of Blogging From MS Word

There are many advantages when you are blogging from MS Word.

1. It has more formatting options. So you can choose among variety of fonts.
2. You feel at home when you use MS Word.
3. You can use font sizes with greater flexibility.
4. You can insert chart, clip-art, wrod art and so on.

Disadvantages Of Blogging From MS Word

1. You cannot SEO your articles like in WordPress or in WLW.
2. You cannot create tags and categories for Blogger account. However, if you are using wordpress you can create categories.

SEO I Did To This Article:

This is a new practice that I am adopting in my blogging. This section of the blog will contain all the SEO I make to a article as it would be helpful to my readers. I discuss the importance of the SEO below every post from now on as much as I know. Suggestions about SEO and the article are welcome by means of comments or mails. Will continue it depending on how people react to this.

Post Title: How To Post Articles To Your Blog Using Microsoft Word.

Here the post title is same as the one I have entered into the Platinum SEO pack. This is because people search like “How to post articles from MS Word” and as Google gives more importance to the title I have entered the same.

More about Platinum SEO pack. (A must have wordpress SEo plug-in.)

Post Excerpt: Here is a simple tutorial that helps you to blog from MS Word. If you are searching for an alternative for WLW, then you can use Microsoft Word as your blog writer.

This the post excerpt that the search engines see. If you look at the post excerpt on my blog homepage, it is different. The important point in this post excerpt is the keywords. “Blog from MS Word”, “Alternative for WLW”, “Microsoft as your Blog Writer”. People are likely to search these keywords. and if they do so, this would help me to rank high in the search position.

Also note that the excerpt just contains 165 characters. Most search engines just take 160 characters of the excerpt. So being brief in your explanations with keywords will help you to rank higher.

Note: Google gives second position to the Excerpts after Post Titles.

Keywords: blog from MS word, blog from Microsoft Word, alternative for WLW, alternative for Windows Live Writer

These tell search engine to invoke our links when a query like the above ones are entered. People are likely to search using the following keywords.

Image Optimization: I am still a novice in image optimization and still learning it. Any suggestions on optimizing images are welcome.

An important note: Here, we are in no way fooling the Search Engines as many might think. This is just making our post much related to the search queries.

Why Do People Read Reviews In Blogs?

This is an important question to be answered before continuing the talk on writing a review. Even though there are lots of application reviewing sites on web such as Softpedia, FileHippo, Tucows and so on, people read reviews on blogs for many reasons. I have listed them here:

1) People trust reviews made on blogs as bloggers check them before reviewing it. However, not every blogger does this. So beware, readers!

2) It is neatly explained on blogs rather than other sites that I mentioned above. So, readers can get an insight of what that application actually is, and whether they are in need of it or not.

3) Bloggers give a detailed tutorial of how to use an application, thus making the work of a reader easier.

These are some of the reasons why people wish to read reviews on blog. But, what I have seen on many blogs is that they just write review in a short paragraph and end the post. If that is the matter, then readers would prefer on sites like Softpedia only as they update faster than you.

Tips To Write Review On a Application

So, with above points in mind, we need to write such a post, so that it will be helpful to readers in all ways. Here are some points that you need to take care before writing a review post.

1) NEVER WRITE A POST WITHOUT TRYING THE APPLICATION. This is the most important point that has to be kept in mind before writing a review post. Remember, if you write a post on an application that doesn’t work or contains viruses, then you may get lot of teachers to teach you how to write a blogpost. More than that, if a software contains a virus you will be the cause for hacked PCs of your readers.

2) As far as you can, explain the features of the applcation through images. You can check this post of mine, I had written recently for better understanding.

3) Add a special section in your post called THE STRIKING FEATURE to emphasize on the exact usefulness of the application.

4) If there are any complications in using the applications, give a simple tutorial below the review of how to use it.

My Usual Practice Of Writing Reviews On Applications

I usually, at the beginning, explain briefly about what the application is all about. Then, I list all the places and situations where this application can be used. After this I move on with features through complete image tutorial. I mark the important features in the images so that readers can can understand them easily. Later, if I feel there is a real striking feature then I create a separate section, if otherwise I add it in the features section only. At the end I conclude with encouraging the users to test the application and discuss there experience.

Features List: Bullets Or Paragraphs

It is often a common discussion about how to write the features section. I would say, it all depends on the app. If there are so many features that needs lot of explanation, then it is better to write them in paragraphs. If the features do not require much explanation then bullets would do.

For example, if you are writing the review of Google Wave, there are many features that you have to explain to readers like Tweeting from Wave, Sharing a Wave and so on. These features require explanation as to how it is useful and how to use it. So, it would be better to write paragraphs to explain its features.

However, if you are reviewing a simple application like Notepad + +, it would be enough if you write a list of features as shown below:

• WYSIWYG Editor
• Multi-Viewing
• Multi-documents…… and so on.

However, these are completely my point of view and there is no compulsion that you have to accept it.

So, what do you think of my practice of writing reviews? Did you find this post useful? Please share your opinions through comments below.

BTW, What exactly is readability?

Readability of a post, in a layman’s language, is how well can a post or an article be understood by others. However, if you go deeper you will find that readability of an article is calculated based on different factors in an article. Flesch-Kincaid Readability is a method of finding out the percentage of readability of a paragraph.

According to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability formula mentioned in the Wikipedia, scores of the articles are calculated. Here is a table that will tell you the range of scores you must try to achieve depending on your audience.

90-100: Very Easy
80-89: Easy
70-79: Fairly Easy
60-69: Standard
50-59: Fairly Difficult
30-49: Difficult
0-29: Very Confusing

As the topic under discussion here is blogging, it would be ideal to get a score of readability between 60-70, as most blog readers are neither professionals in English nor too weak.

Now after defining, the score you want your posts to have, it is time to concentrate on achieving it.

How To Test The Readability Of A Post?

This important question is worth answering here. After knowing so much about the need of maintaining readability of a post, there is a need to implement them in your writings.

Coming to the tool, MS word is itself a best tool for checking the readability of a post. It actually tests the Flesch-Kincaid Readability I had discussed. Here is a brief tutorial to enable that option:

• Go to MS Word 2007, Click on the review tab.
• Click the Spelling & Grammar option.
• Click on the Options in the opened dialog box.
• Check the Readability statistics option.

After this, you would be getting the readability statistics in the percentage. Try to maintain the percentage between 60 and 70 as I had said above.

Tips To Increase The Readability

• Try to keep your sentences brief and easily readable to others.
• Do not combine too many sentences and make it a single sentence. At the maximum, combine two sentences with all the required punctuations at the correct places.
• Use the punctuation marks at the proper places, so that they are easy to read for your readers.
• Try to avoid as many miss-spells as possible.
• Use blog writers such as Windows Live Writer and Word, so that it would be easy to do spell check etc.

There are many ad codes out there which are not compatible for blogger as it has only XML compatibility. Many java-scripts are very hard to embed in blogger and many end up in getting errors editing it.

Now, here is a online tool that helps you to convert ad codes compatible for blogger. This is called Blogger Adsense Code Converter. It is a service that gives you the blogger compatible script of any ad code. You may also note that you can convert any ad code like Chitika, Adsense, Adbrite etc. This is hosted on eblogtemplates, a site for very good blogger and wordpress templates.

You can check out this service here. If you liked this post get subscribed here for more of posts like this.